398
PARTISAN REVIEW
Mick stared at the soup. The surface was full of little oil slicks.
"I mean," Heimlich's wife said, "some things
j~lst
aren't funny."
Mick thought it best to nod solemnly. "You've noticed that too, have
you." The oil slicks seemed to be moving around under their own power.
"You better eat that soup," Heimlich's wife told him.
Mick dutifully lifted a spoonful of soup and blew on it and swallowed
it. He felt a swell of nausea rise up from his stomach as if the soup had dis–
lodged it.
"You know what he wanted me to do?" Heim.lich's wife asked him.
''I'll tell you what he wanted me to do. This is what he wanted me to do,
all right? He wanted, he asked me, he wanted me to
do
you. He asked me
didn't I appreciate the irony. Appreciate the fucking
irony,
right? I think he
wanted to watch. I mean what do you think about that. [ mean I'm mar–
ried to a fucking cartoon. I mean you're a cartoonist, give me the benefit
of your insight."
Mick swa.llowed another spoonful of soup. He did not look at her. He
sat there eating soup, trying to put a lid on the nausea, trying not to think
about it.
"Listen Joyce," he said finally. "There is one thing you have to under–
stand about him is he is basically what you might ca.ll a religious man."
"This is true," Heimlich's wife nodded. "Also true is I am Mahatma
Gandhi in drag."
Mick knew he could not walk away from this. He felt an obligation
here. It was necessary
to
explain. "What he is," Mick said, "he's a religious
man looking for a religion, okay? This is a guy he's made a whole career
out of something to offend everyone. Nothing is sacred. Okay. See I figure
what he's got, he's got all this great Ta.lmudic guilt left over from his child–
hood and nothing to hang it on. So that's the thing, his this whole
obsession with the
profane.
I figure this is just one big invitation for the
God of Wrath to
smite
him."
Mick pushed the soup away from him. He was suddenly unable to look
at it. "The point," he said, "is if God's gonna
smite
you, He's gotta
be there
to do it. He 's gotta make Himself manifest. He's gotta show Himself. If you
sin-and you get your wrist slapped by a fucking
tllllllderbolt-then
God
exists. That's proof. You got no faith , you need proof."
Mick's face was sweating. Another swell of nausea rose up from his
stomach.
"Look," he said. He could not leave it alone. Heimlich's wife had her
head cocked to one side. She was watching him carefully. Mick could not
decide whether or not she was humoring him. He could not tell how irra–
tional he was sounding. "Look," he said again. "This is the point, this , this
is a man who believes in
sin
is why he does this stuff. He's giving God the
