Free Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen

contract. Spells out our liability and His. What we will do, though, is send you one of our complimentary blessings, and if you go over to the Lobster Grotto on Queens Boulevard and tell ’em the Lord sent you, you’ll get a gratis cocktail.” Bottomfeeder hung up. “Everybody’s on my case. Last week I got sued because we mailed the wrong envelope to a woman. She wanted a little divine assistance to make her face work turn out swell, and I accidentally sent her a prayer for peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile Sharon pulls out of Gaza and she gets off the operating table looking like Jake LaMotta. So what do you say, chuckles, in or out?”
    Integrity is a relative concept, best left to the penetrating minds of Jean-Paul Sartre or Hannah Arendt. The reality is, when winter winds howl and the only affordable dwelling shapes up as a cardboard carton on Second Avenue, principles and lofty ideals have a tendency to vanish in a whirlpool down the bathroom plumbing, and so, postponing plans for a Nobel, I gritted my teeth and leased my muse to Moe Bottomfeeder. For the following six months, I must confess, a myriad of those pleas for divine intervention you or yours may have requested or bid for on eBay were knocked out by Mrs. Specter’s onetime prodigy, Hamish. Among my gold-leaf texts were “Dearest Lord—I am only thirty and already balding. Restoreth mine hair and anoint my sparse areas with frankincense and myrrh.” Another Specter classic: “Lord God, King of Israel—I have tried but in vain to shed twenty pounds. Smite my excess avoirdupois and protect me from starches and carbs. Yea, as I walk through the valley, deliver me from cellulite and harmful trans fats.”
    Perhaps the top price ever paid at a prayer auction was for my moving plea: “Rejoice, O Israel, for the stock market hath arisen. O Lord, can You do it now for the Nasdaq?”
    Yes, the Benjamin Franklins were falling into my account like manna from heaven until one day two swarthy gentlemen, heavily invested in Sicilian cement, dropped up to the office while Bottomfeeder was out. I was at my desk, debating the ethics of a prayer for some new home owners pleading for the castration of their contractor. Before I could ask the visitors how I could help them, I found myself making the same sound a fife makes as the one named Cheech lifted me by the scruff of my neck and dangled me out the window, high above Atlantic Avenue.
    “There must be some mistake,” I squealed, scrutinizing the pavement below with more than a vested interest.
    “Our sister won a prayer here last week,” he said. “She bid high on eBay for it.”
    “Yes—yes,” I gagged. “Mr. Bottomfeeder will be back at six. He handles—”
    “Well, we’re here to give you a message. That co-op board better accept her,” Cheech explained.
    “We hear you wrote that prayer,” the brother with the ice pick added. “Let’s hear it—and loud.”
    Not wanting to deny their request and seem a spoilsport, I trilled the material in question in the manner of Joan Sutherland.
    “Blessed art Thou, oh Lord. Grant me in thine infinite wisdom the two-bedroom with the eat-in kitchen on Park and Seventy-second.”
    “She paid twelve hundred bucks for that prayer. It better come true,” Cheech said, snapping me back inside and hanging me on the coatrack like a duck in a Chinatown window.
    “Either that or we mail your arms and legs to four different addresses.” With that they quit the offices of Moe Bottomfeeder, Prayer Jockey, and after making sure they were long gone, so did I.
    I don’t know if the building in question finally accepted Teresa Calebrezzi as a tenant, but I can say that while there are not many writing jobs here in Tierra del Fuego, my kneecaps are still of a piece. Amen.

C AUTION , F ALLING M OGULS

    WHILE PERUSING THE
times
movie ads in desperate search of some bearable celluloid high jinks with which to palliate a summer of heat and barometric readings one