Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [45]
A man’s voice answered, “Sure, come on.”
Elner rearranged her robe. “Dorothy, do I look all right to be meeting somebody? I wish I didn’t have on this old thing.”
“You look just fine,” Dorothy said, and opened the door. Inside the room, Elner could see a nice-looking older man with shiny silver hair sitting at a large desk. He looked exactly like Dorothy’s husband, Doc Smith, who had been the pharmacist at the old Rexall drugstore in Elmwood Springs! As Dorothy escorted her into the room, she said, “Raymond, look who’s here,” and he immediately stood up and came around the desk, with a big friendly smile on his face, and he shook Elner’s hand with great enthusiasm.
“Well, hello there, Mrs. Shimfissle, so glad to see you! Dorothy told me you were coming up today. Please, have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and forgive the mess.” He indicated the room, packed with maps, papers, and files scattered everywhere. “I try to keep the place neat, but as you can see I’m not doing a very good job.” As he was busy removing several books and papers from a chair so she could sit down, Dorothy commented to Elner, “How he manages to find anything in here is a mystery to me, but he does.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Elner, “you should see my house.” As she walked over to the chair, Elner was secretly pleased when she noticed several dirty coffee cups on the floor, and dust on the bookcases; just as she had always suspected, cleanliness, or neatness, for that matter, was not necessarily next to godliness. She thought, “Norma is going to be in for a big surprise when she sees this.” She looked around the room and saw a wall full of pictures of thousands of little babies, and she was also happy to see that over in a corner, a big fat black and white cat was sleeping on the window seat, and he was the spitting image of Bottle Top, the cat that used to sleep in the window of the Cat’s Paw shoe repair shop in downtown Elmwood Springs.
Dorothy sat down in the other chair across from the desk, and said to Raymond, “Honey, Elner has a few questions she wants to ask, so I thought it would be best if she talked to both of us.”
Raymond sat back in his chair and removed his glasses. “Of course, happy to answer any questions you have, Mrs. Shimfissle.”
It was at that moment when Elner noticed the small gold plaque on the edge of his desk that read SUPREME BEING, and she was unsure how she should address him. She sure didn’t want to make any mistakes at this late date, and asked, “Should I refer to you as Supreme Being?”
Raymond looked at her, somewhat puzzled. “Pardon me, dear?”
She pointed to the sign. “Your plaque?”
Raymond reached over, picked it up, turned it around, and read it and then laughed. “Oh that, no, that’s just a little something some people like to see, makes them feel better.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a handful of plaques and showed them to her “Look…see…I have a GOD THE FATHER…BUDDHA. Here’s a MUHAMMAD. I even have an ELVIS PRESLEY in here somewhere, but you just call me Raymond.” He put the plaques in the drawer and smiled at her. “All right now, Mrs. Shimfissle, what’s your question? And by the way, I like your robe.”
“You do?” she said, looking down at it. “I’ve had this old thing for years, it’s about to fall apart on me.”
“Yes, but I’ll bet it’s comfortable.”
“It is,” she said. Elner was relieved and amazed at how relaxed she was. Who would have thought meeting your Maker would be this pleasant?
She sat back, happy that they were starting off with the “mysteries of life” part first, and said, “Well, Raymond, I know you probably get asked this all the time, but like everybody that comes up here, I guess, I’ve just been itching to know the answer to this one for years.”
“Yes?” said Raymond.
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Raymond looked surprised at first, then he laughed. “I’m sorry to laugh, Mrs. Shimfissle, but that’s usually not the first question most people ask, but the correct answer is the egg.”
Now Elner was surprised. “The egg?