“Something I can do for you?” asked Bob.

“Just wanted to say congratulations. You deserve it.”

“Thanks. Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t get it. I thought for sure that fatted calf I offered ol’ Baal here wasn’t going to be enough. What did you offer?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, that explains it. You know, it never hurts to stain the sacrificial altar now and then. Keeps the boys upstairs happy.”

“I don’t have one.” Phil crossed his arms tight enough to cut off the circulation. “An old boy, I mean.”

“Really?” A curious expression crossed Bob’s face, as if Phil had just admitted to being a cross-dressing jewel thief clown in his spare time. “You really should get one. They’re an absolute necessity. I don’t see how anyone gets along without some upstairs help.”

That alone wasn’t enough to push Phil into the decision.

On the car ride home, distracted by his worries, he’d been in a minor fender bender. The damage wasn’t serious, just a dented bumper and an ugly scrape to his paint job. But the other driver’s car didn’t have a scratch.

The other driver pulled out a special knife and ran it across his palm, drawing some blood to offer to his god as he incanted, “Blessed be Marduk, who keeps my insurance premiums down.”

Phil arrived home. As he pulled into the driveway, the first thing he noticed (the first thing he always noticed) was his lawn. It taunted him, a symbol of his promising life, once green and flourishing, now greenish and wilted. He watered and fertilized it. Had even brought in a specialist. But it was dying, and there was no way to stop it. He took comfort in the fact that nobody else in the neighborhood could get their grass to grow either. There was something in the soil, a lingering curse laid by Coyote on this spot of land for the injustices the Native Americans had suffered at the hands of the Europeans. The natives got smallpox, and the suburbs got yellowed grass. A light punishment for stealing a continent, Phil had to admit, but still annoying.