Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Joshua?”
    “I promise.”
    “Then do what you will. But remember your lessons from The Art of War .”
    I considered the words of Sun-tzu, which Joy had taught me: Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby, you can be the director of the opponent’s fate . So after considering strategy carefully, running and rejecting the various scenarios in my head, working out what seemed a nearly foolproof plan, and making sure the timing was perfect, I went into action. That very night, as I lay in my bed and Joshua in his, I called forth all my powers of subtlety and mysteriousness.
    “Hey Josh,” I said. “Balthasar sodomizing you?”
    “No!”
    “Vice versa?”
    “Absolutely not!”
    “You get the feeling he’d like to?”
    He was quiet for a second, then he said, “He’s been very attentive lately. And he giggles at everything I say, why?”
    “Because Joy says it’s not good if he falls in love with you.”
    “Well, it’s not if he’s expecting any sodomizing, I’ll tell you that. That’s going to be one disappointed magus.”
    “No, worse than that. She won’t tell me what, but it’s really, really bad.”
    “Biff, I realize you may not think so, but from my way of thinking, sodomizing the Son of God is really, really bad.”
    “Good point. But I think she means something to do with whatever is behind the iron door. Until I find out, you have to keep Balthasar from falling in love with you.”
    “I’ll bet he was myrrh,” said Josh. “Bastard, he brings the cheapest gift and now he wants to sodomize me. My mother told me the myrrh went bad after a week too.”
    Did I mention that Joshua was not a myrrh fan?

C hapter 14
Meanwhile, back at the hotel room, Raziel has given up his hopes to be a professional wrestler and has resumed his ambition to be Spider-Man. He made the decision after I pointed out that in Genesis, Jacob wrestles an angel and wins. In short, a human defeated an angel. Raziel kept insisting that he didn’t remember that happening and I was tempted to bring the Gideon Bible in out of the bathroom and show him the reference, but I’ve just started reading the Gospel of Mark and I’d lose the book if the angel found out about it.
I thought Matthew was bad, skipping right from Joshua’s birth to his baptism, but Mark doesn’t even bother with the birth. It’s as if Joshua springs forth full grown from the head of Zeus. (Okay, bad metaphor, but you know what I mean.) Mark begins with the baptism, at thirty! Where did these guys get these stories? “I once met a guy in a bar who knew a guy who’s sister’s best friend was at the baptism of Joshua bar Joseph of Nazareth, and here’s the story as best as he could remember it.”
Well, at least Mark mentions me, once. And then it’s totally out of context, as if I was just sitting around doing nothing and Joshua happened by and asked me to tag along. And Mark tells of the demon named Legion. Yeah, I remember Legion. Compared to what Balthasar called up, Legion was a wuss.

    I asked Balthasar if he was smitten with me,” Joshua said over supper.
    “Oh no,” said Joy. We were eating in the girls’ quarters. It smelled really good and the girls would rub our shoulders while we ate. Just what we needed after a tough day of studying.
    “You weren’t supposed to let him know we were on to him. What did he say?”
    “He said that he’d just come off of a hard breakup and he wasn’t ready for a relationship because he just needed to spend a little time getting to know himself, but that he’d love it if we could just be friends.”
    “He lies,” said Joy. “He hasn’t had a breakup in a hundred years.”
    I said, “Josh, you are so gullible. Guys always lie about stuff like that. That’s the problem with your not being allowed to know women, it means you don’t understand the most fundamental nature of men.”
    “Which is?”
    “We’re lying pigs. We’ll say anything to get what we want.”
    “That’s true,” said Joy. The other girls nodded in agreement.
    “But,” said Josh, “the superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue, according to Confucius.”
    “Of course,” said I, “but the superior man can get laid without lying. I’m talking about the rest of us.”
    “So should I be worried about this trip he wants me to take with him?”
    Joy nodded gravely and the other girls