James had been in Los Angeles for almost a month, and he had been unable to decipher any of God’s signs since his arrival. He knew it wasn’t God’s fault. He knew God was sending him signs. It was his fault that he’d been unable to see them. He was sure this was because of Satan’s influence over the city. There was no other explanation. But that didn’t change how even though he’d been living very sparsely and sleeping in his car since arriving in the city and trying unsuccessfully to find Karen Holloway with no outside help, James was running out of money. He had enough for maybe two or three more meals and a tank of gas, and that was all. So knowing that God always helps those who help themselves, James decided it was time to find work. It wouldn’t have to be anything permanent, just something that would allow him to subsist in Los Angeles until God told him what to do next.
He checked the Internet to see if there were any Dillard’s stores in Los Angeles. There weren’t, but he did find several malls, so he decided to start his job search there. He had plenty of experience on a cleaning crew and knew how to operate a floor buffer. He assumed it shouldn’t be too difficult to find work in a city that big.
The first mall he visited was the Grove. It was an outdoor mall, so there would likely be little need for a floor buffer for the mall itself, but he reasoned that the stores themselves might be able to oblige him. After inquiring about employment at the general information booth, James was given an application. He filled it out and expected at least to be given an interview, but instead he was told that someone would look over his application, and if they had a position open, they’d call him back sometime in the next several weeks. This obviously wouldn’t help James in the moment.
Next he visited the Westside Pavilion, an indoor mall that was much closer in nature to the mall he worked in back at home. He thought this would be an easier place to find employment, but after talking with another person at another general information booth, he was given another application, and was told again he would be contacted in a few weeks if they thought there was a position he could fill.
James visited three other malls and two Targets, all with nearly identical results. It wasn’t until he visited the Beverly Center that he experienced something different.
When he approached the information desk there, he was met with an experience that at first seemed even worse than what he’d encountered before. The girl sitting at the desk told him that they had no openings at the mall, and it would be a waste of his time to even fill out an application because the mall used a private outside cleaning company to come in every night. Then, just as James turned around to leave, the girl said, “Hang on, though.”
God was definitely real, and he definitely performed miracles, and he definitely wanted everyone to love each other and get along. War and murder and every bad thing on Earth were the result of mankind’s bad choices. These things weren’t punishments from God. They were just the logical conclusions of humanity misusing the free will God granted us. Science was incredible, but it was just one tool among many that God gave us so we could try to figure out things on our own. Sex wasn’t necessarily only meant for marriage. There was no way that could even be possible, because sex had existed long before marriage. Having children wasn’t an active goal most people should have, but if a girl was to get pregnant, she should obviously have the baby and raise it to the best of her ability. And if the father wants to be in the picture, even better, but it wasn’t necessary. These were things that the girl at the Beverly Center information desk understood to be true.
When James turned back around, she said, “You know, my boyfriend actually works for a cleaning company that does, like, medical buildings and hospitals and stuff like that. I don’t know if that’s something you’d be interested in, but I could give you his email or something.”
James thanked her and told her he’d love any help he could get. As she wrote down her boyfriend’s email address, James noticed that she wore a golden cross around her neck. It seemed to glow a little bit as she was writing. James knew that this was his next sign from God. When it took her boyfriend only an hour to respond to James’s email and set up an interview on the same day, James was excited to be back in the very obvious service of God. And when James was hired at the end of his interview to be part of a cleaning crew working on a few floors at Cedars-Sinai as well as some surrounding medical buildings, he knew that God’s plan for him was moving much faster than it ever had before. And when he was given a nondisclosure agreement to sign, because some of the buildings he would be cleaning housed the offices of doctors who serviced celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Al Pacino, and even Karen Holloway, James knew that God was initiating the final phases of his plan.