Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (15 page)
“Why a nun?”
“I think it was to make up for wanting to be a Gypsy.”
Makes sense.
“After that, I wanted to be a cowgirl, a rock star, a dentist, a madam, a barista, a human pincushion, a lounge singer, a dog walker, a cheerleader, a trapeze artist, a cabdriver, a paleontologist, and a bounty hunter.”
So much for learning about Sara’s future from her past.
“Why did you get into real estate?” I ask.
“I just sort of fell into it,” she says. “But there’s something rewarding about helping someone find someplace they can call home. It’s like helping people find their dreams.”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.
Of course, just because Sara possesses some noble qualities doesn’t explain why people react to her the way they do. Her effect on people isn’t necessarily a reflection of who she is but of who she’s destined to become.
It’s both exciting and disconcerting to be this close to her and yet have really no idea who she is or where she’s headed. When you’re used to reading the futures of eighty-three percent of the world’s population and knowing how things turn out, being unable to read the person you’re in love with takes some getting used to. She’s like a blank television screen. All I can see is an opaque reflection of the present.
I suppose I should be concerned with Destiny’s knowledge about my interest in Sara, considering I’m now guilty of multiple counts of interfering. So far, I’ve purposely altered the fates of more than two hundred mortals. Not exactly a significant number in the grand cosmic scheme, and most of them were just set back on their original paths, but when you take into consideration the impact those two hundred or so humans will have on the other humans they come in contact with, the numbers could conceivably increase exponentially.
Kind of like a plague, only I’m spreading hope instead of disease.
But I’m on a high from helping people. I feel invigorated. Inviolate. Invincible. Which isn’t much of a stretch, considering I’m immortal. Besides, I haven’t seen Destiny in a more than a month. Maybe she’s forgotten about me and decided to let me have my fun.
“Do you believe in destiny?” asks Sara.
Having spaghetti and meatballs come shooting out of your nose isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds.
“Destiny?” I say, coughing.
“You know,” she says. “The inevitable path that determines your life.”
“That’s fate,” I say, removing a chunk of meatball from my left nostril.
“Really?” she asks. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Then what’s destiny?”
I explain the difference to her without getting too technical or portraying Destiny as a whore, which isn’t easy.
“Mostly it comes down to a matter of choice,” I say. “With fate, there is none. Your outcome is determined by a force outside of your choosing. With destiny, you’re more involved in the decision-making process.”
“So destiny is better,” she says.
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say—”
“And fate pretty much sucks.”
This conversation isn’t going in a direction that works for me.
“Fate’s just misunderstood,” I say. Which isn’t entirely accurate. I do suck. But I’m working on it.
“Why do you want to know if I believe in destiny?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation away from my shortcomings.
“I don’t know,” she says, taking a bite of pizza and talking with her mouth full. “I just have this feeling you and I were destined to meet.”
While that’s an endearing thought, it’s not likely. Immortals can’t show up on one another’s radar. And we most definitely can’t show up on the paths of mortals.
“And I’ve become friends with this woman I met in Central Park and we just started talking about fate and destiny,” says Sara. “I guess it kind of stuck with me.”
“Woman?” I ask, suspicious. “What woman?”
“Her name’s Delilah,” says Sara. “Gorgeous redhead. Fantastic body. Monochromatic wardrobe. Lives in SoHo. We’re getting together for lunch next week.”
No wonder I haven’t seen much of Destiny lately. She’s been hanging out with my girlfriend while I’m off fixing the fates of drug addicts, fallen teachers, and career politicians.
Destiny’s breaking Rule #1. Not that I have any room to talk . . .
“What else did she say?” I ask.
Apparently, Destiny’s been extolling the virtues of feminism, the empowerment of celibacy, and the benefits of self-gratification. I can almost hear Destiny’s throaty laughter and I suddenly wonder if she’s watching us right now.
Most of the time, when Destiny’s around, I can sense her. We’re kind of like identical twins that way, except we don’t look anything alike and we occasionally have sex. But Sara is so distracting I suppose it’s possible I never noticed Destiny watching us.
I shiver once in disgust and glance around Sara’s apartment, checking to see if I can spot anything red situated conspicuously out of place, but all I see is earth tones. Sara’s bedroom, on the other hand, has more red in it than Addiction’s eyes.
“How do you know so much about fate and destiny, anyway?” asks Sara.
“Just a hobby,” I say, getting up and walking toward the bedroom.
“Strange hobby,” she says.
I stand at the entrance to the bedroom, looking around, knowing that Destiny isn’t in there but unable to shake the feeling that she’s somewhere nearby, keeping tabs on me. Or maybe I’m paranoid. Just in case, I extend both of my middle fingers, raise my arms and gesture emphatically, then stick my tongue out and let loose a solid raspberry.
“What are you doing?” Sara asks from the kitchen.
“Nothing,” I say, walking back to her. “Just looking for Destiny.”
“Well, you’re looking in the wrong place,” she says, leaning against the kitchen table, her bathrobe falling partially open, revealing a glimpse of her left breast. “Destiny is waiting for you right over here.”
I have to say, Sara looks rather fetching partially disrobed among an assortment of take-out containers and plastic mugs. But Destiny poses a larger obstacle than I realized in my continued pursuit of happiness with Sara, which means I’m going to need some help. I know Sloth and Gluttony would be more than willing to offer their services, but a lactose-intolerant glutton and a pot-smoking narcoleptic aren’t exactly what I have in mind.
I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but . . .
“I can’t,” I say. “I have to go to work.”
“But it’s Sunday,” says Sara, disappointment clouding her face and making me feel like Guilt. “I thought we were going to spend the day together.”
“I know,” I say. “But I have to meet with a client regarding international futures.”
While not the truth, it’s not entirely a prevarication, either. But I can’t tell Sara I’m leaving the country to track down Death.
She moves away from the table, not bothering to close up her robe, and glides over to me.
“You sure you can’t call in sick?” she asks, pressing against me.
I try to think about baseball or roadkill or Attila the Hun in a thong. Anything to keep my mind off Sara’s warm, naked body.
“I wish I could,” I say. “But I have to go.”
“When will you be back?” she asks, putting her arms around me and holding tight, her breath tickling my ear.
“As soon as possible,” I say. And that’s no lie.
She pulls back and looks at me, her face an exquisite work of art I can picture in perfect detail when I close my eyes.
“Promise to stalk me later?” she asks.
Like I have to promise.
CHAPTER 22
You have to
understand about Dennis.
understand about Dennis.
First of all, even when he’s not holding a five-hundred-year-old grudge against someone who used to be his best friend, he can come across as a little surly. After all, he is Death. Which wreaks havoc on his social life. In spite of his occasional attempts to throw dinner parties and host potlucks, it’s kind of hard to escape the stigma associated with ending the lives of all humans. Most of the other Immortals think the job carries with it a burden of guilt. But when you’ve spent countless aeons dishing out plague and genocide and terrorism, you tend to develop a knack for dispassionate disposal.
Dennis once told me being Death was like conducting an orchestra that had been playing the same symphony forever and that he’d become so familiar with every meter and measure and movement he no longer gave any thought to his actions. The orchestration of death just came to him naturally.
Really, in spite of our falling-out, Dennis isn’t a bad guy. He’s just misunderstood.
It’s not like he forces humans to consume diets rich in heart-clogging fats or to climb onto the rear of motorboats while the engine is running. Other than old age, airplane crashes, and the occasional natural disaster, most people nowadays die because they make bad choices.
Smoking tobacco.
Binge drinking.
Eating blowfish.
Other humans are just inherently stupid.
Drinking and driving.
Setting themselves on fire.
Trying to stop a chain saw with their femoral artery.
And they blame Dennis? Honestly, no one wants to take responsibility for their own death anymore.
Even before Destiny became aware of my affection for Sara, I’d been thinking about Death a lot lately. Maybe it’s because I’ve been feeling good about helping my humans discover a less bleak future. Or maybe it’s because I’ve fallen in love with a mortal. Or maybe it’s because I don’t want Sara to end up as collateral damage in a dispute between two immortal entities. But I’ve decided it’s finally time to put an end to this whole Columbus rift.
So here I am, in Vienna, Austria, outside a UPS distribution center, eating a sausage with mustard and drinking a Pfiff of Märzen, watching forty-eight-year-old Guenther Zivick load a bunch of empty cardboard boxes into a trash compactor in the back of the facility. Guenther has worked for UPS for the past fifteen years and has used the hydraulic press multiple times. But today, it’s his turn to display the full extent of his human stupidity.
Once Guenther has finished filling the hydraulic press with empty boxes, he’s going to turn on the compactor, climb up onto the edge of the press, then smash the boxes down into the compactor with his foot, which will get caught by the press. No one will realize what’s happened until his coworkers discover Guenther’s crushed corpse tomorrow morning.
There’s no sign of Dennis yet, which doesn’t surprise me. With over 150,000 worldwide deaths per day to contend with, he can’t exactly attend each and every one, so he tends to pick and choose, letting Devastation and Despair handle most of the infant mortalities and people who die from natural causes. He prefers to take care of the rest himself—martyrs, heroes, murder victims. And in cases like this, Dennis tends to show up at the last minute. Plus he was never a big fan of Austrian cuisine.
I take another bite of my sausage as Guenther starts up the hydraulic press before he climbs over to the edge of the charging hole and uses his right foot to press the boxes further into the trash compactor. Honestly, I’m surprised he’s managed to draw his life out nearly five decades.
I watch him shoving his foot into the operating trash compactor and shake my head. The old me would have just finished off my sausage and downed the rest of my beer while Guenther got dragged into the trash compactor and met his fate, which, while unpleasant, would at least remove him from the gene pool.
Maybe it’s because I’ve lived with them for so long, but in spite of their limited imaginations and their gratuitous conflicts and the ridiculous faces they make during sex, I’ve begun to develop a quaint fondness for my bumbling, self-destructive, misguided humans. I know I can’t help them all, but I can’t just stand by and watch one of them get compacted when I can do something about it.
Just before the press seizes his foot and drags Guenther into the chamber to turn him into a human pancake, I grab him by the back of his brown uniform and yank him away from the trash compactor. I think about remaining invisible, but then Guenther wouldn’t realize what had almost happened to him. So I materialize before I grab him.
“Hey,” he shouts out in German upon seeing me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Saving your life,” I respond, also in German, before I take another bite of my sausage. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to put your foot into a working trash compactor?”
For emphasis, I drain the rest of my beer, then toss it into the compactor, which eats up the can in a brief series of crunches and pops.
“Imagine that’s happening to you,” I say. “Only all over.”
He looks at the trash compactor, then at me, then back at the compactor like he’s trying to figure out which one of us is telling the truth. I’m beginning to wonder if saving Guenther Zivick was such a good idea.
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