Read Fated Online

Authors: S. G. Browne

Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction

Fated (24 page)

BOOK: Fated
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Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, and Ann Taylor.
Banana Republic, Tommy Bahama, and Lucky Brand Jeans.
Beard Papa Sweets, Godiva Chocolatier, and Juicy Couture.
True, Juicy Couture sells fashion accessories rather than confections, but when thirteen-year-old girls walk around wearing the word
juicy
on their asses, it kind of sends a mixed message about what’s on the menu.
Within its 1.5 million square feet of consumer indulgence, the Westfield Mall also boasts a Bloomingdale’s, a Nordstrom, three Bebe stores, nine sunglass retailers, seventeen separate shops that provide health and beauty services, and twenty-six jewelry stores. The mall even has concierge services, valet parking, and a day spa.
You’d think with all of the money they sank into this place, they would have managed to find room for a Hot Dog on a Stick or an Orange Julius, but the lowest common denominator of nourishment I can find in the food court is a Panda Express and a Jamba Juice.
So as I sit on a leather recliner eating my orange chicken and drinking my Orange Dream Machine smoothie with a soy protein boost, I watch all of the mall addicts wander past with their bags of eight balls and acid tabs to distract them from their futures.
The fifty-two-year-old housewife who hasn’t had sex with her husband in six months and who is considering having an affair just to feel the loving, hungry touch of a man again.
The twenty-nine-year-old store manager of Banana Republic who can’t get enough of his wife but who wonders if they have enough in common outside of the bedroom to keep the marriage together.
The forty-year-old divorced mother of two who would prefer to stay with a boyfriend whom she’s not in love with rather than taking a chance and opening her heart to another man who truly loves her.
Relationships seem to be the flavor of the day.
I see this all of the time: men and women who remain in stagnant relationships or who opt not to enter into new ones because it’s easier than being alone or starting over from scratch. They’d rather remain in the comfort and familiarity of something that doesn’t work than find the courage to take the chance on something that might bring them happiness. Something that might lead to the future they’ve always wanted. Something that might actually involve the risk of heartbreak.
They prefer the comfort of their box.
So they settle for less than what they want. They settle for mediocre relationships and tepid romance and distant bedmates. And they eventually end up here. Or someplace like here. Maybe someplace with a Hickory Farms or a JCPenney or a Beck’s Shoes rather than Bristol Farms or Bloomingdale’s or Kenneth Cole. But regardless of the brand name, the places all serve the same purpose.
Shopping helps to hide what’s wrong with a relationship. Maybe not as much as good sex, but if you can buy something nice for yourself, treat yourself to a new pair of shoes or that watch you had your eye on or a few hours in a day spa, you feel better about yourself and that helps you feel better about your relationship. At least for a while. Until you realize you’re just masking the cause of your own suffering.
I’m here to put an end to that.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say, standing up in a planter box in the center of the lounge area. Probably not the most subtle way for me to get my point across, but I’ve got a lot of relationship-challenged humans to fix and I don’t want to do this piecemeal. “Can I have your attention, please?”
A few bored customers look my way. The rest just ignore me and head off to Aveda or Banana Republic or the Sunglass Hut International. So I try again, but in my best impersonation of Jerry.
“Can I have your attention, please?”
This time I get their attention and most of them not only look my way but stop what they’re doing and start walking toward me. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you sound like God.
The problem is, there’s a big difference between sounding like Jerry and being Jerry, who has an aura I just can’t emulate, no matter how much omni-whatever I try to project. So I have a limited window of opportunity to get my point across. Eventually, these humans are going to realize I’m a fraud and I have to convince them of their emotional ineptitude before they reach that point of realization. Or before the mall security shows up.
“You don’t have to suffer,” I say. “You don’t have to live a life of self-delusion. You are the masters of your own happiness.”
While not entirely true, it sounds good. Or at least it did when I heard it on NPR. But from the blank expressions of the humans staring back at me, they have no idea what I’m talking about.
So I figure I should just dumb it down.
“Look,” I say. “You don’t need all this crap to make you happy. To make you feel more attractive. To fill the emotional void in your lives. You don’t need your Roberto Cavalli shirt or your Dior sneakers or your Versace sunglasses to compensate for your failed relationships. Okay, well, maybe he does,” I say, pointing to a thirty-two-year-old reproduction of a Ken doll who’s wearing all three. “But for the rest of you, there’s still hope.”
One floor above me, I see the flicker of mall security heading toward the escalator.
“You,” I say, pointing to a thirty-year-old chronic screwup who just bought his girlfriend a pair of diamond earrings to make up for the fact that he’s emotionally challenged. “She doesn’t want jewelry. She just wants you to be honest and compassionate.”
He looks around, smiling self-consciously.
“You.” I point toward a young married couple who have regular shouting matches over toilet seats, grocery shopping, and the alphabetical order of the CD collection. “It doesn’t matter that he’s anal retentive or that she leaves her crap everywhere. What matters is that you accept each other because of your faults, not in spite of them.”
“He’s right,” she says, looking up at her husband.
“Whatever,” he says, then turns and walks away as his wife follows, the beginnings of an argument blooming from her lips.
At least I tried.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the security guards are making their way down the escalator.
“And you,” I say, this time leveling my index finger at the divorced forty-year-old mother of two who has chosen safe mediocrity over the risk of true love. “Dump your underachieving live-in boyfriend and open your heart to emotional intimacy.”
And that’s all I have time for before the two mall security guards arrive and ask me to step down out of the planter box.
“Well, it’s been fun,” I say. “You’ve been a wonderful audience. I hope you enjoyed the show. Just remember, don’t go to bed angry, never settle for less, and always eat your vegetables.”
With that, I bow, doff an imaginary hat, then follow the lead of my invisible chapeau and blink out of existence.
CHAPTER 34
“I have a
surprise for you,” says Sara as she takes me by the hand and leads me across Fifth Avenue.
I’m not really that big on surprises. Go figure. But the day I get back from California, Sara tells me she has to take me somewhere and I’ll love it.
I hope so. I could use some cheering up. Not that I didn’t have a good time in San Francisco, but after transporting to Manhattan, I do a quick checkup on the humans I’ve recently sent down the Path of Destiny and discover that Cliff Brooks is dead.
I don’t know how this happened. I sure as hell didn’t see this coming. Maybe if he’d been destined to die while fighting for a noble cause or saving someone’s life, I could understand. But humans on the Path of Destiny don’t just up and get attacked by a pack of starving greyhounds while eating a Big Mac and fries.
I haven’t felt this bad since the Donner party.
At least with them, it wasn’t like I offered advice on their travel itinerary or suggested something on the menu. They made their own mistakes and I let them. But with Cliff Brooks, I’m the one who put him on the Path of Destiny. I’m the one responsible for directing him to his own death.
“Here we are,” says Sara, shortly after we cross the street, and I realize we’re going to the Met.
At first I have no idea what she could possibly have planned for my surprise. Then I see the signs posted at the ticket windows and at the front doors advertising the Met’s new temporary exhibit:
The Nature of Fate.
“You’re always talking about fate and destiny,” says Sara, as we walk into the museum. “About the concept of the multiplicity of fate and how people make choices without considering the possible consequences, about the inevitability of their fate. So I thought you’d appreciate this.”
I don’t know if
appreciate
is the word I would use to describe how I feel about seeing a collection of artwork representing my nature.
“Surprised?” asks Sara, squeezing my hand.
“That would be the word,” I say, then flash a convincing smile and give her a kiss. “You’re the best.”
As a general rule, I tend to stay away from museums. Not that I don’t have an appreciation for art. It’s just that so many of the pieces that hang in the world’s museums are depictions of people and events I’ve known and experienced, memories I’d prefer not to revisit, especially in my current state. Apparently, they’ve brought them all to the Met so that I can enjoy the Nature of Me.
Surprise.
There’s
The Death of Socrates
.
The Last Supper
. The discovery of the New World.
The storming of the Bastille. The sinking of the
Titanic
. The Great Depression.
There are mythological paintings of Sisyphus and Oedipus and Prometheus. Of Pandora’s box and
The Judgment of Paris
and
The Death of Achilles
. And there are dozens of other paintings and portraits and sculptures depicting men and women as they’re about to make a life-changing decision or at the moment when they realize the fatal significance of their actions.
Yes. This is just what I needed to cheer me up.
In my defense, a number of these works of art represent Death, Envy, Lust, Cruelty, and War. Still, it’s rather humbling to see myself portrayed in such a collection of mayhem and mistakes and despair.
“What do you think?” asks Sara.
I think I’m going to throw up.
Instead, I hear myself say, “It’s overwhelming.”
I don’t think I ever imagined myself in this light. These paintings make me seem like an insensitive, careless bastard who forces unpleasant circumstances upon innocent humans. Sure, the circumstances are dictated by the choices my humans have made, but no one likes to see their true nature depicted in the soft glow of museum lighting.
“What do
you
think?” I ask.
“About the collection?” asks Sara.
I nod. “What do you think about the nature of Fate?”
“I think Fate is capricious,” she says. “I think he enjoys the pain and suffering he inflicts upon people. Like it was something he was born to do.”
Apparently, that was the wrong question to ask.
“You said
he
,” I say.
“What?”
“You referred to Fate as
he
. As if Fate were a man.”
“Well, of course,” she says. “Only a man would be the cause of so much misery and gloom and appear to take so much pleasure in it.”
“You’ve never met Cruelty,” I say.
“Who?”
“Nothing.”
I really have to stop saying things in my outloud voice.
We continue past paintings of mistakes and bad judgments. Of lost hopes and lost opportunities. Of failures and disappointments. By the time we’ve made it through the exhibit, I feel as though I’ve gone ten rounds with Mayhem and been raped by Aggression.
CHAPTER 35
Two days later
I’m sitting in my apartment watching television with Sara, lying low while trying to come to terms with the death of Cliff Brooks, when Sara says, “Honey, is that you?”
I glance at the flat-screen television, where the news anchor on CNN is talking about some miracle that took place in California. In the corner of the screen is a grainy photo of a figure standing in a planter box, his mouth open and his arms outstretched as if preaching. From this distance, it’s hard to get a good look at the figure’s face. But when another image of the figure appears on the fifty-inch, high-definition screen, enlarged and digitally enhanced, it’s apparent the figure looks a lot like me.
Well, this is awkward.
Turns out my impersonation of Jerry and subsequent disappearing act made the national news. Dozens of men and women have come forward to say they were touched by the divine, by a presence that spoke to their hearts and filled them with love.
This is me we’re talking about, right?
Disappearing in front of a large group of people—in broad daylight in a shopping mall—probably wasn’t the smartest thing for me to do. But at least I know I made a difference, convinced a lot of relationship-challenged consumers to reexamine the way they relate to one another.
BOOK: Fated
10.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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