Fated (34 page)
Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
I wonder if this is what it’s like to be human. To make decisions in someone else’s best interests rather than your own.
I’m thinking this should at least earn me some fate points, maybe get me started out on a respectable path. A fate that doesn’t involve prostitution or working eight hours a day in a cubicle. Although at least with prostitution, I could set my own hours and get a chance to work outdoors.
And while I realize the odds are against it, I can’t help but wonder if I could manage to talk Jerry into placing me on the Path of Destiny.
Somehow, I don’t think Destiny would appreciate the irony.
I wander around my apartment for a few minutes waiting for Sara to call back; then I take the elevator to her apartment and use the extra key she gave me. Once inside, I put on her favorite Sheryl Crow CD and wander through her place, remembering all of the time we spent together, smiling at all of the take-out containers in her refrigerator, inhaling her scent on the dresses hanging in her closet.
I lie down on her bed.
I dab on some of her perfume.
I slip into a pair of her silk pajamas.
Thirty minutes later I’m standing in front of her dresser with the top drawer pulled open and a pair of her boy shorts in my hands, when a voice from the bedroom doorway says, “No wonder you didn’t answer your cell phone.”
I turn to find Sara standing there, still in her workout clothes, her sweat-dried hair pulled back and her face unadorned with makeup, and I think she’s never looked so beautiful.
I drop the underwear and walk up to Sara, take her in my arms, and kiss her for so long, I lose track of everything but us. The apartment around us ceases to exist and all I know is Sara—her scent and her touch and the way she feels pressed against me. When we finally pull apart, she looks at me, her lips inches from mine.
“Wow,” she says. “What’s gotten into you?” Then she looks me up and down. “Or should I say, what have you gotten into?”
I run my fingers through her hair; then I cup her face in my hand and smile. “You have no idea how much I love you.”
She smiles and we kiss again and before I know it, our clothes are off and we’re climbing all over each other, falling into her bed, and I’m exploring Sara as if I’ve never known her. Touching her as if I’ve just discovered her. Delighting in her as if this were our first time.
When we’re finished and she’s curled up next to me beneath the sheets, Sara says, “So what happened to put you in this mood?”
So I lie. I tell her I’m suspended. That I’m in a lot of trouble. That I have to perform community service. But in another few months, I’ll be immortal again.
“And you were so certain you’d be made into a lowly mortal,” she says.
I laugh and hope it doesn’t sound like I’m choking to death.
“Though I have to admit,” says Sara, “I was kind of looking forward to growing old together.”
“Well,” I say, forcing a smile, “I guess you’ll just have to get used to being married to a younger man.”
She smiles and kisses me, then glances over my shoulder.
“Oh, shit,” she says, looking at the clock. “I have to take a shower and get to work.”
She starts to get up and I reach out and take hold of her wrist. When she turns back, I’m almost overwhelmed with how beautiful she looks, halfway turned around, one breast exposed, her dark hair falling across her bare back.
“Don’t go,” I say.
She looks at me and starts to say something, then stops. There must be something in my face that changes her mind, because she nods and smiles and says, “Okay.”
After a phone call to her office to reschedule her appointments, Sara rejoins me in bed, where we spend the rest of the morning and the afternoon and most of the evening talking and making love and eating leftover Thai food.
Eventually, sometime before midnight, Sara drifts off to sleep and I spend the next few hours just looking at her face—at her eyes and her lips and the way her hair falls across her forehead. When she rolls over, I stare at her neck and her back and the soft, gentle slope of her shoulders. I reach out to touch her and she lets out a little purr of contentment. Then I curl up next to her and inhale her scent and listen to her breathe.
At some point, I fall asleep.
CHAPTER 49
I wake up
alone in Sara’s bed.
alone in Sara’s bed.
Faint light filters in through the bedroom window and I can see the beginning of a gray, overcast Manhattan day in the waxing light of dawn. When I turn to look at the bedside clock, the green digital numbers glow 7:37 in the subdued light.
At first I think Sara’s gone, that she woke up and went to the gym and in twenty-three minutes I’ll be erased from her memory forever. Then I hear the unmistakable strains of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 coming from the living room and the sound of someone knocking around in the kitchen and before you can say, “
L.A. Confidential
should have won the 1997 Best Picture Oscar,” I’m out the bedroom door.
L.A. Confidential
should have won the 1997 Best Picture Oscar,” I’m out the bedroom door.
I know what I said about not being selfish, but I need Sara to know she’s not going to remember anything about me or us. And in spite of the odds against its happening, I need her to try to remember. To try to hold on to something, anything, just one memory, and maybe, just maybe, if she can do that, there will be a chance we can still be together.
I realize as I walk into the kitchen that it might have been more appropriate to make this appeal wearing some clothing. Or at least a bathrobe. Plus I have a morning woody.
Well, at least I’ll look earnest.
Sara is sitting at the kitchen table in a pair of Lucky Brand jeans and a red cashmere sweater I’ve never seen before. Her back is to me as she eats leftover pad thai with a fork.
“Sara,” I say. “I have something important to tell you.”
She turns halfway around in her chair to look at me, swallows a bite of pad thai, then looks me up and down with a smile and says, “Apparently.”
“No,” I say. “This is serious.”
She looks at me, obviously amused, then turns her chair all the way around and leans forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m listening.”
I’m not sure how to tell her, so I just blurt it out.
“In another twenty minutes, you’re not going to remember me.”
She just sits there staring at me, wearing that same amused smile.
“I don’t know,” she says, checking out my man suit. “You’re a tough one to forget.”
“You don’t understand,” I say, crouching down in front of Sara and taking her hands in mine. “You’re going to forget about everything. About me. About us. About Jerry . . .”
“Jerry?” she says, her eyes opening wide. “Oh, my God! Did we have a threesome?”
“Sara, I’m not kidding around.”
“Neither am I.” She gets up and walks over to her bedroom door and looks inside. “Did we have a threesome? Because I honestly can’t remember.”
Oh, no. I look at the kitchen clock. I should have nineteen more minutes before the purge. Unless Memory got here early.
“Sara,” I say, standing up. “Sara, do you know my name?”
She looks at me from the bedroom doorway, then glances up as if trying to remember something before she looks back at me with a sheepish grin. “I take it you’re not Jerry.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not Jerry. You really don’t know my name?”
Sara smiles again and shrugs. “I know. It’s bad. But to be honest, I don’t remember anything about last night. I must have had one too many shots. Though I don’t feel hungover.”
Memory did come early. Damn her. Why can’t she be more reliable?
“So what’s your name?” asks Sara.
“Fabio,” I say with a sigh, my morning woody deflated. “My name is Fabio.”
“Really?” she says, laughing. “You don’t look like a Fabio.”
That’s exactly what she said to me the first time we met, only without the laughter. Still, it makes me wonder if there’s a chance.
Naked and flaccid, I walk over to Sara and take her hands in mine again. “Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe you can still remember.”
“Look, Fabio,” she says, laughing again. “Is that really your name?”
I just nod. If I weren’t deflated already, I’d go limp.
“Look. You’re a very attractive man with an incredible body,” she says, giving me my hands back. “And I’m sure we had a lot of fun last night. But the truth is, I’m not looking for a relationship right now. So I think it would be best if we just call it what it is.”
“And what’s that?” I say.
“A one-night stand.”
Great. They gave her a memory purge with a commitment-phobic chaser.
I start to respond, to say something that will make her remember me. That will change her mind. I have no idea what I’m going to say, but when I open my mouth, what comes out is, “Ow!”
“I’m sorry,” says Sara. “But I’m just not ready for anything serious right now.”
I wave her off with one hand, then bend over and put both of my hands on my knees.
Suddenly I don’t feel so good.
“Are you okay?” asks Sara, with more suspicion than concern as she takes a step back.
I shake my head. It feels like someone has turned on an electric mixer in my stomach.
Either this is what it feels like to have your heart broken, or else I’m starting my transformation early.
Doesn’t anyone stick to a schedule anymore?
A cramp hits and I let out a groan. Then another cramp doubles me over. Sara is saying something about doctors and help and putting my clothes on but I can barely hear her. The electric mixer in my stomach is spinning faster, spreading down to my groin and up to my chest.
The transformation from immortal to mortal is about as painful as you can imagine. Granted, I’ve never gone through it before, but we all read about the case studies of Lucifer and Azazel during Introduction to Immortality.
First comes the sensation your insides are churning. The electric-mixer syndrome. This continues for several minutes, spreading throughout your entire man suit until you’re one giant mixing bowl of cosmic goo.
Shortly thereafter, your insides implode.
Imagine all of your internal organs and blood vessels and cartilage and bones suddenly going supernova, exploding within the confines of your skin. Now imagine that in reverse.
When I implode, the blinding white ball of light contained inside my man suit will expand, giving me the appearance of an over-inflated balloon. Then it will collapse and start to cool, forming bones and organs and blood vessels while my man suit transforms into human flesh. Except since the blinding white ball of light that was my immortal self has three times the mass of the internal components contained inside a typical mortal man, there’s going to be a great deal of waste that’s going to have to be released.
Think food poisoning.
Think stomach flu.
Think the Johnstown Flood.
The electric mixer is already working its way down my legs and up to my head and I realize I’m not going to have time to get back to my place.
Before I lose the ability to walk, I stagger past Sara, nearly knocking her over as I stumble into her bedroom and head for her bathroom.
“Hey,” Sara shouts from behind me, her voice muffled by the roaring in my ears.
I ignore her and lurch toward the bathroom, hoping I make it before the implosion. I barely get inside and close the door when the electric mixer stops. For a moment, there’s nothing. No cramps. No discomfort. No mixing. Just a preternatural stillness inside of me.
“Fabio?” says Sara from the other side of the door. “What’s going on?”
Before I can answer her or make it to the toilet, my insides implode.
I collapse on the floor, writhing and screaming, my insides on fire and freezing cold, my excess immortality pouring out of every orifice until I think I’m going to die. Until I start to wish I were dead. I don’t know how long this goes on. Maybe thirty seconds, maybe thirty minutes, but when it finally stops, I’m left gasping and mortal on the bathroom floor in a steaming, coagulating pool of foul-smelling inhuman detritus.
Somehow, I don’t think this is going to help me to get a second date.
CHAPTER 50
Over the next
two weeks I call Sara every day, apologizing for the mess I made in her bathroom and offering to take her out to dinner to make up for it, but she doesn’t return my phone calls. So I send her flowers and candy. I send her bottles of champagne. I send her lingerie from Victoria’s Secret because I know how much she loves silk panties.
two weeks I call Sara every day, apologizing for the mess I made in her bathroom and offering to take her out to dinner to make up for it, but she doesn’t return my phone calls. So I send her flowers and candy. I send her bottles of champagne. I send her lingerie from Victoria’s Secret because I know how much she loves silk panties.
For some reason, I don’t get a thank-you card.
It’s hard enough to deal with the rejection of your former girlfriend on a daily basis, but when you also have to get used to moving around in a cumbersome, hairy, 175-pound human body that doesn’t come with self-cleaning flesh or optional air freshener, you tend to get a little irritable.
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