Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (9 page)
Gossip. That little whore. Can’t she ever mind her own business?
“So how’s Jerry?” he asks.
“Omnipotent as always,” I say. “Cracking the whip. Making sure I’m doing my job.”
“Really?” says Failure. “I always thought he was kind of a pussy.”
Somehow, Failure always seems to find a way of making conversation awkward.
“So what are you doing to keep yourself busy?” I ask.
“Oh, the usual,” says Failure. “High schools, racetracks, movie studios. Every now and then I take a trip down to D.C. to fuck with democracy, but that’s pretty much taking care of itself, so I don’t bother.”
Another stripper—this one a slender Korean who’ll be leaving her job as a flight attendant to pursue a career in pornography—joins the counterfeit blonde onstage and starts caressing her thighs.
“I hang out in places like this a lot,” says Failure, taking another pull from his Budweiser. “Not so much for the women. Most of them are just here to make some easy money. But most of the men come here because they’re failures at something. Work. Life. Sports. A lot of them are here because they’re failures at relationships.”
I glance around the club and can’t help but agree.
“They don’t know how to communicate with real women,” he says. “So they come here and feel like they’re successful because they can have a real conversation with a beautiful woman without taking the risk of rejection.”
I nod, though I suddenly don’t like where this conversation is going.
“It’s the ultimate in failure,” he says, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “Even if they’re wealthy or physically fit, intelligent or fluent in three languages, they’re incapable of speaking the language of love. Of sharing themselves honestly with a woman.”
I signal to the bartender for another Jack and Coke. “Make it a double,” I say.
On the stage, a petite brunette with nipple rings and an undiagnosed case of cervical cancer crawls toward us on her hands and knees.
“They’re afraid of honesty,” says Failure. “They’re afraid of commitment. Of communication. Of intimacy. Of opening themselves up to something that requires more than just physical prowess or financial acumen or insightful witticisms.”
I’m wondering where the bartender is with my drink. And if Bambi is still available in the VIP room.
Failure turns to look at me. “Pretty pathetic, don’t you think?”
CHAPTER 13
I’m on the
rooftop garden of my apartment building, sunbathing nude and thinking about Sara. Not in a sexual or French-maid-fantasy kind of way. I’m thinking about her smile and her walk and the way she crinkles her nose sometimes when she’s talking. I’m thinking about her scent and her voice and the way she laughs out loud at movies when she’s alone in her apartment. I’m thinking about the way I lose track of time watching her and how I feel excited when I’m around her and why I can’t get up the nerve to talk to her.
rooftop garden of my apartment building, sunbathing nude and thinking about Sara. Not in a sexual or French-maid-fantasy kind of way. I’m thinking about her smile and her walk and the way she crinkles her nose sometimes when she’s talking. I’m thinking about her scent and her voice and the way she laughs out loud at movies when she’s alone in her apartment. I’m thinking about the way I lose track of time watching her and how I feel excited when I’m around her and why I can’t get up the nerve to talk to her.
Here I am, an immortal entity, existing since the dawn of man, and I’m afraid to talk to one harmless human female.
My parents would be so proud.
Though, technically, I don’t really have parents. I suppose Necessity could be considered my mother, but that’s stretching it. Jerry’s the closest thing I have to a father, and I can’t tell you how much
that
embarrasses me.
that
embarrasses me.
I did have three stepsisters for a while—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who were born during the heyday of Greek culture and mythology. They never cared for me. Considered me old-school, washed up, a relic of the Stone Age. Thought they were the next big thing, what with their trendy white robes and their “thread of life” image. They even went so far as to compose a collection of hymns.
Meet the Moirae
.
.
It included songs like “I Cut Your Thread,” “Your Fate Is Mine,” and the holiday classic, “You Won’t Be Home for Hanukkah.”
Didn’t sell very well. Humans back then just weren’t interested in shelling out their hard-earned drachmas for a self-absorbed musical composition created by a trio of cold, remorseless harpies.
And when the Golden Age of Greece came to an end fifteen hundred years ago, those three little shrews found out that banking your future on a doomed mythology is a bad career move.
Think Ramses ignoring the warnings of Moses.
Think Custer’s Battle at Little Bighorn.
Think
Gigli
.
Gigli
.
But then, I’m not exactly qualified to critique vocational choices. I’ve fallen in love with a mortal woman who’s on the Path of Destiny, which is a good way to get yourself reassigned to something like Disease or Incest.
Not where I see myself in a thousand years.
Problem is, I’m too smitten with Sara to just forget about her. I considered moving to another apartment building so I wouldn’t have the temptation so close at hand, but I’ve grown fond of the rooftop garden. Reminds me of Eden. Which doesn’t really help with the whole temptation scenario.
But even if I moved to Brooklyn or Queens or Long Island, I’d still know where Sara lived and where she worked and when she’d most likely be taking a steam bath at her health club. Besides, I hate packing. And having to set up DSL again is such a hassle. So I crossed “moving” off my list.
I could see if Memory would do her thing on me, wipe Sara from my data banks. But Memory can be kind of selective sometimes and really screw things up. The last thing I want is to end up wandering around for the next few hundred years trying to figure out where I left my keys.
So I’m stuck with my Upper East Side apartment and my feelings for Sara and the general realization that I have no idea what I should do.
At times like this, I like to meditate. And nothing beats invisible nude sunbathing in my rooftop garden for relaxing the mind and finding some clarity.
My eyes are closed, my body simmering in a Coppertone glaze, the warm sun slowly cooking my brand-new man suit to a nice, even bronze.
When I got back from Amsterdam, I had Ingenuity repair the stitches from my stab wound, buying his silence with a quarter ounce of the White Widow I brought back from one of the hash bars. Ingenuity does his best work on mind-altering substances. So when he mentioned that my man suit looked a little dated and showed me the latest model, I threw in three grams of magic mushrooms for an updated version that reflects the current perception of the perfect male body: sculpted chest, toned arms and legs, six-pack abs, and unblemished, hairless flesh. I also upgraded the most masculine part of my anatomy.
Although I can’t prove it, I’d swear Vanity had a hand in my decision making.
Naturally, my outer physical appearance had to remain the same—face, hair, skin color, height—so I had to wait a couple of weeks for my custom man suit to arrive. After all, you can’t just buy a man suit off the rack and walk out the door. Not unless you want to make
Style
’s annual “Top Ten Immortal Fashion Faux Pas” issue.
Style
’s annual “Top Ten Immortal Fashion Faux Pas” issue.
I’m hoping my new man suit gives me the confidence I need to approach Sara. Still, physical appearance alone isn’t going to solve my dilemma. I need to find my center.
My breath is slow and rhythmic, the only image behind my eyelids that of darkness as my mind floats along, calm and focused, all the sounds of New York City and the fates of its more than eight million inhabitants nothing but muffled static in the background, like the ocean’s roar, soothing and monotonous.
Naturally, it would be easier to maintain my focus if the object of my dilemma didn’t appear on the rooftop singing “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer and wearing a brand-new black French-cut bikini.
When I open my eyes and glance over at her, Sara stops singing and removes her iPod headphones, then opens up her folding beach chair and begins to set up camp. I figure even though I’m invisible I should put on some clothes, just to be proper, when Sara looks my way and says, “Mind if I join you?”
I forgot to turn on my cloaking again. Not exactly the way I envisioned our official introduction.
I move to cover up, but she stops me.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t mind.”
You think you know everything about a mortal woman and then she doesn’t bat an eye at your naked man suit. Which, by the way, is custom-designed to never lose muscle tone or develop a spare tire. And Ingenuity didn’t skimp on the accessories.
“I didn’t know they allowed nude sunbathing up here,” she says from about ten feet away.
“They don’t,” I say, throwing my shirt over my nakedness in spite of her protests. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. That and she looks really hot in her bathing suit, which is about to cause me to sport some wood.
She’s looking at me with a quizzical expression. “You look familiar.”
I still remember our encounter on the subway nearly two months ago like it was yesterday. But then, when you’ve been around for more than two hundred and fifty millennia, seven weeks
is
kind of like yesterday.
is
kind of like yesterday.
“I live in apartment twenty fourteen,” I say, hoping that settles it.
She shakes her head. “No. I haven’t seen you around here. I’m pretty sure of that.”
“I travel a lot,” I say. Whatever that means. I have no idea what I’m saying.
Sara’s looking at me the way she did on the subway, her eyes stripping me naked, which doesn’t take much at the moment.
“No,” she says. “It was someplace else. Someplace around town. Do you work in real estate?”
I shake my head. “I’m in futures and options.”
“So you’re a stockbroker?”
“Sort of.”
She nods as if that explains everything, then walks toward me. “Sara Griffen,” she says, extending her right hand.
I take it.
If watching Sara wash her hands and handle other objects with them was tantalizing, physically touching them is absolutely exhilarating.
“Fabio,” I say, nearly choking out my name.
“Really,” she says. She tilts her head and studies me. “You don’t look like a Fabio.”
“What do I look like?” I say, still holding her hand.
She stares into my eyes, then shifts her gaze to my perfectly sculpted, hairless torso, then to the rather sizable pup tent rising below my waist. When her attention returns to my face, she’s wearing a playful smile.
“You look like you could use a hand.”
CHAPTER 14
The last time
I had sex with a mortal woman was on the RMS
Titanic
, just before it hit the iceberg. Her name was Dorothy Wilde and was she ever. Barely twenty years old and traveling in second class, fated to get hit by a falling safe in Brooklyn less than a week after surviving the disaster, Dorothy taught me things about early-twentieth-century women that most mortal men had to pay top dollar for. It didn’t hurt my cause that she believed I was the heir apparent to the estate of millionaire John Jacob Astor IV, who wasn’t going to make it off the
Titanic
alive.
I had sex with a mortal woman was on the RMS
Titanic
, just before it hit the iceberg. Her name was Dorothy Wilde and was she ever. Barely twenty years old and traveling in second class, fated to get hit by a falling safe in Brooklyn less than a week after surviving the disaster, Dorothy taught me things about early-twentieth-century women that most mortal men had to pay top dollar for. It didn’t hurt my cause that she believed I was the heir apparent to the estate of millionaire John Jacob Astor IV, who wasn’t going to make it off the
Titanic
alive.
Even before the cruise liner hit the iceberg, I knew what was going to happen, but Dorothy Wilde didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong until the stern started to rise out of the water. Wallace Hartley and the rest of the ship’s band weren’t the only ones who kept on playing after the waterline continued to climb. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that as the
Titanic
was going down, so was Dorothy Wilde.
Titanic
was going down, so was Dorothy Wilde.
But Dorothy had nothing on Sara Griffen.
“Oh, my Jerry,” I say as Sara rolls off and onto the bed beside me, laughing and gasping for breath at the same time.
“Jerry?” she says, grabbing a half-smoked joint off my bedside table and lighting it up. “Who’s Jerry?”
I’m not aware I mentioned him until she says something. “Oh. Just this guy I know who reminds me of God.”
“God?” she says, letting out a puff of smoke as she hands the joint to me. “Do you believe in God?”
This is not the kind of postcoital conversation I want to have. Problem is, after good sex, I tend to open up like a penitent pilgrim in front of the pope.
I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut after I have an orgasm.
Fortunately, I can take a moment to gather my thoughts before answering while I take a hit on the joint. I hold it in as long as I can, hoping that maybe while waiting for me to respond Sara will change the topic of conversation.
“Well, do you?” she asks again, turning her head on her pillow to look at me.
I empty my lungs and look over at Sara—her lips moist, her skin slick with perspiration, her soft brown hair draped across her shoulders.
“When I look at you, I do.”
Funny thing is, that’s not what I planned to say. But it seems to do the trick, because she smiles and drops the conversation and sticks her tongue down my throat.
An hour later, when we’re both gasping for breath again, Sara asks me if I remember meeting her on the subway.
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