Fated (11 page)
Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Before I can respond, Infatuation leans over and says, “Speak of the devil.”
When one of us says,
Speak of the devil
, it’s not uncommon to actually see Satan come strolling through the door. And when that happens, it’s a good idea to just mind your own business. You don’t want to get on Satan’s bad side, especially now that he’s trying to quit smoking.
Speak of the devil
, it’s not uncommon to actually see Satan come strolling through the door. And when that happens, it’s a good idea to just mind your own business. You don’t want to get on Satan’s bad side, especially now that he’s trying to quit smoking.
In this instance, however, Infatuation was speaking in the figurative sense.
Contrary to popular mythology, Love is not a naked, winged being shooting arrows at mortals and causing them to fall in love. Instead, she wears a black sequined pantsuit with a black velvet cape and looks more like Judy Garland in
A Star Is Born
.
A Star Is Born
.
“Between you and me,” says Infatuation, leaning over to whisper, “I think she could use a good makeover.”
The thing about Love is that she’s codependent.
I don’t run into Love very often, since most of the people on my path don’t tend to find her with any regularity, and I notice beneath the confident stride and inviting smile she appears to be fighting back tears. Even though there are more than a dozen couples in the lounge and many of them are physically attracted to one another, no one in here is looking for love.
Moments after entering the lounge, Love walks back toward the bar, escorted by laughter and catcalls from Passion and Desire, who are both drunk and starting to bloat.
“You know . . .” says Infatuation, pulling out a compact and flipping it open.
“Hold that thought,” I say, getting up and following Love toward the bar, where I find her sitting at the end next to a drunk thirty-two-year-old man who’ll be developing cirrhosis of the liver when he’s forty-five.
“You’re really cute,” he slurs to Love, who is trying unsuccessfully to ignore him. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Why don’t you buy your wife a drink?” she says, indicating the woman sitting on the other side of him.
“Harry, can we go now?” says the woman, obviously not happy with the situation.
Maybe it’s just me, but there doesn’t seem to be any love between them.
“Just one more drink,” says Harry. “One for me and one for this beautiful little lady who’s stolen my heart.”
“That’s it,” the wife says, getting up. “We’re leaving.”
“Scotch on the rocks,” Love says to the bartender.
“But I love her,” Harry says as his wife drags him out of the bar. “I love her!”
Love just ignores him and lights up a Winston, blowing the smoke at another man who has started to approach her with amorous intentions.
I pull up a stool next to her. “Tough day?”
“Why is it that every mortal man seems to think he’s in love with the idea of me,” she says, “rather than the person he’s supposed to be in love with?”
“Is every human supposed to be in love with another?” I ask.
“In theory,” she says. “But for some reason, it’s just not working out that way. Lust and Desire and Infatuation seem to be the flavors of the day. Winston?” she asks, offering me the pack of cigarettes.
“No, thanks,” I say. “Never developed a taste for them and don’t want to start now.”
“Not a good idea to tempt Fate—is that it?”
“Something like that,” I say.
We make small talk for a while, long enough for Love to empty most of the Scotch from her rocks, until I finally get around to broaching the subject that’s on my mind.
“Why do humans fall in love?” I ask.
“You say that as if it’s some kind of choice.”
“Point taken,” I say. “Okay, so
how
do humans fall in love? How do you create the awareness that makes them realize they were meant for each other?”
how
do humans fall in love? How do you create the awareness that makes them realize they were meant for each other?”
“First of all, they don’t so much fall in love as they discover it,” she says. “Falling implies you’re out of control, which is what Passion and Lust and Desire want you to feel. The problem is, they’ve done such a good job of marketing themselves that most humans who aren’t ready for love get confused between me and their physical yearning.”
I have to admit, I’ve seen my share of humans who screwed up their fates in the pursuit of love when all they really wanted was to get laid.
“The truth is, Fabio,” she says, downing the rest of her Scotch, “love is a like a good book you can’t put down and you wish would never end. But with Infatuation and Lust, rather than enjoying how the story unfolds, you just skip to the last chapter.”
While I’m absorbing all of this, Love orders another Scotch on the rocks. In the back of the lounge, I hear Passion and Desire cackling.
“And second,” says Love, pointing toward the lounge, “not everyone’s ready to embrace me. Those couples back there, all caught up in their passion and their desire, they’re not ready for love. They wouldn’t know what to do with it. So I’m not going to waste my time on some man or woman who won’t appreciate what I’ve given them.”
“Okay,” I say. “So if you’re ready for love, then how do you know it’s you and not Infatuation or Desire?”
Love smiles and looks down into her drink. “You just know.”
Jerry used to say that all the time during his class on practical omniscience. Drove me nuts. I hated that class. Got a C-minus, and that’s only because he graded on a bell curve.
“So what’s all this interest in love, Fabio?” she asks.
“Just curious,” I say, feigning indifference.
“Just curious, huh?” she says. “Well, if you ask me, there’s a reason you’ve found each other.”
“Found who?” I ask.
“Whoever it is you’ve fallen in love with.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Come on, Fabio,” she says. “Contrary to what they say about me, I’m not blind.”
“Shakespeare said that, didn’t he?” I say, trying to change the subject. “I think it was in
The Merchant of Venice
.”
The Merchant of Venice
.”
“Look,” she says. “It’s none of my business, but if you want my advice, don’t go around sharing this with any of the others. If it gets back to Jerry, that’ll be the end of it, and I don’t want to see that happen because I have the feeling whoever she is, she’s very special.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“And don’t worry,” Love says with a wink. “You’re secret’s safe with me.”
We spend the rest of her second Scotch on the rocks talking about Romance and Affection and the good old days; then I leave just as a fifty-five-year-old man with an adolescent case of Alzheimer’s approaches Love and asks her to marry him.
CHAPTER 17
I’m stalking Sara
a few days later while she shows a three-bedroom condo in Harlem to a married couple who will divorce and remarry each other three times over the next sixteen years, when I learn that Nicolas Jansen, the fine young man I goaded into stabbing me in an Amsterdam alley, has joined a monastery.
a few days later while she shows a three-bedroom condo in Harlem to a married couple who will divorce and remarry each other three times over the next sixteen years, when I learn that Nicolas Jansen, the fine young man I goaded into stabbing me in an Amsterdam alley, has joined a monastery.
Uh-oh.
This most definitely wasn’t in his future, immediate or otherwise, when I met him in that alley. He was supposed to bounce from drugs to prison and back again. Maybe even spend a little time eating leftover food out of garbage cans. Developing lesions. Breeding head lice.
Turns out after stabbing and presumably killing me, Nicolas felt so guilty about what he’d done and so afraid of being caught and sent off to prison that he sobered up waiting for the police to find him. But when the authorities failed to show up to haul him off and when news of the murder never showed up in the media, Nicolas saw that as a sign from Jerry and realized he’d been given a chance to start a new life, which he commenced by joining the Orthodox Monastery of Saint-Nicolas, located in the mountains in the South of France.
His fate more than likely changed the moment he stabbed me, but I was too preoccupied with getting my man suit repaired and falling in love with Sara to notice.
I probably should have kept tabs on Nicolas Jansen to see how things were going to play out for him, but I just figured he was going to spend more time in jail than in rehab. Plus it’s not like I’m in constant, conscious awareness of what every one of my humans is doing. I suppose that’s part of what Jerry was talking about when he told me to do my job better, but I just get so sick and tired of the same old story over and over and over that I tend to tune them out. Kind of like I do with Redundancy.
Then today, I do a quick scan and discover that my would-be murderer has improved his fate. Or rather, I improved his fate.
Rule #2: Don’t improve anyone’s assigned future.
This isn’t exactly going to help my chances of getting employee of the month.
It’s not like I did it on purpose. It was an accident. A reaction. A mistake. Still, I hope my role in Nicolas Jansen’s improved fate manages to slip through the cracks without Jerry figuring out what happened. After all, we’re talking about joining a monastery. It’s not like Nicolas Jansen is going to be canonized. So there’s really no reason for Jerry to notice, not unless he happens to do a random quality-control check on this month’s predetermination balances. But Jerry’s so behind in his paperwork I shouldn’t have to worry.
Then why do I get the feeling there’s something wrong?
“Hey, Faaaaabio.”
A moment later, Destiny appears at my side, her mane of red hair flowing halfway down her bare back.
She’s wearing a red satin, ankle-length, backless dress with a plunging neckline and red Italian pumps. From the glimpse of her cleavage and the absence of a panty line, she doesn’t appear to be wearing any undergarments.
I’m not sure if it’s the sexual heat radiating from Destiny, or the fact that I’m in love with a mortal woman who is on the path of an immortal sex maniac and both of them are in the same room, but my man suit is beginning to perspire.
“What brings you to Harlem?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
She nods toward Sara, who is showing the doomed-to-repeat-the-same-mistake-thrice married couple the features of the condo’s gourmet kitchen. “Just checking up on one of my clients. You?”
“The same,” I say, gesturing toward George and Carla Baer, who are already arguing with each other over whether or not they can afford the $1.973 million the condo will cost them.
“Are you sure you’re not here for her?” says Destiny.
“Why would I be here for her?” I ask.
If red is the color of guilt, then color me scarlet.
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Destiny, crawling up on to the kitchen counter and lying down on her side. “Maybe because you’re in love with her.”
Honesty. That veracious bitch. I should have known better than to trust her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Really?” she says, kicking off her pumps and stretching out on her back like a cat, her breasts and nipples outlined in red satin. “Then how about we play some noncontact doctor?”
I look at her stretched out on the kitchen counter, looking hot and mouthwatering in her trappings of sexuality. The last thing I want is to admit how I feel about Sara to Destiny. But I can’t risk accepting Destiny’s invitation and inadvertently making contact with her and suddenly appearing in front of Sara.
And by “inadvertently making contact,” I mean having sex.
Destiny slides off the counter, her dress hiking up to reveal that, indeed, she’s not wearing any underwear. “Take off your clothes.”
“No,” I say.
“Come on, Fabio,” she says, moving toward me, her perfect breasts unencumbered inside her satin dress.
I back away toward the living room, trying to think about gladiators.
“You know you want me,” she says, cornering me against an arm of the black leather couch, the dress slipping off her shoulders and falling to the ground around her feet in a puddle of red.
I don’t have to be Honesty to admit I want her. But at the moment I’m trying to channel Chastity.
“It’s your fate,” she whispers maddeningly, her naked body inches away, her lips almost brushing against my ear.
Gladiators and Chastity are no match for the sexual allure of Destiny, so instead of standing up to her, I fall back over the arm of the couch, roll on to my feet, then run around to the other side.
“Coward,” she says, crawling on to the couch on her hands and knees. “Come over here and teach me to be a good girl.”
“You’re a slut,” I say.
“Oh, Faaaaabio,” she says, rolling over and tossing her head back, cupping her breasts. “I love it when you talk dirty. I wish I’d worn my collar.”
“I’m not interested,” I say.
“Are you sure?” she asks, rolling onto her side. “I’ll even let you wear my dress.”
“I don’t look good in red,” I say.
“Suit yourself,” says Destiny, vacating the couch just before the married couple sits down on it to discuss whether or not they should buy the condo. “I’ll just have to find someone else who can fit into a size six.”
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