Fated (22 page)

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Authors: S. G. Browne

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

BOOK: Fated
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“Hey, pal,” says the thirty-nine-year-old insurance salesman who just lost his job and is sharing the spacious cell with us. “Can you order me a cappuccino?”
“What size?”
“Tall,” says the man.
“And one tall cappuccino!” shouts Karma.
Where we are is the drunk tank at the 13th Precinct, which isn’t really fair, considering I’m completely sober. But I couldn’t leave Karma on his own for fear he’d decide to either pull a disappearing act or spontaneously combust, so I told the officers who arrested us that I’d eaten some special brownies courtesy of Alice B. Toklas and they threw me in the tank with Karma.
It’s similar to the circumstances that preceded my last trip to prison in the early sixteenth century, when Karma got drunk at a pub in Cologne, Germany, and started talking about how he’d spoken with Satan. Sure, it was true. We’d had dinner with him just a couple of centuries before. But you don’t go around sharing information like that, especially not in a country caught up in a mass hysteria of witch hunts. Needless to say, since I was the heretic’s traveling companion, I was guilty by association.
But getting out of the dungeon in Cologne was easy. When the guards weren’t looking, we just transported out of Germany to a beach in Barbados. The men we shared our cell with were tortured until they admitted they used witchcraft to help us escape, but they were all going to be tortured and strangled and burned at the stake anyway, so it wasn’t like we made things any worse for them.
“Do they have any biscotti?” asks the drunk insurance salesman, whose name is Alex Dunbar and who is on his way to spending the next two decades discovering the limits of his intelligence and developing adult diabetes.
Karma looks up and down the empty hallway outside the holding cell. “I think all the baristas are on break.”
“This isn’t Starbucks,” I say.
Karma turns around and looks at me as if I’d just said there was no Santa Claus.
“It isn’t?” says Alex.
“No. This is a prison cell. We’ve been arrested for being drunk and disorderly and we’re in prison, where they don’t serve lattes or cappuccinos or biscotti.”
Alex Dunbar starts to cry.
“Now see what you’ve done,” says Karma, who walks over and sits down next to Alex and puts an arm around him. “It’s not enough he lost his job today, but now you have to go and take away the only thing he was looking forward to.”
Sometimes I don’t understand Karma. I really don’t.
“It’s okay,” says Karma, giving Alex a one-armed hug and offering comfort. “The woman who fired you is going to get hit by a bus on her way home from work today.”
“She is?” says Alex, brightening up, his sniffles tapering off.
“She is?” I say.
Karma gives me a quick shake of his head that Alex misses.
“She sure is,” says Karma. “She’s going to get nailed by the forty-two bus in Times Square.”
“Cool,” says Alex.
“Now I want you to lie down on the bench and get some sleep,” says Karma. “And when you wake up, we’ll have cappuccino and biscotti.”
“We will?” he asks.
“You bet.”
“Cool.”
Karma gets up and Alex lies down on the bench, curling up on his side with his sweater under his head. “Hey,” says Alex. “How do you know about the bus?”
“Because I’m Karma.”
“Oh,” says Alex, who puts his hands between his knees and closes his eyes. Less than a minute later, he’s snoring lightly.
Karma comes over and stands next to me. “So you ready to get out of here?”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“You know,” he says, folding his arms like Barbara Eden in
I Dream of Jeannie
and blinking. “Let’s go.”
“This isn’t the sixteenth century,” I remind him. “The police have our IDs. They know where we live. Plus we’re being video-taped. We can’t just disappear.”
“Bummer,” he says. “So what do we do?”
“I already called Justice,” I say.
“You did?” says Karma. “When was that?”
“Right after they brought us in,” I say. “You were still carrying on about cause and effect and trying to get the palak paneer out of your hair.”
“Oh, right,” he says, running his fingers across the side of his head and picking out a couple of pieces of spinach. “So what did Justice say?”
“He said he’ll be over as soon as he takes care of a problem in the Senate.”
“That could be a while,” says Karma, taking a seat on the bench.
I sit down next to him. “Are you still drunk?”
He looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “Not really sure.”
“Can you answer a question for me?”
He nods. “I’ll give it a shot.”
A few feet away, Alex begins to snore louder.
“What happens if someone who was born on the Path of Fate ends up on the Path of Destiny?”
Karma looks at me the way Ramses II looked at Moses when he asked the pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery.
“And you asked
me
if
I
was drunk?”
“Well, what happens?” I ask.
“It can’t happen,” says Karma. “Predestination Law clearly states that those born to their path are bound to it. Unless, of course, Fate or Destiny intervenes.”
“I thought you said you never cracked open your textbook.”
“I didn’t,” says Karma. “But I spent three days memorizing the answers for the test.”
“And you still remember them?”
“Sure,” he says. “I mean, come on. That was only two hundred and fifty thousand years ago.”
Sometimes I wonder if Karma is bipolar or just a smart-ass.
“But what if it could happen?” I say. “What if it
did
happen?”
Karma picks a glob of cheese out of his hair. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
So I tell him about Cliff Brooks. And Sara. And all of the other humans I’ve helped. And about the time I watched Marie Curie take a milk bath. It just comes out. I get that way sometimes when I’m confessing. Kind of an all-or-nothing thing.
“You know you’re not supposed to get involved,” he says.
“This coming from someone who just climbed on a table at an Indian fast-food place and revealed himself to a restaurant full of humans,” I say. “Two of whom changed their fates based on your advice, by the way.”
“Sorry about that,” says Karma. “My bad. But it shouldn’t be permanent.”
“Hello,” I say. “I can see their paths. And it looks pretty permanent to me.”
“The universe corrects,” says Karma.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that while their journey might be temporarily altered,” he says, “they should eventually find their way back to their original paths. Same thing with all of the other mortals you’ve helped, including this loser you sent off onto the Path of Destiny. Chances are he’ll end up back at Hooters trying to impress his girlfriend.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
Karma nods. “You can’t fight the universe, Fabio. It’s self-correcting, self-fulfilling, and self-serving. Sooner or later, everyone ends up where they’re supposed to be. Don’t you remember this from Universal Law?”
I kind of ditched that lecture.
“It’s the same as the box theory,” says Karma.
The box theory contends that humans are creatures of habit who become comfortable with their lives and circumstances, with the boxes they’ve built around themselves. If something in their life changes to take them out of their box, they tend to do whatever they can to get back to their comfort level. To get back inside their box.
I’ve seen it enough times with my humans to know it’s more than just a theory. It’s a pattern of self-destructive behavior.
Professional athletes and lottery winners who are suddenly thrust into a world of wealth and end up bankrupt. Single men and women who drive love away because they’re more comfortable being miserable. Aspiring artists and talented writers who have grown so used to the struggle that they let golden opportunities slip away.
Failure is often easier for humans to accept than success.
Although I should be relieved to know that I probably don’t have to worry about the ramifications of changing the cosmic path of Cliff Brooks, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve let him down in some way. And I start to wonder if all of these humans I’ve been trying to help are just going to end up back where they were.
Desperate. Unfulfilled. Lost.
I think I’m beginning to understand why humans have such a difficult time dealing with disappointment.
“What if the universe doesn’t correct?” I ask, more hopeful than worried. “What if Cliff Brooks remains on the Path of Destiny?”
“Well,” says Karma, “Predestination Law doesn’t specifically address the issue, since it’s not supposed to be possible, but I suppose it could be covered by cosmic theory.”
“Which says . . .”
“More than likely you’ll just cause a cosmic shift that will require divine intervention,” says Karma. “Or else cause a black hole to appear and suck all of existence into oblivion.”
Well, that makes me feel better.
“But,” says Karma, getting up from the bench and walking over to the front of our cell, “it’s only a theory.”
For a few minutes there’s nothing but the sound of Alex Dunbar snoring and distant voices from beyond the closed door at the end of the hall. Then Karma sighs, grasps the bars, presses his face between them, looks out at the empty hallway, and says, “Where’s my latte?”
Justice shows up about a half hour later, dressed in a black pin-stripe suit, sporting a pair of black Gucci wraparound sunglasses, and carrying a black titanium walking stick.
The thing about Justice is that he’s a sociopath.
Personally, I think the whole visually impaired image is all for show, but I’ve never been able to prove it and I’m not about to try to expose him now. At times like this, it’s good to have connections who know how to work the system.
Within minutes of Justice’s arrival, Karma and I are released from the drunk tank and cleared of all charges. Naturally, Justice requires a payoff for his assistance and for his silence, so I give up my box seats at Wrigley Field while Karma offers to set up a private meeting with the Dalai Lama.
“Just make sure you don’t stare at his third eye,” says Karma. “He’s really self-conscious about it.”
Once outside, Justice takes off to deal with some voting machine problems in Florida, leaving Karma and me on the 13th Precinct steps.
“Well, that was fun,” I say. “Let’s do it again in another five hundred years.”
“I’d better get going,” says Karma, looking at his watch. “I’ve got a bunch of unsettled karma that needs to be balanced.”
“That’s an understatement,” I say, making my way to the sidewalk to hail a cab.
“Hey, Fabio,” says Karma.
“What?” I snap, turning around. Getting arrested and having to deal with Justice always puts me in a mood.
“Don’t get too close to humans,” he says. “They’re contagious.”
Human beings are technically a virus. That was one of the first things we learned in Primordial Soup 101. But knowledge like that is the kind of thing you tend to suppress when you’ve fallen in love with one of them.
“Thanks,” I say. “Anything else?”
“Just be careful,” he says. “And for Christ’s sake, stop helping them. You never know what you’ll catch.”
CHAPTER 32
A couple of
days later, I’m checking on the paths of some of the mortals whose fates I’ve redirected, just to keep on top of things, when I discover that Cliff Brooks isn’t as much of an anomaly as I thought.
The future of Nicolas Jansen, the fine young drug addict who stabbed me in Amsterdam and joined a monastery in France, has started to fade from view.
George and Carla Baer, the previously doomed couple with a future in bondage and discipline, are drifting off my radar.
Even Darren Stafford, the ex-biology teacher and would-be bird molester, is destined for something beyond my reach.
As I mentally sort through my case files, I discover that in addition to Cliff Brooks, Nicolas Jansen, Darren Stafford, and George and Carla Baer, I’ve managed to set more than a dozen other humans on the Path of Destiny.
I have to admit, I’m surprised by my powers of suggestion. I was just shooting for paths that didn’t involve drug addiction or pedophilia.
Apparently, I’m better at this than I thought.
Of course, when it was just Cliff Brooks whose future I’d changed, I stood a better chance of getting away with what I’d done. But the last time anyone had a positive impact on humans like this was Josh, and he didn’t exactly maintain his anonymity.

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