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Authors: S. G. Browne

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

BOOK: Fated
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For a few moments there’s nothing but the sound of me jumping to conclusions and the soft, fragile voice of Billie Holiday.
“So,” I say. “What do you think of the Jets’ chances against the Patriots this weekend?”
CHAPTER 43
“Where have you
been?” asks Sara. “And why are you wearing black silk pajamas?”
I’m not sure which question is harder to answer, but I figure since I’ve already given up my identity and the existence of Jerry, I might as well come clean.
Like Honesty always says, she’s the best policy.
“I went to see Jerry,” I say.
“Really?” says Sara. “What was he like?”
“Pissed off.”
“Oh,” says Sara. “How pissed off?”
So I tell her.
About my dead humans. And my suspension. And my stripped powers. And the time I saw Charles Darwin naked.
Natural selection, my ass.
“So, no more transporting?” she asks.
I shake my head.
“No more blinking out of existence?”
I shake my head again.
“No more having sex while you’re invisible?”
I have to admit, that was a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. But sadly, no more invisible sex, either.
Sara seems more disappointed about this than I am.
“How long will this last?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Depends on when the investigation is complete.”
“Who’s doing the investigation?”
“Integrity and Trust,” I say.
“That doesn’t sound good,” she says.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Integrity and Trust are two of the biggest brown-nosers in the universe. The only one with his nose farther up Jerry’s ass is Subservience.
“Oh, Fabio,” says Sara, putting her arms around me and squeezing me tight. “I’m so sorry.”
She holds me like that, close and intimate, our bodies fitting against each other, my face buried in her hair. In spite of the circumstances, my man suit is suddenly ready to go.
Sara leans her head back and looks up at me, a growing smile on her face. “So what’s with the pajamas?”
“I threw up on my clothes and had to borrow these from Dennis.”
She looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Who’s Dennis?”
“He’s Death.”
“Death?” she says, letting go of me and taking a step back. “You’re wearing the Grim Reaper’s pajamas?”
“Is that too weird?” I ask.
She stares at me, looking me up and down a few times before the smile comes back. “Well, considering invisible sex isn’t going to happen, I suppose Death’s pajamas will have to do.”
She steps back up to me and runs her hand along the black silk, then presses her face against my chest and inhales. “They smell like you,” she says. “Can I wear them?”
Somehow I don’t think Dennis is going to get his pajamas back.
An hour later we’re lying in bed, me naked on my back and Sara curled up next to me wearing Dennis’s unbuttoned and rumpled pajama top.
“So how long will the investigation take?” asks Sara, her fingers caressing my hairless chest.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe a couple of days. A week, tops. Integrity and Trust are pretty reliable. And uncompromising. That’s why everyone else hates them.”
Integrity and Trust live together in a $9.25 million penthouse loft on the Upper West Side with hardwood floors, soaring ceilings, and breathtaking views of the Hudson River. It also has a fifteen-hundred-bottle temperature-controlled wine room, a suspended glass staircase, two wood-burning fireplaces, an oversized spa bathroom with deep soaking tub and double walk-in steam shower, and a twelve-hundred-square-foot rooftop garden with an outdoor shower and a Viking kitchen.
“What happens when the investigation is complete?” asks Sara. “What happens if they determine you’re guilty?”
Guilty. It’s such a harsh word. No one is ever truly guilty in Jerry’s eyes. Condemned, yes. Expelled, sure. Turned into pillars of salt, you bet. But found guilty? That’s just not his style. Still, Sara’s question is a valid one.
“Well,” I say. “In addition to being stripped of my powers, it’s possible I could be excommunicated.”
“Excommunicated?” says Sara. “Isn’t that from a church?”
“Well,” I say, “we are talking about God. But however you want to put it—excommunicated, banished, disavowed—it all amounts to the same thing.”
“Which is?” asks Sara.
This isn’t really something I want to discuss. It’s embarrassing. And depressing. You just never expect to have your immortality revoked. It’s bad enough to think about being forced to take the subway instead of just doing it for kicks. But when you have to start thinking about applying for unemployment and looking for a job, the prospect of becoming mortal gets overwhelming.
Plus there’s the whole transformation process. I hear it’s rather unpleasant. Kind of like having your arteries pumped full of liquid lead.
So I’ve got that to look forward to.
“What do you think about the idea of living together?” I say.
Sara props her head up with one hand and leans on her elbow. “What are you talking about?”
Somehow, I doubt I’ll be able to afford $3,990 a month for rent on unemployment. And as far as I know, there aren’t a lot of job opportunities for disgraced immortal entities.
“Well, let’s just say I might need a place to live.”
“You’ll lose your apartment?” she asks.
“Among other things,” I say.
“Such as . . . ?”
“My Universal Visa card, my Garden of Eden health club membership, my immortality . . .”
“Your
immortality
?”
The way she says it makes it sound so permanent.
“You mean you’ll grow old?” she asks.
I nod.
“You’ll get sick?”
I nod again.
“You’ll go gray and develop love handles and need reading glasses?”
Somehow, this conversation isn’t making me feel any better. But I nod again.
Sara drops back down to the crook of my arm, her head nuzzled against me. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad?” I say. “I’ve been around for more than two hundred and fifty thousand years and now I’m about to find out what it’s like to get sick and struggle with my weight and die of old age and you’re telling me it’s not so bad?”
“So we’ll grow old together,” says Sara, her voice vibrating against my chest. “When you get sick, I’ll take care of you. When you start to go gray, I’ll tell you it looks distinguished. When you develop love handles, I’ll tease you about them. And when you need reading glasses, I’ll adore the way you look in them.”
“Really?” I say.
She rises up again and looks me in the eyes. “Really.”
“But when I lose my immortality, I’ll become human. I’ll become flesh and blood. Which means no more man suit.”
Which I’ve grown particularly fond of, by the way. You just don’t appreciate the convenience of wick-dry technology until you have to contemplate buying antiperspirant.
“Fabio, as much as I love your perfectly sculpted and well-endowed body and the heights of pleasure it brings me to, I love you for the blinding ball of light you are inside your man suit.”
She’s staring at me with those big, gorgeous eyes of hers that both captivate me and fill me with courage.
“You love me?” I say.
She smiles and nods. “Undeniably. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Fabio. And I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”
I smile back and tell her that I love her, too, and that if I have to lose my immortality with someone, I would want it to be with her.
Sara smiles and says, “I think that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
CHAPTER 44
Of course, in
addition to the regular bumps most couples encounter, being in a mortal relationship with Sara could present some other problems.
My lack of experience as a human.
The inevitable depression I’ll encounter at the loss of my immortality.
The fact that Jerry might be paying a house call.
While it’s true I can’t get Sara pregnant in my current form, if I become human, all bets are off. And if she’s destined to become impregnated with the future savior, I’m thinking Jerry and the rest of the board of directors might frown upon our shacking up together.
I don’t know what path I’ll be put on if I become human, but I’m hoping if Sara is going to play the part of the Virgin Mary, I’ll get to play the part of Joseph. Except I’m not much of a handyman. Or a role model. And my friends don’t have the best table manners.
Gluttony belches and wipes his face with his sleeve. “Can you pass the soy sauce?”
I’m in Chinatown, having dim sum with Sloth and Gluttony. Gluttony has just finished sabotaging a Weight Watchers’ conference along with his third helping of har gau, while Sloth is coming down from an apathy high and a three-hour nap.
Having dim sum with a compulsive overeater and an unmotivated slacker while you’re waiting to find out if your immortality has been revoked might not seem like the best way to spend your morning, but Sloth and Gluttony always manage to make me feel better about myself.
“Dude,” says Gluttony, his mouth filled with half of a char siu bao. “That sucks that you were stripped of your powers.”
“Totally,” says Sloth, yawning.
Of course, I didn’t have to tell Sloth and Gluttony I was suspended. Gossip and Rumor made sure of that. The entire community knows.
I have to say I’ve been a little overwhelmed with the response. Faith and Hope and Love called to say they were there if I needed them. Karma sent me an inspirational singing telegram. Lady Luck e-mailed to say she was sending a little of herself my way. And I got a text message from Failure to join him at the Paradise Club in Midtown for the nude fire-breathing show.
Needless to say, I’m a little disappointed I haven’t heard from Truth or Wisdom or Serendipity and that my calls to Honesty have gone unreturned. But I guess you find out who your real friends are when you’ve been censured by God.
“What’s it like not to be able to read humans?” asks Gluttony.
“It’s kind of creepy,” I say. “A little too quiet, if you know what I mean. But I sleep a lot better at night.”
“Sleep is so important,” says Sloth. “It’s, like, the most important meal of the day.”
“Sleep isn’t a meal, dude,” says Gluttony.
“Yeah, well, it should be,” says Sloth.
“If sleep were a meal,” says Gluttony, shoving a taro cake in his mouth, “I’d so eat you.”
“Dude, that is not cool,” says Sloth. “Now I’m going to have that image in my head for the next century.”
In addition to sleeping better at night, I’ve discovered that being suspended and having my powers stripped has helped me to improve my meditation, allowed me to take up yoga, and enabled me to relate better to my humans. Over the past couple of days, I’ve found myself riding the subway or walking through Central Park or hanging out in the Manhattan Mall and discovering how much more I understand people.
Before, when I was tapping into the fates of all of my humans, I couldn’t focus on anything but a few superficial aspects of any one individual, which made it difficult to get to the root of the problem. It was like having sixty seconds to impart two hundred and fifty thousand years’ worth of wisdom to someone who’s worried because they’re having a bad hair day.
Now, without the distraction of the other five and a half billion students, even though I can’t read them, I’m able to focus on each person and get a sense of what makes them tick. I’m able to relate to them one on one. I’m able to appreciate how much we have in common.
True, they’re inferior bipedal life-forms in fragile, biodegradable shells, and I’m a blinding ball of light in a technologically advanced suit with a half-life of two thousand years, but deep down, we all come from the same cosmic goo.
And I’m wondering if there might be a future for me in career counseling.
“So who did Jerry say was going to take over while you’re suspended?” asks Gluttony between spring rolls.
“Chance,” I say.
“Chance is a pussy,” says Sloth.
I won’t argue that. And if you ask me, he’ll do a piss-poor job of managing my humans. He’s just a possibility. An accident. The absence of any obvious design. How is that supposed to help direct anyone to a better future?
Of course, it’s that kind of thinking that got me into this predicament in the first place.

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