Fated (37 page)

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Authors: S. G. Browne

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

BOOK: Fated
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It’s bad enough when you go from being vice president at Morgan Stanley to scrounging through garbage cans in Central Park. But when you fall as far as I’ve fallen and lose as much as I’ve lost, hope becomes a word you don’t even dream about because it’s so impossible to imagine. Eventually, you forget what it even means.
And I realize I have become the epitome of all I despised when I was Fate. A drunk, pathetic, worthless human. A waste of a carbon-based life-form.
I think again about how so many humans have such a difficult time staying on their paths. How they fail to live up to their potential. How they divert themselves from their optimal futures with possessions and alcohol and other distractions. Maybe they’re not so much distracting themselves from their fates as from the struggle of being human.
I laugh. Not a sick or desperate laugh or one born from the onset of madness, but a brief burst of laughter filled with bitter irony.
I’m sitting on a rock in a copse of cherry-blossom trees, staring at the George Washington while New Jersey sits across the Hudson like a shadow of Manhattan. Behind me, traffic roars along the Henry Hudson Parkway while the river laps at the rocks fifteen feet below. During the height of spring, the cherry-blossom trees are rich with pink-and-white blossoms, but in the last week of March, at the end of a long, lingering winter, the trees are as barren as my future.
As I take another swig of cheap wine, half of which dribbles down my beard and onto my coat, a voice appears on the pedestrian path behind me.
“Fabio?”
I don’t even have to look to know who it is.
Destiny steps around a cherry-blossom tree to stand in front of me. “Jesus, Fabio. You look horrible.”
“No thanks to you,” I say, taking a swig of wine.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize . . . I’m sorry.”
Destiny is wearing a red wool coat with a red beret and red jeans with red Doc Martens.
“That’s kind of a subdued look for a slut, isn’t it?” I say, aware that my sibilants have deteriorated.
“Haven’t lost your charm, though,” she says, sitting down on the rock next to me.
We sit there, not saying anything, just staring out at the sun setting over the Hudson and at the lights adorning the George Washington Bridge.
“You slumming again?” I ask. “Seeing how the other five and a half billion humans live? Or did you just come to laugh at me some more? Enjoy how far I’ve fallen?”
More awkward silence, followed by Destiny gasping as she gets a good whiff of me. Eventually, I pass Destiny the bottle of wine.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Cheap,” I say.
She takes the bottle from me and takes a sip, then spits it out. “That’s awful.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the bottle back.
Another span of minutes plays out in silence. Finally, Destiny says, “I never meant for things to be this hard on you, Fabio.”
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” I say, punctuating my statement with a belch. “Maybe if you wouldn’t have killed my humans, I’d still be immortal.”
Although if I’m going to be honest, I have to admit that Destiny isn’t to blame for what happened to me. I don’t have anyone to blame but myself.
Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not bitter.
“So is that why you came?” I say, wiping wine from my beard. “To tell me you’re sorry? To clear your conscience?”
“Sort of,” she says. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Can’t see me without a personal appearance, right?” I say. “Not exactly on your radar, am I?”
“I don’t know what to say,” says Destiny. “I can’t undo what I’ve done and I’m not going to keep apologizing for killing humans who had no right being on my path in the first place. You can’t mix up the cosmic gene pool, Fabio. It brings down the property values.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” I say.
“Look, I didn’t come down here to argue with you,” says Destiny. “I just wanted to explain a few things.”
“Well, thanks for the explanation,” I say, tipping back the bottle to get the last of the wine. “By the way, thanks for the advice about Sara. I owe you one.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, then closes it and stares out at the Hudson.
“I also thought you’d want to know that Jerry is making a trip to Earth tonight,” she says.
Wine comes spraying out of my mouth and nose.
“Why would I want to know that?” I say, wiping a sleeve across my face. “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I just . . . It seemed important,” she says.
“To who?” I ask. “To you? So you could torment me some more?”
“I’m sorry, Fabio,” says Destiny. “I only wanted to—”
“To what?” I shout. “To rub it in my face? To let me know that the woman I love is about to fulfill her destiny?”
“Look,” she says, standing up. “I didn’t have to come here, you know.”
“Then why did you?”
She stares at me, then looks away. “I just thought you should know,” she says, before she walks past me and into the deepening shadows along the edge of the river.
It’s only a few seconds later when I realize I don’t want her to go.
I turn around to ask Destiny to wait, to sit back down and tell me how everyone is doing, to see if she’s talked to Dennis, to ask her about Sara, to just stay and keep me company, but she’s already gone. And I’m alone again, sitting on my empty bench with my empty wine bottle and my empty life, surrounded by shadows and strangers and an existence that doesn’t belong to me.
I stare out at the Hudson River flowing past, my eyes filling up with tears, and before I realize what I’m doing, I drop to the ground on my knees and I start praying to Jerry. I plead to the heavens, asking him to take me back, promising that if he gives me one more chance I’ll be the model employee. I’ll even take something like Obsequiousness or Sycophancy. Anything so I can have a chance to be immortal again. To help take care of humans. To have the chance to see Sara. To be near her even if she doesn’t know who I am or what we used to share.
I wait for an answer as the sun disappears beyond New Jersey. I wait as darkness falls and the moon climbs up in the sky. I wait until the stars are all out and the night has officially turned the page to morning.
Then I start walking toward the George Washington Bridge.
CHAPTER 53
The George Washington
is accessible on foot from Manhattan at 178th Street via a long, steep ramp that makes it ideal for bicyclists. At this time of morning, there aren’t any bicyclists and the traffic is fairly light, so no one notices me climbing up the crisscrossed bracing of the bare steel tower on the New York side of the bridge.
As I make my way toward the top of the tower, I keep thinking these last three months have just been a long, bizarre, fucked-up dream and that I’m really in bed next to Sara or passed out in Truth and Wisdom’s spare bedroom after a long night of drinking or that I dozed off while taking a hot mud bath at the day spa on Venus. And when I wake up I’ll be so happy to discover I’m still immortal and that my existence is filled with love and meaning and the ability to spontaneously combust, I’ll dedicate myself to being the best Fabio I can be.
I’m not sure if I think this to distract myself or to give me the motivation to keep climbing, since it’s only a dream. But it definitely helps to block out the fact that I have to pee.
The height of the tower is more than six hundred feet above the Hudson River, so by the time I reach the top, my hands are raw and bleeding and my head is pounding. Probably not a good idea to climb to the top of a suspension bridge after drinking a bottle of cheap wine, arguing with Destiny, and being ignored by God, but sometimes people do stupid things.
I sit down on the edge of the tower and look south along the Hudson, my breath coming out in deep, panicked breaths. I didn’t used to be afraid of heights, but there’s something about the prospect of actually dying that makes you appreciate it’s a long way down.
“You could have saved yourself the trouble of the climb,” says a voice from behind me.
I turn around and see Dennis standing on the tower. If he were dressed in a suit or something casual or even an apocalypse cloak, I’d figure he was here to talk me out of this and treat me to a steak dinner, maybe give me a place to sleep and take a hot shower. Instead, he’s wearing his black rain gear and blue mortician’s gloves, so I know this isn’t a social call.
“It’s good to see you,” I say.
“I don’t get that very often,” he says, sitting down beside me. “But thanks. You’ve looked better.”
“Yeah, well, you try being human for three months and see how you look,” I say.
Dennis nods. “The beard’s sort of becoming, though. In an Attila the Hun kind of way.”
We always thought Attila the Hun looked like he had pubic hair on his face.
We sit there on the tower in silence, two football fields above the water, looking out into the early morning darkness stretching toward the Atlantic. After a moment, Dennis glances down between his knees.
“You know, the fall from the upper deck would have been enough to do the job,” he says.
“I figured as much,” I say. “But I wanted to make sure I didn’t just break all the bones in my body and maintain consciousness while I drowned.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about that,” says Dennis.
More silence, while below us cars head east and west, oblivious to the fact that Death and the mortal previously known as Fate are sharing one last conversation on the tower above them.
“So how long have you known?” I ask.
“About you?” he says. “Since the transformation. As soon as you became mortal.”
“And you didn’t think to give me a heads-up?”
“You know I couldn’t do that,” says Dennis. “It would have had an impact on your future. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Besides,” says Dennis, “Jerry gave us all strict orders not to interact with you.”
I laugh. “The fascist bastard.”
“You might want to reconsider your opinion of Jerry before you jump,” says Death. “It might make things easier for you. Just a suggestion.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
Another few minutes pass in silence, though I notice Dennis keeps looking at his watch.
“Got someplace you have to be?” I ask.
“Well, you know me,” says Dennis. “My schedule’s pretty booked.”
I nod. “Well, then, don’t let me keep you,” I say, getting to my feet.
Dennis stands up and faces me. In the glow from the white lights that line the tower, his eyes look glassy, as if filled with tears. Either that or mine are.
“Thanks for coming,” I say, my voice thick.
“No worries,” he says.
“It’s kind of weird, you know,” I say. “After all this time, to think I’m going to come to an end. That I’m going to be no more. To think about my own mortality. Remember how we used to laugh about
Hamlet
?”
Dennis smiles and nods.
“‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’” I say. “‘Whether ’tis nobler in the mind . . .’”
“Fabio,” he says.
“I know, I know. You have to go.”
We stand there awkwardly a moment, neither of us knowing what to say; then Dennis steps forward and embraces me. “Head-first is probably the best way.”
“Thanks,” I say.
He steps away and leaves me alone at the edge of the tower. I stand there looking south at the Hudson cutting a dark swath between Manhattan and New Jersey, at the lights spreading east and west to the horizons, then up at the stars and the moon in the endless sky above us.
I look back one last time and give Dennis a smile. And then I’m leaping out into nothing, tumbling slowly through the darkness, cold air whistling past my ears and the tower racing past in a blur of metal and white lights and I realize I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be. I don’t know what I expected to feel, but this sense of calm surprises me, as if this were what I was supposed to be doing. As if the mistake were living. And I’m remembering Socrates, who said that death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
I glance up and catch a glimpse of Dennis peering over the edge, waving to me. I wave back and then he’s gone and I’m falling past the upper deck and the lower deck, less than two hundred feet from the end and I’m suddenly craving some cinnamon rugelach from Zabar’s.
Sara always preferred the chocolate.
I’ve heard that for humans, your whole life passes before your eyes in the moments before death. But for me, my last thoughts before I hit the water are of Sara.
Her laugh and her smile.

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