Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (25 page)
Fortunately, the Miracle on Market Street, as they’re calling it, took place in San Francisco, which everyone knows is full of gays, heathens, and liberals, so you can’t believe anything that happens there. Besides, Jerry doesn’t pay attention to reports of supernatural events unless they involve locusts, resurrections, or the Chicago Cubs.
But at the moment, Jerry isn’t the problem.
Sara picks up the remote control and stops the playback using TiVo, leaving my somewhat blurry but clearly recognizable face displayed on fifty inches of flat-screen, high-definition digital technology.
“Tell me that’s not you,” she says.
“That’s not me,” I say.
Is it technically lying if you tell someone what she asked you to tell her?
Sara walks up to the television and points to my larger-than-life image. “That’s not you?”
“Um,” I say, and then start to laugh. I get that way when I’m nervous sometimes. Or when my immortal identity is discovered by my mortal girlfriend.
“Do you think this is funny?” she asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. And I’m wondering if this is a good time to spontaneously combust or if that would only make things worse.
Relationships with humans are so complicated.
“Fabio?”
Maybe if I just ignore her she’ll go away.
“Fabio?”
Maybe I can get Memory to do a selective purge.
“Fabio!”
“Yes,” I say, blurting it out. “Yes, it’s me.”
So much for spontaneously combusting.
Sara looks at me, her stare shifting from my face to the flat-screen television, then back again. I feel like I’ve been caught doing something inappropriate. Like that time when Disappointment walked in on me masturbating to an eight-by-ten glossy of Virtue.
“Is it true what they said about what you did?” asks Sara.
“Is what true?” I ask, still holding out hope she’ll just drop the whole thing.
She hesitates, as if she’s not really sure she wants to know the answer to her next question. “Did you just vanish into thin air?”
After dealing with humans for countless centuries, I’ve discovered when it comes to mortal women, there are certain questions you should never answer truthfully.
Does this make me look fat?
Do you fantasize about having sex with other women?
Did you just vanish into thin air?
While I suppose there are situations where honesty is actually appropriate for the first two questions, like at an all-you-can-eat buffet or at the Playboy Mansion, the last one should be a nobrainer. But I can’t seem to find the words to lie to Sara. And I know that if I don’t tell her the truth, any future we have together is likely to involve a lot of counseling and a lot less sex.
So I just nod.
“How is that possible?” asks Sara.
I could go into the physics of molecular transportation and how my genetic structure allows me to jump around the globe and the solar system at the speed of light, but that would probably just bring up more questions, and I never really had the patience for scientific explanations. So instead I decide to give a demonstration.
“Like this,” I say.
When I reappear an instant later behind Sara and tap her on the shoulder, she screams and turns around and falls to the floor in an unconscious heap.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
When Sara regains consciousness a few minutes later on the couch, I flash my most charming smile and hope she doesn’t scream or call the police or kick me in the face. Sure, the warranty’s still good on my man suit for another nine months, but I’m not covered for dental.
“Did that really happen?” she asks.
I nod, still smiling.
“And you can do that whenever you want?” she asks. “Go wherever you want? Just vanish from one place and appear in another?”
I nod again.
Several long moments pass in which Sara doesn’t say anything but just stares at me, her expression as unreadable as her future. Not a muscle twitches. She barely blinks. Just as I’m beginning to think she’s suffering from the onset of shock, she says, “Well, I guess that explains why you never ask me to pick you up from the airport.”
I let out a laugh, thinking things are going to be okay, that I’m not going to have to share all of the secrets of my existence, until I realize Sara’s not laughing but is still staring at me with that same blank expression.
“Are you from another planet?” she asks.
“No,” I assure her. “I’m not from another planet.”
How do you explain you hail from the ether of the universe without sounding like a lunatic?
I just hope she doesn’t ask me if I’m human.
“Are you human?” she asks.
I don’t immediately respond, hoping that by my stalling for time she’ll forget the question.
“Fabio?”
I could just transport out of here, go hide someplace and hope this eventually blows over.
“Fabio?”
I could pray for a natural disaster to provide some temporary distraction, but Jerry would want an explanation, and I hate paperwork.
“Fabio!”
“No,” I say. “I’m not human.”
From the expression on her face, I can tell this isn’t an answer she ever expected to hear.
“Then what are you?”
So I tell her all about me. About my existence and my abilities. About my history and my future. About my man suit and my list of sexual partners. Sure, finding out your boyfriend has had sex with more than a hundred thousand women can be a little overwhelming, but I’d rather she hear it from me.
“A hundred
thousand
?” she says.
thousand
?” she says.
I shrug. “Give or take.”
I mean, really. Homo sapiens appeared barely more than two hundred thousand years ago. True, I’ve been fooling around with human women for only the past five thousand years, but spread out over the existence of modern man, a hundred thousand women averages out to one every other year. Of course, that number doesn’t include Destiny or Lust or Secrecy, or any of my other numerous dalliances. But I don’t see any reason to upset Sara.
“How do I know you’re not making this all up?” asks Sara. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
I obviously can’t prove it to her by telling Sara about herself. So I tell her about her older brother who drowned in a pool when she was three. And her parents who got divorced when she was seven. And her best friend who got pregnant when Sara was thirteen. And her college boyfriend who cheated on her with a stripper.
After a few more minutes of staring at me in silence, she finally says, “So you’re really Fate?”
I nod.
“Which means you can see how my life is going to turn out?”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?” asks Sara.
This is where things get tricky.
Confessing to Sara that I control the fate of more than five and a half billion humans is one thing. And I haven’t even considered telling her about Jerry. She’d want to meet him, which of course is impossible, and that would just lead to arguments about her feeling like I don’t think she’s good enough to meet God, which is a conversation I’d prefer to avoid altogether.
But telling someone they’re destined for a future greater than the mass of the human population can have an adverse impact on their destiny. They start looking for signs. Altering their habits. Thinking about what’s going to happen. All it takes is for one moment to shift, one cosmic wheel to get out of alignment, and their destiny can veer off in another direction. As I look at Sara, waiting for me to give her an answer, I know I don’t have any choice but to tell her the truth.
“I can’t read your future,” I say.
Okay. Mostly the truth.
“Why not?” asks Sara, a concerned expression on her face. “Is there something wrong with me?”
“It’s not like that,” I say. “You’re not on my path.”
“Path?” she says. “What path? What does that mean?”
I take a deep breath, then blurt it out. “It means you’re on the Path of Destiny.”
I follow up my latest confession with an explanation of path theory, detailing the difference between Fate and Destiny while leaving out the fact that I got a C in the class. Jerry was very disappointed in me.
“So what am I destined for?” she asks.
“You’d have to ask Destiny,” I say. “But I’d advise against bringing this up with her. You’re kind of not supposed to know about her. Or me. Or any of this. I could get in big trouble. Plus she’s already not real happy about the fact that I’m your boyfriend.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m going to have lunch with her tomorrow,” says Sara.
“You’d be surprised.”
After a moment, Sara sits up on the couch and wraps her arms around me, holding me tighter than she’s ever held me.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” she whispers in my ear. “I won’t tell anyone.”
I feel like a superhero who’s just revealed his secret identity. Clark Kent confessing he’s Superman. Peter Parker divulging his inner Spider-Man.
Sara Griffen. My Lois Lane. My Mary Jane Watson.
Still holding me tight, Sara says, “How come Destiny doesn’t want you to be my boyfriend?”
“Because she’s a selfish whore,” I say. It’s just an automatic response. “And she feels like I’m preventing you from fulfilling your destiny.”
Sara pulls away and looks at me. “Maybe it’s like I said before,” she says, her smile radiant. “Maybe you’re my destiny.”
In the mirror behind Sara, I see my grainy image reflected on the flat-screen, captured on a cell phone camera, the evidence of my identity sent in by an anonymous source, and I find myself wondering what Destiny was doing Monday afternoon.
Sara turns around to see what I’m looking at. “How much trouble are you going to get into for this?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But Jerry watches CNN religiously, so I’m pretty sure he’s going to find out.”
“Who’s Jerry?” asks Sara.
“Who?” I say, playing dumb.
“Jerry,” she says.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“You’ve mentioned him before.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Is he your boss?”
“No.”
“You mentioned once he reminds you of God.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Her eyes suddenly grow wide. “Is he God?”
“No.”
“He is God, isn’t he?”
“No.”
“Can I meet him?”
CHAPTER 36
In addition to
her constant badgering for a face-to-face with Jerry, to which I finally caved and told her I would see what I could do, Sara wants to know everything about me.
her constant badgering for a face-to-face with Jerry, to which I finally caved and told her I would see what I could do, Sara wants to know everything about me.
Where I’ve lived.
What I’ve seen.
Whom I’ve slept with.
“You don’t really want to know,” I tell her.
“Yes, I do,” she says. “I want to know everything about you. And that includes your sexual history.”
So I tell her.
About the women from ancient Greece who introduced me to Minoan massage. And the Egyptian slaves I boned during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. And how Helen of Troy wasn’t as good in bed as you’d think.
I barely make it more than halfway through the Classical Age and don’t even get to Cleopatra before Sara tells me that’s enough.
“I told you so,” I say.
So we steer clear of the remainder of my one hundred thousand sexual partners, which is just as well. Even the most well-adjusted human woman is going to struggle with her self-esteem once she finds out you’ve slept with Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, and Queen Elizabeth.
Instead, Sara asks me how I manage to stay so fit and free of physical blemishes. Even being immortal, she figures the daily wear and tear and the exposure to the elements over a couple of hundred thousand years would leave me looking a little weather-beaten.
So I explain to her about my man suit.
“You mean it’s not flesh?” she says, poking at my bare, sculpted chest as I stand there, completely naked, for her to inspect.
“No,” I say. “It’s kind of like advanced silicone, but with properties beyond anything humans have developed.”
She keeps poking me, then runs her hands along my torso until they’re below my waist.
Is it getting warm in here or is it just me?
“So this isn’t real?” she asks, taking my aroused member in her hands with the curiosity of an unabashed virgin.
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