Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (21 page)
The ascension of Cliff Brooks isn’t something I can just ignore. It’s unprecedented. An anomaly. A mutation of the cosmic order. I need to figure out how to set him back on the proper path.
Problem is, I was never much of a student, and Jerry’s lectures in Path Theory and Predestination Law always put me to sleep, so I need some help. Dennis didn’t have to take the classes as core requirements, since all paths eventually lead to him, Sloth slept through more lectures than I did, and Gluttony frequently ate his own homework. Even though Karma ditched school almost as often as I did, he somehow managed to score near the top of the class.
Fortunately, Karma was in town for his annual visit to George Steinbrenner, so it wasn’t too hard to track him down.
“So,” I say. “I have another question about paths.”
“You mean like the Path of Fate, the Path of Destiny, all that metaphysical bullshit?” says Karma, his eyes a bit glassy from the two Kingfishers he’s already put away.
“Yeah,” I say, wondering how many beers he drank before I showed up.
“Man, I don’t know,” he says. “That was more than two hundred and fifty fucking thousand years ago.”
The Japanese woman at the table next to us stops with her fork halfway to her open mouth and looks over at us.
“Listen,” I say, as the waiter returns with another Kingfisher. “Just help me out on this and I’ll get lunch.”
“Okay,” he says. “But I never was much of a student.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You aced Predestination Law. Got the highest final score of anyone in the class.”
“I cheated,” says Karma before downing half of his beer. “Bought the answers from Deception. Never even cracked a book.”
Great. I come looking for clarity and wisdom and instead I get folly and crapulence.
“Do you remember anything about your schooling?” I ask. “Anything at all?”
“Some of it,” he says. “I remember gym class and stealing Injury’s wheelchair during Greek Week and filling Celibacy’s locker with naked pictures of Confidence. Oh, and I remember the visualization techniques we learned in Virtual Theater.”
Pageantry taught that class. The idea was to imagine yourself as an inanimate object that represented your abilities. My visualization, my inanimate object that represented the Fate of the human race, was a gasoline pump.
Before I can stop him, Karma is climbing up and sitting on our table, his ass in his lunch.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I like to think of myself as a scale,” he says, striking a pose with his legs crossed in the lotus position and his arms held out to the sides, elbows down and wrists bent, palms facing up.
I hate it when he does that.
“People are staring,” I say.
“Let them stare,” he says in a loud, commanding voice. “I am Karma. I weigh the outcome of your decisions. Heed my wisdom.”
“Heed this,” says a balding thirty-five-year-old New York native with a future in failed opportunities who gives Karma the bird.
Not a wise decision.
Karma places the tip of his middle finger against the inside of his thumb and makes a flicking motion at the balding man. The next moment, the man is tripping over his own feet and falling face-first into a table occupied by a married couple who just ordered the chicken curry.
Instant karma.
At the back of the restaurant, the manager of Curry in a Hurry, a forty-year-old Indian with a future in heart attacks, is pointing his finger at us.
“Get off the table! Get off the table and get out or I’ll call the police!”
Karma isn’t moving.
“Can we get back to my question about paths?” I ask.
“It’s all about cause and effect,” says Karma, ignoring me and addressing the two dozen or so patrons of Curry in a Hurry. It’s fast-food philosophy for a fast-food crowd.
“If you do good things, good things will happen to you.” Karma lowers his right hand and raises his left. “If you do bad things, yada yada yada.”
I look around, expecting the other restaurant customers to either be laughing and shaking their heads or ignoring Karma completely. After all, this is New York City. Stuff like this happens all the time. Instead, other than the balding guy with a face full of chicken curry and the couple whose meal he ruined, I discover most of the customers are paying attention. More than that. They’re almost transfixed.
I’ve seen this reaction before, back during the Classical Age, after the exodus and before the birth of the Roman Empire, when the vast majority of humans were hungry for messiahs and spiritual leaders. Karma would sit down on a hill or under a tree and just start talking and the people would flock to him, asking him to lead them out of whatever persecution or injustice they suffered. When he got them all good and worked up, right where he wanted them, he’d spontaneously combust and they’d run away screaming.
Afterward, we’d have a good laugh about it over some wine and unleavened bread.
But now, human beings seem to have eschewed their pursuit of spiritual saviors for the pursuit of corporeal rewards and material goods.
Glycolic-acid peels and breast implants.
Prada handbags and Hugo Boss suits.
Luxury SUVs and home theater systems.
Even when they do seek out internal guidance, they’ve traded in the ascetic for celebrity. Their messiahs are pop singers and movie stars, their spiritual leaders television evangelists and radio personalities. But then I look around this Indian fast-food restaurant on Manhattan’s East Side, at the people transfixed by Karma, and I think maybe humans are hungrier for guidance than I thought. Maybe they want more than a paycheck and a bedroom set from Ethan Allen to define who they are. To measure their success.
Or else Karma just knows how to work a crowd.
“He who speaks in a nonhurtful, truthful manner creates positive karma,” he says, his eyes closed, espousing the philosophy of karma in Buddhism.
“Engage in wholesome action, avoiding that which would do harm.
“Pursue a livelihood that does not harm others or oneself.
“Do not answer injustice with injury. Answer injustice with kindness.”
I’m pretty sure that last one’s Lao Tzu, not Buddha, but these people don’t know the difference.
“What about the Path of Destiny?” I ask.
“Man creates his own destiny,” he says. “The path you seek is your own.”
It’s really frustrating when he talks in philosophical axioms.
“What if I’m not seeking a path but am sending others down a path that isn’t meant for them?” I ask, trying to remain patient while the manager of Curry in a Hurry is on the phone, calling the police. “Does Karma say anything about that?”
“To understand another’s path, you must first understand yourself.”
Whatever that means.
Before I can pursue my line of questioning, a young man, just turned twenty and on his way to a series of dead-end jobs, approaches our table holding his baseball cap in his hands.
“If I apologize to my girlfriend, will she forgive me?”
“Deeds, not words, define the man,” says Karma. “Apologize with actions and you will reap the rewards.”
The young man thanks Karma and leaves the restaurant.
“Is it too late to make something right?” asks a twenty-five-year-old female who steals money from her parents to buy drugs.
“It’s never too late to atone for one’s offenses,” he answers.
She starts to cry, then also leaves.
“Will I be able to find happiness?” asks another customer.
“Happiness is found within.”
“Can you offer salvation?” asks a forty-two-year-old woman who will continue an extramarital affair for the next seven years.
“Screw salvation,” says Karma, opening his eyes. “If you want salvation, talk to Jerry.”
In the distance I hear sirens. They might not be for us, but just in case . . .
“I think we should leave,” I say.
Karma polishes off the rest of his Kingfisher. “But I’m on a roll.”
I guess that depends on how you define
roll
. Half of the patrons who were here when he started are gone and the manager is cursing Karma in Hindi. When I glance back at Karma, he has this smirk on his face.
roll
. Half of the patrons who were here when he started are gone and the manager is cursing Karma in Hindi. When I glance back at Karma, he has this smirk on his face.
“Please don’t tell me you’re thinking about spontaneously combusting,” I say.
“It crossed my mind,” says Karma. “What do you think?”
“Probably a bad idea,” I say. “But if you’re going to do it, can you at least wait until after we talk about Destiny?”
“What is all this Path of Destiny stuff about, anyway?” he asks, waving his empty beer bottle in the air again, seemingly unaware of his current status as Least Favorite Customer.
“I think we should talk about this someplace else,” I say, as the sirens grow louder.
“But I haven’t finished my lunch,” he says, grabbing a piece of naan from under his left thigh and scooping some lamb curry off his pants.
“Come on,” I say, taking him by the hand and pulling him down from the table. “Let’s get out of here before the police show up.”
“Too late,” he says.
A police car pulls up in front of the restaurant as the remaining patrons, the spell apparently broken, go back to their meals and avoid eye contact with us. A few moments later, the manager appears at the top of the stairs, followed by two uniformed officers.
“Them!” the manager yells, pointing at us. Like I did anything wrong. “They disrupt my business and drive my customers away.”
“Is that what happened?” asks the first police officer, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried man who is fated to stay that way.
“Not exactly,” I say. Though I have no idea what I’m going to say to follow it up. This is one of those times when I wish I could just blink out of existence. Maybe transport myself to Hawaii or Santorini or Jamaica. I hear Hedonism II is nice this time of year.
The forty-two-year-old woman whom Karma told to “screw salvation” points to him and says, “He thinks he’s the incarnation of karma.”
“Is that so?” says the officer.
“The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and dispassionate reaction,” says Karma, and then belches in the officer’s face.
Like that’s going to help us.
“And what about you?” asks the officer, looking at me. “Who do you think you are?”
“I’m someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“You got that right,” says the officer. “Let’s go outside and have a little chat, find out who you two really are.”
“I am Karma,” announces Karma, climbing onto another table, knocking over glasses and plates as he assumes the lotus position. “I am like a scale. . . .”
“Let’s go, buddy,” says the first officer, reaching over and grabbing Karma by one arm.
Karma isn’t budging, which brings the second officer over to the other side of the table, where he takes hold of Karma’s other arm.
“Your actions will have consequences,” says Karma. “You must obey my law!”
“Yeah,” says the first officer, pulling out his handcuffs. “And you must obey mine.”
Faster than you can say
samsara
, Karma is turned around on his chest, his face to one side in a plate of palak paneer, his wrists handcuffed behind him.
samsara
, Karma is turned around on his chest, his face to one side in a plate of palak paneer, his wrists handcuffed behind him.
“You’re going to be sorry!” he says as they pull him to his feet, spinach and cheese dripping from his face. “It’s a bad idea to fuck with Karma!”
“And it’s a bad idea to fuck with the NYPD,” says the officer.
The second officer escorts me down the stairs and out the door, where a crowd has gathered on the sidewalk to watch the show. Behind me, Karma shouts, “Cause and effect! Cause and effect!” as he’s dragged out of the restaurant in handcuffs.
CHAPTER 31
The last time
I was incarcerated, human beings still believed the sun revolved around the Earth and public executions of heretics were good, wholesome, family entertainment. Back then, prisons were generally referred to as
dungeons
and it wasn’t uncommon to have to share your eight-foot-by-six-foot luxury suite with half a dozen condemned men, most of whom needed a bath and some of whom needed a proper burial.
I was incarcerated, human beings still believed the sun revolved around the Earth and public executions of heretics were good, wholesome, family entertainment. Back then, prisons were generally referred to as
dungeons
and it wasn’t uncommon to have to share your eight-foot-by-six-foot luxury suite with half a dozen condemned men, most of whom needed a bath and some of whom needed a proper burial.
I have to say, the accommodations have improved significantly since then.
Our cell is twenty by ten, with a bench running along the back wall and a single toilet with a sink in the far corner. Instead of dirt and rocks littered with human excrement, the floor is a clean, concrete slab. There’s even central air-conditioning. And the only one of us who needs a bath is Karma.
“Can I have a grande double latte?” Karma calls out, his face pressed against the bars, spinach and cheese coagulating in his hair and on his shirt. “No, wait. Make that a chai iced tea.”
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