Authors: S. G. Browne
Tags: #Humorous, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
Fated (28 page)
“Chance?” I say. “Are you kidding? You can’t leave it up to him.”
“Your actions have put the cosmic balance of this planet in jeopardy, Fabio,” says Jerry, handing me the bag of figs while he reaches inside his coat. “You’ve given me no choice.”
His hand comes out of his coat with a single white envelope, which he passes to me.
“What’s in here?” I ask.
“Fifty bucks and an airplane ticket,” he says, gathering up his shopping bags of souvenirs.
I open up the envelope and count the money, just to be sure. Jerry’s not real good with currency. He can never get the exchange rates right. And he’s notorious for undertipping.
“What about my Universal Visa card?” I ask. “Can I still expense to my business account?”
Jerry gives me an expression of disapproval that reminds me of how he looked just before he leveled Sodom and Gomorrah.
“Fine,” he says. “Consider yourself grateful. But no unauthorized expenses. And you’d better maintain records of all charges if you don’t want to get billed back.”
I nod. Though I never was good about keeping my receipts.
“What am I supposed to do while the investigation is going on?” I ask.
“Nothing,” says Jerry. “Just wait until you hear from me. And for Christ’s sake, stay out of trouble.”
Then he’s gone, leaving me with cab fare, a one-way ticket to LaGuardia, and a half-eaten bag of figs.
CHAPTER 40
The last time
I flew on any form of public transportation was back in the spring of 1937, when I was an undocumented passenger aboard the
Hindenburg
’s final flight. Not that I really needed to be in attendance for the thirty-six people fated to die. When you build an aircraft with a frame covered by cotton varnished with iron oxide, then you fill your creation with a highly flammable gas, “tempting fate” just doesn’t quite cover it.
I flew on any form of public transportation was back in the spring of 1937, when I was an undocumented passenger aboard the
Hindenburg
’s final flight. Not that I really needed to be in attendance for the thirty-six people fated to die. When you build an aircraft with a frame covered by cotton varnished with iron oxide, then you fill your creation with a highly flammable gas, “tempting fate” just doesn’t quite cover it.
The entire ship was destroyed in under forty seconds.
I’m hoping my flight to Duluth, Minnesota, turns out with better results.
When I arrived at the Rockford airport, I fully intended to fly back to New York so I could be with Sara, maybe even see if Laughter or Humor was in town to help cheer me up. But as I was waiting in the security checkpoint line, I noticed a pair of teenage girls being noticed by a man easily twice their age and I got to thinking about Darren Stafford. His death hadn’t been one of those shown to me by Jerry, which meant maybe he was still alive. Maybe there was still hope. Maybe I could save him.
So I switched my flight, billed it to my expense account, called Sara to tell her I wouldn’t be home for dinner, and got Darren Stafford’s phone number from information and called to make sure he was still alive. Then I boarded my plane bound for Duluth.
Or so I thought.
Turns out this flying isn’t as simple as I expected. I thought I’d sit down, take an hour-long nap, and wake up in Duluth. Instead, I had to take a ninety-minute flight to Denver, where I waited more than an hour for my connecting flight, which is more like two hours of nonstop turbulence, to Minnesota, where I’ll have to wait another hour for a fifty-five-minute flight to Duluth.
Rockford to Denver. Denver to Minneapolis. Minneapolis to Duluth.
Spending almost as much time waiting for my flight as I do in the air.
How do humans travel like this?
In the seven hours it’ll take me to get to my destination, I could have bar-hopped across the globe and ruined the futures of another three hundred humans. Instead, I’m trapped inside this pressurized cocoon made of metal and plastic, crawling along at a speed of five hundred miles per hour on the second leg of my journey, stuck next to an insurance salesman from Iowa who hasn’t stopped talking since before takeoff.
“And then she tells me—get this,” he says, gulping down the last of his second gin and tonic. “Then she tells me she never wants to see me again. So you know what I do? I tell her to go to hell. I tell her Duncan Mayfield is meant for better things in life than a tramp like her. That’s what I tell her.”
I doubt that. With a name like Duncan Mayfield, the only thing you’re meant for is ridicule and abuse, maybe an unwanted pregnancy or getting played by a con artist. The better things in life aren’t on the menu.
The thing is, for the first time in my existence, I can’t really be sure. Ever since Jerry disabled my fate radar, all of the voices I used to hear have been silenced. It’s as if someone pulled the plug on a discordant symphony I’d been listening to for as long as I can remember. A symphony of mistakes and bad judgments, of failures and disasters, of unrequited love and unfulfilled expectations. Now all I hear is the muffled roar of the jet engines, the steady drone of hushed cabin conversations, and the incessant blather of Duncan Mayfield.
“Then there was the time I nailed this cute little housewife in Boston,” he says. “Banged her all afternoon, and then, when her husband came home from work, I sold him a life insurance policy with an inflated premium.”
I’d call Dennis and ask him to pay a house call, but I can’t use my cell phone while we’re in flight. I suppose I could kill Duncan myself, but that would probably just delay my connecting flight. That and I don’t want to get blood on my man suit.
When you’ve recently discovered that your good intentions have caused the inadvertent deaths of more than half a dozen humans, you’re not really thinking clearly. Throw in the fact that you’ve been stripped of your ability to instantly transport anywhere on the planet and you’re now sitting in the window seat of the emergency-exit row next to a human whose fate you can’t read but who makes you wish you’d lost your hearing in a hand grenade accident, and you might understand why I’m considering getting off before the next scheduled stop.
I suppose I could go through my files and find Duncan Mayfield, find out his story and how much of what he’s telling me is fabrication so I can call him on it, maybe get him to shut up, but I don’t really have the patience to sort through more than five and a half billion case files right now, especially since I still haven’t gotten around to alphabetizing. So I just have to assume he’s making most of his life story up.
Humans are like that. On average, less than forty percent of what someone tells you actually happened. The rest is just filled in. Fabricated. Made up to hide their shortcomings and make them look better.
A work of fiction.
A Hollywood movie.
Their entire life based on a true story.
It’s disconcerting not being able to know which parts are made up. Not being able to read the fates of the other two hundred and forty-two passengers aboard this Boeing 757. I feel inadequate, incomplete, as if one of my senses has stopped functioning. Which, I guess, it has.
The woman sitting across the aisle glances at Duncan and all I see is her annoyance.
The captain comes over the intercom and all I hear is his voice.
The flight attendant walks past and all I get is a hint of White Linen.
I’m limited. Lost. Struggling with my identity. Questioning my purpose. If I can’t read anyone, how can I tell what’s bothering them? If I don’t know what’s bothering them, how can I help them?
Of course, most of the people I’ve helped lately have met with untimely and gruesome deaths, so maybe it’s a good thing I can’t help anyone. The last thing I want to do is kill any more humans.
“And then there was the flight attendant I nailed so many times I used up all of my frequent-flier miles.”
Except for Duncan Mayfield.
When I finally land in Duluth, I get off the plane as fast as I can, then find the first available cab that accepts credit cards and give the driver the address for Darren Stafford. On the ride there, I’m rehearsing my delivery, trying to think of a subtle way I can warn Darren about his impending death without alarming him or motivating him to call the police. But when the cab pulls up in front of Darren’s apartment building, it looks like Darren has already beaten me to the punch.
Two police cruisers and an ambulance are parked out in front, their lights flashing in the twilight. A crowd of people has gathered on the lawn and along the sidewalk, murmuring and speculating. Yellow Do Not Cross police tape is stretched across the entrance to Darren Stafford’s first-floor apartment.
So much for subtle.
I get out of the cab and walk up to a couple of men who appear to be in their thirties: one who looks like he’s going to spend the rest of his life drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and blowing his retirement savings playing Texas Hold ’Em, while the other one looks like he has a future in necrophilia.
It’s just a look some humans have.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Guy hanged himself,” says the probable future necrophiliac. “Wrapped a tie around his neck and choked to death.”
“Neighbor found him hanging from the ceiling fan,” says the poker addict.
“Which neighbor?” I say.
“Over there,” says the poker addict, pointing to a man standing outside the taped-off entrance to Darren Stafford’s apartment, talking to the police.
The potential corpse violator says something else but I barely hear him as I stare in the direction of the neighbor talking to the police. Just beyond them is another figure, obviously unnoticed by anyone else. While the onset of twilight and the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles cast her face in flickering shadows, there’s no mistaking the luxurious red hair and the sexual trappings of Destiny.
She doesn’t see me standing in the crowd, trying to blend in with the underachievers and the sexual deviants. I’m about to duck behind an overweight woman who most likely has a future in high blood pressure and heart attacks, when Destiny glances my way. Her eyes narrow as if she’s trying to tell if it’s really me, and then she’s gone.
Great. This is all I need. Not only am I suspended from duty without my abilities, but now another one of my humans is dead and Destiny knows about it. Which means she probably knows Darren Stafford shouldn’t have been on her path in the first place. Which means she’s probably the one who turned me in to Jerry. Which means he probably knows about me and Sara.
I wonder how I’m going to explain this.
I wonder how I allowed myself to get into this situation.
I wonder how things could be any worse.
CHAPTER 41
It’s just past
dawn in Queens as I ride home in the back of a cab that smells like used condoms and stale sweat. I could have called Sara to come pick me up, but it’s embarrassing enough to have to use a public bathroom and to be forced to take public transportation with a bunch of future-challenged humans. Asking my mortal girlfriend for a ride home from the airport would be downright mortifying.
dawn in Queens as I ride home in the back of a cab that smells like used condoms and stale sweat. I could have called Sara to come pick me up, but it’s embarrassing enough to have to use a public bathroom and to be forced to take public transportation with a bunch of future-challenged humans. Asking my mortal girlfriend for a ride home from the airport would be downright mortifying.
While my flight from Duluth to LaGuardia took nearly half the time of my previous flight, I’m still in a bad mood. After all, if it takes you four hours to die a slow, agonizing death instead of seven hours, there’s still not a whole lot to celebrate.
As my cab rolls along toward the Triborough Bridge, the silence that fills my head is unnerving. I can’t read the cabdriver or any of the other humans in the cars on the interstate with us. I’m surrounded by more than eight million people, most of them on my path, and I can’t hear a thing. It’s as if they’re all dead.
By the time we reach Manhattan, I’m feeling claustrophobic. After hours of being cooped up inside small metal boxes, I need to get out. So I ask the cabdriver to let me off at the corner of 125th and Second and I start walking. Nowhere in particular at first. I just wander through the city, this place I’ve called home for most of the past century, visible to everyone. Unable to hide or seek refuge in my supernatural abilities. More like the humans I share this city with than the immortal that I am.
I wander along Fifth Avenue and through Central Park, then wind my way through Midtown and the Theater District before following Broadway to Lower Manhattan, finally stopping when I reach Battery Park. There I sit and watch the sun climb over Brooklyn as gray clouds roll in, threatening rain.
I’ve never felt like this before. Exposed. Vulnerable. Freezing my ass off. I never really realized how cold it gets in New York in December because I’m invisible most of the time. When you’re invisible, your man suit creates enough body heat to keep you warm during a blizzard when you’re streaking naked through Central Park. And don’t think we don’t enjoy doing
that
whenever we get the chance.
that
whenever we get the chance.
But now I’m just cold. Cold and anxious. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, to my relationship with Sara, or to all of the humans I’ve tried to help. All I know is that I need a warm bed and some thermal underwear.
On my way back home, I stop to check on some of my humans, those whose fates I’ve influenced over the past few months, and discover that the slide show Jerry showed me was just a sample of the consequences of my hubris.
The bipolar homeless woman who argued with herself near the Flatiron Building.
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