The Man in the GPS and Other Stories

The Man in the GPS and Other Stories

Mary Elizabeth Raines

Copyright © 2018 by Mary Elizabeth Raines

All rights reserved. No part of this collection of stories, including the illustrations, may be reproduced, recorded, redistributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of a few brief quotations in connection with a review.

All characters appearing in this work are completely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published by

Laughing Cherub Unlimited

www.books-plays-scripts.com

Illustrations and Cover by

Mary Elizabeth Leach (Raines)

Dedicated to the amusing, agonizing, and astonishing foibles of My People, otherwise known as The Human Race, without which these stories could not have been written.

Mary Elizabeth Raines

Sedona, Arizona

INDEX

Bear and the Guru

The Tender Harvest

The Man in the GPS

That Time I Came in as a Fruitfly

Easter Breakfast at Denny’s

The Sweater-Cat-Vomit Situation

Love on the Subway

What Was Wrong with Her Sister

Triplets

The Best Apple Ever

The Song of the Queen

Transitions, Trees, and Cottage Cheese

About the Author

BEAR AND THE GURU

Mary Elizabeth Raines

BEAR DREW ANGELS. That was her thing. The angels were always nude, with huge triangular patches of dark pubic hair. She attracted a fair bit of attention to herself by claiming that she channeled these pictures of angels. She was sketching one now, seated in the front row of the audience where the Guru was soon going to be giving another of his inspirational seminars.

I don’t know how it works, she would say, looking heavenward and shrugging her shoulders with false modesty when someone complimented her on her angel drawings. I just hold the pencil and spirit, like, moves through me.

She had given spirit a helping hand by working hard at learning how to draw wings. At first, she had traced them over and over from a chart of various types of wings that she had printed out from Wikipedia, and eventually she’d advanced to copying them freehand. Her practice paid off. Even though the ones she drew on her angels weren’t often in perspective, they mostly looked like actual wings. This became her strong suit, so all the angels she drew had enormous wings, twice as big as those possessed by any Renaissance angel.

In other respects, her channeled angels, whether blonde, brunette, or redheaded, looked remarkably alike. They all had oversized wide-set eyes, itty-bitty noses, plump pouty lips, skinny necks, perfectly circular breasts with prominent nipples, and masses of long curly hair on their heads, as well as other places, which has already been mentioned. And, of course, those gigantic wings.

Once she had been inspired to draw Jesus. Her Jesus was not nude, nor did he have wings, but otherwise he looked just like the angels she drew. Even his lips. It is the nearest Jesus has ever come to looking like a Barbie Doll.

The year before she had renamed herself Bear. Her birth name was Jennifer-Jane Czelusniak. When people asked how she got the name Bear, she would tell them with a faraway look in her eyes that it was because once, when she was in a sweat lodge, the vision of a bear holding a rainbow had come to her.

In all honesty, she had never been in a sweat lodge. Instead, she had arrived at the new name of Bear after spending an afternoon lying on her bed doodling half a dozen potential names over and over: Rainbow Moon, Rainbow Star, Rainbow Spirit, Rainbow Heart, Shakiva, and Bear. It was a hot day, and even though she wasn’t technically in a sweat lodge, she truly had been sweating. She had also doodled a rainbow, and had tried, but failed, to doodle a bear. Close enough.

Despite this artistic failure, Bear came out the winner because B had always been one of her favorite letters, a letter that she could write in cursive with a beautiful flourish.  She renamed herself immediately, thrilled to discard the name Jennifer-Jane, for the letter J had always been hard for her to write. Her Js looked clumsy. Her third-grade teacher had even kept her indoors during recess once, insisting that she write the letter J twenty-five times on a piece of paper until she got it right. She hated J. She loved B. So Bear she became.

IN THE AUDIENCE that day, Jillian, who had no trouble writing the letter J, took a seat next to Bear. They were directly under the podium where the Guru would soon be standing. Bear reeked of patchouli, and a powerful wave of it slammed into Jillian. Jillian gagged slightly, and a spontaneous gasp of revulsion escaped her.

Bear, who was focused on her drawing pad, thought that Jillian’s gasp was an adoring response to the angel she had been busy sketching.

I channel them, she said, glancing sideways at Jillian with a proud smile.

Ah, replied Jillian, holding her hand up to her chin and extending her index and middle fingers thoughtfully. In truth, she was trying to cover her nose so as not to have to breathe in all that patchouli.

Bear, turning back to her sketch book, paused to stomp viciously on a little bug that had been crawling innocently near her foot, and then resumed her drawing. Jillian winced.

Jillian was a tender and wistful, albeit awkward, woman. She was not a bug squisher. This was her first seminar with the Guru, and her chunky appearance was in startling contrast to that of the other attendees, who were for the most part a Yoga-sleek, organic-smoothie-drinking, essential-oil-smeared, and hip-looking crowd. Jillian was aware of the fact that she didn’t belong. That morning, she’d done her best to make a few alterations in hopes of blending in. One of them was going after her mousy straight hair with a curling iron. To her chagrin, despite repeated attacks, it had adamantly refused to curl.

My head looks like a pile of pick-up sticks, she had complained in a text to her mother. It looks like uncooked spaghetti.

Yes, but on the bright side, at least it’s whole wheat spaghetti, her mother had texted back cheerfully, attempting a little humor. Jillian’s hair, you see, was quite brown. Whole-wheat brown.


Pushing her glasses back up onto the bridge of her squat nose, something she did often, Jillian glanced covertly and a bit enviously at the lush, long, brunette curls of Bear. She felt grateful that at least her spaghettiesh bangs were covering up the unfortunate patch of acne on her forehead that had chosen to appear only the night before. Except for her stubby bespectacled nose, her exceedingly straight hair, and the heretofore unmentioned misfortune of being somewhat big-bottomed, Jillian mostly just looked beige. Nondescript. Chunky, but nondescript.

Her soul was far from nondescript, however. Jillian was actually a pretty evolved person. She had such reverence for life in all of its forms, for example, that, as stated earlier, she would never have stepped on that bug in the seminar room. She even refused to kill the ants who persisted in marching into her kitchen. Instead of squashing them, her solution to the ant problem was to go into meditation, call upon the Deva of the ants, and plead her case.

Jillian, a person can’t reason with an ant, her mother would sigh.

Jillian would protest that her one-sided conversations with the insect world were working…that, along with sealing everything an ant could conceivably want to eat inside an impenetrable plastic bag.

Jillian had recently experienced a brief but ecstatic encounter, one that she fervently yearned to share with another kindred soul in the hopes, if truth be told, of receiving a little admiration, since her mother really didn’t get that side of her. The euphoric moment had happened during a particularly powerful meditation. The Universe had suddenly opened up to Jillian, and a bright spiritual figure had given her the momentary revelation that We Are All One with Everything.

This was why she was now sitting in the audience waiting for the Guru to appear. She’d never seen him in person before. She had signed up for the event with excitement after watching a few YouTubes of the Guru, where he promised to share the Universal Secrets of Existence with any who were willing to pay the somewhat steep price of admission for his seminars. Jillian wanted access to those secrets. Even more, however, she dreamt that the Guru might notice the advanced state of her soul, for, during his talks, he was known for doing a bit where he would step off the stage, scan the auras of his audience members, and point out those who were truly evolved. This was her big chance to be seen, finally, for who she really was.

IN THIS QUEST, unlike Bear, Jillian actually had attended a sweat lodge not long ago. A revered Native American elder named Bold Feather had conducted the sweat lodge, which was Jillian’s first.


There were about forty people in attendance. For comfort, they had been asked to wear their swimsuits, and as they lined up outdoors, preparing to crowd into the heated space on hands and knees, Jillian tried without a lot of success to suck in her tummy. Once inside, the participants sat elbow to elbow, thigh to thigh, in the small enclosure. It was awfully dark, especially in the corner where she sat, and it was