Work Text:
I found myself in Arizona, because that’s where my list was taking me that week. Number 43: carjacked a bookmobile. I’d been volunteering at the library for weeks when the librarian started telling me stories about some of the kids who would come to get books. One little girl never seemed to have anywhere else to be or any family. The librarian guessed she didn’t live walking distance from the library so she never saw her after we took the bookmobile, except one last time she came in to say she was moving to Arizona.
I figured I’d head out that way and if I was meant to find her, I guessed I would. Karma has a way of taking care of these things.
I’d wandered into a bar, alone on account of Randy being employed at a job that didn’t allow him paid holidays. The bar looked fine on the outside but was a little too classy for me inside. Anyway, I could not get the attention of the bartender, who was patiently listening to a lady telling him the whole plot of a movie. I was right about to leave when she said something that caught my attention.
“I was a good person for six months. That’s like five years! And it felt okay, but not as good as I thought it would. And what did I get for it?”
“See?” said the bartender. “Now you’re talking about moral dessert.”
“Wait, what?”
“Moral dessert,” he continues, “ is the concept that if you act with virtue, you deserve a reward.”
“Excuse me, I don’t mean to have been listening in, but it sounds to me like you may be interested in Karma,” I said, as I took the empty seat next to the lady.
“Karma?” The bartender looked at me over the top of his glasses, the way a librarian would.
“Karma,” I repeated. “I started off thinking that it was like this dessert you were talking about. But Karma, it turns out, is more complicated.”
Both of them were looking at me, and I realized I’d been rude. “Sorry, let me back up. My name is Earl.”