A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  "It's one of those half and half jobbies," Bella said.

  "Bullroar. There's no such thing. It's got to be one or the other," Donna said.

  "That's why it called ‘piecake.’ Because it's half pie and half cake," Bella insisted.

  I tickled the air at Wanda who was busy ratting and bumping up the back of Jenny McCoy's hairdo. Jenny was a mousy little thing with a flat chest who put all her self-worth into the care and maintenance of her hair. She felt about her hair the way a teenage boy feels about his penis. She couldn't keep her hands off it. She was constantly touching, patting and twirling it.

  Jenny was the hoity-toity type who held her nose so high up in the air it looked like she couldn't bear the stench of her own upper lip. She was married to Bob McCoy, who was the preacher over at the Last Chance Baptist Church. I always felt sorry for her because Baptists think female orgasms are demon possessions.

  I went all through school with Jenny. We became enemies when we both got invited to Marlene Williams's slumber party in the eighth grade. Jenny was on her period and she wore those thick sanitary napkins when all the other girls wore tampons. (Only Satan's harlots wore tampons.) She woke up sometime in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom. When she came out she was shaking and out of breath. She flipped on the overhead light and waved something around, babbling about stigmatas and Jesus. I finally got her to sit down and breathe and that was when she showed it to me. She held out her used sanitary napkin and said, "Look! I bled a perfect likeness of Jesus in my Kotex!"

  When we went back to school the next day, Marlene Williams told everyone that the movie Carrie was based on Jenny's life. Jenny never got invited to another slumber party and she blamed me for it.

  Well, to be truthful, I think she blamed me for stealing her bloody Shroud-of-Turin and listing it on eBay. I got over forty bucks for it. I tried to split it with her, but she got all huffy puffy about it.

  Twenty years later, Jenny was sitting in The Best Little Hairhouse getting a fifty-dollar color and curl and I was cleaning the toilets. Go figure.

  "Dana, you judged the last pie contest at the county fair. Will you please tell my sister that she can't enter her piecake in both categories? She needs to pick a dang category and stick to it," said Donna.

  "I judged the pie-eating contest. I'm not qualified to answer your question."

  "Shoot fire and save matches," Donna grumbled.

  Bella smirked and wagged a finger at her sister. "You wait and watch. I'm gonna win both categories. Mark my word."

  Wanda gave me a smile as I opened the closet and extracted the little carry-all of cleansers. Wanda had brand-new dentures which were pretty to look at, but according to her they didn't fit right. She couldn't keep them glued down. She made awful clicking noises when she talked and every time she bent over they popped out and hit the floor. She claimed the three-second rule and popped them right back in without rinsing them first.

  Wanda said, "Dana, you want your hair cut, click, the new girl, click, I hired isn't busy."

  Wanda paid me in cash and haircuts. I usually got my hair cut every four months, so she was getting off cheap. "New girl?" I asked, nervously tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

  She whispered behind her hand (in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear), "I hired her, click, three days ago and nobody's wanted to be the first, click, one to test her out."

  "I don't want to be anybody's guinea pig," I whispered back.

  "Ssshhhh," she said, darting her eyes to the closed restroom door. "I thought that since you don't put as much stock, click click, in your looks as other women, that you wouldn't mind, click, giving Kimmy a test drive."

  Jenny giggled.

  There were so many insults in Wanda's statement I didn't even know where to begin. So, I did the next best thing and ignored it. I pulled out a roll of paper towels and squirted one of the mirrors with glass cleaner. It was no accident that I squirted Jenny's reflection right between the eyes. I could feel Jenny's eyeballs burning a hole in my back.

  I squirted the reflection of Jenny's boobs, first one, then the other. I wiped on the mirror, making swirly-cues around her titties. She glared hate rays at me. I squirted her mirror image directly in the crotch. I scrubbed at it vigorously, pretending there was something on the mirror that I couldn't get off. I made sure to smile lasciviously while I did it.

  The toilet flushed and the rest room door opened. I looked into the other side of the mirror to see the new hairstylist walk out. My hand froze in mid-swipe.

  No wonder every woman in town was suspicious of her. She was drop dead gorgeous. She could give Miss America a run for her money.

  Kimmy walked to her empty station chair and sat down. She picked up a file and commenced to work on a nail. I studied her reflection. Her hair was the color of a Hershey's milk chocolate candy bar. Her eyes were blue like my favorite M&M's. Her lips were as pink as fresh-spun cotton candy. Her dress was the color of pistachio pudding, and her breasts were like twin mounds of whip cream with a cherry on top.

  My stomach growled.

  I resumed cleaning the mirror, stealing sidelong glances at her.

  Miss High-and-Mighty, Jenny McCoy, must have thought this was a prime opportunity to out me. Or embarrass me. Or both. "Dana, my friend Claire's nephew is coming to town. I could invite you over for Sunday dinner. He's from California, you know, a liberal type who might find you...interesting."

  Kimmy flicked her eyes up at me and back down to her filing.

  "No, thanks," I said.

  "Are you still in your lesbian phase?" Jenny said the word “lesbian” like it burned her lips.

  Kimmy's file stopped.

  "Yes, Jenny, I am. And I can prove it too."

  Kimmy resumed her filing and a small smile played across her lips.

  "Seems to me you might want to switch to something more lucrative," Jenny snorted.

  I wiped at the mirror harder.

  Jenny continued, "You're not going to have much luck finding a man as long as you keep saying you're a lesbian."

  "You never know. Lesbians turn men on. That's a proven fact."

  I distinctly heard Kimmy giggle. Wanda and the sisters were quiet. I think they were silently placing bets on how long it would take me to explode.

  "Men like real women, Dana. Not women who are pretending to be men," Jenny said.

  I scrubbed so hard the mirror squeaked.

  Wanda took that opportunity to jump in and change the subject, "Did you all hear Davy Arbuckle, click click, is getting divorced?"

  "Where'd you hear that?" Bella asked.

  I glanced over at Kimmy and found her looking at me. She smiled and went back to filing her nails.

  Wanda said, "Mona told me. Said she was going to divorce him this summer right after they take the kids to Disney, click, World."

  Jenny was like a dog with a bone. "I bet you could catch him, Dana. He's never been particular."

  "I don't think I could ever go out with a man who did that to a dog," I said.

  "Did what?" Bella asked.

  "You mean you all haven't heard about Winston, his prize bulldog?"

  "What about him?" Wanda asked.

  "Davy gets a stud fee off that ugly dog, you know."

  "Yes, but what of it?" Donna inquired.

  "Well, Winston is too short to mate. His hind legs are too short to allow him access to the female, you know," I explained. Everyone was staring at me, including Kimmy. "So when it came time to breed Winston, Davy had to do the honors."

  "Do the, click, honors?"

  "You know..." I said. I moved my fist back and forth in front of my crotch. "Do the honors. He jacked off his dog, collected the bulldog stuff, and carted it back to the vet, and Dr. Amos injected it into the female."

  Bella gasped. "Davy Arbuckle did that to his dog?"

  I nodded. "Now that dog follows him everywhere. He can't get rid of it to save his soul."

  They all laughed. Well, ex
cept for Jenny, of course, but she never laughed. She probably thought mirth was the eighth deadly sin.

  "No wonder Mona's divorcing him," Donna said.

  "Maybe I'll ask Mona out," I said.

  Bella interjected her opinion, "I wouldn't mind being a lesbian. Except for the sex part."

  "Couldn't be any worse than having sex with my husband," Donna said.

  Jenny said, "Being a lesbian is an excuse a woman comes up with when she can't get a man. I don't believe in lesbians. They don't exist."

  "Well, I don't believe in you. Therefore, you don't exist," I said.

  Bella chimed in, "I saw a lesbian on TV the other night." She smiled at everyone and said proudly, "I have cable now."

  Jenny stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt. "Lesbians are like unicorns. Everybody's heard of them, but nobody's ever seen one."

  "Why, Jenny, didn't you used to have a poster of a unicorn in your bedroom?" I sniped.

  "I most certainly did not," she said.

  "Oh, that's right," I said. "My bad. I was thinking of that poster of Darlene from Roseanne you had hanging up on your wall."

  "She was an exceptional actress," Jenny said, turning three shades of red.

  "Yes, she was," I said, grabbing an imaginary pair of boobs and squeezing. Everybody laughed.

  Jenny harrumphed, threw some folding money on the counter and pranced out the door like a circus pony.

  After Jenny's grand exit, Kimmy stood up and swiveled her chair around toward me. "Let me cut your hair. Give you a new style," she said. "You can be my first."

  Wanda and the sisters stared at me expectantly. "I don't know," I said. "I've had this same hairdo forever. I don't adjust well to change."

  "Jennifer Anniston would be proud." Kimmy patted the back of her chair. "But, honey, it's time to let go."

  I tried to think of reasons why I shouldn't let her cut my hair. 1.) I could end up looking like a fool, and 2.) I would have to wear a hat the rest of the summer.

  I tried to think up reasons to let her cut my hair. 1.) If I sat in that chair, I'd be eye level with her boobs.

  "Why not?" I said. "Let's cut my hair."

  I eased into the chair while she gathered all her instruments and laid them out like a surgeon. She selected a pair of pointy scissors and snipped the air, testing them out.

  "Who do you want to be?" she asked.

  "You mean I get to be somebody else?"

  "Sure," she said with a knowing smile. "That's what the beauty biz is all about. You come in here to be somebody else, look like somebody else." She snipped the air around her like David Carradine catching flies with chopsticks. "I am the magic-maker who transforms you into who you want to be," she said with an ultra-straight face.

  "Isn't that line from Willie Wonka?"

  She laughed. "Isn't there anybody you’d like to be?"

  My mind raced with all the endless possibilities. "How about Wonder Woman?"

  "Lynda Carter?"

  "No, Wonder Woman. I'd kill for a magic lasso and those golden arm bands."

  She laughed. "When I was a kid I had a Wonder Woman nightlight. She was sitting inside her invisible airplane."

  "How could you see it?"

  "Huh?"

  "If she was inside her invisible airplane, how could you see the nightlight?"

  "I don't know. I never thought of that."

  "Maybe your mom lied to you. Maybe she told you there was a nightlight but it wasn't really there."

  She laughed again. I liked it when she laughed. It made her boobs jiggle. I made a pact with myself right then and there to make her laugh as much as possible.

  "How about short hair? Short hair will make you look younger," she said.

  "I'm okay with looking my age. How about you make my butt smaller instead?"

  "No problem."

  She lifted a hunk of hair off the back of my neck and chopped. Her scissors blurred as she hacked, sawed and axed. After fifteen minutes her scissors slowed and she swiveled me around in the chair a couple of times, pumped a glob of gel into her palm, rubbed her hands together like she was trying to start a fire with twigs and then applied it all vigorously to my head.

  She held a hand mirror up in front of my face so I could see the back of my hair in the mirror and said, "What do you think?"

  I'd never paid much attention to the back of my head before. I'd always thought of it like the play sets that I helped build in high school: only the front mattered. The back was masking tape and boards. I realized I'd been selfish my whole life by not paying any attention at all to the people behind me.

  Kimmy turned my chair until I was facing myself in the mirror.

  "What do you think?" she asked again.

  I looked like me except with less hair and more face.

  I raised my eyes and saw Bella, Donna and Wanda standing behind my chair, scrutinizing Kimmy's job.

  "I never knew you were so pretty, Dana Dooley," Donna said.

  "That style brings out your eyes," Bella said.

  "And your cheekbones," Donna added.

  I blushed more shades of red than Crayola has in their 124-pack while the sisters chatted all the way back over to their hairdryers. "You see, she's like me. An artist. We don't follow recipes," Bella said.

  "You know who needs to make an appointment with her?" Donna asked.

  "Gertie?"

  "Mmmhmmm, she's always wanting to try new things. I'll call her up tonight."

  Wanda winked her approval at Kimmy and went back to sweeping up hair.

  "Thanks," I murmured.

  "Thank you for being my guinea pig," she said. "I owe you one."

  ***

  Dana spent the better part of the morning plucking her eyebrows and waxing her mustache. She even tweezed her nipples. Not because she thought Ellen would actually see her nipples at the city park picnic, but because it made Dana feel in control. There were so many things about her body that she couldn't control—like hunger, where fat stored itself and pimples—that she liked to control everything she could.

  She stopped short of shaving her legs even though she definitely had a five o'clock shadow. Shaving her legs was as good as admitting that she wanted to have sex with Ellen. And she didn't. Well, she did want to have sex with her, she just didn't want to have sex with her over lunch on a first date. Having unshaved legs would act as a chastity belt. Or at least a speed bump.

  Four

  Dana was twenty-one minutes early (a multiple of three) even though she drove around the park three times (another multiple of three) before parking. She sat on top of the monkey bars so she could see the whole park at once. She swung her feet back and forth and thought about the date that wasn't a date. What if Ellen got a good look at her in broad daylight and decided she didn't like what she saw? What if Ellen really did mean that this wasn't a date and she had tweezed her nipples for nothing?

  "Hey!"

  Startled, Dana flinched and almost fell off the monkey bars.

  "Sorry," Ellen said. "I didn't mean to scare you."

  "That's okay, I'm used to falling," Dana said, then immediately felt stupid.

  She scooted back further on the monkey bars and surreptitiously looked Ellen over. She was wearing baggy jeans hanging low on her hips with her boxers peeking over the waistband, brown Converse tennis shoes and a T-shirt that read “I like cats. I just can't eat a whole one by myself.”

  "Sorry, if I'm late," Ellen said. "There was a long line."

  "You're late?" Dana said. "I thought I was early." She grimaced at how easily she lied. She didn't want to start off lying to Ellen. She wanted this whatever-it-was to be different. "I'm sorry," she said. "I lied to you. I was completely aware that you were late. Seven minutes late to be exact."

  "Sorry," Ellen said.

  "It's okay," Dana explained, "I felt bad about lying to you. I don't even know why I did it."

  Ellen nodded like she understood. "You going to come down?" she asked.

&
nbsp; "Why don't you come up? It's cool, you can see the whole park from here. I like to sit up here and pretend to be God. God of the park."

  Ellen laughed. "Okay, God, here goes." She clenched the bag between her teeth, scrambled up the bars and scooched on her butt until she was sitting in the middle of the monkey bars next to Dana. She took a deep breath and looked down on the park. There were a few wooden tables scattered around the perimeter, the creek tumbled over a small waterfall and the swings moved back and forth in the light breeze. It was picture perfect and peaceful.

  "Look," Ellen said, "all the little people down there on Earth look like ants."

  "Those are ants."

  "Oh, sorry, God. You're right."

  They laughed.

  Dana said, "This is my happy place."

  "I can see why."

  Dana's stomach growled loudly. Ellen laughed. "Somebody's hungry." She opened the bag and handed over a six-inch sub and a bag of chips. "I forgot the drinks," she said apologetically.

  "That's okay," Dana said. She unwrapped her sandwich and was happy to see that it was loaded with three types of meat and a good three inches of everything else.

  "I told them to put everything on it. I figured you could take off what you don't like."

  Dana smiled. "I like my sandwiches Dagwood style," she said. And to prove it, she took a humongous bite. While she chewed, she wracked her brain trying to think of a good conversation starter and all she could come up with was, "I got my very first kiss up here."

  "Oh, yeah? How old were you?"

  "Twenty-seven."

  Ellen looked at her wide-eyed.

  "Just kidding," Dana said. "I was seven."

  "Who was it with?" Ellen bit into her sandwich.

  "Jenny McCoy. I planted a big kiss right on her lips, she screamed and fell off. Sprained her wrist."

  Ellen laughed.

  "She's hated me ever since. I seem to have that effect on women."

  "I seriously doubt that," Ellen said. "So, that was your girlfriend last night?"

  "You saw my girlfriend?"

  "Yeah, she threatened to beat me with her wig, remember?"