A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  She sucked in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. "He built up my trust. He confided in me. Told me he was unhappy. Unhappy, he said!"

  I nodded like it was perfectly normal for my cat to be holding a conversation with this woman.

  "He suckered me in. Told me how he was mistreated. Told me you kept him locked up in this house and wouldn't let him go outside to play with friends. You never bought him any pretty things..."

  I thinned my lips into a grimace. I did that so she couldn't tell I was on the verge of apoplectic laughing.

  She continued, "I bought it all. He told me, or rather pretended to tell me, his deepest dream and desires."

  "Go on, please," I urged. This was getting good. I leaned forward on the edge of the couch waiting for the punch line.

  "I brought him treats. Every night. I brought him little presents, you know, catnip, cat toys, things he told me he wanted."

  I nodded. "Uh huh, sure."

  "He was thankful. Said I made his life worth living. He said he didn't know what he'd ever done without me."

  I had a woman once tell me the same thing about a week before she packed all my CDs and walked out the door. But I didn’t tell Lisa that.

  "He told me the thing he wanted most was a friend."

  "Aha," I said. I also had a girlfriend once who told me the blond she was texting 600 times a day was her friend. I found out the hard way that different people have different definitions of “friend.”

  "And I brought it to him," she cried. "I brought him the special friend he wanted."

  "Special friend?"

  She bobbed her head up and down. Tears leaked out of her big, sad, hound dog eyes and ran down onto the neck of her shirt. "He wanted a mouse friend. A little mouse friend like Stuart Little."

  "You brought him a pet mouse?" I asked. I didn't know if I wanted to know the answer to that, but I already had several minutes invested in this story and I had to know the outcome.

  She bobbed her chin up and down, slinging tears like a cartoon character with those little teardrops and squiggly lines drawn all around its head.

  "Then I found this!" she bellowed. She held up something between her thumb and forefinger that looked like a tampon string. "I found this in my shoe!"

  "Is that a tampon string?"

  "It's a mouse tail! Asscat ate his special friend!"

  This was the part where I laughed. I couldn't help it. And maybe that makes me a really bad person, but I don't care because this was too rich. "He didn't eat all of him," I sputtered. "He left the butthole."

  "You're sick," she hissed at me. "An animal lost its life! He died a horrible cruel death due to deception and fraud!"

  My laughter faded to hiccups and I managed to spew, "Let me get this straight, you gave a cat a mouse and now you're upset because he ate it?"

  Asscat chose that moment to waltz into the room. I tried to telepathically warn him, but he rubbed his backside against the coffee table leg and jumped up onto the window sill. Either he couldn't hear my secret brain waves or he was ignoring me.

  "You lying son-of-a-bitch," Lisa Number Two screeched at my cat. "You made me love you! Then you broke my heart!"

  She ran to the front door, threw it open and dramatically turned to Asscat with these last words: "We're breaking up! I never ever want to see you again as long as I live!"

  Then she was gone. From his perch on the window sill, Asscat watched her drive away. He turned to me with lazy, indifferent eyes. And, I swear, I heard his thoughts: "Easy come, easy go."

  "I know," I thought back at him, "but you shouldn't have flaunted the tail by putting it in her shoe."

  "I couldn't resist," he said. He turned his attention back to the window where he watched the squirrels play in the yard. I made a pot of coffee and called the bank to put a stop payment on the check.

  ***

  Dana couldn't sleep. She was sprawled on her sofa with Asscat purring on her lap, spooning Rocky Road ice cream right out of the carton and into her mouth. One half of her brain was watching a TV show about tracing rich and famous peoples' ancestry and the other half was thinking about Ellen's cute butt in Levi's and the remaining half was in an ice cream delirium.

  She heard a strange noise. It sounded like a vibrator. Like a vibrator tingling her left boob. No, wait, it was her cell phone. Dana dug it out from under her boob and, figuring it was Trudy, she put it on speakerphone. Without looking at the caller ID, she said, "Talk me to me. And make it fast 'cause Hoarders is on next."

  "Dana?"

  She dropped her ice cream spoon. "Ellen!"

  "It's not too late to call is it?"

  "No, it's perfect!" Dana lowered her voice so Ellen wouldn't think she was easy or something. "Hey," she said again, softer. "Uh...I couldn't sleep anyway. What's up with you?"

  "What's Hoarders?"

  Dana laughed. She reached down and picked her dropped spoon up off the floor. She wiped it on her T-shirt. "It's a TV show. Reality TV where they film these people that're hoarders, you know, they collect massive amounts of crap, and they go in their house and throw it all away for them."

  "Sounds interesting…"

  "It makes me feel better about myself. And it usually gives me the impetus to clean house."

  Ellen chuckled.

  Dana found the remote control buried in the sofa cushions. She muted the TV and the program switched to captions.

  Dana continued, "But right now I'm watching this show where Lionel Richie is tracing his roots."

  "Oh, yeah? So what's up with Lionel these days?"

  "He found out he's black." Dana realized she was babbling, but she also realized she was powerless to stop the babbling. She wondered what Ellen was doing. Was she eating ice cream too? Was she sitting around in her boxers? Was she as nervous? "So...What're you up to?" she asked and took another bit of ice cream.

  "I couldn't sleep. I was debating whether or not to call. I didn't want you to think I was easy."

  Dana laughed. How weird and symbiotic that they were thinking the same thing. It's like they shared a brain. And by that, Dana meant that it was like they were a brain squared or a brain to the second power, not that each of them had only half a brain.

  "You still there?" Ellen asked.

  "Yeth, I'b hereth," Dana said with a frozen tongue. Time to set the ice cream down. She held her tongue between her fingers, warming it up.

  Ellen continued, "But if I didn't call, then you might think I'm playing hard to get. I don't know which is worse—too easy or hard to get."

  "Are you hard to get?" Dana asked. Were they flirting? Dana thought it sounded like they were flirting.

  "I called, didn't I? That means I'm easy."

  Dana laughed. Yep, there was definitely a flirt vibe happening.

  "How about you? Are you easy?" Ellen asked.

  "Definitely not. I like to get to know a person first." Like for about fifteen minutes, Dana thought, but thankfully, did not say.

  "Hmmm—playing hard to get. Okay, so let's get to know one another. Tell me something about yourself."

  "Like what?" Dana asked and took a big bite of ice cream.

  "Make it good," Ellen said, "this is a crash course tour into each other's psyche. Tell me something you never told anybody else."

  "Okay, let's see. In high school…" she stopped. She tapped her spoon on the ice cream carton and contemplated what she about to divulge. She didn't know if she should share her past. It was embarrassing. It might cause Ellen to run. But that isn't necessarily all that bad. If Ellen didn't want to have anything to do with her, wouldn't it be better to find that out right up front?

  "C'mon, out with it," Ellen urged.

  Dana took a deep breath and decided to bare all. "Okay...In high school the other kids made fun of me. 'Cause of my weight. You know, the fat. They called me names and...you know, stuff like that. My senior year I was voted ‘Most Likely to Eat Dooley Springs.’"

  Ellen laughed, then choked it back. "Oh my God..
.Sorry for laughing, but that is kind of funny. You know, unless you're the one they're making fun of."

  "It's okay. It only hurts when I think about it." Dana held out her spoon and let Asscat lick it.

  "So what happened?" Ellen inquired. "How'd you lose all the weight?"

  "You're so sweet."

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "I haven't lost the weight. I'm still fat," Dana said.

  Ellen gasped. "Oh my God, no, you're not! You're perfect! How could you even think that?"

  "You don't have to be nice to me. I know what I am."

  "No, you obviously don't. You're gorgeous! Hasn't anyone every told you that before?"

  "No," Dana said truthfully. She set the ice cream carton on the coffee table. "And you just said it because you're trying to get into my pants."

  Ellen laughed. "Yeah, I am. But you're still beautiful. Or I wouldn't even want into your pants."

  Dana looked at the TV and watched Lionel Richie talk to some older white woman. He wiped away a tear and the old lady smiled and touched him on the shoulder. Dana didn't know if she was projecting Lionel's sadness or if it was her own melancholy, but regardless she forged ahead with her soul-baring. "A therapist would say that overeating is my way of filling the hole my mother left when she abandoned me."

  "You're in therapy?" Ellen asked.

  "God, no," Dana snorted. "That's not the Oklahoma way. We're supposed to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps with no help from anybody else. Besides, you ever looked at the word ‘therapist’?"

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "The word itself," Dana explained. "Therapist. The. Rapist. Coincidence? I don't think so."

  "I never thought of that," Ellen chuckled.

  "Oh my God!" Dana exclaimed when she read the crawl across the bottom of the TV screen. She leaned forward and punched the volume up on the TV. She listened for a moment, then hit the mute button again.

  "What's going on?" Ellen asked. "You still there?"

  "Lionel just found out he's white," Dana said.

  "That sucks," Ellen says.

  "Yeah, now he has to rethink his entire career." Dana muted the TV again.

  "Okay," Dana said, "it's your turn. Tell me about you."

  "Hmmm…I'm white as far as I know," Ellen said.

  Dana laughed and sat up. She hugged her knees to her chest and whispered, "Tell me a deep dark secret about yourself."

  "Deep and dark. Okay…" Dana could practically hear Ellen thinking. "I'm scared of insects," Ellen said.

  "That's lame. Tell me something good." Dana closed her eyes and concentrated on Ellen's voice. The timbre, the cadence, the tone. It was a good voice, Dana decided. A voice that could wrap you up and carry you a million miles away.

  Ellen continued, "No, I mean I'm really scared. Like phobic. I see a spider, I scream and jump on a chair. I even have nightmares sometimes about spiders roosting in my hair or crawling in my ears and eating my brain."

  "Spiders don’t roost."

  "Well, whatever they do. It scares me."

  "Okay, I'll keep the spider thing in mind. I'll protect you. Any other fears?"

  "I have an irrational fear of standing in front of a microwave while it's running."

  "I have an irrational fear of Gary Busey movies."

  "Don't even get me started on Christopher Walken."

  "Or Dick Clark."

  They laughed.

  "So ask me something. Anything," Ellen said.

  Dana knew you could tell more about a person by the questions they asked than by the questions they answered. For instance, if she asked about something sexual, like when did you lose your virginity, then Ellen would know that this was a physical thing for her. That it was more about lust than love. So, Dana tried for something more substantial. "What's your favorite book?"

  "My favorite of all time?" Ellen asked.

  "Yeah, of all time."

  Ellen didn't hesitate. "Go, Dog. Go! By P.D. Eastman."

  "I had that book when I was a kid!" Dana said. "I loved it!"

  "Yeah, well, I still read it now. A couple of times a year."

  Dana said, "Okay, now you have to tell me why it's your favorite."

  "It's a great metaphor," Ellen said.

  "How so?"

  "Eastman was a genius. He did this whole take on relationships and put it in the context of a children's book. You know how there's two dogs, a boy dog and a girl dog? The girl dog keeps trying on new hats, wanting to please the boy dog. I keep hoping the boy dog will like the girl dog's hat, but he never does and the girl dog keeps changing hats, trying so hard to get him to love her. She keeps saying, "Do you like my hat?" But he keeps saying, 'No. I do not like your hat.' Finally at the end, he likes her hat and they go off, riding in a convertible toward the sunset, and live happily ever after in the party tree."

  "That's very romantic in a 1950s retro ‘woman has to please the man’ kind of way.

  Can I ask you another question?"

  "Shoot," Ellen said.

  "No, never mind."

  "Ask. I said ask anything."

  "You probably don't want to talk about it. And it's really none of my business," Dana said.

  "You Midwesterners and all your manners. Ask me. If I don't want to answer, then I'll lie."

  Dana laughed. "Okay...How long have you been an alcoholic?"

  "Since I was in high school. But I think what you really want to know is, how long since I've had a drink?"

  "Okay. How long?"

  "Two years, three months and sixteen days."

  "And you're okay with it?" Dana asked.

  "Most of the time. Sometimes it's hard, you know, it'll always be hard. But I'm done with drinking."

  "What made you stop?"

  "Long story."

  "Give me the edited version."

  There was a long pause, and Dana thought Ellen wasn't going to answer or maybe she was thinking up a lie. Ellen paused long enough that Dana reconsidered wanting to know the answer. Maybe it was a story that would make her look at Ellen differently. Maybe it was something she didn't want to know. Then Ellen said, "I was at Ralph's, the grocery store, and was stocking up on booze. My week's supply, you know. I had my cart filled with bottles—and by bottles I mean the great big ones, the half gallons—a bottle of Absolut, two bottles of Southern Comfort, a bottle of Maker's Mark, a case of Dos Equis and a bottle of Dom. That was always my treat—a bottle of Dom on Sunday morning. So, I go up to the cashier with this cart full of booze and she says, "Oh, are you having a party?"

  Ellen paused so long that Dana urged, "And?"

  "And I lied. I told her yes, that it was my birthday. Because, you know, I was embarrassed that I was buying all this and it was a normal week. So when I go to pay with my credit card, it's declined because I'd been drinking too much to make any bill payments and so I go to write a check. And, of course, the cashier asks to see my ID. I get all nervous but have to hand it over. She checks it out and writes the birth date on my check. Of course, she sees it's not my birthday or even my birthday month and she looks at me all weird like I lied to her. It was really embarrassing and awkward and...stupid. That made me stop and realize that I had a problem, you know. Most people don't ingest a whole grocery cart full of booze in one week. I didn't quit drinking right away, though. Not that week or even the next. But that's when I realized I had a problem. Took me about six months before I tried to quit."

  Dana was glad she asked. And she was even more glad that Ellen trusted her enough to talk about it. "You're very brave."

  "Thanks," Ellen murmured. "Drinking was one of the reasons I moved here six months ago. To start over clean, you know."

  Dana closed her eyes and listened to the sound of Ellen's breathing. Finally, she said, "I want you to know—I like your hat. You don't have to change it for me."

  Ellen didn't say anything. But Dana could hear her breath even out and become long and steady. It felt good not to talk, to be connected by breath over an invisib
le wave. It was so tenuous, yet strong at the same time.

  "’K, bye then," Dana said.

  "Bye."

  Dana had her thumb poised to hang up when she heard, "Dana?"

  "Yes, Ellen?"

  "G'night."

  "G'night."

  Dana didn't hang up until she heard the dial tone. She put the phone down and smiled at Asscat. He had never seen her smile at him before. Confused, he showed his fangs, then buried his head in the ice cream carton and pointed his butt at Dana.

  "Go ahead and eat it all, Asscat. I don't want it."

  Six

  Excerpt from Bad Romance:

  I was lying in bed that next morning after I got stuck in Kimmy's car when my cell phone rang and jarred me out of my fantasy. I took my hand out of my panties but didn't answer the phone because a call at eight a.m. can only mean one of two things: Fat Matt needed help again or somebody was calling to offer me a dirty job they didn't want to do. Both those things were unappetizing, so I let it ring through to voice mail. After a moment, my phone beeped and I pressed 1.

  After Sylvia told me I had a message (Sylvia was what I named the automated female voice that told me how many voice mails I had) I listened to somebody suck in some air and breathe it out over their receiver. Then a coarse-grit sandpaper voice scratched, "I need to hire you all to pick up dog turds out of my front yard. The neighbor's cockamamie dog keeps on doin' its business in my front lawn and I can't even walk in it for fear of hitting a land mine." Pause, then, "Do you all charge by the turd or by the hour?"

  The woman left her address, Sylvia instructed me to save the message by tapping the 3 button, and I buried my head back under the covers and thought about Kimmy's boobs.

  By the time I got out of the shower, I could hear Maw Maw in the kitchen banging around pots and pans and I smelled maple sausage frying. Maple sausage means biscuits and gravy and biscuits and gravy means it's Saturday.

  As I walked downstairs, I heard my brother, Fat Matt talking to Maw Maw. Could this day get any worse? First dog turds and now my dog turd of a brother is at my breakfast table.