A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  "They're all dead, silly."

  "Oh." I flipped through several more pages. I pointed at a photo of an older woman whose eyes were bulging. Upon closer inspection I noted that her eyes were painted on top of her closed eyelids. "That one looks a little like our old third grade schoolteacher," I said. "Remember Mrs. Anthony?"

  "That is her."

  I looked closer. "How'd you get rid of her wart?"

  "Putty and a spatula."

  "I like how you painted on her eyes."

  "That's one of my newest creations. I call them Lady Gaga eyes."

  "Good job," I said.

  Trudy fast-flipped through a couple of pages and pointed. "That's Mr. Gilbright. Remember our grade school janitor?"

  "I never would've recognized him."

  "I call it Geisha Girl."

  "What did his family say when they saw him like that?"

  "Closed casket."

  "Oh." I flipped through more pages. "I like this Peter Pan look you have on Mr. Dunphree."

  "That's a Forest Nymph and green's not your color."

  "How about this Marilyn?"

  "Nah…" She flipped a few pages back and tapped her fingernail on a photo. "I think we should do this Lindsay Lohan. I've been wanting a model to perfect it. LaFonda Duke was the right age when she died, but her bone structure was wrong."

  "I don't know," I hedged, "Which Lindsay are you going to do? Before Herbie or after Herbie? 'Cause I don't want to look like I'm on drugs."

  Trudy said, "Before. I'll make you look like Lindsay in Freaky Friday except with big boobs."

  "Okay," I said. "Let's get started." I closed my eyes and pointed my face toward her.

  "Lie down on the table."

  I opened my eyes. "Huh?"

  "Lie down on the table on your back."

  "Why?"

  "I only ever do makeup when they're lying down. I don't know if I can do it when you're sitting up."

  "Do I have to cross my arms over my chest?" I asked.

  "Yes. To make sure, you know."

  I sat on the edge of the table and laid back with my arms crossed over my chest. After a moment, I opened one eye and saw her open a jar of stinky goop and smear it all over her palms. "What's that for?"

  "Gel for your hair. To lift it off your face." She rubbed her hands through my hair like she was drying them on a paper towel in a public restroom. "Did you mow your front lawn?"

  "I pay the kid down the street to mow."

  "I meant, did you, you know, weed your garden." She wiped her hands on the tablecloth. I made a mental note to throw it in the washer later.

  "Weed? I don't have a garden this year. Maw Maw planted some tomatoes in that old metal pig trough out by the back fence but that's it."

  I opened both eyes in time to see her dip a rubber spatula into a pot of beige goop. She aimed the spatula at my face so I closed my eyes again. "I was talking about trimming up your woo-hoo. You're the one with the English degree, haven't you ever heard of a euphemism? Keep your eyes shut."

  My eyes popped open. "Oh, that garden. The euphemistic garden of delight, I get it." I closed my eyes and tried to keep my face supple while she rubbed the goop all over it. "No, I didn't weed the garden, but I did walk the dog."

  "What dog? You don't have a dog."

  "I also washed the car. And cleaned the gutters."

  She pulled one side of my face up two inches higher than it's supposed to be and slapped more stuff in the taut flesh. "What the hell're you talking about, DD?"

  "I don't know. I thought we were playing a euphemism game. But to answer your question, yes, I mowed my front yard a couple of weeks ago."

  "Better mow it again. If you plan on anybody seeing it tonight."

  I snickered. "You mean, you won't weed my garden of delight for me?"

  She snorted like a horse. "I'd have to drink a dozen Elroys to even consider it," she said.

  "You really think I should do it again? Isn't twice in one month a little excessive?"

  "Honey, I've seen you naked. Your woo-hoo grows faster than a chia pet."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll mow."

  "Don't want to scare the poor woman off."

  "I said okay, no need to harp on it." I felt weird talking about my chia pet even if Trudy was my best friend, so I changed the subject. "What're you going to do with your famous faces portfolio?"

  "That portfolio is my ticket out of this dump. I'm not going to work at the funeral home forever, you know. I'm going to move to Tulsa or Fayetteville, some big city, you know, and open my own business doing specialized makeup and hairstyles for the deceased."

  "I don't get it."

  "Say a woman who dies always had the fantasy of being Marilyn Monroe. She can hire me to make her look like Marilyn for her burial and her entrance into the afterlife."

  "How's she going to hire you if she's dead?"

  "No, silly, she'll hire me before she's dead. Then when she dies I'll do the make-over."

  "How's she going to know you did it if she's dead? You could sell her the make-over and when she dies, say screw it and she'd never know."

  "I'm not that type of person."

  "Okay, just saying. It wasn’t meant to be a slander on your morality."

  "I know you're always going around trying to concoct the perfect crime and the perfect murder, but that doesn't mean that everybody in the world thinks like you do. Some people don't cheat at Trivial Pursuit."

  "Good God, Trudy, that was over twenty years ago. I already said I was sorry."

  Trudy muttered under her breath, "Staying up every night for a week to memorize the answers to all those cards."

  "Drop it, okay? You know good and well I'm not going to commit those murder schemes. I like to think them up for when I start writing my magnum opus. In case the plot turns out to be a mystery. Ouch!" I rub my nose where she poked it with a paintbrush.

  "Sorry. I'm not used to working on live people." She re-aimed the brush for my lips.

  An hour later I looked like a hungover Lindsay Lohan on her way to court. I had on my best pair of jeans, the black ones that I saved for funeral-going and dates (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.) I sincerely hoped that I didn't have to pee anytime soon because I had had to lay down on my back and suck in my gut to get them zipped. I couldn't go through all that again. (I swear I was the only person in the civilized world who gained weight by eating at Subway.) I chose my favorite blouse—a peasanty-type thing that gave my non-descript eyes a hint of blue and hid my muffin-tops. My boobs were going to be too big no matter what I did, so I deemphasized them by tying up the strings around the collar and hiding the cleavage. I had to wear flip flops because the too-tight jeans wouldn't let me bend over to tie any other shoes.

  I took one last look in the mirror and grabbed a box of Kleenex. I could wipe all the crap off my face on the way over to Kimmy's duplex.

  Trudy was pretty zonkered on the wine by the time I was ready to leave. She was lying back on the couch, sound asleep and making ZZZZ noises. She looked like Cleopatra waiting to be fed grapes. Asscat was perched regally on her belly with his paws stretched out in front of him like the Sphinx.

  I was halfway out my front door when Trudy yelled from behind me, "Oh my God!"

  "What?" I spun around. She was sitting up ramrod straight with an agog expression. Or maybe it was more of an aghast expression. Yes, it was definitely aghast.

  "Nothing," she said way too sweet. She affected a tone of nonchalance, "I was thinking—can you make sure to always keep her in front of you?"

  I touched the back of my head. "Why? What's back there? What'd you do?"

  She sighed. "It's one of the hazards of working on the dead. I've never actually done the back of somebody's head before."

  "It looks bad?" I put my hand back there and patted. It felt like a hard rat's nest.

  "Nope," she said with a tiny grin. "Not if she doesn't see it."

  I'd try to brush it out on the way over there
. I could brush and drive a stick shift at the same time. I hoped. "Okay, wish me luck," I said.

  "Wait!"

  I stopped halfway out the door and turned back. "What now?"

  She suppressed a grin. "Maybe you should take Asscat with you."

  "Why?"

  "He might be the only pussy you get tonight."

  "You're so not funny, Trudy."

  "I'm a little bit funny." She grinned.

  "No," I said. "You're most definitely un-funny."

  She stuck out her bottom lip like a tipsy toddler. "A wittle? A teeny tiny wittle bit funny?"

  "Nope."

  "Aren't you even going to say goodbye to my pussy?" she fake-pouted and waved Asscat's paw at me.

  "Get that cat off your lap and I will," I retorted. I closed the door and headed toward my car. I heard Trudy's guffaws all the way to the driveway.

  ***

  "I'm so happy you're an alcoholic," Ellen said.

  Dana playfully socked Ellen in the arm.

  "I mean, I'm not glad you are, I'm glad you admitted it."

  After the AA meeting Dana and Ellen met up at the city park. Dana led Ellen back to the monkey bars, but this time they were hanging upside down by their knees. Dana looked at Ellen hanging upside down next to her and giggled.

  "What?" Ellen asked.

  "Our hairs match," Dana said. "Now mine is sticking straight up too."

  "Maybe it's sticking straight down because you're upside down."

  "Or maybe we're sitting straight up and the world is upside down," Dana said.

  Ellen was quiet for a moment. "That's a strange thought, but it is a familiar feeling," she said.

  "Yep," Dana agreed. "Most of the time I feel like the world is going one way and I'm going the other. Like I'm always walking upstream."

  "Me too. Except when I was drinking. Then I felt like the world and I were in sync. That's the only time I fit in. Or maybe the alcohol numbed me so much I didn't care." Ellen reached over and wrapped Dana's fingers in her own. "You feel that way too?"

  Dana looked away from Ellen's searching eyes. "I'm glad you're here to help me through this." Her words tasted metallic and false. She changed the subject. "This is my thinking place. You know how Winnie the Pooh has his thinking place? This is mine."

  "You always hang upside down when you think?"

  "Yep. It increases the blood flow to my head and my best ideas always happen when my brain is engorged."

  Ellen chuckled. "Engorged. That's a weird word."

  "So…" Dana said. "Have you caught your girlfriend cheating yet?"

  "No. Have you?"

  "Not yet. I can't find her, let alone find her cheating." Then Dana voiced what been scaring her the most lately. "What if...our respective girlfriends aren't cheating? What do we do then?"

  Ellen frowned. At least Dana thought she was frowning. She could be smiling and Dana was seeing her smile upside down.

  "I don't know," Ellen uttered softly. "All I know is that I don't want us to end before we've even begun."

  "I guess we could be friends," Dana said without conviction.

  "Yeah, we could," Ellen said half-heartedly. "Or we can both get out of our relationships anyway. It's just messier. We'd have to admit why—that we didn't love them and we wanted to be with each other and...you know. We have to be the bad guys."

  Dana nodded, which is harder than you think when you're hanging upside down.

  A sudden crack of thunder underscored the mood. Dana scanned the sky and saw rolling thunderheads obscuring the moon and the stars. "Crapola. It's going to rain."

  They didn't move. Dana didn't care if an F5 ripped through the city park, she didn't want to let go of Ellen's hand and she sure didn't want to go home all by herself. There was nothing quite so lonely as lying in bed and listening to the rain hit the roof, counting seconds between thunder claps—all alone.

  The first drop of cold rain splunked right into the middle of Dana's forehead. Ellen laughed and wiped it away with the cuff of her shirt. Within seconds, the sky opened and cold, hard pellets of rain battered them. Still, neither one moved.

  Ellen uncurled herself from the monkey bars and landed nimbly on her feet. She helped Dana unhook a leg, but before she could help with the second leg, Dana slipped from the bars and kerplunked head-first into the mud.

  "You okay?" Ellen asked, kneeling on the ground with Dana.

  Dana grabbed Ellen, pulling her into the mud beside her. They laughed. Ellen sat up, wrapped an arm around Dana and pulled her close. They sat that way for a moment, their faces tilted up letting the rain wash away the mud.

  "It could be worse," Dana said, shivering against Ellen. "We could be struck by lightning."

  "Oh God, don't even say that."

  "I believe that if you say bad things out loud, they don't come true. Only unvoiced fears ever materialize."

  Ellen pooched out her bottom lip and thought about it.

  "Or maybe it's the opposite, I never can remember," Dana amended.

  "I knew a lady once who got struck by lightning," Ellen said. "She was washing dishes at her kitchen sink, the lightening shot inside, hit her on top of her head and blasted out her butt."

  Dana laughed.

  Ellen said ultra-seriously, "It's not funny. It completely burnt out her sphincter."

  Dana laughed harder.

  "She had to get an asshole transplant."

  "Stop," Dana sputtered around waves of laughter. "You're killing me."

  "It's true," Ellen insisted. "They gave her a pig's asshole. You know, since pig parts are the closest things to a human's."

  Dana laughed so hard she snorted. "I snorted," Dana giggled. "Like a pig."

  "I haven't even told you the funny part. Instead of sending her flowers at the hospital, people sent her pig figurines. Now she collects little pig statues. She has thousands of them."

  "Oh my God!" Dana managed to gasp. She snorted again and this caused her to break into renewed hysterics.

  "True story," Ellen said uber-solemnly, holding up two fingers in the Girl Scout salute. "You can look her up in the Guinness Book of World Records."

  Dana caught her breath and asked, "For what? She break the record for pig collecting?"

  "Nope. She's the only living pig asshole recipient."

  "I have one question. When she farts does it smell like…" A small laugh escaped and Dana stuffed it back down. "Does it smell like…" She broke into gales of laughter.

  Ellen finished the sentence for her, "Does it smell like bacon?"

  "Yes!"

  They fell backwards under a tidal wave of laughter, rolling in the mud. They laughed for a good five minutes. Each time one stopped, the other mumbled, "Bacon," and they were off and running into more bouts of laughter.

  Laughed dry and sopping wet, Dana managed to say, "You're hysterical. And to think I once hated you."

  Ellen was shocked. "Hated me?"

  "Yeah," Dana said. "I hated you from the second I saw you."

  "Why?"

  "I hated that you were you and I was me and I was stuck being me in a life that was mine and I didn't like it because you weren't in that life. Like, you know, when you're watching an infomercial for the ab cruncher or that Bowflex thing and you want a stomach and butt like hers but your credit card is maxed out because you spent it all on fattening foods at the grocery store so you realize you can never have her butt or stomach or even have her...Okay, maybe it's not like that at all...What I meant was I hated you because I could never have you."

  Ellen stared at Dana. There was a long silence. Long enough that Dana got nervous. Finally, Ellen said, "Well, as long as we're being honest, I hated you too."

  "Why?" Dana whispered. She was pretty sure Ellen was going to say she found her unattractive. It was the whole fat thing again. Or maybe it was her hair or the way she dressed.

  "Because I wanted you too," Ellen said.

  Dana searched Ellen's face for any trace of insincerity. And when
she didn't find any, she allowed herself to hope. One tiny sliver of shining hope leaked through the cracks. "You wanted me?" Dana whispered.

  Ellen nodded. "I wanted you and I hated you for that because you weren't mine. You belonged to somebody else."

  Dana knew that her heart didn't belong to anybody else. As far as she was concerned her heart was a free agent. She opened her mouth to tell Ellen she loved her, but what came out instead was, "Well, I hated you first."

  Ellen smiled. "No, I hated you first."

  "I hated you way before you hated me."

  Ellen countered, "I hated you before I even knew you."

  "That’s impossible."

  "I hated the very idea of you."

  "You're making stuff up," Dana said. "I hated you first and you're mad that I beat you to it."

  "I hated the idea that somebody like you even existed."

  Dana replied, "I hated your mother before she gave birth to you, therefore, I hated you first."

  "Big deal." Ellen rolled her eyes. "I hate you more."

  "I hate you the most."

  Ellen wrapped her fingers around the back of Dana's neck and leaned in until their lips were only a breath apart. "I hate what I'm about to do," Ellen said.

  "Stop talking and do it already," Dana breathed.

  Ellen touched her lips to Dana's. They kissed deeply and Dana felt time freeze like in that Twilight Zone episode starring Burgess Meredith where he's the only man on earth.

  Dana was so lost in the kiss that she didn't even bother to count the twenty-seven raindrops that fell on her head.

  Ellen pulled back. She smiled, then rested her forehead against Dana's, muttering, "I hated that."

  "I hated it too."

  "I hated it so much, I want to do it again." Ellen pressed into Dana and kissed her again. This kiss was deeper and more insistent than the first. This kiss was full of the promise of things to come. Ellen's lips beamed Dana out of this world and transported her to a place where she wasn't fat or cold or being rained on. Suddenly, Dana found herself sitting on a beach with warm sand under her butt and ocean waves tickling her feet. No, wait, she was in a mountain cabin on a bear skin rug in front of a roaring fireplace. No, on second thought, she was in her bed with Ellen, wrapped up in a quilt, skin-to-skin, exploring with her mouth and fingers and—