Piece of My Heart

by Layce Gardner

  “What’s that?” Dale pointed at the postcard Jenna was still clutching in her hand.

  Jenna wished she’d had the foresight to set it down so Dale wouldn’t have seen it. “Nothing. Just a postcard,” she hedged.

  “I can see that,” Dale said.

  “How is Lee?” Taylor asked while rummaging around in her toolbox.

  “How’d you know it was from her?” Jenna asked.

  “Ex-girlfriends are like that. ‘Oh, I’m having so much fun, but I was thinking of you while I have my fingers in another woman’s pussy.’”

  “Taylor!” Dale scolded. “That was completely unnecessary.” She snatched the postcard and quickly read it. “It doesn’t say anything about pussies here.”

  Jenna took the card back. “She probably did it just to torment me.”

  “Sure, she did. You know if I had to choose between an alligator’s intentions and an ex-girlfriend’s, I’d take my chances with the gator,” Taylor said. “Now, let’s go to Home Depot. Maybe we can find you a new girlfriend and you can toss any images of that spaghetti-eating whore out of your head.”

  “What makes you think I want anything to do with her?” Jenna asked. She picked up her wallet and phone from the kitchen counter.

  “You have that look,” Taylor said.

  Dale studied Jenna’s face. “She does have that look.”

  “What look?” Jenna asked, all innocence.

  “The I-would-take-her-back-and-we-could-get-past-this-and-take-up-where-we-left-off kind of look,” Taylor said. “I see it all the time. I don’t know what it is with lesbians, but they just can’t let go. Even if their beloved has passed on. Death won’t even part them.”

  “What?” Jenna said, imagining the dog, Li’l Ann, lying on the grave of her brother, Old Dan, in the book Where the Red Fern Grows. That book was her childhood favorite and never failed to bring tears to her eyes. Jenna wondered briefly why she found it so easy to cry over fictional characters, but couldn’t bring herself to cry over real people.

  Dale slung an arm over Jenna’s shoulders. “Don’t listen to Taylor. She reads all those damaged girlfriend lesbian romances. It gives her ideas that she turns into blogs and hopes to one day publish.”

  “Seriously?” Jenna asked.

  “I consider it my duty to put a stop to all this regret-dating. The relationship went south,” Taylor said, “let it die an honorable death.”

  “You don’t look like a writer. I even have a hard time imagining you reading,” Jenna said.

  Taylor smiled as she wiped the yuck off her hands on a paper towel. “And what exactly does a writer look like?”

  “I don’t know, authorial? Do you really read a lot?”

  “I do and, believe me, if you’re sitting somewhere, say Starbucks or the park, and you’re reading a lesbian romance, it’s like a chick magnet. You should have your clients try it.”

  “You stay away from those women,” Dale said, picking up her purse.

  “I do, honey. I only read at home.” She playfully swatted Dale’s butt. “Now let’s go to Lesbian Central, also known as Home Depot.”

  ***

  Taylor was right. Jenna had never noticed what a smorgasbord of gay girls worked and hung out at Home Depot. It was practically Gay Pride only it involved tools and stuff to fix stuff. Jenna wasn’t one for fixing things—one reason she didn’t own a house. You had to fix things and she didn’t know how. She couldn’t expect Taylor to come over and do handiwork every time something went wrong. She’d need her own version of Taylor before she could buy a house.

  Taylor was clanging around looking for pipe parts and Dale was admiring new faucets when a Home Depot associate came up and asked, “Can I help you find anything?”

  Jenna admitted to having a moment of lust. The woman was tall, buff, had short dark hair, and astonishingly blue eyes. Jenna had always had a weakness for dark hair and blue eyes.

  “I…I don’t know,” Jenna said. She pointed at Taylor. “She’s fixing my kitchen sink.”

  “Let me know if you need any help,” the woman said.

  “Okay. What’s your name? You know, if I need to call it out for help or something,” Jenna said.

  “Danger. Brooklyn Danger,” the woman answered.

  “Is your last name really Danger?” Jenna asked.

  “Yes, my father changed it because he hated his surname,” Brooklyn said.

  “Which was?” Taylor asked. She had found the part she was looking for and now stood up.

  “Dankensmacker,” Brooklyn said.

  Jenna almost laughed, but caught herself in the nick of time.

  “It’s okay to laugh,” Brooklyn said. “That’s the reason he changed it.”

  “Danger is more intriguing. And easier to spell,” Jenna said. She couldn’t stop staring at Brooklyn’s well-defined biceps. She wondered what it would feel like to touch them.

  “That’s what my dad thought. I got a little teasing in school until I had a growth spurt and put a stop to it. Being a big girl has definite advantages on the playground.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Dale asked.

  “Dale!” Jenna said.

  Brooklyn laughed. “Naw, I had to throw the last girlfriend out. I went home to see my parents and when I got back I found out she’d turned my man cave into a pedicure place. It was her dream to open her own business. I would’ve forgiven her for the man cave, but she also took my cat to the Humane Society and I couldn’t get her back. That was the last straw. I loved that cat.”

  “Evidently more than your ex-girlfriend,” Dale said.

  “Don’t ever get between a woman and her pussy…” Taylor said.

  Dale shot her a look.

  Taylor said quickly, “As in cat.”

  “Good save,” Brooklyn said and fist-bumped Taylor in obvious butch camaraderie.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Taylor said. She smiled impishly at Dale.

  Brooklyn crossed her arms over her chest and asked Dale, “Why’d you want to know if I have a girlfriend?”

  “Because we’re on the lookout for single lesbians,” Dale said.

  “Dale!” Jenna said again. Her cheeks felt hot. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  “All I’m saying is that Home Depot has a lot of lesbians. Potentially datable lesbians. We should bring our clients here. Brooklyn might show them around and then they could loiter in the aisles and talk about home repair stuff. Don’t look at me like that,” Dale said, looking at Jenna who was holding a bunch of pipe thingy-jiggers.

  “It’s not a bad plan,” Taylor said. “If Brooklyn were so inclined,” she added, raising her eyebrows at Brooklyn.

  Brooklyn nodded. “We’ve got all sorts of home repair seminars. I teach a basic repair course every Saturday morning.”

  “Basic, as in what? We’ve had some unique experiences in our quest for datable women,” Jenna said. The more she stared at Brooklyn’s hair, eyes, face, biceps, and firm thighs in well-fitting Levis, the more that home repair seemed like a really good idea. But she needed to be cautious after the last fiasco. She still had the scar in the middle of her forehead from their dinner date. Maybe they should stay away from the saw aisle. And keep away from the hand tools all together.

  “Unique experiences?” Brooklyn asked.

  “She means uniquely dangerous,” Taylor said. Dale and Jenna glared at her. “I’m just saying a nail gun is not a toy.”

  “True,” Dale said.

  “No nail guns will be used. At least not in the beginning. Those are for the more advanced classes,” Brooklyn said. “We start with some basic plumbing, then how to change light switches, painting, installing a door knob and dead bolt. That kind of stuff.”

  Jenna had no interest in knowing how to do any of those things, but if she could stare at Brooklyn for several hours on a Saturday morning, she was willing to learn.

  “That’s it then, we’ll sign them up,” Dale said.

  “Shouldn’t we ask the
m first?” Jenna said.

  “No.”

  “Because?”

  “They’re clueless. And we’re the bosses. It’s up to us to clue them in. We decide the dating format,” Dale said.

  “All right, let’s get you up front and signed up,” Brooklyn said.

  As they followed Brooklyn up front, Jenna whispered under her breath to Dale, “My god. Look at that butt.”

  “I heard that,” Brooklyn said without turning around. “Yours is nice, too.”

  “I wasn’t being a creeper,” Jenna said.

  “I was,” Brooklyn said.

  They both laughed.

  Dale and Taylor exchanged a triumphant look.

  ***

  “I am so embarrassed,” Jenna said as they all piled into Taylor’s Land Rover in the Home Depot parking lot.

  “Don’t be. It was a good move,” Taylor said, starting up the SUV.

  “I didn’t think she heard me,” Jenna said.

  “She evidently has 20/20 hearing,” Taylor said.

  Dale opened the bag of Doritos she’d picked up at the checkout counter impulse aisle. She offered one to Jenna who declined.

  Taylor popped the top on a Red Bull and slammed it. She stifled a belch and pulled out of the parking lot. “So did looking at Brooklyn’s ass help you forget about the slimy ex’s postcard?”

  “Until Dale bought Doritos,” Jenna said.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” Dale said, crumpling up the bag. “I forgot.”

  “Forgot what?” Taylor asked as she guided the SUV toward Jenna’s apartment.

  “Lee used to love Doritos and after she finished the bag she’d lick her fingers,” Dale said.

  “So?” Taylor asked.

  “She did it suggestively,” Jenna said.

  “That’s kind of gross,” Taylor said.

  Dale stuck one of her Dorito covered fingers in her mouth and pulled it out suggestively.

  “Or not,” Taylor said.

  ***

  “All done,” Taylor pronounced. “Good as new.”

  “That was fast,” Jenna said.

  “That’s me. I’m the world’s fastest P-trap changer,” Taylor said.

  Jenna ducked her head under the sink to have a look. Taylor pressed her body into Dale’s and whispered, “Let’s go buy you some more Doritos, baby.”

  “Sshhh. Don’t say that word,” Dale said.

  “Which word?”

  “Doritos.” Dale looked over at Jenna who was studying the pipe under the sink. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Huh?” Jenna said.

  “Never mind.”

  “You know, there are a few other things that could be fixed around here. And you live so close to Home Depot you could just pop in every now and again,” Taylor said. “For advice and such.”

  Jenna brightened. “I could, couldn’t I?”

  ***

  After Dale and Taylor left, Jenna grabbed a Sam Adams and went to sit on her balcony. It was small, but had enough room for two chaise lounges and a wrought iron table that Lee had found at a flea market and Jenna had spray-painted turquoise. She picked up the postcard and studied it. She sipped her beer and ruminated. Why would Lee send this? And why write “You’d love it here.” Was she being facetious? But why would she? Lee was the one that left. Jenna hadn’t even had the opportunity to cry, scream, plead, or yell. Lee just went poof, got on a plane, and was sitting on a piazza in Tuscany or Pisa or wherever the following day.

  Six years. They’d been together for six years, and poof! People don’t just go poof! Jenna still didn’t get it, nor did she get how she was going to get over it. Nine months was a long time to nurse a broken heart. It wasn’t that she was nursing it exactly; it was more like she had her heart preserved in formaldehyde, sitting in a jar on a shelf in some Frankensteinian lab somewhere deep in the desert, unreachable by public transportation.

  Stop it, she told herself. Her mother was right. She did suffer from an overactive imagination, but she could picture her heart that way. She imagined her broken heart like a Frida Kahlo painting, ripped and bleeding above her bed, dripping onto her sleeping form.

  Jenna methodically ripped the postcard into very small pieces and threw the handful into the stiff breeze. She took deep breaths. This unplanned ceremony of cleansing felt good until Mrs. Johnson, her downstairs neighbor, yelled up, “You’re littering! What, you don’t have a garbage can in your place? It’s not like the world doesn’t have enough problems without people throwing trash everywhere!”

  “Sorry. I was having a cleansing ceremony. Lee sent me a postcard from Italy,” Jenna said, leaning over the railing so she could see Mrs. Johnson.

  “You mean the woman that wasted six years of your precious life that cannot be returned and that you’ll pine for the rest of your life? That one?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She’s got a lot of nerve,” Mrs. Johnson said.

  “I’ll say.”

  “Forget what I said about the littering—some things have to be thrown to the wind. Besides paper is biodegradable.”

  “Thank you. Have a good day, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “You too, dear.”

  Jenna sat back down. The postcard was ripped to shreds, and the little pieces were scattered and floating away in the wind. Just like her heart.

  Chapter Seven

  Mickey sent another set of milk cans crashing down with a fastball that would’ve got her laid after the game at any women’s softball tournament this side of the Mississippi. Jenna stood next to her, eating cotton candy, and marveling. Jenna and Cindy had been following Mickey around the carnival and watching her win prizes. Jenna had never known anyone who actually won prizes playing carnival games. She’d always thought they were all rigged. She said as much to Mickey.

  “Well, yes and no,” Mickey said. She handed Cindy another stuffed dragon to add to her growing collection of prizes.

  “What do you mean?” Jenna asked, picking cotton candy off her chin. She loved the sticky stuff. She just wished it wasn’t so messy.

  “You gotta know how the set up works, that’s all. And I happen to know,” Mickey explained.

  “How?” Cindy asked. She was holding a dragon, a duck, and two brown things.

  Jenna pointed at Cindy’s arms and said, “Those two brown things look like stuffed poop.”

  “That’s because they are stuffed poop.”

  “Who would want a stuffed poop?”

  Cindy shrugged. “It’s a thing.”

  “Who’s thing?”

  Cindy shrugged again. She held out one of the stuffed poops. “Want one?”

  “Okay, thanks,” Jenna said. She held the poop. She didn’t know why she had accepted it. Now she was stuck with a stuffed poop.

  “Enough poop talk,” Mickey said. She sent another pile of milk cans crashing with a fastball. She turned back to Jenna and said, “I worked as a carnie for two days before Agnes put a stop to it. She had the flu so I thought it was the perfect time to go have an adventure. It was a blast until Miss Party Pooper came along.”

  “Agnes does seem to be the voice of reason,” Cindy said.

  “Yeah and that’s her problem—she’s so reasonable. If it weren’t for me and Naomi, her life would be one big blah, blah, blah.”

  “You mean, you all know about each other?” Cindy asked.

  “Of course, we’re all living in the same head. We just dress differently,” Mickey said.

  “I could never be so cavalier about sharing my brain like that,” Cindy said as they walked down the midway so Mickey could find another game to conquer. Soon they’d need a Sherpa to carry all the stuffed animals and other crap that Mickey was accumulating.

  “It’s not like we got a lot of choice,” Mickey said. “I’d love to have my own brain. And my own body.”

  “Have you all ever tried to get it fixed?” Jenna asked.

  “Yeah, we’ve had some shrink-tinkering but it never works,” Mickey said. She s
topped in front of the dime toss. “Hey, we haven’t gotten any glassware yet. Let’s try this game. Cindy, you’re good at tossing stuff. You give it a try. I’ll give you the lowdown.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cindy said.

  “Come on, live a little,” Mickey said. She handed over three dollars to the toothless man behind the counter.

  Jenna looked around for Dale and Liz-Melody who had gone off earlier to find a restroom. Thank God, Liz-Melody was stone-cold sober this time. Jenna had put her foot down on Martha attending the carnival. Liz-Melody could still dress up, but Martha was not welcome.

  This time Liz-Melody had dressed up as Alice Moffit from the movie Poker Alice. Jenna had never seen the movie. Dale quickly scanned the IMDb and read the movie synopsis. From what they could gather, the movie was about Alice Moffit, a rich girl who’d been disowned by her Bostonian family because of her gambling problem. Alice went west, won a bordello in a poker game on the train, and fell in love with a bounty hunter.

  When Alice-Liz-Melody had met them in the carnival parking lot that morning, she wore a dove gray dress and a matching traveling coat with black piping. She had a matching parasol and big hat with a long feather. The feather served as a crowd deterrent— a person could lose an eye if they got too close.

  “So, if we keep Alice-Liz-Melody away from gambling halls, bordellos, and bounty hunters, we should be all right? Jenna had asked.

  Dale had nodded.

  And so far, things were going okay. Knock on wood.

  The toothless carnie that ran the glass toss explained the rules of the game to Cindy. Cindy’s forehead wrinkled in concentration as she listened. The carnie looked pleased, like a flight attendant who sees a passenger actually listening to the preflight lecture on airplane safety.

  Jenna listened to the spiel with one ear and with one eye she watched Mickey walk around the booth and study the glassware set up.

  The carnie handed Cindy ten dimes. “Toss away and may the luck of the Irish be with you.”

  Jenna figured it’d take a lot of Irish for Cindy to toss a dime into a candy dish, wine glass, or ashtray. Who the hell needed an ashtray these days? Must be leftover stock from twenty years ago when being a smoker didn’t make you a social pariah.