by Nick Poff
Rick sniffed. Ed was surprised to see tears in his eyes.
“You’re the first, baby, and the best. Always the best. Thank you for loving me enough to waste so much money.”
Ed smiled. “It was worth every cent, seeing the look on your face. For what it’s worth, I’d spend every penny I have in this world to show you how much I love you.”
“Well, don’t do it,” Rick said, wiping his eyes. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. Just know I love you that much, too.”
“I do, darlin’, I do.”
Rick kissed him softly. “Do you s’pose we have time to make it thirty-eight before that movie starts?”
“We can always go to the second show.”
“That sounds like a very good idea, because right now I’m gonna show you how much I love you, and it doesn’t cost a thing.”
* * * * *
After a stop at Gino’s for baked sub sandwiches, they were in Rick’s car and on their way to Fort Wayne. Ed had his hand possessively on Rick’s leg, thinking about what a sellout he was where Valentine’s Day was concerned. He hoped all the lonely people in the world would forgive him, because he was extremely happy, and he knew the romance of Valentine’s Day had something to do with it.
He looked at the contented expression on Rick’s face and wondered about that bad Valentine’s Day he had with Jack. Ed didn’t want to spoil their day by bringing it up, but curiosity got the better of him.
“So tell me about that awful Valentine’s Day with Jack. What happened?”
Rick grimaced. “It was bad all right. You sure you wanna hear this story? All it will do is make you feel sorry for me.”
“Oh, go ahead. If I feel sorry for you, you’ll just get more kisses out of me.”
“Well, in that case, okay, I’ll tell you.” Rick sighed. “Hmm. Well, I know I always start out my Jack stories by saying I was young and stupid, but I was. I really was.
“We’d been living together for a few months when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I was excited, thinking how great it was to be celebrating it for the first time with a man I loved. I admit it, I went overboard. In addition to cards and candy, I had flowers delivered to Jack at our apartment while I was at work. I also made reservations at a very pricey, very romantic restaurant for that evening.
“I was looking forward to it all day at work. I could just see me coming in the door and Jack throwing himself at me in gratitude for the roses he’d gotten while I was away. So I drove home like a maniac, ran up the stairs, and threw open the door. Well, the roses were there, sitting on the coffee table, but Jack wasn’t.
“I figured he’d gone out for an errand, maybe to buy something for me, so I sat down and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally I started calling his friends, wondering where he was. I got dressed to go to dinner, and he still didn’t show up. By that time I was getting nervous, convinced something had happened to him. I mean, he wouldn’t forget these huge plans I’d made for Valentine’s Day, right?
“The time for our dinner reservation came and went. He finally showed up about an hour after that. He was bombed. He’d been sitting in a damned bar just down the street, hanging with some new friend of his. I was very hurt, and very angry, and all he could say was, ‘I’m sorry, honey, I just forgot.’ Not only that, but he didn’t do anything for me. He thanked me for the flowers and candy, but that was about it. I should’ve known right there and then that I was wasting my time with him, but I was, I repeat, young and stupid. I will say this much: He didn’t get jack shit from me the next year on Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh, darlin’.” Ed squeezed his leg. “That doesn’t make me feel sorry you. It just makes me want to track him down and beat the shit out of him.”
“Yeah, there’s a part of me that would like to do it myself, but it’s all in the past. He can’t hurt me anymore, and being with you has made up for any bad times I ever had with him.” Rick took one hand off the steering wheel and grabbed Ed’s. “I love you, baby. You know what? I thought I was in love with Jack, and maybe I was, but I swear I didn’t know what real love felt like until I met you. From that very first kiss, I knew you were the one. Just that kiss alone made Jack seem like a bad dream.”
Ed leaned across the gearshift and kissed Rick on the cheek. “Did I ever tell you what I was thinking about during that kiss?”
“No. What?”
“I was so . . . so surprised by it. My mind just kinda . . . went blank, but suddenly I remembered Gidget. Did you ever watch that on TV, with Sally Field? Not the movies, but the TV show?”
“Hmm. I kinda remember it.”
“Well, Laurie and I watched it every week. It came on right after The Patty Duke Show. I don’t think it was on very long, but we both loved it. In one episode she was dreaming about Jeff, and she was wondering what kissing him would be like. So she started writing fake diary entries, and she imagined Jeff kissing her, and she wrote, ‘I sank into nothingness.’”
Rick laughed, loud and hard. Ed hit him on the arm.
“It’s not funny. All these years I’ve waited for a kiss like that, and that’s what it felt like, kissing you that first time. It was like I’d never been kissed before at all.”
“Damn, and I left my surfboard in Indy,” Rick cracked, still laughing.
Ed crossed his arms across his chest and sulked. “Fine. Laugh all you want, but it was a big deal to a teenage boy who didn’t give a rat’s ass about kissing Sally Field, but dreamed about kissing a handsome man someday.”
Rick pulled Ed’s arms apart, taking his hand. “I’m sorry, baby. I wasn’t laughing at you, really. I was laughing about the role models we had. Wouldn’t it have been great if one of the surf boys on that show had been gay and had a beach boyfriend? Or if, say, that hot guy on Petticoat Junction, the one that married Betty Jo, had turned out to be gay? I remember dreaming about kissing him.”
Ed felt slightly better. “Okay, I know what you mean. Anyway, that’s how moved I was by our first kiss.”
Rick pulled Ed’s hand back to his thigh. “Thank you, baby. I just remember hoping that you were feeling what I was feeling. I’m glad to know you were, because I can promise you, I was sinking into nothingness myself. I couldn’t believe a kiss could be so amazing. Thing is, you could probably get that Petticoat Junction guy here in the car and I could kiss him, but it still wouldn’t be as good as kissing you.”
That did it. Now Ed felt better.
“First red light you hit,” he told Rick, “I’m going to give you a kiss that will make you forget Jack, and that guy from Petticoat Junction forever.”
Rick smiled at him. “You already have, baby. That’s what that first kiss was all about.”
* * * * *
A collective gasp went out from the audience in the theater as a woman’s mangled body slid out of the Laundromat dryer that was decorated with the upside-down heart.
“Ugh,” Rick groaned. “Ed, this is disgusting. Let’s go home. Now!”
“No,” Ed replied, working his way through a box of popcorn, eyes glued to the screen. “I’m not leaving till I find out who the killer is.”
Rick sighed, reaching a hand into the popcorn box. “Thank God you don’t have a pickax at home.”
“Sssh!”
After another hour of gory murders and mayhem, most of it at the bottom of a coal mine, the killer was revealed.
“Finally,” Rick snorted. “Can we get outta here now?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ed got to his feet. “Man, that was really gross.”
“No kidding. Damn, Ed, this is a side of you I’ve never seen, or even suspected. Slasher movies.”
“Oh, I love horror movies,” Ed enthused. “They’re supposed to be making a sequel to Halloween later this year. I can’t wait.”
“Great.” Rick sighed, rolling his eyes.
Rick was still grumbling as they walked across the parking lot to his car. “At least there aren’t any coal mines around here. Chri
st, I’m gonna go to sleep tonight thinking about someone coming into your room and cutting my heart out.”
Ed stopped and looked at Rick, a very smug look on his face. “It made you forget everything bad in your life for an hour and a half, didn’t it?”
Rick was unmoved. “So do shock treatments, and you don’t see me lining up for those, do you?”
“Okay, okay.” It was Ed’s turn to grumble. “I won’t drag you to any more slasher movies. I’ll get someone else to go. I made Laurie go with me to see Terror Train last fall, and she still hasn’t forgiven me.”
“Baby, I like good horror movies: Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby—”
“How ’bout Night of the Living Dead?”
Rick scowled at him. “Okay, I admit it. I liked that one. Maybe ’cause it was in black-and-white. I couldn’t see the blood.” He stopped by the driver’s side of his car. “That movie wasn’t about the gore, it was just plain scary. I think . . .” Rick patted his pockets. “That’s funny. Where are my keys?”
“Fell out of your coat, maybe?”
“No, I always keep them in my pants pocket, but—oh, no! There they are.” Rick pointed inside the car.
Ed leaned over and peered in the window. Yes, there they were, still in the ignition. Ed pulled on the passenger-side door handle, remembering, even as he did, that he had locked it earlier.
“Aw, crud. Don’t worry, darlin’. All we need is a wire hanger.”
Rick shook his head, disgusted with himself. “Yeah, baby, I always carry one of those on me, right in my wallet.” He slammed a fist on the car hood. “Where the hell is Joan Crawford when you need her.”
“Didn’t she make Christina throw away all the wire hangers?” Ed looked around the parking lot. They seemed to be the only people left. “Man, what a movie that book would make. Look, let’s just go back inside. The manager will probably loan us a coat hanger. This is where you get to hug and kiss your handyman in gratitude. I know just how to unlock the car, but I need a hanger.”
“I will hug and kiss the handyman after he unlocks the car, and after I kick myself in the ass for being so stupid,” Rick said, following Ed back to the theater.
A movie was still in progress on the other side of the twin theater, but the lobby was deserted. Ed figured all the ushers had been sent to clean the crap out of the theater showing the horror movie. He hoped so. His sneakers were still sticky from the cola spill by his seat. Ed walked to the refreshment stand, where a young woman with JODY on her name tag was rearranging Junior Mints and Milk Duds in the display window.
“Excuse me,” Ed said to her. “Could we see the manager, please?”
Jody looked around the empty lobby. She leaned over her counter, scowling. “There he is.” She pointed to a short, skinny guy exiting the ticket booth.
“That’s the manager?” The kid didn’t look a day over sixteen.
“He is tonight,” Jody said, rolling her eyes.
Ed walked over to the young man, Rick trailing him.
“Excuse me, sir,” Ed said, feeling a little foolish. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. My friend here locked his keys in the car. I was wondering if you could let us borrow a wire hanger.”
The young man with MARK on his name tag pushed his glasses up his nose. “What do you need a hanger for?” he asked suspiciously.
Ed sighed. “I can untwist the hanger and use it to pull up the lock button on the door. Haven’t you ever seen anyone do that?”
Mark frowned, crossing his arms across his chest. “How do I know you aren’t trying to steal it?”
“Look.” Ed pointed out Rick’s beat-up Monte Carlo. It looked worse than usual, covered with winter road grime. “Who the hell would want to steal that? We just wanna go home.” He turned to Rick with an apologetic look. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Rick laughed. “I hate to admit it, but it really is my car, kid, uh, sir. If you want, I’ll show you my driver’s license, and my registration after we get it unlocked.”
“I think we should just call the police,” Mark said. “I have no way of knowing whether you’re telling the truth.”
“Look, kid,” Ed said, getting annoyed. “Do you have a wire hanger or not? It’s getting late, and I’ll just go somewhere else if you’re gonna be a jerk about this.”
“Ed!” Rick said.
“The fact that you locked your keys in your car is not the problem or the responsibility of the Westside Cinema,” Mark said loftily. “If you had lost your keys in the building, I could help you, but I’m afraid this is a matter for the Fort Wayne Police Department.”
“The theater owns the parking lot, doesn’t it?” Ed asked, resisting a strong urge to shake the little twerp.
“Actually, no. It’s part of the Westside Shopping Plaza, and their office would be closed at this hour,” Mark said with a tight smile.
“Oh, brother,” Ed snorted. “C’mon, Rick, let’s get out of here. I think there’s a gas station down the street. Maybe it’s still open.” He turned to leave, shaking his head.
“Hey,” Jody hollered at him. She walked out from behind the candy counter. “Is this dork giving you a hard time?”
Ed turned to her in relief. “Look, we just locked the keys in the car and need a coat hanger to get it unlocked, that’s all.”
Jody, who was a good three inches taller than Mark, not to mention about twenty pounds heavier, glared at the young manager. “You asshole,” she hissed. “C’mon, guys,” she said, waving a hand at Ed and Rick. “I’ve got a hanger in my car. I lock my keys in it all the time. I’ll take care of it for you.”
“You’ve already had your break,” Mark growled, doing his best to look managerial. “If you leave the building, I’m going to write a note on your timecard.”
Jody handed him the scoop from the popcorn machine. “Here, dork. Why don’t you get busy shoving this up your ass while I give these guys, paying customers, a hand with their car.” She turned to Ed and Rick. “Hang on while I get my purse.”
Mark shook the popcorn scoop at her retreating figure. “You have no authority to do this!”
“Kid,” said Rick, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. “She may not have any authority, but she’s a hell of a lot bigger and meaner than you. I’d let this one go.”
“Humph.” Mark sniffed and walked behind the candy counter, then pointedly washed the scoop before replacing it in the popcorn machine.
Jody reappeared and led Ed and Rick to her car. She paused long enough to pull a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. She lit up, blowing smoke in the direction of the lobby.
“Up yours, dumb ass,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, guys. He’s not really the manager. The real manager called in sick, and for some dumb reason he put Mark in charge for tonight. He must have one hell of a fever.”
She bent over next to her worse-for-wear Camaro. She felt inside the left rear tire well, then pulled out a rusty hanger.
“If you want, I’ll unlock your car,” she offered. “I’m such a spazz about locking my keys inside, I’ve gotten really good at it.”
Jody expertly manipulated the hanger inside the window of Rick’s car and easily pulled up the lock button. Ed had to admit she was better at it than he was.
“Whew,” Rick said in relief, reaching for his wallet. “Thanks. Can I give you—”
“No, no,” Jody said with a smile. “My reward was being able to piss that little shit off. He’s been driving us crazy all night. Heck, the ushers are fighting over who gets to give him a wedgie when we close up.”
“Thanks, Jody. You’re the best,” Ed called to her as she walked toward the theater door.
She waved at them. “Come back some time and I’ll slip ya some free Milk Duds.”
Rick, keys securely in his hand, began to laugh. “Thirty-seven roses, a gory slasher movie, and hearing her tell him to shove that popcorn scoop up his ass. Baby, this is a Valentine’s Day I’ll never forget.”
Ed laughed with him. “And t
he Petticoat Junction guy.”
“Him?” Rick smiled at Ed over the top of the car. “I dumped him after our first kiss, remember? You’re the only valentine I want, baby, tonight and for always.”
“Well, why don’t you get in the car, where it’s nice and dark, so your valentine can kiss you again?”
Rick jumped in and slammed his door. Ed did the same. Ed leaned over the gearshift and gave Rick a long, passionate kiss, hoping Mark was watching from the lobby.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, darlin’,” he whispered.
* * * * *
They were getting ready for bed when Rick suddenly disappeared into the living room. He returned, carrying the vase packed with thirty-seven red roses.
“I want to see them, first thing, when I wake up in the morning,” he said, kissing Ed.
They pulled the covers back and settled in. Ed reached for the light, then stopped.
“Did you want to read for a while before you go to sleep?” he asked.
“No, baby. I’m beat. Let’s just call it a night.”
“Okay.” Ed turned off the lamp, then lay down, curling up next to Rick. A thought suddenly came to him. “You know what, darlin’?”
“What?”
“I just realized. When you’re here, I go to sleep with your arms around me, and when I wake up, either my arms are around you or yours are around me.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“No, not at all. But I was wondering, doesn’t my thrashing around keep you up all night?”
“Oh! No, you don’t do that anymore.”
“I don’t?” Ed asked, turning around to face him.
“Well, a little bit,” Rick conceded with a grin. “But if it’s bad enough to wake me up, I just whisper ‘I love you, baby,’ and you settle down. Works every time.”
“Huh. How ’bout that.”
“Yeah.” Rick kissed him. “How ’bout that.”
With one last smile, Ed turned his back to Rick, whose arms immediately encircled him. Rick kissed Ed’s neck.
“Good night, baby,” he whispered.