The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written

by H. M. Mann

“Thanks,” Thais said with thanking thanks in her thankfully thankful heart.

  “Just being instructive,” Gunn said informatively.

  “But back to what we were saying before,” Thais said, uncoiling from the circle. “I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.”

  “What were we talking about?”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gunn smiled. “About yoga? Yes. It’s good for my back.”

  “I meant—”

  “Oh. Yes. I am.”

  “You really are?”

  “Yes.”

  Thais squinted as Joan Rivers might if Joan Rivers ever could squint again. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  Gunn scratched his head, which meant he was confused. He also had dandruff, so folks thought he was confused a lot.

  “Wait,” Thais said patiently.

  Gunn waited.

  “Are you sure?” Thais repeated in a positive manner.

  “You mean, am I sure that I’m …”

  “Yes.”

  Thais un-squinted. “Our bodies have been in a perfect circle for thirty-four minutes. We represent infinity and eternity and other circular things like Frisbees, and manhole covers, and new garbage can lids before the union trash people dent them all to smithereens when you’re trying to sleep at five in the morning. What do you think?”

  Gunn didn’t know what to think, so he thought about nothing.

  Thais sighed. “I think about so many irrelevant things.”

  “Me, too,” Gunn said intuitively. “Like, have you ever noticed that Andy Rooney says ‘Have you ever noticed’ a lot?”

  Thais sighed again, her eyes capsizing like a catamaran running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, which is the largest living thing on earth by the way. “But are you comfortable with this, with us, with our future?”

  “Oh. That. Yes.”

  “So I don’t have to be—”

  “No. As long as you’re clean.”

  “I bathed.”

  “Good. Um, there is one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I drank a lot of free coffee at the Dunkin Donuts this morning,” Thais said freely and without coughing. “It’s what we insensitive cops do, you know. We waltz into food franchises that have extremely small profit margins and drink away a percent or two of their profits every single day under the guise of providing protection for the storeowners. Anyway, my bladder is about to burst.”

  “Yes. Um, after you get some relief, then we can snuggle, neck, and generally do some serious networking.”

  Thais licked her lips, wishing she had bought stock in Chapstick. “Like giraffes and camels on the Discovery Channel,” she roared. “Like squirrels in your back yard,” she chattered. “Like worms in the mud,” she muttered.

  Primal attraction burned in him and shot through her like a bolt gun used to kill cows and pigs in slaughterhouses, which is so inhumane. Say you’re a cow waiting your turn to die. Humans have raised and fattened you since birth. You even kind of like them when they brush you, though they always miss brushing the spot that annoys you the most. You’re even smiling while you’re waiting, chewing your cud like bubble gum and wishing you could blow a big pink bubble like that freckled kid who gives you rotten apples that make your two stomachs hurt. You think that your bovine friends ahead of you are falling asleep and hitting the floor unusually fast, but you don’t sweat it because you’re a cow with several brain cells and think humans are really cool because they feed you all the time and let you wander all over creation eating food that gives you major gas that will one day destroy the ozone layer. You finally get to the front of the line. It’s your turn. You’re excited because you finally get the chance to get some much-needed sleep. I mean, it’s no barbecue picnic filling two stomachs every day and flatulating enough gas to fuel several large power plants in Rhode Island. You smile at the man with the bloody, gloved hand. He puts a cold piece of metal to your temple, and it feels so nice since that’s the place they always forget to brush then BAMMO! Down you go, your cud ejected into the darkness, a huge pink blood bubble spewing from your lips, your tongue preceding your head to the floor with a THWACK! It’s the last sound your furry, tagged ears will ever hear.

  “Oh, Cat, my darling!” Gunn mooed.

  “That’s not my name,” Thais uttered. “I am offended. I am affronted, insulted, outraged, piqued, stung, injured, wounded, cut, disobliged, lacerated, and quite not happy. At all. And I mean it.” She stamped her foot and partially threw out a hip. “You have tread on my toes, stomped on my feet, kicked me in the shins, and given my heart a Charley horse. I feel like a freshly killed, too-trusting cow who only wanted to blow a big, stupid pink bubble. I am no longer full of romantic feelings. Goodbye.”

  “Wait.”

  Thais waited.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  “Let me pee first,” Thais said, peeved. “I’ve had to pee for the last two pages.”

  Johnny had a sudden pang of conscience, and it startled him. He wondered if it were ladylike for a woman to say, “I have to pee.” It was what he said, but would Thais Knotts say it? Johnny consulted his trusty thesaurus. Would she say, “I have to urinate”? Of course not. Would she say, “I have to go make water”? Never. Thais has to pee, and why not? She’s a cop. She is tough and coarse. I could even have her cursing more to make her more colorful.

  Johnny had another epiphany.

  Color.

  I can make Thais foreign just like Gunn! This is wonderful! Two foreigners in an all-American romance! Perfect! American readers will love meeting new, um, Americans who aren’t really Americans. Now where can she be from? Let’s see …Thais can be … Thai! Yes!

  Johnny remembered his last battle with Thai food. He decided against Thais being Thai on principle and the nagging ache he still felt in his elbow from flushing fifty times in half an hour that night.

  Brazil! Brazilian women are sexy, tall, and athletic. All the women there either play soccer or date soccer players. I think.

  Thai became instantly Brazilian.

  After peeing, Thais spun on her heels and almost fell to the floor. Thais had sexy heels, tan heels worn smooth by the tan sands on the tan beaches and green soccer fields of her native Brazil. She had come to the United States after being named Miss Brazil as a teenager and scoring the winning goal against Uruguay in the World Cup, fell in love with American cuisine and all its trans fat, became a naturalized citizen, lied her way into UVA, graduated with a degree in political science, posed for a “Got milk?” ad, and became a low-paid cop.

  Thais threaded her way through a virtual minefield of Cat’s bric-a-brac littering the living room. She punted the robotic vacuum cleaner into the hallway as she eyed the Hummel figurines festering on bookshelves and on the fireplace mantel. She hated the sight of another woman’s stuff still taking up her man’s space, so she smashed all the Hummels with her furious tan fists of Brazilian fury, gleefully grinding a defenseless angel into angel dust with her smooth, sexy, tan Brazilian heel.

  “What in blue blazes are you doing?” Gunn blazed, feeling blue.

  “I’m erasing your past, Gunn,” Thais said, her heart racing. “You cannot live in the past, Gunn. It’s so wrong to do that, Gunn. You shouldn’t do it, Gunn. It’s a waste of time, Gunn. You need to live for now, Gunn. The past is past, Gunn. The future is now, Gunn. Live for the moment, Gunn. Live for now, Gunn. The past is passé, Gunn. The present is a present, Gunn.”

  She crushed a defenseless kitten Hummel. “The present is a gift you open every day of your life, and sometimes the box is empty and you get really crabby about it and break stuff and jump down the throats of people who love you just because you can. Sometimes it contains Lycra bicycle shorts, and though they’re usually more expensive, they never come back from the laundry the same. Sometimes you can’t remove the wrapping paper f
rom your life’s box without tearing it, and it flusterates you even though you know you’d never actually use the wrapping paper again on another present, I mean, who the heck is so freaking cheap that they would do that kind of thing? Sometimes you can’t get the tape off the box at all, so you stay in bed all day watching infomercials and Home Shopping Network and eating leftover sushi washed down by milk that’s way out of date and rattles like marbles in the carton. The future is a huge group of presents all piled under a huge Christmas tree called life, only you don’t have to water the tree to keep the needles from spilling all over your carpet, and they have yet to make an affordable American-made vacuum cleaner that can suck up every one of those needles. You have to bend down and use your fingers sometimes, and your fingertips get all piney and sappy. So, live for now, Gunn, or your life will be all sappy.”

  “But those Hummels belonged to my mother!” Gunn hummed maternally under his breath. “Other than her eyes, hair color, basic facial bone structure, her stringy nose hairs, half of my DNA, my decadent and daring sense of fashion, and my insatiable desire for hot pickles, those figurines were all I had left of her! I know you are coarse, sexy, and wise, but don’t take every memory I have of my mother away from me!”

  “This is good therapy,” Thais said therapeutically. She picked up a large gray vase with a lid on top. “It’s for your own good.” She threw the vase into the fireplace, a plume of gray powder filling the room. “You need to dust more often,” she said dustily.

  “No I don’t!” Gunn cried. “That … was … my … mother!”

  “Oops,” Thais said in her silly little girl’s voice. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think gray would be her color. I thought she would have been more of a warm tone woman. Orange. Yes, orange, like the color of the counter at a Quick-E Mart. Yes, that should have been the color of her urn.”

  Gunn crumpled to the floor like the New York Knicks basketball franchise since the retirement of Walt Frazier and the Cleveland Browns football franchise since they sneaked off to Baltimore only to reappear later as an expansion team and have really crummy drafts. “We called her the Lady Macduff,” Gunn called with a tear in his eye and a whimper in his voice as he sat on his duff. “This is such a Shakespearian tragedy!”

  “Um, doesn’t Macbeth have Lady Macduff whacked in that Scottish play?” Thais asked in a wacky way. Thais knew about the curse, and she wasn’t about to test it.

  Gunn looked up. “Yes, Shakespeare whacks, as you say in such a wacky manner, Lady Macduff only to accent Macbeth’s cruelty and provide a counterpoint to Lady Macbeth, who, like you, dear Thais, is in all respects a fine example of an archetypal femme fatale.”

  “Oh.”

  “And now the Lady Macduff rests on my floor,” Gunn whined restlessly on his duff.

  Thais wriggled her sexy tan toes in the dust. “She was certainly a big-boned lady,” Thais said with certainty. “I can see where you get your big bones,” Thais said with calcium in her voice. “Do you have a Wet-Vac?” she asked, sucking at her teeth.

  Gunn stood so he could crumple to the floor like an old dollar bill some cheap customer might give to a pizza delivery driver. “Mama! Mama!” he cried like a man who wanted his mama really, really badly.

  Johnny decided that this would be the perfect place to end this chapter. He had established angst, tension, maternal bone fragments, dead cows, a sexy Brazilian girlfriend who used the word “pee,” and several key literary references for graduate students to analyze for many semesters to come.

  It was the best chapter Johnny had ever written.

  And it fueled Johnny’s determination to keep writing. He had to know what was going to happen next, and if he were excited and intrigued, the reader would just have to turn the page. Will Thais continue to destroy Gunn’s past? Will Thais really vacuum Gunn’s mother? Will Gunn stop crumpling like NFL contracts to players who keep getting in trouble with the law? Will Gunn remain a tortured soul forever?

  Johnny had to pee, so he did.

  12

  He is such a tortured soul, Thais thought. He is tormented. He is suffering. He is grief-stricken. He is beleaguered, beset, and besieged.

  I am so alliterative, Thais thought alliteratively.

  And we’ve only just met, Thais thought. He’s chockfull of angst, and he doesn’t even know me yet. How quaint.

  And he loved his mama very, very much. I have to love a man who loved his mama very, very much. It makes him very, very manly.

  Thais felt a jolt go through her like the time she put a fork in an electrical socket one night back at UVA because all the other undergrads there were doing it. Then her thoughts caught like a split toenail on deep shag carpeting.

  O-M-G, she thought, one letter at a time. Am I falling in love? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Is this love? Is it? Is it really? Is it? Could it be? Could it? Could it really? Could it? Is he the one? Is he? Is he really? Is he? Am I the one for him? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Are Gunn and I a pair of star-crossed lovers in a dusty room covered with shattered Hummel figurines and the cremated remains of his mother, his most recent lover who I killed still somewhat warm and rotting in her grave?

  Johnny thought he heard organ music. He felt the beginnings of an interesting turn of events.

  He actually felt sleepy, but he kept on writing.

  But why would Thais kill Cat? Johnny had no idea, so he let his character do some thinking for him:

  Why did I kill her? Thais thought. Why? Why? Why would I kill Cat Mann? Why? Why? What possible motive could I have had? What? What? Why aren’t I thinking this all out loud with him in the room as they do on soap operas, which is so cheesy and retarded, I mean, who walks around telling their business to the world out loud? I mean, besides people standing in line on freaking cell phones talking loud enough to implode eardrums, then when they think you’re eavesdropping, they say something like, “Mind your own freaking business!” And you’re like, okay, wench, stop talking because you’re making your business everybody’s business, and no one gives a crap about Deron and how he done you wrong and if that skank keep comin’ on to him you gonna straighten dat—

  “Mama!” Gunn cried again. “Mama!”

  So why did I kill Cat? Thais thought. Why? I could say that I hate cats. That’s it. I hate cats, her name was Cat, thus her death. Very, very logical. It’s not the truth, of course, but if they ever catch me, I’ll plead insanity and they’ll send me to a psychiatric hospital to inhale happy pills and allow me to help the FBI solve similar crimes. I’d like that a lot since I need a quiet place to keep all my secrets in one place. I mean, it’s a really big secret about how Cat and I were sisters in Slovenia a long time ago and how I sold her to the circus once.

  “Eureka!” Johnny cried as the man upstairs repositioned himself in his bathtub. “Oh no! Here comes the trombone …”

  Blat.

  “Eww,” Johnny whispered, “he must eat a lot of chili.” He looked at the mice. “Just be glad that heat rises.”

  What would Gunn do, Thais continued to think for a long freaking time, if he knew that I was actually Scorpion’s sister coming from Slovenia to America via Brazil to wreak havoc with my sexy heels and my very big police-issue gun? He’d probably kill me. I guess I had better not tell him that. What would Gunn say if he knew he had been hot for both sisters of his mortal enemy? He’d probably think some pretty vile thoughts, and then he’d probably wait until I vacuumed up his mother before he killed me in a senselessly violent manner.

  “Mama!” Gunn cried for the fifth freaking time. “Mama!”

  I left no physical evidence, Thais continued to think, evidently, because I am an international terrorist and I watch CSI and Forensic Files all the time. I will never commit crimes in Miami, New York, or Las Vegas. The CSI techs in those cities are good, and they solve every crime in less than an hour if you ignore all the commercials, which I always do except for commercials that have clowns in them. Don’t ask me why. Clowns are good sales people. But wh
y does the detective in Miami always stand sideways when he talks to a suspect? That would tick me off. I’d say, “Yo, over here, redheaded detective.” But here I am …

  “Mama!” Gunn cried for the umpteenth time. “Mama!”

  Yes, here I am, Thais thought yet again, getting my thoughts interrupted by a manly man yelling “Mama!” like Marlon Brando yelled “Stella!” over and over until I just couldn’t stand it anymore. “Answer him, wench!!” I wanted to yell, but I knew she couldn’t hear me since it was an old movie and I know that movie people can’t really hear me. I am, after all, a UVA graduate who only once put a fork into an electrical socket. Yet here I am falling in love with Gunn even though he looks so pitiful covered in his mother’s bodily dust. What should I do? What should I say aloud? What can anyone say at a time like this? Do I confess my crimes, say, “I love you,” and expect Gunn to forgive me?

  I’ve heard it happens in a whopping pile of romance novels.

  I mean, the heroine catches the hero “bedding down a kitchen wench” yet forgives his cheating heart even when he says, “If you loved me, I wouldn’t have had to bed down the kitchen wench” and then he says, “I love you” to make it all better.

  I guess I could go ahead, assassinate Gunn, and make it look like he fell in the bathtub. Or, I could smother him with his own chest hair. A simple up-do, and he’s done. Do I do right by my creepy brother, who is really a wimp, cries at chick flicks, and is afraid of moths, and make what’s left of my family proud of me, or do I turn my sexy Slovenian, Brazilian, naturalized American heel on everyone—except Cat, who’s certainly dead as a doornail—whom I hold dear? I feel so much angst.

  Meanwhile, Gunn wept sad and sorrowful tears of sadness and sorrow for his mother, for Cat, for the mess in his living room, for the gradual decline of democracy as a functional government in a world increasingly given to socialism, and for the free market economy stymied by governmental tariffs, treaties, an incompetent Congress, and the slow-footed and chaotic UN.

  But when Gunn looked up, he saw Thais’s lips moving. It was a good thing he was once deaf thanks to a really bad job at a pharmacy with an old man named Gower, because Gunn could read those lips. “I feel so much angst,” those lips said. Thais, the cop with heels sculpted by warm Brazilian sands, was reaching out to him. Thais, the contortionist who taught him yoga position number thirty-four, was feeling angst. Thais, who had asked him lovingly to Wet-Vac his mother’s big-boned ashes, was crying for his help.