The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written

by H. M. Mann

  “She’s working that puzzle. She’s more than halfway done already.”

  Trying to impress her daddy, no doubt. Bet she misses him already.

  “Would you like to speak to her?” Gloria asked.

  No. I don’t have a French accent or long, curly hair. “It’s okay. I have a lot of deliveries to make.” All none of them.

  “Well, are you coming over after your shift?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “Won’t Paul be back?”

  “I doubt it. I told him to leave.”

  This should be good. Let’s see how creative she can be. “Why did you tell him to leave? He seemed like such a nice guy.”

  “I told him to beat it so Mama wouldn’t kill him.”

  Uh-huh. Right. “Why would she ever want to kill him?” Johnny heard a door close on Gloria’s end. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the bathroom with the door closed,” Gloria whispered. “Mama and Angel are downstairs.”

  Strange time to try keeping secrets in that house. “Is the toilet roll coming over the top or from the bottom?”

  “Over the top, of course.”

  Like this little tale I’m about to hear. “So, why did your mama want to kill precious Paul?”

  “Mama wanted to kill him because, well, he pretty much said I trapped him into a baby, said I was irresponsible, called me coarse and uncivilized, that sort of thing. I, um, I told him to leave.”

  With your hand caressing his massive French Riviera chest. She should be the one writing romances, not me.

  “He’s not interested in me at all, Johnny.”

  Ah. Paul is playing hard to get. What woman doesn’t like that? Obviously, Gloria wasn’t playing hard to get. I bet she won’t wash her hand for a week.

  “Once he saw Angel, he just wanted to, I don’t know, gush over what he had made,” Gloria said. “He’ll be leaving again for South America in May, so he won’t be around long.”

  He’ll be around for …almost three months. Almost long enough to have a relationship with Gloria as long as mine was. Great. “You and Angel have passports?”

  “What?”

  “Passports. They let you go to other countries without them throwing you jail.”

  “No. Why should we have passports?”

  Oh, don’t play coy with me, Missy Marie Antoinette. Time to use the guillotine. “Y’all sure had me fooled.”

  “What?”

  “Y’all were certainly the happy family when I came in.” Pretty as a picture.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She’s good at playing coy. “You and Paul and baby girl make three. A family.”

  “Johnny, we haven’t been a happy family in over a month.”

  That was a pretty original evasion, but I’m not buying it. “I’ll bet Angel misses her smart, interesting father already.”

  “Not really. She only shook his hand when he left.”

  I shook hands with my father, too. What does that prove?

  “And he’s not that smart and definitely not that interesting,” Gloria said. “You can’t be jealous of him.”

  “Oh, he’s just the man you slept with, that’s all, here in all his fabulous French flesh.”

  “What? When Paul was only some guy from my past, you had no problems with him.”

  “But now he’s here.” And you’re pawing him? Should I say that now? Better wait for the precise moment. Timing is everything in a romance gone bad.

  “Like I said, he’ll be leaving.” Gloria sighed. “Look, Johnny, it’s been kind of an emotional night for me, okay, and I really have to talk to you.”

  I’m feeling pretty peachy myself. I’m single-handedly ruining Hector’s business and becoming unemployed and unemployable. I’m also probably permanently single.

  “Did you do any writing while, um, while you were away?” Gloria asked.

  Ah. Trying to change the subject, are you? Well, let’s see. I lost my Muse and stopped writing. Oh, and the diarrhea. Yep. That kept me from the computer. No electrical outlets in the bathroom, and the computer’s useless battery only makes it weigh more. “I am thinking of writing something new. Want to hear the plot outline?” He heard the gas pump click. That was quick.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. But bear with me on this one. It’s kind of realistic. There’s this average guy who falls in love with an average girl, but the average girl doesn’t fall in love with the average guy even though the average girl probably does love the average guy.”

  “Johnny, I—”

  “And then,” Johnny interrupted, “a seriously creepy Frenchman shows up to claim the average girl’s extraordinary daughter, only the average girl’s mama, who is really her grandma, wants to kill the seriously creepy Frenchman because the seriously creepy Frenchman says that the average girl is irresponsible.”

  “Johnny, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “And then, the average guy sees the average girl putting her above average hands all over the seriously creepy Frenchman’s chest and acting all shy, the way she used to act with the average guy, who is the dum-dum she fed Dum-Dums to. Would you read that ridiculous story?”

  “Johnny, you’re reading way too much into … Hey! You were watching us?”

  “The Vega cut off a few blocks away,” Johnny said. Kind of true. It cut off when I turned the key. “So I saw everything, Gloria.”

  “You didn’t see anything!”

  “How hard is his chest, Gloria?”

  “Oh, Johnny, I was fussing with him!”

  “By feeling out his pectorals? Interesting way to fuss with a man.”

  “I was fussing with him! If you had heard what I was saying to him, you would know that I—”

  “I heard your body language, Gloria,” Johnny interrupted. “You were all over him.”

  Gloria sighed. “Okay, I put my hand on his chest, but I did it so he’d know that I meant business. You have to believe me that there is nothing going on with that man.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Johnny!”

  “Hey, have you told him that you probably will never say ‘I love you’ to him?” Johnny asked. “He might want to know that from the jump.”

  “Johnny, what is going on with you?”

  Nothing. Nothing is going on, and it’s about as exciting as watching boogers dry on pizza boxes. This conversation, though. This conversation has had its moments.

  “Look. I never told you I loved you—”

  “So why are we talking?” Johnny interrupted, completely un-casual no longer. “Water under the bridge, that ship has sailed, quit beating a dead horse.” He checked the coin return and found a British sixpence. Am I in the queue again? I kind of am where Gloria’s concerned. I’m at the end of the queue. At least I have a sixpence for my trouble.

  “Johnny, please listen.”

  “Over. Done. Finished. The end.” I am the thesaurus I barely read.

  “Just let me finish, will you?”

  Johnny stared at “Crystal and Joe 4-Ever” scratched into the metal shelf. If I had a chisel, I could change the “4” to an “N.” Sorry, Crystal and Joe. You put your love on one of the last payphones on earth, so you deserve to end. “Go right ahead.”

  “I never told you I love because I wasn’t sure at the time.”

  “I was sure.”

  “I know you were, and I hope you still are, and I wished and prayed that I’d feel as sure as you did. I just … didn’t, okay?”

  What’s the old saying? Don’t assume or … something. “I know you are”? That ship has sailed, too. “This all sounds pretty ridiculous to me.”

  “I was confused, all right? I mean, I couldn’t tell you I loved you if it wasn’t true, right?”

  “You said that already. It makes me feel swell to hear it again.”

  “Johnny, let me finish!”

  I’ll bet her eyes are little dots right now. I’ll probably miss those eyes. So brown. So penetrating.


  “Johnny, I didn’t know I loved you until you went away,” Gloria said.

  Johnny dropped the phone and left it there for a moment. He picked it up. “Now that is ridiculous, Gloria.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “How isn’t it? You knew you loved me because I disappeared for a month?”

  “Yes.”

  “By that logic, you should be languishing near death’s door for Paul right now. He disappeared for five years!”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “And if I stay away forever, you’ll love me even more.”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  Johnny smiled at several customers leaving Quick-E-Mart. A man gave him a thumb’s up sign. Guess he didn’t like Gladys either. She had such a rotten counter-side manner. “So if I did show up at your house one night, you wouldn’t love me because I was there.”

  “That’s not what I meant!”

  “Then tell me what you do mean.”

  “I’ve never loved anyone before.”

  That … that I believe, Johnny thought. I wish she had told me before now. Ah. C’est la vie. If Americans spout French like that to sound smart, do French people say, “Such is life” to sound smart over there? There are far too many unanswered questions in the universe.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Gloria asked in the smallest voice.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t have anything to say about it?”

  “No.”

  Major silence.

  Johnny let the silence last a long time. It had a fuzzy, whooshing sound, like the sound of soda that was almost but not quite flat.

  “But I think—no. I know that I love you, Johnny.”

  This is an unforeseen plot complication. Now she loves me. What does the romance novel handbook say to do about a situation like this?

  Johnny weighed his options. He could challenge her and continue to argue, or he could fall completely apart, start to blubber, shriek her name over and over again, and drive like a bat out of hell over to her house, break down the door, and yell, “Here’s Johnny!”

  He decided to argue. Gunn would agree with me on this. “Say that again.”

  “I love you, Johnny.”

  “Because I’m not there, right?”

  “No. I’d love you if you were here with me.”

  Gotcha. “But if you never loved anyone before, Gloria, how do you know you really love me now?”

  Silence.

  This particular silence sounded like steady rain drumming on something soft like a damp cardboard box. It even had a little rhythm to it, though Johnny wasn’t about to dance to it.

  “I know I love you now because … because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because I cry over you. Because I miss you so much. I love you.”

  Johnny decided to bring out the big guns now. “So that little phrase is just supposed to remove all my pain and hurt?” And my diarrhea. That would be nice.

  “I hope so, Johnny. Please come visit me tonight. I just want to hold you.”

  As much weight as we’ve both lost, I bet we could fit on that loveseat now, but … Paul the Frenchman still lurks in her life, I saw what I saw, and Angel … I can never be much of anything to Angel now. “You really just want to hold me?”

  “Yes, Johnny. Really.”

  Time for an ungraceful, rude exit. “I gotta go.”

  “Will you come by later?”

  Johnny sighed. “You’ll be the first one to know, Gloria. Bye.”

  He hung up and walked through the parking lot and got into the Vega. She says she loves me, yet she paws pompous Paul on the porch. Thirty days ago, she didn’t love me when I was deeply involved in her life. Now that I’ve vanished … she loves me. You never know what you’ve had till it’s gone, eh? But if I show up again, will she still love me? Maybe I’m just naturally lovable from a distance. Maybe I’m just one of those distant lovers Marvin Gaye sang about. Maybe familiarity does breed contempt. Maybe the less she sees me, the more she’ll love me, and if I disappear for real …

  I’ll be the ultimate love of her life.

  All this made as much sense to Johnny as a Pomeranian wearing a sweater in Miami, so he drove out of the lot, drifted over to the right lane, and rolled to a stop at a stoplight that had just turned yellow. A prick in a Jeep honked his horn and swerved around him, running a red light. The prick also flashed his middle finger to Johnny.

  Another Frenchman, Johnny thought. They’re so proud of the one war they’ve ever won.

  The light turned green, and after a series of cacophonous coughs and a thick plume of purple smoke, the Vega turned off.

  And stayed off.

  Oh sure, Johnny thought. All this would happen in one freaking night in a romance novel. Sure. He’s lost his lady to the suave European, and now his horse is dead. What could be worse?

  Luckily traffic was thin and his flashers still worked.

  Unluckily, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a police cruiser easing in behind him. An officer soon walked toward his window and waved several drivers around him, flashing blue and white lights clashing with the purple haze.

  People driving by probably think I’m a criminal, Johnny thought. Yeah, same to you, buddy! You wish you could have a car from a really cool century. You wish you had a car that belched purple smoke.

  Johnny rolled down his window and smiled at the officer. “It does this occasionally. She’ll start up in no time.”

  “Should I call for a tow, sir?” the cop asked.

  Always cracking on the Vega. “No sir. She’ll start up eventually.”

  The cop flashed his beam into the back seat. “Delivering pizzas?”

  No, actually I’m stealing warming bags. They’re worth at least a dime apiece at pawnshops these days. I’m going to make a fortune and own this town one day, yes sir! “Yes sir. Just finished my last run. On my way to the store for another batch of pizzas.”

  The cop flashed his beam on the Vega’s Virginia state inspection sticker. “This passed inspection?”

  Two cracks on the Vega in the last minute. “Yes sir. She might not look like much, but she runs like a dream. Usually.”

  Johnny held his breath and turned the key. The Vega whimpered to life.

  The cop coughed. “I’d get your transmission looked at.”

  Ya think? Johnny nodded. “Yes sir.”

  “You have a good evening, sir.”

  Good? It can only get better now that I’ve been accosted by the cops. “Thanks.”

  After the cruiser pulled around him, Johnny coaxed the Vega another eight blocks to park in front of Señor Pizza. The Vega seemed to sigh when Johnny turned off the ignition. That’s a new sound. Maybe my horse is just tired.

  While Johnny was collecting the warming bags from his back seat, a Jeep roared into the parking lot and skidded next to the Vega.

  A burly man jumped out of his Jeep flailing his arms. “What kinda driving was that? I nearly wrecked! You shouldn’t have a license to drive! I’m gonna tell your boss, ya prick! You’re gonna lose your job!”

  This … I am going to handle this.

  Johnny kicked the Vega’s door open with a bang, shot out, and slapped the warming bags on the Vega’s roof. He took off his coat and his doofy uniform shirt and hat in a flash and stepped up to the bigger man, cracking his knuckles and neck at the same time. “I don’t know, chief. I kinda drive like a convicted felon, you know, cuz I can’t find another freaking job.”

  The man took a step backwards.

  “You know, I kinda miss the joint,” Johnny said, stalking slowly towards the man and shaking out his arms. “Felt right at home there, you know? Kind of miss the great chow they got there, you know? Salisbury steak and fake spuds with the brown mushroom gravy. Real good chow.”

  “I, um, I—”

  “And now you got a problem with my driving.” Johnny shrugged. “I could get me some of that Salisbury steak … tonight, you kn
ow? Yeah. Tonight.”

  The man stumbled and fell against his Jeep. “No problems, man.”

  Johnny cocked his head sideways. “Then why the freak did you roll up on me like that, ya prick?”

  The man opened his door, smiled weakly, backed out his Jeep, and tore out of the parking lot.

  That’s what I thought, Johnny thought. Ow, my knuckles.

  Johnny collected his uniform shirt and hat and the warming bags and entered the store. He dumped the bags and his fanny pack on the counter and draped his uniform shirt over the cash register. Then he went to the make table for the very first time.

  “What are you doing?” Hector asked. “Get away from there! And why are you out of uniform?” A phone rang. “Señor Pizza, can you hold?”

  Johnny took the dough out of a medium pan and spread it out it on a large metal tray. He took dough out of one small pan, tore it in half, and attached the halves to the medium. Hello, Mickey. I think I might be able to digest you tonight. And if not, at least my toilet won’t trap you and throw you back at me in the form of Texas tea.

  “I ask you again, Johnny,” Hector said. “What do you think you are you doing?”

  Johnny smiled, adding circles of sauce to the ears and face. “This is a Mickey Mouse operation, so I’m making a Mickey Mouse pizza.”

  Hector pointed to the counter. “But there are deliveries to be made!”

  I know, but I just don’t care. Johnny smiled broadly. I … just … don’t … care.

  “You must take them right now, Johnny!”

  Step aside, Hector, and let a master chef work. “Carryout only for the rest of the night. Either that or get your cousin to drive for you, I don’t care.” I am suddenly feeling managerial for some reason. I’ve had a pretty decent night ordering people around. I wonder if Quick-E Mart has ever hired an engineering major a few classes short of a master’s degree to be a manager-in-training.

  “Are you sick in the head?” Hector asked.

  “Not so much now, but the diarrhea comes and goes,” Johnny said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Johnny spread a huge heap of cheese over Mickey, adding two pepperoni eyes, a pepperoni nose, and a seven-pepperoni mouth. He slid the tray into the oven.