Clichéd Love: A Satirical Romance

by Lynn Galli

  My head gave a full shake this time. I needed to end these snide thoughts. It wasn’t fair to my subjects. They didn’t know how ordinary and sometimes boring their stories sounded. They thought they were living something original. And of course, they were, since no two stories were identical, but damn, some of them were very similar.

  A hand landed on my back. Not the sharp slap that Riley usually gave. Not the soft caresses that Adrian/Sawyer sometimes gave. Not Lane’s quick tap whenever she delivered a drink. This was a gentle hand placement meant to both alert me to her presence and a greeting.

  “Tough one?” Iris sat next to me and took her hand back.

  “I was kind of an ass, actually.”

  She tipped her chair into a balance on its back legs, amusement livening her face. “Because you don’t think waiting in line for hours outside with a group of people only to get married at the same time as four other couples is the most romantic idea for a wedding?”

  I let out a relieved laugh. I might have been an asshole, but at least someone else shared my critical stance. “It wouldn’t be my choice, no, but I do understand how it would work for those people who waited years to be legally married and didn’t want to wait anymore. As long as eloping is fine for both partners, have at it. It was heartening to read about all those couples who married the first day they could in this state. They have a story to be proud of for the rest of their lives. My main hang up with those two was that one partner wanted a real wedding and her spouse-to-be seemed more interested in making a statement than marrying the love of her life.”

  Iris contemplated that with a nod. “You know the worst part? There’s a three-day mandatory waiting period after obtaining your marriage license in this state. They had time to plan for something more intimate with their friends and family. It might not have been everything Alex wanted, but it wouldn’t have been any less important than going down to City Hall.”

  The waiting period was news to me. Made me feel worse for Alex Two, also known as Alex Who Didn’t Get Her Wedding. My gaze traveled over Iris. “You really do know everyone’s story, don’t you?”

  “Only the best ones.” She looked me over. “Missed you in here last night. Took a night off?”

  “Nope, doing the other side of the competition.”

  Her mouth drew into a thin line of concentration. “I could make you tell me, you know.”

  “You could just detect it, private eye lady.”

  That got a laugh. “Still don’t believe me?”

  I shrugged to give her a hard time.

  “Come out with me tomorrow.”

  I started forward in my seat. “What?”

  “I’m doing surveillance work tomorrow. Come out with me.”

  “Like a stakeout?”

  She laughed at the excited look on my face. “Exactly like that.”

  “Really?” I had work to do, but suddenly I didn’t care. I’d never been on a stakeout before. As a journalist, I’d done a lot of research and been in some tight situations, but I hadn’t done a stakeout before.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  My eyes narrowed. I’d seen enough cop shows to know that couldn’t be true.

  Her hand waved off my skepticism. “Maybe not fun, but fun to have you around.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I tried to tone down my excitement, but she saw right through it.

  “I’ll swing by your building at ten tomorrow morning.” She patted my back and headed over to chat with Lane. I stopped watching as soon as another tipsy patron caught her eye and she worked her magic again.

  “She’s not the marrying kind,” Alex Two spoke from a foot away.

  I wanted to groan out loud, but since I’d already been rude to her before, I turned with a polite smile. “What makes you say that?”

  “She’s never once had a long-term relationship.”

  Neither had I really. Did that make me the “not marrying kind” also? “You know her that well, do you?”

  “Well, no, but she’s in here every night and has been for years.”

  Which proved absolutely nothing. “Is it possible that she doesn’t cook or that her best friend is the bartender?”

  She contemplated that but brushed it off almost as quickly. “Just a warning, babe.”

  Not her babe, and she didn’t have the right to warn me. “Don’t need it, thanks.”

  “She’s taken an interest in you,” she persisted, her hand coming down to grip my shoulder for emphasis. “When she sets her sights, she doesn’t relent.”

  “We’re friends.” Clearly these women didn’t know Iris well enough to know when she was being friendly and when she was on the hunt.

  “That’s what I said about Alex when I met her, and look where we ended up?”

  On the steps of City Hall, settling for a ceremony among a hundred and fifty other couples when she wanted a real wedding. I barely managed to keep from asking, “Did you wear socks and sandals at your wedding too?” Instead, I smiled and nodded like she made any sense.

  7 |

  Hazel eyes stared up at me from the photo I’d checked a hundred times already. I tried to memorize the sweep of his dark hair, the stoop of his shoulders, and the set of his jaw, so if he did show up on the street we were watching, I could spot him. If ever in this lifetime he showed up. Stakeouts were boring. If not for Iris, I’d have willfully returned to listening to Alex and Alex’s entire life story.

  “Believe me yet?” Iris offered the last of the grapes she’d thoughtfully packed.

  As with our other outings, we’d had no trouble coming up with topics of conversation to fill the hours sitting in the car. She also understood the intent of every comment I made. Never once did I fret about offending her with whatever snarky thing I said. Now, she was asking if I believed she was a PI again, somehow reading my mind.

  “This would be a pretty elaborate set up if we weren’t really here to watch this guy. Why are we doing this, by the way?”

  “Three hours in, and you’re just now asking?” She gave an amused shake of her head. “I like the way your mind works, lady.”

  My eyes caught on four people leaving the apartment building we’d been watching. All men, all tall enough, one with dark hair and a little stooped. Possibly our target. I’d brushed up on my cop show lingo last night in preparation.

  Iris sat up straighter and grabbed for her camera, using the telephoto lens to zoom in. “Not him.” She set the camera back on the console between us.

  “He’s wanted for staying indoors too long?” I guessed.

  She laughed. “Insurance fraud. I get calls from a few adjusters I know when they have suspicions but not a big enough settlement to justify assigning their in-house investigator.”

  “What’s his fraud?”

  “Slip and fall. He’s racking up chiropractor bills to make him appear more injured than he is.” She methodically closed the empty grapes bag and placed it into the small cooler she had in her backseat. Her car’s interior was spotless, probably because she spent years at a time in the car, surveilling people who NEVER CAME OUTSIDE.

  “How do you know he’s not?” My reporter’s habit of playing devil’s advocate often helped me get all sides of a story.

  “That’s why we’re here.” She didn’t feel the need to get defensive, which propelled her upward a few rungs on the ladder of admiration. “The insurance adjuster had a feeling after talking to the guy. He asked me to look into it.”

  “I thought most PIs spent their time trying to catch cheating spouses.”

  She cut a glance at me. “Most do, but I don’t take those kinds of cases.”

  “Must be nice.” What I wouldn’t give to be able to pick and choose my assignments. Of course, that’s why I’d pitched this freelance series. It could pave the way for more work of my choosing rather than scrambling to find another paper to staff.

  “I make enough with these claimant and employee fraud cases to cover my expenses. I don’t need to work sixteen-ho
ur days to close active investigations anymore. Once my pension kicks in at fifty-five, I can cut back even more if I want.”

  Having worked plenty of sixteen-hour days, researching, interviewing, investigating, and writing, I always appreciated when I could take a break from that and live on savings or write unessential pieces that didn’t take the same amount of effort. “Does your ass ever fall asleep?”

  Her eyes dropped down to my ass, or my hip because I was sitting on my ass. “It’s a learned skill,” she said in a steady voice, looking away to hide the fact that I’d caught her trying to check out my ass. “Need another break?”

  “I’m good for now. I’ll walk to that sandwich shop over there and get us some lunch in a little bit.”

  “May not have to.” Iris grabbed her camera again and checked the guy walking out of the apartment complex’s door. “That’s him.” She snapped several photos of a guy who walked with ease down the street. He didn’t look injured, but that wasn’t always evident.

  “What did he injure?”

  “Back, neck, hip, and shoulder according to the insurance adjuster. He showed up for his interview in a neck brace and shoulder sling and needed to sit with a pillow at his back.”

  I made a disbelieving sound. He definitely didn’t look that injured now. Before I could ask what she had planned, she adjusted a tiny video camera suctioned to her dash, handed me the digital camera, and reached for her door latch. “What?”

  “Just keep taking photos.” She dropped out of the driver’s seat of her SUV and went around to the back hatch. With a soft grunt she hauled a cumbersome looking box from the cargo area and onto the ground a few steps away. “Don’t let him see you.”

  It took a few seconds before her words dawned on me. “Oh, come on. You’re not going to Silence of the Lambs him, are you?”

  “Don’t make me laugh, or I’ll blow it.”

  “I’ll move over there.”

  She followed the direction of my finger point to the alcove of another apartment complex. “Careful shutting the door. I don’t want him to look over and see you.”

  I slipped out of the car. Adrenaline surged, which was ridiculous since I’d been on dangerous assignments before. All I was doing here was positioning myself for a good shot if she managed to get this guy to fall for her creep-with-a-heavy-object-that-needed-to-get-into-her-creepy-van bit. My hands trembled as I brought the camera up to my eye. One at a time, I shook them out to steady them.

  As predicted, the guy noticed the cute woman bent at the waist—or noticed her ass sticking up—trying to struggle the large parcel into the back of her car. My breath held as several emotions flickered across the guy’s face. He liked the ass, liked her whole body, but was it worth the hassle of helping her? When she stood up, wiped her brow, and let out an exaggerated groan, he decided that he’d probably never get a better chance to be a hero to some attractive woman. So, that was why she’d worn makeup today. At most I’d seen her in eyeliner, but she was wearing that, shadow, some base, and colored lip gloss today. The scoop neck tight shirt showed a good amount of skin, and the slacks molded to her ass. This guy didn’t stand a chance of resisting.

  “Hey there, need some help?” He offered, jogging over to her.

  My finger pressed down on the shutter release as Iris played her part perfectly. If I didn’t know she wasn’t planning to push him into the back of her SUV and throw him down a well where she’d force him to put lotion on himself, I’d be a little frightened at how easily she could take this guy right off the street.

  Not only did she convince him to solely lift the awkward and heavy package up and into the cargo area, but she had him jump up there to tie it down, bending this way and that with absolutely no grimaces of pain or stiffness showing. This dude was such a faker I wouldn’t be surprised if he lied about his name, too.

  After getting what I assumed was a bogus phone number for Iris, he gave a deep bow when she applauded him, and sauntered off, not one limp or back seize in his step. All the while, I’d been taking snap after snap of his show of strength and flexibility. And fraud.

  “Get in, we’re following,” Iris said from the now open driver’s side window.

  I rushed forward as if avoiding a sniper. I had no idea why I was crouched and darting. It must be the adrenaline making me do weird things, including jumping into the passenger seat as if the car was in motion. At least the window wasn’t open, or I might have tried getting in Dukes of Hazzard style.

  I faced her as she cranked the ignition. “I can’t believe you almost made him put the lotion in the basket.”

  She laughed loudly and flipped a U-ie, heading to the intersection where the guy had turned the corner. We crept along because he was on foot, but found it wasn’t necessary when he ducked into the second building on the block.

  “His gym,” Iris said when she pulled into a parking spot across from the wide expanse of windows that allowed us an unobstructed view inside the gym. “Jeez, this guy is an idiot.”

  “Do most people do this? So blatantly?” I handed her the camera.

  Her eyes flicked to me before looking through the viewfinder. Our guy was starting into a run on a treadmill that faced the street. Big surprise he’d chosen a machine that allowed him to be noticed by everyone walking by. She started taking photos, sparingly unlike me, and set the camera in her lap. She clicked through some of the photos I’d taken. “Did you lift your finger at all?”

  Heat touched my cheeks. “I didn’t want to miss anything.”

  “You did well, thanks. And to answer your question, yeah, when they think they’ve gotten away with it, they’re blatant as hell. One interview, fill out a few forms, they think they’re in the clear.”

  “So his doctor is in on it?” I felt my mouth pinch in distaste.

  “Chiropractor. That’s the key.” She caught my look of distaste and nodded approvingly. “A doctor takes x-rays or MRIs, makes note of the patient’s pain, but once the scans come back clear, a doctor won’t keep writing prescriptions. Chiropractors depend on repeat business. Chronic pain that can’t be explained. They aren’t prescribing medication. They’re giving temporarily relief to chronic pain. It’s an ambulance chaser’s dream.”

  That made sense and wasn’t as sinister as when I’d thought it might be a medical conspiracy. “I see. Get adjustments three times a week, rack up the medical bills to make the injury legit? Let me guess, he’s not able to work either?”

  “Exactly. You could run the fraud division now.”

  I sat up straighter. Damn right, I could run the fraud division. I had a stakeout under my belt and could stealth with the best of them. Then again, maybe not. “I could never entice someone into the back of my creepy van.”

  Her eyes drifted over me as she laughed again. “You’d need a van first.”

  “This was fun.”

  “It was. I appreciate the help.”

  “Glad to.” Genuinely. I hoped to do it again.

  “I’ll buy you a beer tonight if you’re going to the bar?”

  “Tomorrow night.” I was already feeling the disappointment of not being able to collect on that beer tonight. “I’m stuck interviewing at another place tonight.”

  She cut a sly look at me before raising the camera to snap a few final photos of Captain Uninjured America across the street. “You’ll tell me about the angle soon. I can feel it.”

  I could, too. She was becoming a good enough friend to drop my guard around her.

  8 | Gayle & Paul

  Their story began with him falling out of an elevator on top of her. Oh, the romance of it all. I shiver to think something that blissful might happen to me one day.

  “And then I go, ‘Yo, babe, you make a good pillow.’ She totally fell for me.” The balance-challenged guy, Paul, came across as a typical jock. Or former jock, I should say, since his protruding belly indicated he no longer played sports. Or he was pregnant.

  My eyes shifted to take in Gayle. She didn’t
look as enamored by the “meet cute” story he was spinning as she must have been when they’d first gotten together. “He really fell out of the elevator right on top of you?”

  Paul didn’t let her answer. “I was sloshed. Just came back from this killer party at the frat I was rushing and could hardly stay upright.”

  If he’d been a woman, he probably wouldn’t have made it out of the house without being repeatedly molested. Instead, being a guy, he was able to leave the party unharmed and somehow find a woman to fall on top of.

  “I was waiting to get on the elevator. He fell out as soon as the doors opened,” Gayle clarified.

  “On top of you?”

  “Toward me. I tried to break his fall, but we both ended up on the ground.”

  Ah. The real story. Not on top of her, but onto the ground while reaching for anything to break his fall and blindly lucked into a woman half his size. Charming.

  “You’ve been together ever since?”

  “We dated on and off for a few years, but yeah,” Paul agreed.

  On and off? No doubt code for: I slept around but she better not have, or we wouldn’t be together now. My eyes flicked to Gayle again. Hers wouldn’t meet mine. This was likely her permanent expression whenever she took her husband out in public and let him talk.

  “Did you live together first?”

  “Hell yeah,” Paul said. “I wasn’t marrying someone who can’t handle how I am around the house.”

  Translation: I lounge in front of a television in my boxers every weekend and eat whatever she fixes for me and fart whenever I feel like it with no regard for my girlfriend in the room. Yeah, I knew guys like this. I even knew a woman like this. She’d added a tank top to her boxer clad body, but all the rest—doing whatever she wanted and farting freely because she didn’t want any falseness between us—yep. One afternoon of that, and I decided I was completely fine with “falseness” if it meant I didn’t have to listen to or smell gassy emissions from the woman I was seeing. Call me uptight, but I didn’t see anything wrong with keeping up a polite veneer, at least until we were hopelessly in love. Even then, really, but that was my own preference. There was even a study that showed how much more likely those kinds of habits caused couples to break up. Nothing like stats to back up my uptightness.