A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  She slurped down the dregs of her second drink. These things tasted better than hard rock candy. She wouldn't mind pouring this stuff over her Cheerios.

  Dana didn't drink all that much. She never had. She already felt like her life was out of control and drinking seemed to exacerbate that feeling. But between Kimmy's philandering and her own incessant toothache, Dana figured self-medication was warranted.

  The alcohol helped with her toothache, especially when she swished it around in her mouth before she swallowed. She could still feel the pain, but now she didn't care. The throbbing was persistent, but it was more like a distant third cousin on Thanksgiving who was relegated to sitting at the kid's table.

  Dana moved her jaw from side to side and listened to it pop.

  Bubble wrap.

  She wondered what scared-hair woman was doing. Was she sitting next to big-hair woman? Were they exchanging pheromones and phone numbers? Was she in there talking about how she bottomed out, woke up homeless on the street, sold handjobs in dark alleyways and then vowed to get sober and straighten her life out? Did she start drinking because some woman broke her heart?

  Dana could kick herself. She finally met a woman she could relate to, maybe even enjoy talking to and what did she do? She ran away. And got drunk. And the woman was a recovering alcoholic.

  She slurped some of the ice cubes into her mouth and crunched. She shouldn't be thinking about this woman. She should be concentrating on how to get her relationship with Kimmy back on track. Or rather, how to catch her cheating butt so she could break up with her and be free to pursue women with pokey hair.

  Ouch! Note to self: don't crunch ice on a broken molar.

  She stuck her finger in her mouth and gingerly touched the sore tooth.

  Dana woke up every morning with an aching jaw from clenching her teeth while she slept. She didn't grind, she clenched. In fact, she clenched so hard and so often that she finally snapped off her second molar. Last week, she had given in to the pain, opened her hemophiliac wallet (it bled money non-stop) and went to see her dentist, Dr. Asshole (not his real name.)

  "Open wide," Dr. Asshole said, aiming a lethal-looking hypodermic needle toward Dana's face. "You're going to feel a little prick."

  "That's a joke, right?"

  "What?"

  "Open your mouth? Feel a little prick?"

  His smile turned upside down. The rest of the exam got worse from there.

  "You're clenching your teeth in your sleep," A-hole explained. "You have too much stress. I can make you a night guard to wear."

  "How about you write me a script for valium instead?" she asked.

  This time he laughed. And Dana wasn't trying to be funny; she was dead serious. He fitted her with a temporary crown to wear until her new gold crown was made. She chose gold because she liked the bling factor. She imagined herself sipping a dry martini at a cocktail party, pinky finger extended, laughing at her own joke. She tilted her head back and laughed and—bling bling bling!—people were awestruck by the flash of gold and the twinkle in her smile like in the toothpaste commercials.

  She would be the only white person in Oklahoma with a gold tooth. It would be her distinguishing characteristic if they ever had to identify her body.

  Dr. Ass of Hole burst her bubble when he said, "The crown's too far back in your mouth to be seen."

  The temporary crown that he stuck over her ground-down-to-a-nub molar had fallen out twice. The first time it fell into the toilet bowl while she was brushing her teeth and peeing at the same time. (She liked to multitask boring activities.) She had to boil it before she stuck it back in her mouth. The second time it fell out when she was painting her privacy fence like Tom Sawyer (except she couldn't con her friends into painting it for her.) The crown plunked into the open can of paint. She had to boil it that time too. She finally got smart and stuck it back on with some crusty Polident that she found in Maw Maw's bathroom.

  Since then Dana had had trouble sleeping at night not only because of the teeth-clenching but because she was scared that she was going to suck the temporary crown down her windpipe and suffocate like how Tennessee Williams did with that cap to the nasal spray.

  The bartender brought another drink to her table. "Hey," Dana slurred. "This one's not white."

  "You drank all the milk. What do you think this is, the Dairy Barn?"

  She handed him a ten-spot. "Keep the change."

  Why'd I do that? He's mean to me and I give him a tip. Trudy's right, I let people walk all over me.

  "Thanks for the tip," he said, walking away.

  Dana grabbed his arm and spun him around. "You want a real tip?"

  Resigned to listening to drunks, he shrugged. Dana raised her voice so she could be heard over Carrie's singing and said, "Don't ever fall in love!"

  Everybody in the bar turned to look at her. Dana hopped up onto her chair and pointed her drink accusingly at all five patrons. "There's no such thing as true love!" She gestured at each person, "There's no such thing as romance! It's all a sham to sell Valentines cards and chocolate. There's only lust and pheromones and loneliness and the need to procreate." When she said “procreate,” she demonstrated with a few pelvic thrusts so her audience wouldn't miss the point. "Women are bitches! Every last one of 'em, stone cold bitches! They'll rip your heart out and feed it to the pigs! Whoops." That last “whoops” part was because she slung half her drink in a wild arc across the floor when she gestured a little too emphatically.

  The bartender frowned. "You're cut off."

  "Eff you," Dana mumbled. She swung a loose fist at the bartender. Unfortunately, she had forgot she was standing on a chair so when she swung she ended up crashing to the floor. She raised what was left of her drink above her head and clunked it on the table. Then she grabbed the chair and pulled herself up and into it.

  Dana grabbed her drink, toasted the patrons and downed it. The bartender shook his head and walked away. Then she slumped over the table with her head in her arms.

  She was down to her last effing drink. Her last effing dollar. Her last effing chance at effing love. Effing Carrie Undereffingwood should sing a song about that. Or maybe she'd write a book about it. That was the ticket. She'd write a book about Kimmy and all this crapola.

  ***

  Dana had been writing The Great American Novel for the past fifteen years. She had written 2,471 single-spaced pages and, not surprisingly, most of those pages centered on her various travails with women. Her book was titled Bad Romance, and she thought of it as an anti-romance/revenge fantasy loosely disguised as a romantic comedy. It was a semi-quasi memoir/fiction. A cross between fact and fiction. A faction, if you will. If the Lifetime Channel for Women ever made it into a TV movie, the crawl under the title would read:

  “Inspired by a true story. The following events may or may not have happened. And if they did happen and you think this is about you, then go ahead and try to prove it, bitch.”

  Excerpt from Bad Romance:

  I've had more than my fair share of Lisas. Five of them in fact. Once I tried to work out the statistical odds having five girlfriends in a row named Lisa and the best I could come up with was that I have a better chance of getting eaten by a shark. Which explains why I won't set foot in an ocean. Well, that and the fact that there are no oceans in Oklahoma.

  My first Lisa was an accident. I was fresh out of college and working on my novel and I was full of dreams, hopes and aspirations for my newly framed English lit degree. I was typing on my Maw Maw's Smith-Corona typewriter in front of the picture window and saw an old Chevy van roll to a stop right in front of my house.

  Lisa Number One jumped out of the van and threw open its hood. Black smoke roiled out and little flames jumped out of the engine.

  Lisa Number One was tall, trim, athletic and I liked the way her butt looked in those cut-offs. She had cornrowed hair and I thought that was a real interesting choice for a white girl. I ran outside and turned my water hose on the engine. Th
e flames sizzled out and the hot metal hissed as we stared at each other.

  She more or less invited herself into my house. I fed her some cold, leftover pizza, and then she invited herself into my shower and into my bed.

  The next morning, we rolled the van into my driveway and she unloaded some of her clothes and we went back to bed. We got out of bed about a week later and that's when I realized she was living with me and I didn't really know much about her.

  According to the little she'd told me in between bouts of lovemaking, she was from New Jersey and was a wannabe stuntwoman. She was following her dharma to Hollywood when her van broke down.

  I had made the classic young lesbian mistake and confused sex with love. Turned out I was horny. As soon as the horny wore off things started going downhill fast.

  Five months went by and Lisa Number One refused to go get a normal job. She said she had to practice her stunts for when Hollywood came calling. I didn't point out that they couldn't call because she didn't own a phone.

  So I spent my days typing my magnum opus and she spent her days lighting herself on fire and hurling her body over parked cars.

  One day when I was sitting at my typewriter, I looked through the picture window and saw a big crowd of people standing around in my front yard. They were all craning their necks, looking up at the roof of my house and pointing. I ran outside to see what all the commotion was and found Lisa Number One standing on my third story roof. She had drug the neighbor kids' trampoline over to my yard and it was set up directly underneath her.

  "Jump!" somebody yelled.

  My front yard was full of looky-loos and cars were stopping on the street. A few people had set out lawn chairs and somebody even had an ice cooler and was selling Coors Lite at three bucks a bottle.

  Lisa Number One responded with some exaggerated deep-knee bends and shoulder rolls, though it was beyond me why you had to warm up to fall off a roof.

  I had my mouth open to yell at her not to jump, but then I clamped my mouth shut. Would it really be so bad if she jumped? What if she broke her neck and died? I'd have to spring for the funeral, that's what. Plus, I'd have to wear black for a week and walk around looking all bereaved and accepting casseroles from the neighbors. That would suck. But even worse—what if she severed her spinal cord and didn't die? She just got paralyzed? Then I'd be stuck with her for life, wiping her ass and spoon feeding her green Jello. That would suck even worse.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth like a megaphone and yelled, "Don't jump!" But my words were drowned out by a group of little kids chanting, "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

  Lisa Number One had the crowd eating of her hand and she was playing this like a pro. She cracked her knuckles and popped her neck from side to side. She licked her index finger and held it up to test the direction and velocity of the breeze.

  A purple Gremlin screeched to a stop in the street and farted a cloud of black smoke out its tailpipe. CeCe White climbed out of the car. She was the star reporter for the Dooley Springs Dispatch. Cece wore a mumu-type dress that had big Hawaiian flowers on it and wore a pair of Birkenstocks that were older than me. Around her neck hung a big camera with a zoom lens. Her permed hair was all mooshed down on one side like she'd just rolled out of bed.

  The entire crowd was yelling “Jump-Jump-Jump.” All the beer was gone and the natives were getting restless. It looked like Lisa Number One needed to hurry up and dive or somebody was going to push her off the roof.

  CeCe didn't waste any time. She raised her camera and clicked so fast it sounded like a tiny machine gun.

  Lisa Number One threw the crowd a big thumbs-up signal, shouted, "Geromino!" and executed the best swan dive I'd ever seen outside of the Olympics on TV.

  All the people's heads followed her arcing descent off the roof; their heads bounced when she hit the bull's eye of the trampoline; and their heads followed her skyrocketing bounce back up in the air. She cannonballed up higher than the third story she'd jumped from.

  As soon as she hit the apex of her ascent, she hung in limbo for a moment with a surprised look on her face. I heard CeCe's camera machine gun again and knew that was the shot we'd see in tomorrow's paper.

  Lisa Number One screamed and flailed her arms and legs, looking like a deranged marionette dancing a jig. Then her strings were cut and she started falling again. All that flailing around had her off balance and this time when she hit the trampoline she shot sideways instead of up. If it hadn't been for the walnut tree she would've ended up over in the neighbor's yard.

  A teenage boy scampered up the tree and scooched on his butt out to the limb where Lisa Number One was draped like a wet towel hung over a clothesline. He put a finger on her neck and shouted back down, "She's alive!"

  The whole crowd went wild, clapping and yelling, like OU had won the Orange Bowl.

  I went inside and called the fire department to come rescue her out of the tree, but I was told that the trucks were out fighting a blaze in some farmer's barn. So, I did the next best thing and shot her out of the tree with my garden hose. (Actually, I aimed the stream of water at her face, it woke her up and she fell out of the tree.)

  The next day I had her van towed in and fixed. A week later I had Trudy call her on my home line and pretend to be a big Hollywood producer looking for a stuntwoman for Sandra Bullock's newest film.

  Lisa Number One was packed up and long gone by the time I got home.

  ***

  Dana was slumped over in a chair by the jukebox, her forehead pressed against the edge of a wooden table, arms hanging limply at her sides, fingertips dangling only inches from the floor, muttering "Lisa" and "jump" over and over when someone lightly touched her arm.

  Dana turned her head and, keeping her cheek pressed against the table, looked up at Ellen. "There you are," she said like she'd been waiting on her the whole time.

  "Here I am."

  "Prince Charming," Dana slurred.

  Ellen laid her cheek on the table next to Dana's. Their noses were only three inches apart. Dana giggled.

  "What's so funny?" Ellen asked.

  "You have three eyes." Dana giggled again.

  "Do you need a ride home?"

  Dana didn't hear the question. Her clouded mind was still focused on threesomes. "I have a thing for threes. They're a good omen. I once knew a woman who had three nipples."

  "Awesome," Ellen replied.

  "You know where her third nipple was?"

  "On her third boob?"

  Dana laughed. Then she hiccupped. "No, she only had two boobs. The third nipple was under her arm."

  "Oh, right."

  "Next to her belly button. Her belly button wasn't on her belly. It was in her armpit. Right under the third nipple."

  "Please don't tell me anything else was under her arm too."

  Dana said, "When she was naked, she looked like a Picasso painting." She laughed and hiccupped at the same time. At last she focused her eyes on the top of Ellen's head.

  "Can I touch it?" she asked.

  "My armpit?"

  "Your hair. How do you get it to stick straight up like that?"

  "Gel."

  "It makes you look like a hedgehog."

  Ellen smiled uneasily.

  "Or a shoe brush."

  Ellen's smile faded.

  "Or maybe a porky-pine."

  "Are you insulting me?" Ellen asked. "Should I be offended?"

  "Nope. No offense intended. Your hair is exciting and different. I like it ever so much. I'm an authority on being different, you see, and I deem your hair most different and exciting."

  "You deem it so, thusly, it must be so." Ellen laughed. "And might I ask, on whose authority you are basing this knowledge?"

  "Huh?"

  "Your name, m'lady?"

  Dana sat up and straightened her shoulders. She hiccupped twice, then said, "I am none other than Dame Dana Dooley”—hic—“of Oklahomadom in the village of Dooleyshire."

  Ellen sat up and faced Dana.
"Oklahomadom? And what kingdom is that realm located in?"

  Dana furrowed her brows a moment, then smiled and said, "Kingdom Come."

  "Well, Dame Dana Dooley of Kingdom Come," Ellen held her arm across her waist and bent forward as she continued, "I bow before your supreme weirdness."

  Dana drew an imaginary sword from the imaginary sheath on her hip and tapped it on Ellen's real left shoulder, saying, "I, Dame Dana Dooley, knight you Sir...loin of beef." She tapped Ellen's real right shoulder, "Sir...rhosis of liver. Sir...han Sirhan."

  They laughed. Dana reached out with her palm and lightly patted the top of Ellen's head. "Ouch," she said. "Your hair is prickly."

  "That's what you get for being so handsy. I usually have a 'no touching above the neck rule' on first dates."

  Dana closed one eye and looked at Ellen with the other. It was a double-dog-dare-you type of squint. "Are we on a date?" she asked.

  "Would you like to be on a date?"

  "I would if I could," Dana said, "but I can't, so I won't."

  "Are you straight? I had the feeling that you...you know, were a lesbian."

  "I am, but I'm kind of involved with somebody right now."

  "So am I," Ellen said with a groan. "So I can't go out on a date with you either."

  "Maybe we could not go out with each other together," Dana said. This train of thought appealed to her. "We could not go on a date, and not kiss, and I would definitely not pat you above the neck and we would not fall in love and you would not cheat on me and not break my heart."

  "Is that what's happened to you? Somebody cheated on you?"

  Dana looked away and frowned. The moment passed and when she looked back at Ellen she was smiling again. "Would you not go out with me if neither one of us were attached?"

  "No," Ellen said, "I would definitely not want to not go out with you."

  "In that case, can I not buy you a drink?"