A Perfect Romance

by Layce Gardner

  Dana knew that Matt was a misguided genius with a brain the size of Jupiter living inside a hairy, fat man's body. The psychiatrist who prescribed him drugs diagnosed Matt as SICK (Sensitive, Intelligent, Creative and Kind). Matt had never worked a day in his life (okay, he did work that one day at the chicken plant) and was elected mayor of our fine city by a vote of 13,526 to 89. Nobody ran against him because he kept talking about "taking them to the mattress" in a professional wrestler's voice. Not very many people in town were up on Italian mob lingo, and they thought taking them to the mattress meant he was going to mate with them or something. (The 89 votes against Matt were write-ins, ranging from Daffy Duck to Oprah Winfrey. Dana herself had voted for Ellen Degeneres so Portia could be first lady.)

  Before he was elected mayor, Fat Matt sucked on the government's teat for a while—as a guinea pig for the FDC. They gave him new drugs and tested him; most of those drugs never made it out of the lab and onto drugstore shelves. He did that job for three years and was never quite the same. Since then, however, Matt felt he owed his full head of luxurious hair (and a body covered with the same thick pelt) to something he called "Rogaine gone rogue."

  Matt viewed his only job as mayor was to "put Dooley Springs" on the map. He did have a modicum of success seven years ago when he climbed a tree and said he wouldn't come down until David Letterman asked him to be a guest on his show. Mr. Letterman ignored him until one day after three weeks Matt accidentally fell out of the tree and broke his tailbone. Then David Letterman officially announced that his home office was in Dooley Springs, Oklahoma, and made Matt's mishap #1 in his top ten list of "Ten Stupid Ways to Get on National TV."

  Dana knew that whatever Matt was up to in the cornfield with the light saber was another prank designed to create a buzz for the upcoming mayoral election. She watched for a few moments. Some of the braver souls were throwing hard candy at Matt. The woman next to Dana threw a Dum Dum; it hit Fat Matt square in the middle of his belly and bounced off.

  Dana tapped the woman on the shoulder and asked what was happening. The woman threw another Dum Dum like she was playing third base and a runner was trying to steal home. The sucker hit Matt in the butt and he yelped. The crowd laughed.

  "Excuse me," Dana said again, "but what's going on?"

  The woman looked Dana up and down. She tossed a Dum Dum up in the air several times and caught it without looking at it. "Who you supposed to be?"

  "Wonder Woman."

  The woman gave Dana a judgmental look before she said, "He says that aliens landed here. He says that's a crop circle he's standing in made by one of their spaceships. I heard about it over my police scanner and called up some people."

  "Oh." I digested this and watched Matt bat away hard candy and Tootsie Pops with his light saber like he was Babe Ruth. "Why's he wearing a diaper?"

  The woman unwrapped the Dum Dum and stuck it in her mouth. She sucked on it for a second, then plucked it out of her mouth with a loud pop. "He says the aliens beamed him outta his own bed while he was sleeping. He says they looked like Star Wars characters. Then Princess Leia probed him a couple of times and set him back down here. He wrapped that sheet around hisself so as not to offend the children with the nakedness of his violated orifices."

  "Violated orifices?"

  "His words, not mine."

  "But why're you all throwing candy at him?"

  She shrugs. "'Cause it's funny."

  It was funny, watching him get pelted with Jolly Ranchers. Especially when they dinged off his butt and made him jump. I pushed through the mob, working my way toward Matt.

  "You mowed that circle yourself!" shouted a man from back behind me.

  "I most certainly did not, sir!" Fat Matt shouted back, holding his saber skyward like the Statue of Liberty. "This circle is what is left of the UFO landing."

  A man in front of me shook his fist at Matt. "You mowed it! I ain't no idjit! There's the tractor you did it with!"

  Dana's eyes followed to where the man was pointing. Sure enough, there sat a tractor with a thresher hooked up to the back and some damning, freshly mowed grass stuck between its blades.

  The same man shouted again, "How do you explain that?"

  "Yeah!" the crowd shouted in unison.

  Matt took a moment to scratch under one arm. "The aliens mowed it?"

  "Fraud!" people shouted.

  "Liar!" others yelled.

  The crowd was growing a mind of its own and its mind was turning ugly.

  Dana knew about herd behavior and mob mentality because she had seen the movie The Accused where Jodie Foster got raped on a pinball machine by a pack of frat boys. She didn't want the same thing to happen to her brother even though the nearest pinball machine was several miles away, so she pushed people out of the way and ran toward him, screaming, "Don't rape him! Please, please don't rape my brother, can't you see how homely he is!"

  A brilliant, blinding flash of white light stopped Dana as she grabbed the back of Fat Matt's diaper. For one frozen moment, Dana was pulling on the diaper and Matt's giant heinie was all bright and shiny. He looked like a grotesque version of that old Coppertone commercial with the dog pulling down the little girl's panties.

  Dana caught a glimpse of CeCe White. She was in another one of her Hawaiian print mumus and popping off flashes with her camera. Fat Matt saw her too and quickly morphed into celebrity mode. He struck poses with his saber as if he fancied himself as a modern-day Errol Flynn.

  Matt's posturing seemed to enrage the herd, and they stampeded forward with thundering hooves and gnashing teeth. Dana grabbed Matt by the elbow and propelled him on a circuitous route toward her car. CeCe snapped photos until the crowd blocked her view.

  Fat Matt dove headfirst into Betty and Dana jumped in the driver's seat. She pulled her cape safely inside the car, then slammed her door shut.

  "Let's go!" Matt shouts.

  "Mind the hole in the floorboard!" Dana hollered. Matt picked up his feet and Dana mashed down on the gas pedal. Betty's rusty frame bounced over pasture bumps as Dana honked and swerved around the mob.

  Dana reached the far end of the pasture before she looked behind her. The crowd had mostly given up; only a few young ones were still giving chase. She wheeled through a ditch, almost sending them topsy turvy, but Matt leaned against his door and that extra weight kept them upright. They bounced out of the ditch and onto the gravel road. They rode in silence for a moment.

  "What the hell, Matt?"

  "I bet ol' CeCe will have that in tomorrow's paper," he said gleefully, rubbing his palms together.

  "Tell me this is some harebrained publicity stunt and you don't think Princess Leia really put anything up your butt."

  He grinned. "Election's comin' up. People will reelect me to have something to talk about."

  Dana glared at him. "What if I hadn't been there? What if I didn't rescue your big, hairy butt? What if this whole thing had backfired and they'd stoned you with Jolly Ranchers?"

  "But they didn't," he said as if that made sense to anybody but himself.

  "You're an idiot."

  "No, you are," he taunted.

  "No, you are."

  "You are."

  "You."

  "I know you are, but what am I?" he sing-songed.

  She doubled up her fist and socked him as hard she could. She was aiming for his chin but got his shoulder instead.

  "Ow!"

  "Shut up," Dana fumed.

  "You shut up."

  "You shut up."

  "No, you shut up!" He socked Dana in the arm.

  She let go of the wheel and threw a couple of wild punches at him, connecting with only air.

  "Watch out!" he yelled.

  Dana grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it hard to the left, almost but not quite careening into the rain ditch.

  As soon as the car was traveling on a straight path, Dana elbowed Fat Matt in his ribs.

  "Ow! Quit hitting," he whined. "Or I'm gonna tell M
aw Maw."

  "Don't make me stop this car," she warned, tapping on the brakes.

  He crossed his arms and leaned against his door where she couldn't elbow him. After about two miles of silence, he said, "I was thinking that after this Kimmy thing was over for you…"

  "You mean after I find her cheating on me and throw her butt to the curb?"

  "Yeah that. I wondering if you could put the lesbian thing on hold for awhile?"

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "Maybe you could pretend to be straight for awhile? Like go out with my friend Doobie a couple of times or something?"

  "Doobie? Are you serious?"

  "He told me once that he's really a woman trapped inside a man's body. So, that makes him kind of a lesbian too."

  “He sells tie-dye clothes at the flea market for a living and smells like horse manure."

  "He's into organic farming is all. And the deal is...my reelection is coming up and I figure I'd have a better chance without a lesbo for a sister. You know, since I ran on the Republican ticket..."

  Dana screeched Betty to a stop and if the dashboard hadn't stopped him, Matt would've sailed through the front windshield. She leaned over him, popped open his door and used her feet to kick her brother out of her car and onto the side of the road.

  "What'd you do that for?" he asked.

  "You're lucky I stopped the car first."

  She zoomed off with the passenger door flapping open and shut, open and shut. When she squealed her tires around the next left, the door slammed closed on its own.

  Eleven

  After giving her brother the heave-ho, Dana took the long way home so she could do a drive-by of all the local bars. She drove through the lots of every one of them, but still there was no sign of Kimmy's Mustang.

  She slowed down as she drove by The Best Little Hairhouse. There was a light on inside the building. Weird. It was nine o'clock at night and Halloween to boot. Either somebody was working late or Wanda had left a light burning, which, knowing the tightness of Wanda's wallet, was highly unlikely.

  Dana guided Betty around the block and parked in the alley. She reasoned that she better investigate the light because if the beauty shop was being burgled and she didn't stop it, she would never forgive herself. And, hey, Wanda gave her a key and wouldn't it be the Christian thing to stop and save Wanda a little on her electric bill?

  Dana closed Betty's door real quiet-like, pulled her bathrobe-cape around her shoulder and crept down the alley toward the beauty shop. The first thing she ran into was Kimmy's Mustang. Literally. She didn't see it until she banged into it and Dooleyed over the hood.

  Dana hadn't been expecting a car to be parked in the middle of the alley. Interesting. Kimmy chose not to park her car in the beauty shop's parking lot, which means she didn't want anybody to know where she was.

  Didn't take a Stephen Hawking to figure out why.

  Dana slid off the car and placed her hand on the hood like how they do in mystery movies. It was cold. Kimmy had been there a while. Dana squatted down so as not to be seen and duck-walked around the car and up to the back window of the building where the light was burning.

  She raised up slowly and peered through the window. She saw Kimmy reclined in her beautician's chair. Her mouth was moving like she was talking to somebody. There must be somebody in the back room.

  Dana sneezed. The force of the sneeze snapped her neck forward and she banged her forehead on the window pane.

  Kimmy quickly swiveled in her chair and looked at the window. Kimmy and Dana's eyes met for a split second, then Dana ducked.

  Dana wasn't sure whether Kimmy saw her or not. And if she did see her, did she recognize her? Impossible to tell.

  Only one way to find out. Dana slowly, ever-so-slowly, raised back up and looked through the window. She found herself face-to-face with Kimmy.

  They each yelped and ducked.

  This was exactly what Dana was afraid of. Kimmy had caught her, instead of the other way around. And since Kimmy had obviously seen her, Dana stood back up. No sense in hiding now.

  Dana didn't see Kimmy. Odd. She pressed her nose against the glass and looked as far to either side as she could. There she was. Kimmy was standing near the back storage room. She was shouting something, Dana could hear her voice, but she couldn't make out the words. Dana was a pretty good lip reader though, because once her TV set went on an audio fritz and she watched it for three whole months without sound before she finally figured out that Asscat had sat on the mute button on the remote. Dana watched Kimmy's lips move and was pretty sure she was saying something like "Call the police! There's a mad woman outside trying to kill me! She has a chainsaw!" Of course, the part about the chainsaw might be her over-active imagination.

  I might have an over-active imagination, but Kimmy has an over-active vagination.

  A blast of bright light hit Dana from behind and pinned her to the brick wall. She quickly turned into the light and had to shield her eyes with her hands. She heard a siren “Wooooot” like a slide whistle. Dana peeked between her fingers. Red and blue lights flashed up and down the bar on top of a police vehicle.

  A voice boomed over the speaker mounted on top of the police car. "Step away from the window! Put the weapon down!"

  Weapon?

  "Put the weapon down!"

  Dana looked down and only then did she realize that she was holding a big chunk of concrete in her hand. She had no recollection of picking it up. Maybe somebody put it in her hand, trying to frame her. Maybe that somebody was Kimmy. But wouldn't she know if Kimmy had put something in her hand?

  Oh my God! Dana realized what was happening. She was going insane. The flashing lights tap-danced across her vision and she blinked. She could hear her own rapid breathing inside her head. Or was that her heart pounding? She was going to pass out. She could make out the silhouette of a police officer, but it was like looking down a tunnel.

  The megaphone roared, "This is the Dooley Springs police! Put down the weapon!"

  Dana dropped the hunk of concrete. Unfortunately, she dropped it on her right foot. "Shoot a brick!" she shouted, grabbing her foot in her hand and hopping up and down. "Dang, dang, dang!"

  The cruiser door opened and Officer Drumright climbed out. He hitched his pants up, hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and stared at Dana.

  Dana recognized her old nemesis and stopped hopping. She put one hand on her hip and affected a casual, yet superior stance. "Hey ya, Puddinhead. Slow night?"

  Puddinhead's God-given name was Wilson Drumwright. He and Dana had been enemies since grade school. Dana was responsible for giving him the moniker Puddinhead. She was a big Mark Twain fan, even in grade school. Puddinhead didn't like the nickname and he didn't like Dana either.

  It didn't help matters when she got him drunk on Everclear and Mountain Dew at their senior class graduation party and talked him out of his pants. Once he was sporting only his tidy whities, Dana gave his pants to Steve Snackenberger. Steve and the football team made Puddinhead put his pants on backwards and walk around backwards all night.

  Dana feigned a sudden interest in her fingernails and muttered, "Got your pants on right tonight, I see."

  Puddinhead pulled his gun and aimed it somewhere in the general vicinity of Dana's kneecaps. "Dammit, Dana Dooley, how many times I got to tell you to call me Officer Drumright?"

  Dana decided to play by his rules. Seemed the most sensible thing to do when a gun was aimed at you. "Officer Drumright," she smiled in what she hoped was a genuine fashion. "I saw a light burning in the beauty shop and stopped to check it out. Wanda's one of my customers. Didn't want her to get robbed or anything. You know Halloween's kinda crazy…" Her voice trailed off and her smile twitched nervously.

  He took a menacing step toward Dana. He kicked the hunk of concrete she'd been holding. "What were you planning on doing with that rock?"

  Dana was at a loss. Even she didn't know why she was holding it in her hand while she looked th
rough a window at her cheating girlfriend. Puddinhead was notoriously stupid, but even stupid could connect those dots. "I was...I wanted to...self-defense?"

  He looked past her head at the window. "I don't see no light burning in there."

  "She turned it out when you drove up?" It came out sounding more like a question than the statement that Dana intended. She cleared her throat and tried again, "She turned it out. It was on. Then out. She turned it out to make me look guilty."

  Gosh, why can't I shut up? I'm acting guilty and I haven't even done anything.

  "She?"

  "Kimmy. My girlfriend." Dana was struck with a sudden inspiration. Well, okay, it was more female instincts than it was inspiration: She stuck out her lower lip and forced it to wobble. She tried for a quiver, but it came out more like a wobble. She made her voice sound all soft and trembly. "My girlfriend's cheating on me."

  "Hell, everybody knows that." Puddinhead snorted.

  Dana's anger lit up. She quickly put a lid on it and croaked, "Okay, I was spying on her, all right? I was trying to catch her, you know. Then I could tell her to get lost. I need to know who she's cheating on me with."

  Puddinhead stowed his gun back in his holster and blew hot air through his lips, making them do that raspberry thing that sounded like a fart but only with his mouth. "Better question might be who ain't she cheating on you with."