The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written (7 page)

Johnny sat back and read what he considered his best writing ever:

Her eyes were green lights panting “Go, go, go!” as she beheld the manly man standing outside her window after his Porsche 911 ran a red light and plowed into her Geo Storm. As scorching blood steamed and streamed from a literal crevice in her forehead, Cat Mann knew Gunn Adhamh Glendonwyn was her soul mate by the way his wound matched her own.

Gunn tore off her door in a nanosecond, pulling her from the fiery wreckage.

Cat Mann melted into Gunn’s arms—literally—as flames licked her clothes, giving her nasty, festering, oozing, second- and third-degree burns on over thirty-four percent of her sexy body. Their smoke-ravaged eyes locked, their sooty tongues did the tango as if they were dancing in a smoke-filled bar in Brooklyn, and their lips tasted like burnt microwave popcorn and exploded airbag residue.

It was love at first fiery Geo Storm explosion.

Yes!
Johnny thought.
That is
exactly
how bestselling romance novels begin!

Johnny chuckled.

“
I’m going to be rich!”

10

Johnny grumbled, stumbled, and fumbled his way through his shift, wishing he could get back to his bestseller. He had left his laptop plugged in and on standby at home, his file safely saved, but in his mind, he saw the mice jumping up and down on the keys, opening his file, and ruining all his hard work.

He made his last delivery of the night to a tall, pale, skinny man with brown Brillo pad hair. The man held a glass of urine-colored wine and wore only a red, white, and blue Speedo swimsuit.

“
Hello,” the man said. “I’m Randy.” The man laughed mostly through his nose, and his face was beat red. Randy looked like a white duck-billed platypus with an Afro. “Get it? I’m Randy.”

Johnny didn’t know why Randy was batting his eyelashes but decided that the pollen count must be high, which was unusual for November in the Roanoke Valley. He checked the order ticket. “That’ll be thirteen-fifty.”

“
Would you like to come inside for a while?” Randy asked. “You must be cold. I could warm you up with a glass of wine and a nice backrub.”

And why is Randy lisping?
Johnny thought.
I thought only Hollywood starlets and child actors lisped anymore.

“
Oh no, sir,” Johnny said. “It’s against store regulations.”
Good thing I wrote that self-help book.
He handed the pizza box to Randy. “Um, thirteen-fifty,” he repeated.

Randy smiled, reached his free hand behind his back, wiggled a little, and produced a twenty-dollar bill.

That’s … that’s not cool, man, Johnny thought with a gulp.

“
Here’s twenty,” Randy said, the bill flapping in front of Johnny’s complaining nose, “and if you tell me your name, I’ll let you keep the change.”

Johnny did not want to touch this man’s money. Johnny did not want to be at this man’s front door. Johnny wished he had Dorothy’s red shoes to click together. A $6.50 tip, however, would double his total tips for the night, and Johnny wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough.

“
I’m Hector,” Johnny said quickly with a weak Spanish accent. “My name is Hector. I am from Guatemala. Whenever you call, you talk to me.” He took the twenty, holding it only with his thumb and pointer finger, praying that any of Randy’s bodily juices would have the decency to evaporate and jump off Andrew Jackson’s face before he got into his car.

“
There’s so much more where that came from, Hector,” Randy said.

He’s wearing such a small suit, though,
Johnny thought.
There couldn’t be more than another five bucks in there at the most.

“
Adios, Hector,” Randy lisped.

Johnny slipped the twenty into an air vent on the passenger side of the Vega, turned the vent away from his face, and turned his heater on high. By the time he arrived at the Quick-E Mart, he was confident that the heat had fried any randy smegma on the bill.

He held up five fingers to Gloria, she turned on the pump, and he pumped the gas.
We’re like clockwork, Gloria and me,
Johnny thought.
I wish the rest of my world were as efficient and, well, as pretty as Gloria.

Johnny bypassed the empty counter and went into the men’s room to wash his hands. He sang “Happy Birthday to Me” four times as he lathered and scrubbed with the pink GOJO soap.

At the counter, he counted out five crisp ones from his fanny pack.

“
Doing any writing tonight, Johnny?” Gloria asked.

“
Too busy,” Johnny said, staring at his shoes.
Go ahead. Say something else for a change. You’re the only one in line, and the store is empty.
“I, um, I have been working on a new novel at home, though.”

“
What’s it about?” Gloria asked.

Johnny allowed his eyes to wander up Gloria’s arm to her face, focusing on a space to the right of her nose.
That certainly looks smooth and soft.
“Well, it’s a romance.”

“
Yeah?” Gloria smiled. “You’re writing a romance?”

And now Gloria is batting her eyelashes at me. Stupid pollen. It gets trapped here by the Appalachians and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“Um, yes.” He dropped his eyes, tapped the counter with his fingers, and turned to go.

“
Oh, I love reading romances,” Gloria said.

Johnny turned back to Gloria, smiling at his old friend, the unsmiling orange counter.

“
I’d like to read it sometime, Johnny,” Gloria said.

Do I need a reader at this point in my novel’s development? Or should I wait until I’ve finished it? I guess it couldn’t hurt to have a fresh set of eyes now to steer me in the right direction.
“Um, I can print out some pages for you.”

“
Tomorrow?” Gloria asked.

I can’t tell her that I only have the first page, although it is my best writing ever
. “Oh, I’ll have something more substantial for you to read on …Wednesday.” He turned again to leave.

“
Johnny?”

He turned back.

Johnny was getting a workout tonight.

“
You forgot your sucker.”

Johnny watched Gloria’s interesting left hand slide a cherry Dum-Dum across the counter, and for the first time he noticed Gloria’s left hand was ring-less. “Thanks, um, Gloria.”

“
See you Wednesday night, Johnny,” Gloria said.

Johnny nodded because he was glad that Gloria didn’t turn her every sentence into a question like most convenience store clerks in Roanoke. “See you Wednesday, um, Gloria.”

Later that night when he had counted down his take, he found he had actually made over $40 in tips for the first time in his life.

“
Is about time you had a good night,” Hector said. “Is because you not”—he wiggled his fingers in the air—“playing with your typewriter while you drive. You are driving, and that is making you the money. You see what happens when you do one job at a time?”

Johnny nodded, actually eager to sweep, mop, and get home to his real job.

“
Hey, I put a coupon in the paper for Wednesday,” Hector said. “Two for one special on everything. I must get more business for the holidays.”

Johnny cursed Hector in his head.
Of all the nights!
“Why Wednesday?”

“
Is my slowest night,” Hector said. “You should know this. You will need to get lots of gas before your shift, okay?”

The phone rang, and Hector jumped.

“
You answer,” Hector said, his eyebrows curled back into his forehead. “Man named Randy call all night, make me crazy. Ask me if I like his bathing suit. Ask me if I want a bigger tip. Wants me to come over to drink wine and get a backrub. How does he know I am from Guatemala?”

Johnny looked at the clock and smiled. “We’re closed, aren’t we?”

Hector disconnected the phone from the wall. “Yes, yes. No more Randy.”

Johnny swept and mopped in record time, clocking out before one.

“
You have a date?” Hector asked, inspecting the floor.

“
No,” Johnny said. “I’m going home to write.”

“
You will never get the girls with the writing, Johnny,” Hector said. “That is easy work. You must get your hands dirty. Hard work gets the girls.”

Johnny didn’t respond. He didn’t have to get “the girls.”

He only had to impress one.

And her name, which he had finally said out loud a few hours ago, was Gloria.

11

I’ve made all sorts of breakthroughs tonight
, Johnny thought.
I hope it carries over into my writing.

As usual, Johnny was dead wrong.

Once in front of the laptop, and after whisking cracker crumbs from the keys, Johnny hit the literary jet stream, his mind racing faster than his fingers could type.

Gloria is going to
love
this!

Then Cat collapsed like a fainting goat, the kind they show on YouTube and those amazing video shows, and although it doesn’t seem to hurt the goats, it sure as crap looks as if it does because they hit the ground hard. And that’s funny and we bust a gut laughing when we shouldn’t because the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would let vultures eat our livers for eternity if it could.

That’s how Cat collapsed.

Despite Gunn’s copious blood loss, he was able to carry Cat 3,434 feet to safety and a waiting ambulance, the teenaged, pimple-faced volunteer EMT’s too chicken to park near the blazing Geo Storm for fear of actually doing their unpaid jobs and becoming unpaid heroes.

“
My hero,” Cat whispered as she passed out colder than the iceberg that sank the
Titanic
.

Johnny knew he had to use lots of similes and metaphors so the critics would take him seriously as a writer.

Colder than … the toilet seat under Marie Antoinette? No, too historical.

Colder than Dante’s vision of medieval hell in Canto XXXIV of Inferno? No, too literary.

Wait.

Cat has been on fire. How can she pass out cold?

Whatever. I’ll leave it in. It will be a paradox. Critics love paradoxes.

Now, why had Gunn been speeding recklessly through town in the first place?

Johnny also knew that he had to insert copious amounts of back-story here and there to explain stuff the reader might have missed or might be wondering about—or not—because it was all part of the romance writing game.

Earlier, Gunn had been racing to catch an F-16 Fighting Falcon at the Roanoke Regional Airport for a secret CIA mission to the Middle East to stamp out thought, kick up sand, let certain companies formerly run by Republican vice presidents get rich, and assassinate Scorpion, leader of the international terrorist group, Al-á-Mode. Scorpion had bad breath and looked through eyes the color of swamp water. Scorpion also had a hot sister who looked like Angelina Jolie, liked to punt defenseless kittens, and enjoyed selling orphaned children to the circus.

Johnny knew he had written irrelevant copy, but he decided that he needed to fill space to give his book more depth.

The ambulance took the romantic pair three blocks down Main Street to First Street, two blocks east on Magnolia Avenue, and a hard right next to the post office and a seriously obese Dachshund at Randolph Street before waiting briefly for a gas-guzzling Hummer to get the heck out of the way, learn to drive, ya idiot!!—same to you, ya planet polluter!—and screeched to a halt in front of the emergency room entrance at Graves Memorial, named for Podunk’s first settlers, who came running not from religious persecution but from an angry mob outside a privy that they had set on fire as a prank in Camden, New Jersey.