The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written (40 page)

Littlest did Gunn know, that although Thais had reconciled herself to loving Gunn, she drew the line at making babies with the infidel.
I may be a traitor to my family, my religion, my real country, my sister, and women throughout all eternity, she thought, but I will not muddy the purity of my family tree with an enemy’s offspring.

As a result, Thais was full of angst. She was also full of corn and tofu, and they made her feel like a veg.

She also felt hemorrhoids. They were the pits. I mean, having to go to the proctologist’s to hear him or her say, “Hmm, uh, er, are you having trouble voiding?” And you there on all fours on the ice cold table wondering what “voiding” means. So you ask for an explanation since “voiding” sounds illegal in every state but California and the upper crust parts of Manhattan, and the proctologist pulls out his handy thesaurus and embarrasses you in front of your grandmother, who’s staring at your kiester and comparing it to your Uncle Gene’s kiester, the same Uncle Gene who had a little “lip” removed from “down there” because his “dirt” was spilling all over the toilet like an “outdoor sprinkler.” The good doctor then grunts, “Do you have difficulty defecating, emptying your colon, target shooting Milk Duds, or dropping your kids off the bus?” To which you reply, “No, I poo-poo just fine.”

Gunn felt Thais’s angst and found it rough, scaly, and in serious need of moisturizers, so he took her on an around-the-world tour that did little to relieve their collective angst. They walked around inside Big Ben in London, and Big Ben didn’t blink. They climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris and didn’t enjoy the view since it was freaking France full of freaking French people who had let the Germans waltz to Johann Strauss over and through them like stinky brie. Thais flowed like the Amazon on the Nile River after contracting dysentery from an imported Guatemalan fig that looked suspiciously like a man named Hector, Hector who dreamed of flooding numerous Egyptian hemp farmers and random archaeologists and other grave robbers with his patented pizza sauce. They leaned on The Leaning Tower of Pisa instead of each other, snoozed at 200 miles per hour on the bullet train in Japan, napped during their voyage in the Chunnel, and putted along at 60 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn.

But nothing relieved Thais’s angst, Gunn’s angst, Thais’s hemorrhoids, or Gunn’s longing for an heir …

…
until Emily Benderdondat showed up at the back door of Gunn’s mansion on Christmas Eve wearing a delightful cinnamon red and spearmint green dental floss necklace, a marvelous cat suit, and flip flops.

Emily claimed to be lost.

“
I’m lost,” Emily claimed. “Could I use your phone and a preferably new or near-new toothbrush?”

“
Oh Gunn, can we keep her?” Thais said possessively. “We could raise her as our as yet unborn daughter, Rafe.”

“
We don’t even know her name,” Gunn said evenly.

“
That never stopped you before,” Thais said haltingly.

“
So we should just adopt her without her consent?” Gunn asked, adopting a consensual tone. “In probably one hundred percent of the countries on this planet, that would be considered kidnapping or the beginnings of a really bad movie starring a little red-headed girl and a dog.”

Emily then lifted her bright red bangs and showed them a pudgy pit-bull puppy and a barcode tattooed on her forehead.

Luckily, there had been a sale on point-of-sale scanners at a going-out-business sale for Fill-In-The-Blank Corporation, a company that had failed because of the fiscally irresponsible banks that needed a bailout from financially angry American citizens who elected fiscally irresponsible politicians to give the fiscally irresponsible banks the money. Thais had picked up a scanner for a song, and she sang “My Country ‘Tis in Debt Up to Its Neck” so beautifully that they gave her a twenty percent discount and tickets to see an off-off-Broadway show starring the aging cast of
The Love Boat.

Thais scanned Emily’s barcode, and “$19.99” flashed on the screen.

As I suspected, Thais thought, Emily is nothing but an “As Seen on TV” product being hyped loudly by an abnormally creepy guy who believes we actually need his ridiculous crap.

Fascinated by the glowing red light and the idea of there being so many barcodes, so little time, Thais left Gunn and Emily alone so she could scan every barcode in the house because she liked to hear the beeps.

“
It is about time we were … a-low-un,” Emily said, using some of her dental floss necklace to, well, floss between her molars and incisors.

Gunn instantly recognized Emily’s voice. “Cat, is it you?”

Emily was amazed. Her own sister didn’t recognize her voice or the pit-bull tattoo on her forehead. She was hurt, and she felt angst.

Gunn grabbed Emily’s shoulders and shook her until her eyes spun far back into her head. “Cat, is it really, really, really, really you?”

“
We need to talk,” Emily/Cat said needlessly.

“
Not this again!” Gunn howled like a howling animal that howls.

“
But we really need to talk, Gunn,” Emily/Cat said really, really cattily and Emily-ly. “Your life is in danger.”

Gunn stood in a spotlight that appeared miraculously from the ceiling as a disco ball threw shiny disco beams all over the room, the echo of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” warming up the night. “My life has been in danger from the very millisecond I was born. There has never been a moment in my life where danger wasn’t somewhere nearby, taunting me, calling me ‘Gunn the Ton’ when I was a hefty little fat kid who had to wear husky clothes. Danger was there to laugh at me when I had that unfortunate bicycle accident where I imagined my bike was a horse and leaped only to realize too late that the bicycle seat was missing. Danger is my first name, my middle name, my last name, and even my imaginary friend’s name. Yes, danger knows full well that I am more dangerous and loathsome and vicious and cruel than danger is. I am not afraid of danger.”

Emily/Cat fell asleep.

Gunn slapped her awake. “So you’re not dead?”

“
Obviously,” Emily/Cat said obviously.

“
But I buried you!” Gunn said with an obvious dig.

“
Yeah, about that,” Emily/Cat said. “Being buried alive really, really, really sucks. I mean, there I was, not dead, mind you, and pretty angry because my sister, the wench you’ve been dragging all over the planet, shot me full of holes while you were at your so-called secret hideout crash pad whatever, which isn’t so secret because you have a wooden sign on the door that reads, ‘Gunn’s Top Secret Crash Pad,’ and I was angry they buried me in a lime green dress, I mean, come on, does this body belong in a lime green dress, and anyway while I’m lying there mostly dead, and it’s actually kind of peaceful what with no sound like one of those sensory-deprivation chambers though not as creepy or wet—you should really try one of those chambers but make sure you don’t drink the water—and like I said, I’m ninety-four percent dead when a single thorn pops through my casket, and I’m like, who invited you here, you stupid thorn, and did they have to pay extra for this or what since this casket cost more than a freaking house which is such a scam, like a dead person is going to care if it’s silk-lined or mahogany wood or them there are real brass fittings, Missy, and this thorn hurt my arm, which surprised me because I thought when you were ninety-four percent dead you weren’t supposed to feel anything, but I guess you have to live and learn, and like I said, the thorn hurt me, so I cussed like a trucker high on BC Powder and cut off in traffic by a Honda Civic Hybrid doing at least eighty, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a car that gets good gas mileage if you asked me, and instead of crumpling to the leg end of the coffin—where’s there’s scads of legroom, by the way—and like I said instead of crumpling like Whitney Houston’s and Bobby Brown’s collective careers, those poor, misguided kids, I used that single thorn to cut a hole in the casket—it took about two weeks, give or take, since I kept breaking my nails and had to wait until they grew back—dig six feet up, escape the hole, take a Greyhound and nobody looked twice at my emaciated, nearly-dead body because all they care about at Greyhound is if you pay with American money, and go to Tahiti for a while, you know, because I’ve never been there and it’s really, really hot, and it’s like completely on the other side of the earth in the middle of all this salty water, and then I went to Beverly Hills where they cut me every which way—and loose as a goose, as you can see—so I could come back to warn you disguised as the poster redhead for dental flossing, which I can tell that you don’t do very often so you’ll get gingivitis for sure, that Thais Knotts means to kill you dead.”

And she said all that in one breath,
Gunn thought breathlessly.
They must have implanted an extra lung inside her. Isn’t medical technology great? I mean, just fifty years ago it would have been a waste of time to put “organ donor” on your driver’s license. Oh sure, you could have donated your organs, but who would have taken them? Besides the IRS and maybe Granny from
The Beverly Hillbillies,
I mean—

“
Gunn, you’re in danger!” Emily/Cat purred dangerously.

“
What should I do?” Gunn duly asked.

“
Act casual,” Emily/Cat said casually.

Gunn struck up a casual pose, looking eerily like a mannequin at Old Navy. “Now what?”

“
Look more casual,” Emily/Cat said more casually.

Gunn struck up another pose, looking exactly like Mel Gibson only not as handsome, outspoken and insensitive, hairy, or Australian.

“
I hear you’re trying to have a baby with Thais,” Emily/Cat said in a baby’s shrieking voice.

“
How did you know?” Gunn asked knowingly.

“
You said we were having fifteen kids once, remember?” Emily/Cat reminded him numerically.

“
Oh yeah. Fifteen. I’d settle for one right now.”

“
It takes nine months,” Emily/Cat said.

“
I didn’t mean ‘right now’ as in ‘right now,’ Gunn said rightly. “I meant I’d settle for a baby … You know what I mean.”

“
Do I?”

“
Do you what?”

“
Do I know?”

“
Know what?”

“
Do I know what you mean?”

“
Do you?”

“
Do I?”

“
Do you what?”

“
Do you know?”

“
This is pointless.”

“
Like those little silica packs in your clothes that they tell you not to eat but then they spill out of your pocket and onto the floor for the cat to lick up days before the cat expands to the size of a bus and eats the neighbor’s Rottweiler.”

“
Like that extra button they give you for a shirt, as if anyone can keep track of it or has a needle and thread handy to put that sucker back on.”

“
Like the proof of purchase doo-hickey square on Ritz cracker boxes, as if I’d ever need to use it anywhere.”

“
Like your appendix.”

“
Or your gall bladder.”

“
Or your tonsils.”

“
Or ninety percent of your brain.”

“
Or politics.”

“
Or ninety-nine percent of a politician’s brain.”

“
What did you want me to do?”

“
I said,” Emily/Cat said, “for you to act casual.”

“
Wait,” Gunn said.

Emily/Cat waited. She even hummed to make the wait almost fun and full of frolicking frolic.

“
How should I actually act?” Gunn actually asked.

“
Casually,” Emily/Cat repeated for the umpteenth time.

So, Gunn acted all uninterested and aloof and detached and remote and standoffish, even though Emily/Cat smelled of cinnamon and spearmint, and found himself humming show tunes from Broadway shows that still had some gumption and get-up-and-go like in the Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin days as if he were in the elevator or in a doctor’s office full of snot-nosed kids digging for gold.