and said, “Oh, Johnny, you know what I want!”
I didn’t. I bought her seven gifts: a crock pot, a pair of Magic Scissors, a battery-operated candle, a bottle of White Diamonds, a digital pedometer, a Target gift card, and a fiber optic holiday sweater. She looked less than pleased with all of the gifts but the sweater, which she wore later that day to dinner at my mother’s. My presents included a pair of Hugo Boss leather gloves, a digital camera, an iPod docking station, a fist-sized chocolate heart, custom car mats, a hand-knit scarf, and a ring.
I SAT ACROSS THE TABLE from Alice Candello at Fin–dark wood, musty smell, overpriced seafood–and learned that she is, indeed, stressed, as evidenced by the crescent-shaped stains under the arms of her satin blouse and the speed with which she downed a $42 bottle of merlot. She did not stop talking—about implacable customers, her obstinate cockatiel, traffic on I-84 where, I could not prevent the thought, Shelby had once spun her car like a carnival ride. The handcuff-sized bangles on her wrist clanked each time she lifted her glass or waved to the waiter to ask for more bread, to request a less tart salad dressing, to demand he open a window as she fanned herself with the cocktail menu. After her fourth glass of wine she’d thrown off any pretense of being on a first date, openly flirting while grinding what felt like a size 18 gumboot up and down my left shin and engaging in a strange dialect of drunken baby talk. I am not an easily embarrassed man, but she was making a Herculean effort, even if unconsciously. By the time the main course arrived, I was mentally rehearsing what I would say to my crestfallen mother: I’m being transferred to Parma, I’m allergic to birds, I’m gay.
But the utter failure of my date with Alice Candello did not deter my perpetually upbeat mother, who apparently had a slew of friends with desperate, defective daughters: recently divorced LuAnn Plug spent the evening chatting about the myriad ways she’d like her ex to suffer (stoning, overpass collapse, shark attack), Stacy Kaminski barely spoke, instead giggling like a mental patient, and Renee Dubois anxiously glanced around the restaurant like a witness protection inductee on her first outing before admitting that her former boyfriend was a stalker but, really, she said, that didn’t stop him from loving her.
THERE’S NO OTHER WAY TO say it: my mailman is an asshole. Two days after my ill-fated date with a woman who mistook tracking devices and night-vision goggles for the accoutrements of love, I stood at the curb in a knee-high snowdrift left by the plow and worked a large, tightly fused clump of flyers, bills, and a padded envelope from my mailbox. Shelby’s book. I threw a frozen pizza into the oven, cracked a beer, and exhumed the paperback from its plastic sheath. The colors on its cover were even brighter, the sweater tackier and the scene more bizarre than they had appeared on her website, but that didn’t matter. I found myself attempting to satisfy a curiosity I could not name: Did Shelby have literary talent? Had writing these novels changed her? Had I made a mistake in letting her go? As far as literary talent, how hard can it be to write a romance? But maybe spending time with desperate female characters had opened her eyes to their, well, desperation.
I smiled as I read about Holly, who could have been Shelby herself, or at least the person Shelby saw herself to be: selfless, positive, spirited, unappreciated. Holly even looked like Shelby: short, blond, freckle-faced, snub-nosed, cute. If you’re wondering, as I was, her boyfriend Nick looked nothing like me: square-jawed, muscled, stylish but with an incurable propensity for removing his shirt. I already hated him. Nick stood Holly up, broke promises, flirted with other women while Holly made meals, scheduled events and booked trips for a man who cancelled or ignored her. Why? I wondered. Why did Holly put up with him? Maybe women did not give up on men as easily as men did women. Maybe women read romance novels because they understood the general hopelessness of men, commiserated with the dejected heroines. Maybe that’s why LuAnn Plug imagined her ex plummeting to his death from a fiery helicopter or running headlong into razor wire. All that effort wasted. All that hope shattered. But I never did that to Shelby. Or at least not to the extent outlined in her book.
I read well into the night. When Holly finally releases Nick—who actually runs off to Europe with Margeaux, leaving her no choice, really—she meets Kris, a kind, bespectacled, stable man who owns a toy factory. Her life is now “constant” and “content.” She wears her favorite Christmas sweater to a holiday dinner with Kris’s mother, who flits around the kitchen like an epileptic comet and squeals with delight when she opens a Christmas sweater for her cat, Mr. Bojangles. I laughed aloud, imagining both the slashing I would face if I advanced on the real Mr. Bojangles with a sweater and Shelby including me—or something related to me—in her book. Clearly I was on her mind as she wrote her holiday romance. I put the book aside for a while to savor the warmth of being remembered, the memory of being happy.
Meanwhile my mother persisted in battling my resolve, determined to whittle her list of prospective daughters-in-law to zero; when she engaged her exaggerated limp, clutched Mr. Bojangles to her bosom and claimed that she was not long for this world, I acquiesced. While Mona Lambers rambled on about cross-stitch patterns I wondered if Holly would take Nick back; when Loreen Womack ran to the restroom for the fifth time—Bladder infection? Coke addiction?—I wondered if Nick would or could change. As Patrice Dombrowski chucked oysters into her mouth like an eating-contest contender I hoped that, ultimately, Holly/Shelby would be happy.
The book sat, untouched, on the coffee table like a talisman, like a spell, like an unfulfilled wish. Finally, after a particularly bad day at work—the porters never returned from lunch, one of my mechanics cracked the windshield on a year-old Town & Country with a dropped wrench, an unsatisfied customer threatened to shove his boot so far up my ass I’d taste leather—I decided to reembark on my reading odyssey in an effort to mine some sort of hope from He Was Naughty, She Was Nice. The next scene described a holiday party—five pages of partridge-adorned wreaths, candle-laden mantels, the aromatic properties of pine—after which Holly, Heylei, and Anastasia engage in a three-page discussion of the gifts they received from their boyfriends: Tiffany earrings, Pandora charms, Gucci clutches, spa days, trips to Bermuda, engagement rings. I did not take this personally.
Apparently no romance would be complete without revenge; the cad must not only lose the girl but must be made the fool, must come to his senses only to realize his transformation—real or imagined—has been futile, for the woman he is now determined to win back has found happiness in the arms of a man who is both lesser and greater, paunchy and cerebral but also generous and kind. By the time Nick bursts through the garland-strangled front door wearing the green and red sequined sweater Holly had made for him, the reader not only anticipates but savors the knowledge that his punishment will be both severe and satisfying. The room collectively sniggers as Nick approaches Holly, shyly proffering a basket of unwrapped gifts, which include a crock pot, a pair of Magic Scissors, a battery-operated candle, a bottle of White Diamonds, a digital pedometer, and a Target gift card. That I took personally.
I put down the book and picked up Sheila Kravitz with a newfound will to see the best in people, suppressing my curiosity about why these women were single (after all, I was single, though that was the result of vigilance and resolve). I ignored Sheila’s eye tic. I overlooked the force with which her man hands clutched the fork and knife, sawing like a primate into the bloody steak on her plate. I even managed a smile when she made it clear that she was an old-fashioned girl and not amenable to “roving paws.” Then I went home, opened a free Gmail account under the pseudonym Clint Harris and launched an email at Shelby through her website:
Dear Ms. Duchene,
I really enjoyed your most recent book, He Was Naughty, She Was Nice. You are a talented writer. I liked the descriptions of the meals, the holiday décor, and the characters. I was wondering how you come up with ideas for your books? Are they pure fiction or do you base your work on people you know? Thanks and keep writing!
Sincerely,
Clint Harris
Shelby’s response
