Needy Greedy Love (Part 20)

"You'll remember me," Gunn said clear as the sky over Neptune even though he had no teeth or a tongue or much of a palate. "Do me a favor."

Thais rolled her eyes. "Okay. What?"

"When you bury us--"

"I'm going to set the place on fire to hide my criminal crime," Thais interrupted, "so the authorities may just decide to have you two cremated."

"Even better," Gunn said clear as the Texas sky after a really cool rain like on those old black and white shows like Death Valley Days. "Leave a typewritten note that says--"

"A note will burn up in the fire," Thais said hotly.

"Oh yeah," Gunn said, propping up his jawless face with the stump of the hand he had used in a vain attempt to stop all the bullets. "I just want my bone shards and fragments to hang out with Cat's guts for eternity. Is that going to be a problem?"

Thais put her foot down hard and gave herself shin splints. "Yes." Thais smiled then felt a piece of nastiness stuck between her teeth. She looked at Emily/Cat's body and frowned. I don't use used and bloody dental floss, she thought. She looked and saw something pointy in Emily/Cat's hand. She pried it loose with a vicious cracking sound and picked the nastiness out of her teeth.

"Ha ha ha," Thais said laughingly. "A thorn for Emily."

After turning on all the gas outlets in the house, and not knowing that the gas company installs all sorts of safety features so that kind of thing can't possibly happen--at least in America--Thais lit the little thorn and tossed it behind her as she left Gunn's mansion forever.

Afterward

Thais Knotts woke up in a barn in Flagstaff, Arizona, thirty-four months later with a baby girl on her chest.

Thais named her Rafe but would later nickname her Sparky.

How Thais got from the potpourri of brains in Podunk, Virginia, how she survived the blast that destroyed Gunn's mansion, and how she crawled 3,000 miles to this decrepit barn are the subjects of the next umpteen books in the thrilling series: Thais Knotts Ties the Not's of Love.

THE END

>Congratulations for making it this far. I hope you enjoyed my satire of romance novels. Please comment!<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 19)

Gunn slapped Emily/Cat repeatedly and then sort of, by accident, mind you, and not meaning to do it at all, kissed her as casually as he could just below the left paw of the pudgy pit bull puppy tattooed on Emily/Cat's forehead.

Naturally, Thais came in at the exact moment of lip contact, scanned Emily/Cat's forehead one more time, heard the glorious beep, saw her man casually kissing the tattoo of a pudgy pit bull puppy, and had a remarkable dream sequence where she was the dog whisperer to Lassie, yes, the Lassie, only Lassie wasn't a girl at all and had issues with her co-stars because they kept calling her "girl" when she was obviously not a girl dog at all, thank you very much, and it conflicted her so much that she contemplated running as a vice presidential candidate from Alaska. Shaken from her nightmare, Thais felt much better when she unloaded three clips of cop-killer bullets into Emily/Cat's suspiciously familiar head.

Hey, Thais thought midway through the second clip, my kid sister used to have a pineapple-shaped scar on her chin where I once kicked her with steel-toed boots because she wouldn't let me pet the goat first at the Al-a-Mode annual family reunion (complete with blank T-shirts) and where I accidentally shot off a mortar that killed Osama bin Something. He needed a new kidney anyway, and where are you going to find a good kidney or a working dialysis machine in the mountains of western Pakistan?

"Stop!" Gunn cried resignedly. "You've just killed your sister ... again!"

"That explains the scar," Thais said scarily. "I just know I wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight without knowing that. It would have gnawed and gnawed on me like a beaver trying to eat its way out of Sherwood Forest, like a Republican wondering and wondering what went wrong in the last election, like Paris Hilton trying to figure out why the world gives a crap about her at all. Thank you, Gunn, for once again calming my mind."

Gunn crumpled to the floor like a man who had, indeed, been shot with three clips of cop-killer bullets that had previously shattered the sexy skull of one Cat Mann/Emily Benderdondat. Dark red blood gurgled, sloshed, and babbled crazy blues tunes from every hole in his body, and though the bullets had shredded his lungs like a huge pile of Republican yard signs, he was able to say his final lines without a single rasp, cough, or sputter.

"No matter what you've done," Gunn said clear as a bell and in 5.1 Dolby surround sound, "I will always be a part of your life, Thais Knotts. I will also always be a part of your sister's brains and sinus mucus since I doubt any forensic pathologist could separate all that mess from my body, I mean, they work for the state, right? Why work too hard when they're only going to freeze your salary or make you work without pay anyway? One day, Thais, you'll look back on this moment and smile. One day you'll look back on this moment and either shed a happy tear or tear a happy shed. One day you'll look back on this moment and feel a hot flash, and it won't be an atomic explosion in Iran or North Korea. Whenever you look at dental floss, you'll remember me and your sister in this tangled heap of clotting blood, scalp fragments, and some clear liquid I haven't yet identified. Whenever you look at a Scotsman, you'll remember me and the night we used hydrogen peroxide to bleach your eyebrows so you could make your forehead appear bigger, you'll remember the day we ate all that expired bologna in the fridge and didn't die, you'll remember the morning we--"

Thais emptied a fourth clip into Gunn's face.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 18)

"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, 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 it 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 had 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.

Emily/Cat fell asleep.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 17)

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 shouted 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 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 you don't do very often so you'll get gingivitis for sure, that Thais Knotts means to kill you dead."

And she said that all 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--

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 16)

Many days later, Gunn was still full of angst. He was also full of corn and undigested red meat.

He and Thais had been trying without success to have a baby. His seed had found no purchase in Thais's sexy Brazilian uterus. What am I doing wrong? Gunn thought. What? What are we doing wrong? What? Why? I've stopped riding my bicycle, I wear boxers, and I don't hang out in hot tubs. I take vitamins that make my pee bright yellow and smell like cabbage soup. What else can I do to put a bun in Thais's sexy Brazilian oven?

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 redheaded 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-0f-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 the 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.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 15)

Meanwhile, Gunn wept sad and sorrowful tears of sadness and sorrow for his mother, for Cat, for the mess in his living room, for the gradual decline of democracy as a functional government in a world increasingly given to socialism, and for the free market economy stymied by governmental tariffs, treaties, an incompetent Congress, and the slow-footed and chaotic United Nations.

But when Gunn looked up, he saw Thais's lips moving. It was a good thing he was once deaf thanks to a really bad job at a pharmacy with an old man named Gower, because Gunn could read those lips. "I feel so much angst," those lips said. Thais, the cop with heels sculpted by warm Brazilian sands, was reaching out to him. Thais, the contortionist who taught him yoga position number thirty-four, was feeling angst. Thais, who had asked him lovingly to Wet-Vac his mother's big-boned ashes, was crying for his help.

And then a thought hit Gunn like a freight train hitting those stupid semi-trailers that have gotten stuck on the tracks and someone had the sense to film it with his or her cell phone.

I love her, Gunn thought, because Thais Knotts makes me feel safe and secure.

But mostly, Thais Knotts made Gunn Adhamh Glendonwyn feel. He felt. It felt good to feel. It made him feel full of feelings that felt good. His feelings were strong. His feelings were virile. He couldn't ignore the manly feelings coursing through his Scotch (or Irish, or both) veins. Felt feelings must be released, he thought. He needed to feel something. He needed to feel feelings for someone who made him feel.

"I don't know what to say," Thais said, not knowing what to say.

So Gunn kissed Thais. He kissed her so she didn't have to say anything. He kissed her so he wouldn't have to say anything. They kissed each other, not speaking, mind you, in a silence without words of any kind, so neither would have to say anything for a long, long time. It was really quiet except for a whole bunch of lip smacking going on.

Her lips felt good to him, and his lips felt good to her. They kissed each other hard, loosening teeth and even bruising the little spaces under their noses, those spaces that have a name that nobody knows except maybe anatomy students, Jeopardy contestants, and those nerdy kids in the national spelling bee.

Her tongue tasted like dusty Hummel figurines mixed with coffee and doughnut sprinkles. His tongue tasted like Tom Collins, Johnny Walker, Cuban cigar, and ash from his dead mother. But neither cared, because they weren't saying anything, and saying nothing was sometimes a very good thing to say.

They were kissing fools. They swapped spit. They shared old saliva containing, as everyone knows, all known diseases and even some that had threatened to spread into a pandemic and cause the Centers for Disease Control to throw up their collective hands and cry, "We are so not in control of any diseases, but at least we're safe here in Atlanta since we have all the cool antidotes." They played tonsil hockey, Thais using a wicked slap shot to score again and again and again. They tickled each other's uvulas into submission. They stayed in lip-lock while Gunn's mother's dust floated maternally all around them, and afterward, Gunn's little crooked tooth, the one that made him look most like an incorrigible rogue, had straightened out.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archives at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 14)

"Oops," Thais said in her silly little girl's voice. "I didn't know. I didn't think gray would be her color. I thought she would have been more of a warm tone woman. Orange. Yes, orange, like the color of the counter at a Quick-E-Mart. Yes, that should have been the color of her urn."

Gunn crumpled to the floor like the New York Knicks basketball franchise since the retirement of Walt Frazier and the Cleveland Browns football franchise since they sneaked off to Baltimore only to reappear later as an expansion team and have really crummy drafts. "We called her the Lady Macduff," Gunn called with a tear in his eye and a whimper in his voice as he sat on his duff. "This is such a Shakespearean tragedy!"

"Um, doesn't Macbeth have Lady Macduff whacked in that Scottish play?" Thais asked in a wacky way. Thais knew about the curse, and she wasn't about to test it.

Gunn looked up. "Yes, Shakespeare whacks, as you say in such a wacky manner, Lady Macduff only to accent Macbeth's cruelty and provide a counterpoint to Lady Macbeth, who, like you, dear Thais, is in all respects a fine example of an archetypal femme fatale."

"Oh."

"And now the Lady Macduff rests on my floor," Gunn whined restlessly on his duff.

Thais wriggled her sexy tan toes in the dust. "She was certainly a big-boned lady," Thais said with certainty. "I can see where you get your big bones," Thais said with calcium in her voice. "Do you have a Wet-Vac?" she asked, sucking at her teeth.

Gunn stood so he could crumple to the floor like an old dollar bill some cheap customer might give to a pizza delivery driver. "Mama! Mama!" he cried like a man who wanted his mama really, really badly.

He is such a tortured soul, Thais thought. He is tormented. He is suffering. He is grief-stricken. He is beleaguered, beset, and besieged.

I am so alliterative, Thais thought alliteratively.

And we've only just met, Thais thought. He's chock full of angst, and he doesn't even know me yet. How quaint. And he loved his mama very, very much. I have to love a man who loved his mama very, very much. It makes him very, very manly.

Thais felt a jolt go through her like the time she put a fork in an electrical socket one night back at UVA because all the other undergrads there were doing it. Then her thoughts caught like a split toenail on deep shag carpeting.

O-M-G, she thought, one letter at a time. Am I falling love? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Is this love? Is it? Is it really? Is it? Could it be? Could it? Could it really? Could it? Is he the one? Is he? Is he really? Is he? Am I the one for him? Am I? Am I really? Am I? Are Gunn and I a pair of star-crossed lovers in a dusty room covered with shattered Hummel figurines and the cremated remains of his mother, his most recent lover who I killed somewhat warm and rotting in her grave?

Why did I kill her? Why? Why? Why? Why would I kill Cat Mann? Why? Why? What possible motive could I have had? What? What? Why aren't I thinking this all out loud with him in the room as they do on soap operas, which is so cheesy and retarded, I mean, who walks around telling their business to the world out loud? I mean, besides people standing in line on freaking cell phones talking loud enough to implode eardrums, then when they think you're eavesdropping, they say something like, "Mind your own freaking business!" And you're like, okay, wench, stop talking because you're making your business everybody's business, and no one gives a crap about Deron and how he done you wrong and if that skank keep comin' on to him you gonna straighten dat--

"Mama!" Gunn cried again. "Mama!"

So why did I kill Cat? Thais thought. Why? I could say that I hate cats. That's it. I hate cats, her name was Cat, thus her death. Very, very logical. It's not the truth, of course, but if they ever catch me, I'll plead insanity and they'll send me to a psychiatric hospital to inhale happy pills and allow me to help the FBI solve similar crimes. I'd like that a lot since I need a quiet place to keep all my secrets in one place. I mean, it's a really big secret about how Cat and I were sisters in Slovenia a long time ago and how I sold her to the circus once.

What would Gunn do, Thais continued to think for a long freaking time, if he knew that I was actually Scorpion's sister coming from Slovenia to America via Brazil to wreak havoc with my sexy heels and my very big police-issue gun? He'd probably kill me. I guess I had better not tell him that. What would Gunn say if he knew he had been hot for both sisters of his mortal enemy? He'd probably think some pretty vile thoughts, and then he'd probably wait until I vacuumed up his mother before he killed me in a senselessly violent manner.

"Mama!" Gunn cried for the fifth freaking time. "Mama!"

I left no physical evidence, Thais continued to think, evidently, because I am an international terrorist and I watch CSI and Forensic Files all the time. I will never commit crimes in Miami, New York, or Las Vegas. The CSI techs in those cities are good, and they solve every crime in less than an hour if you ignore all the commercials, which I always do except for commercials that have clowns in them. Don't ask me why. Clowns are good sales people. But why does the detective in Miami always stand sideways when he talks to a suspect? That would tick me off. I'd say, "Yo, over here, redheaded detective." But here I am ...

"Mama!" Gunn cried for the umpteenth time. "Mama!"

Yes, here I am, Thais thought yet again, getting my thoughts interrupted by a manly man yelling "Mama!" like Marlon Brando yelled "Stella!" over and over until I just couldn't stand it anymore. "Answer him, wench!" I wanted to yell, but I knew she couldn't hear me since it was an old movie and I know that movie people can't really hear me. I am, after all, a UVA graduate who only once put a fork into an electrical socket. Yet here I am falling in love with Gunn even though he looks so pitiful covered in his mother's bodily dust. What should I do? What should I say aloud? What can anyone say at a time like this? Do I confess my crimes, say, "I love you," and expect Gunn to forgive me?

I've heard it happens in a whopping pile of romance novels.

I mean, the heroine catches the hero "bedding down a kitchen wench" yet forgives his cheating heart even when he says, "If you loved me, I wouldn't have had to bed down the kitchen wench" and then he says, "I love you" to make it all better.

I guess I could go ahead, assassinate Gunn, and make it look like he fell in the bathtub. Or, I could smother him with his own chest hair. A simple up-do, and he's done. Do I do right by my creepy brother, who is really a wimp, cries at chick flicks, and is afraid of moths, and make what's left of my family proud of me, or do I turn my sexy Slovenian, Brazilian, naturalized American heel on everyone--except Cat, who's certainly dead as a doornail--whom I hold dear? I feel so much angst.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 13)

Primal attraction burned in him and shot through her like a bolt gun used to kill cows and pigs in slaughterhouses, which is so inhumane. Say you're a cow waiting your turn to die. Humans have raised and fattened you since birth. You even kind of like them when they brush you, though they always miss brushing the spot that annoys you the most. You're even smiling while you're waiting, chewing your cud like bubble gum and wishing you could blow a big pink bubble like that freckled kid who gives you rotten apples that make your two stomachs hurt. You think that your bovine friends ahead of you are falling asleep and hitting the floor unusually fast, but you don't sweat it because you're a cow with several brain cells and think humans are really cool because they feed you all the time and let you wander all over creation eating food that gives you major gas that will one day destroy the ozone layer. You finally get to the front of the line. It's your turn. You're excited because you finally get the chance to get some much-needed sleep. I mean, it's no barbecue picnic filling two stomachs every day and flatulating enough gas to fuel several large power plants in Rhode Island. You smile at the man with the bloody, gloved hand. He puts a cold piece of metal to your temple, and it feels so nice since that's the place they always forget to brush then BAMMO! Down you go, your cud ejected into the darkness, a huge pink blood bubble spewing from your lips, your tongue preceding your head to the floor with a THWACK! It's the last sound your furry, tagged ears will ever hear.

"Oh, Cat, my darling!" Gunn mooed.

"That's not my name," Thais uttered. "I am offended. I am affronted, insulted, outraged, piqued, stung, injured, wounded, cut, disobliged, lacerated, and quite not happy. At all. And I mean it." She stamped her foot and partially threw out a hip. "You have tread on my toes, stomped on my feet, kicked me in the shins, and given my heart a Charley horse. I feel like a freshly killed, too-trusting cow who only wanted to blow a big, stupid pink bubble. I am no longer full of romantic feelings. Goodbye."

"Wait."

Thais waited.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"We need to talk."

"Isn't that what we're doing?"

"Let me pee first," Thais said, peeved. "I've had to pee for the last two pages."

After peeing, Thais spun on her heels and almost fell to the floor. Thais had sexy heels, tan heels worn smooth by the tan sands on the tan beaches and green soccer fields of her native Brazil. She had come to the United States after being named Miss Brazil as a teenager and scoring the winning goal against Uruguay in the World Cup, fell in love with American cuisine and all its trans fat, because a naturalized citizen, lied her way into the University of Virginia, graduated with a degree in political science, posed for a "Got milk?" ad, and became a low-paid cop.

Thais threaded her way through a virtual minefield of Cat's bric-a-brac littering the living room. She punted the robotic vacuum cleaner into the hallway as she eyed the Hummel figurines festering on bookshelves and on the fireplace mantel. She hated the sight of another woman's stuff still taking up her man's space, so she smashed all the Hummels with her furious tan fists of Brazilian fury, gleefully grinding a defenseless angel into angel dust with her smooth, sexy, tan Brazilian heel.

"What in blue blazes are you doing?" Gunn blazed, feeling blue.

"I'm erasing your past, Gunn," Thais said, her heart racing. "You cannot live in the past, Gunn. It's so wrong to do that, Gunn. You shouldn't do it, Gunn. It's a waste of time, Gunn. You need to live for now, Gunn. The past is past, Gunn. The future is now, Gunn. Live for the moment, Gunn. Live for now, Gunn. The past is passe, Gunn. the present is a present, Gunn."

She crushed a defenseless kitten Hummel. 'The present is a gift you open every day of your life, and sometimes the box is empty and you get really crabby about it and break stuff and jump down the throats of people who love you just because you can. Sometimes it contains Lycra bicycle shorts, and though they're usually more expensive, they never come back from the laundry the same. Sometimes you can't remove the wrapping paper from your life's box without tearing it, and it flusterates you even though you know you'd never actually use the wrapping paper again on another present, I mean, who the heck is so freaking cheap that they would do that kind of thing? Sometimes you can't get the tape off the box at all, so you stay in bed all day watching infomercials and Home Shopping Network and eating leftover sushi washed down by milk that's way out of date and rattles like marbles in the carton. The future is a huge group of presents all piled under a huge Christmas tree called life, only you don't have to water the tree to keep the needles from spilling all over your carpet, and they have yet to make an affordable American-made vacuum cleaner that can suck up every one of those needles. You have to bend down and use your fingers sometimes, and your fingertips get all piney and sappy. So, live for now, Gunn, or your life will be all sappy."

"But those Hummels belonged to my mother!" Gunn hummed maternally under his breath. "Other than her eyes, hair color, basic facial bone structure, her stringy nose hairs, half of my DNA, my decadent and daring sense of fashion, and my insatiable desire for hot pickles, those figurines were all I had left of her! I know you are coarse, sexy, and wise, but don't take every memory I have of my mother away from me!"

"This is good therapy," Thais said therapeutically. She picked up a large gray vase with a lid on top. "It's for your own good." She threw the vase into the fireplace, a plume of gray powder filling the room. "You need to dust more often," she said dustily.

"No I don't!" Gunn cried. "That ... was ... my ... mother!"

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 12)

Gunn backed the new Geo Storm from the back bumper of Thais's police car and sped off into the sunrise, his front bumper gouging the asphalt in front of him, sparks setting off several small brush fires that would later be blamed on careless campers on their way to spend their vacation at a campground. But who were they kidding? They were driving a Recreational Vehicle, an RV. You don't really camp if you're inside an RV, right? Camping involves tents, marshmallows, nocturnal critters, rocks and sticks gouging your backside all night, and mosquitoes--not indoor plumbing, satellite TV, a refrigerator, and those ridiculous paper lamps strung up everywhere like a campsite is supposed to look like Chinese New Year.

When they arrived at his mansion, Thais taught Gunn the famous yoga position number thirty-four so he could sober up comfortably. They formed a millipede, a perfect circle, his feet to her ears, her feet to his ears. They remained in this position for thirty-four minutes enjoying each other's feet and wondering when the fun was supposed to begin.

"Are you--"

"No. Are you--"

"Of course not."

"You ... aren't?"

"No."

"I meant--"

"Oh. Um, you don't have to be."

"So you're really--"

"Yes."

Gunn squinted as Clint Eastwood used to squint before he became all wrinkly and old as the Appalachian Mountains, which are the oldest mountains in North America. "By the way," Gunn said, pondering aloud, "the New River in southwest Virginia is one of the oldest rivers on the planet. Why they named it the New River is beyond me, but if you ever need a definition of irony, you have one now."

"Thanks," Thais said with thanking thanks in her thankfully thankful heart.

"Just being instructive," Gunn said informatively.

"But back to what you were saying before," Thais said, uncoiling from the circle. "I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing."

"What were we talking about?"

"Are you sure?"

Gunn smiled. "About yoga? Yes. It's good for my back."

"I meant--"

"Oh. Yes. I am."

"You really are?"

"Yes."

Thais squinted as Joan Rivers might if Joan Rivers ever could squint. "Are we talking about the same thing?"

Gunn scratched his head, which meant he was confused. He also had dandruff, so folks thought he was confused a lot.

"Wait," Thais said patiently.

Gunn waited.

"Are you sure?" Thais repeated in a positive manner.

"You mean, am I sure that I'm ..."

"Yes."

Thais un-squinted. "Our bodies have been in a perfect circle for thirty-four minutes. We represent infinity and eternity and other circular things like Frisbees, and manhole covers, and new garbage can lids before the union trash people dent them all to smithereens when you're trying to sleep at five in the morning. What do you think?"

Gunn didn't know what to think, so he thought about nothing.

Thais sighed. "I think about so many irrelevant things."

"Me, too," Gunn said intuitively. "Like, have you ever noticed that Andy Rooney says 'Have you ever noticed' a lot?"

Thais sighed again, her eyes capsizing like a catamaran running around on the Great Barrier Reef, which is the largest living thing on earth. "But are you comfortable with this, with us, with our future?"

"Oh. That. Yes."

"So I don't have to be--"

"No. As long as you're clean."

"I bathed."

"Good. Um, there is one thing."

"Yes?"

"I drank a lot of free coffee at the Dunkin Donuts this morning," Thais said freely and without coughing. "It's what we insensitive cops to, you know. We waltz into food franchises that have extremely small profit margins and drink away a percent or two of their profits every single day under the guise of providing protection for the store owners. Anyway, my bladder is about to burst."

"Yes. Um, after you get some relief, then we can snuggle, neck, and generally do some serious networking."

Thais licked her lips, wishing she had bought stock in Chapstick. "Like giraffes and camels on the Discovery Channel," she roared. "Like squirrels in your back yard," she chattered. "Like worms in the mud," she muttered.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 11)

Thais Knotts was the aforementioned mother of Rafe, Rafe who would despise her name because it was a boy's name and what, were her parents crazy when they named her, or blind, or what? Rafe kind of liked "Sparky," though. That name had spark. It had fire. It was combustible. It was fiery. It sizzled.

Maybe, Rafe the unborn baby thought, they were relighting the pilot light in the water heater when they named me, or am I nicknamed for Old Sparky, the nickname for electric chairs in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, New York, Texas, and West Virginia, and why do I have so many questions for one not yet born, though I can't wait to be born, learn to talk, get potty-trained, and ask my parents about my screwy name?

Thais Knotts limped back to Gunn's window and pointed a very large, scary, police-issue, snub-nosed .38 at him. "Don't you move a single, solitary muscle, buster! Don't you even sneeze! Don't you even flinch a capillary or I'll cap you, you scum-sucking pig!"

Gunn froze, willing his capillaries not to flinch. He had already taken several muscle relaxers to smooth out his drunken rampage, so he wasn't worried about moving any muscles.

But when Thais saw Gunn all frozen and inert and bleeding and stinking blind drunk and gagging on half a Cuban cigar, she smiled a silly little smile when she beheld his masculine manliness. He was manly in a way other men weren't. He was a many, mannish man with a manly, mannish smell, a manly, mannish face, and long, manly, mannish nose hairs. Lesser men would have plucked or trimmed those scraggly, dark strings hanging down from his nostrils to his upper lip, but not this scum-sucking, manly, mannish pig. Thais knew at that moment that Gunn was the most manly, mannish man ever created since the beginning of time. She knew that her destiny was to bear him a child whom she would nickname Sparky in thirty-four months.

"Oh, you poor, poor, poor, poor dear," Thais said, her words dripping carelessly with careful amounts of caring care. "Are you okay?"

"No," Gunn said while licking alcohol-thinned blood and Cuban cigar debris from his lips. He, too, decided that Thais was his real soul mate based on the size of her gun, the ruggedness of her police-issue trousers bulging with ammunition, and her silly little laugh. "Can you, can you heal me, oh fair one with the large gun, rugged pants, and silly little laugh? Will you, will you heal me, you who should be Miss America provided you say politically correct things in all your answers to the judges even if your answers are against everything you believe in?"

Thais's face melted into that soft and caring face women use whenever they hold a newborn baby, kitten, puppy, or new pair of shoes to add to the thousand and five pairs overflowing their closets, most of these shoes worn once with an outfit that has since gone out of style everywhere but The View.

"I can sure try," Thais said with care dripping from her silly little voice onto his lap and forming a puddle of caring goo. "But you want me to heal you? How can you know that I'm the one? I never went to medical school, though I wanted to. I faint at the sight of blood anyway. I've always been that way. I'd skin my knee, see the blood, and pow! Right over onto my noggin and bleeding worse than before. Scraped off many an eyebrow in my day, I have. And don't even get me started about scabs, especially the oozing ones that look like dried up frogs. But ... how do you know that I'm your one and only?"

Gunn chewed on his cigar, reduced after twelve hours and a major collision to a saliva-filled thumb of Cuban tobacco. "You had me at scum-sucking pig."

Thais's eyes misted up, and she said so sweetly, "That is so sweet."

"I know it is," Gunn said with a knowing air. "It's why I said it. I say sweet things so you don't think I'm completely an incorrigible rogue. I say sweet things because I do have a soft side and a rare tea cozy collection. I saw sweet things to get you romantically interested in me because otherwise you would arrest me and throw away the key. Look, I have to pee because of the thirteen Tom Collins I just drank before washing them down with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, so if you don't mind ..."

Thais marveled at Gunn's ability to drink and to be able to converse after he should have been brain dead hours ago.

"Oh," Gunn added brokenly, "and I think my leg is broken."

"You have another one," Thais said with a silly little womanly giggle.

So wise, this woman, Gunn thought. She is a femme fatale, a beautiful, siren-like woman capable of destroying a man's soul and life by making him feel bad, confused, and infatuated all at the same time. She's like a dame in a Bogart movie, but not the one with that decrepit boat and all those Germans. You know, a Bogart movie with the dame who shows up at the detective's office flashing her gams wrapped in black market nylons, and she turns out to be really, really evil and really, really beautiful at the same time, kind of like Queen Elizabeth I, who wasn't actually that pretty, but if you wanted to keep your royal artist's gig, you had to paint her beautifully or she'd chop your fool head off in front of a cheering crowd of English soccer fans and other theologians.

Thais was like that, the yin to his yang, the dark to his light, the snap, crackle, and pop to his Rice Crispies, a real woman who put on her police-issue trousers one leg at a time and carried a huge, scary, police-issue .38.

"Let's go to my place," Gunn groaned placidly, because most of the alcohol in his blood had bled out and he was finally feeling painfully painful pain.

"Sure," Thais said surely. "Can you drive?"

"Yes," Gunn said affirmatively with another manly groan. "Only one of my legs is broken. You don't mind shifting gears for me, do you? I am, after all, blind drunk, crippled, and infatuated."

"I don't mind," Thais said mindlessly. "I am, after all, left-handed," she added handily.

Their eyes met. It was a romantic moment, kind of like the one Gunn had with Cat only different.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 10)

"Life," Gunn thought aloud as he moved realistically away from Cat's grave like molasses in February. "Life has a way of getting rosy." He stood beside the new Geo Storm. He took out a Cuban cigar but didn't light it out of respect for the dead around him who were probably dying for a smoke and the fact that just owning a Cuban cigar could get him into trouble with the Feds. He chomped on the cigar while he mused about life.

"Life is, indeed, a rose," Gunn said in a lifeless manner. "You have to feed it expensive plant food, these little pebbly things that look suspiciously like a little boy's boogers, but if you feed the rose too much, it will wilt like Republican hopes for the presidency through 2016. Life is thorny, especially if you live in the country where a simple walk in the woods can tear the snot out of your clothes. Life sometimes smells good, and sometimes life smells like rotted rose petals dripping with snail slime and half-digested berry-filled pigeon poop."

A single ray of golden light broke through a crevice in the clouds. The crevice looked exactly like the scabby scar on Cat's forehead. It was a ray of silken blonde, which didn't match Cat's hair at all except for a few strands she had bleached once on a whim when she was at band camp as a teenager. All the kids were doing it, so Cat streaked her red hair with blonde. She looked like the top of a merry-go-round for several weeks. Whenever she spun around quickly in a circle, her head would look like the world's largest orange.

"And now," Gunn said juicily, "I've been sun-kissed."

He bathed in that golden ray, he worshiped it, he burned in it.

"My poor, poor, poor Cat. I wish we hadn't fought over the Pomeranian. I will buy one in your memory and name it 'Ouch,' you know, that romantic word you'd utter whenever I hugged you. If we hadn't fought and I hadn't stormed out, I would have been home with you at the time of your death, which the police said was 1:34 AM because of Cat's smashed Mickey Mouse watch. Little did the police know, but Cat's watch needed a new battery and always said 1:34. I would have protected you with my secret arsenal of mostly illegal weapons the NRA has let me legally own so I can hunt freely in this land of the free and the home of the Atlanta Braves."

Gunn hugged Cat's marble tombstone. "I wish that category five hurricane and that 7.5 earthquake that I slept through last night hadn't knocked out the power to the entire East Coast, thereby disabling my state-of-the-art alarm system."

Gunn chewed his cigar in a virile, manly manner. "The police are looking for a girly man with a limp, but if I find him first, he'll be toast. He'll be burned toast. He'll be burned heel toast. Why don't people eat the heels of a loaf of bread? They are just as nutritious. Americans waste too much good food, don't they? And when I am done with Cat's killer, he'll be so crusty he'll look like barnacles encrusted on the bottom of a bass boat beached in Barcelona. He'll be so crispy I can serve him with two family side dishes at KFC."

Maybe, Gunn thought, Cat's killer limps because he only has one leg. I will find him and disarm him, too.

These thoughts naturally gave way to thoughts of Cat's final moments. Who would kill Cat? Who? Who? Who? Why would anyone kill her? Why? Why? Why? She was completely, totally, wholly harmless unless she was on her pain medication and falling all over the place holding a switchblade, and I have the scars on my arms to prove it. Why had Cat been armed with an Uzi submachine gun and Chinese throwing stars, both of which police found unused and tucked under the cushions in my sectional sofa?

Littler did he know, Gunn would soon run into the aforementioned mother of Rafe, a.k.a. "Sparky," his first child who would be born in a trough in a barn on a commune in Flagstaff, Arizona, in only thirty-four short months.

After kissing Cat's tombstone and getting a cemetery worker to help him get his lips unstuck from the frozen marble, Gunn got blind drunk and left new Geo Storm paint on thirty-four cars along Main Street. Gunn plowed down Main Street in the snow in a drunken attempt to rekindle the fiery image of Cat's hair and the collision that originally brought Cat singed and bleeding into his life. That's when he ran smack dab into the back of Thais Knott's police cruiser at precisely 7:34 AM.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 9)

And those roses did, all eighty-seven that had survived the windy trip to Gunn's mansion. One of the roses, the very last one, the rose in his very hand, that rose cut his palm as he gripped it while hugging the casket. The thorn cut deep into his very soul, into his very marrow, into even his DNA, RNA, a ribosome or two, and his endoplasmic reticulum, creating a wound from which he knew he would never recover, a wound he would take to his grave, a wound that his law firm would turn into a multimillion-dollar lawsuit just for the fun of it to tie up the American court system well into the second half of the twenty-second century.

"Oh, my love, my love, my love ... is like a red, red rose," Gunn whispered readily.

Gunn suddenly had an epiphany, and it hit him like a bolt of lightning jolting a Sunday golfer right in the heel of his seven-iron. Am I Scottish then? Who quotes Robert Burns at funerals but the Scottish, Presbyterians, and professors of British Neoclassic and Romantic poetry? I like golf. I drink tea. I look good in plaid. I walk around in a fog. I like skirts. Maybe I'm Scotch and Irish!

Only Gunn and Father Time, an ancient Italian priest, attended Cat's funeral. Father Time said quite a few random things about Cat, like how he knew she was this and that and the other, almost as if he knew her very, very well, and this made Gunn feel even more angst.

I hardly knew ye at all! Gunn whimpered dialectically in his mind. If we only had more time! That's all I wanted! More time! And more thyme! You made my life spicy! I wish this were leap year! I wish the earth would stop rotating on its axis so we'd all fly off the planet at 200 miles per hour!

Father Time shook Gunn's trembling hands with eerily cold and clammy hands. "She was a fine woman, son."

"Dad?"

"No, I am a man of the cloth."

"Oh. Um, cotton?"

"Polyester blend," Father Time said. "Cotton makes me itch."

And then, it began to rain as it usually does at all movie funerals to provide the rainmakers jobs, I suppose, and lend gravity and mud and little dots of water to the camera lenses, all of which, I suppose, is to make the cinematic experience more realistic. The rain was heavy. It soaked him. Gunn was wet. He was sodden. He dripped. He felt the cold seeping into his bones. His bones ached. The rain had a sixty percent chance of turning into snow, and it did, instantaneously coating the mound of dirt under which lay his love, his soul mate, his sweet patootie, Cat Mann.

Gunn would never forget her. He would mourn her for the rest of his life. He would adopt kittens and tell them the epic story of his and Cat's two-week-long torrid love affair over some catnip and Friskies Buffet. He would go on a pilgrimage to Kathmandu. He would meet Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. He would never marry. He would become a Scotch-Irish priest who wore polyester blends and called men "son" to mess with their heads and put them into years of psychotropic drug therapy.

The next day, however, Gunn would meet Thais Knotts, and unbeknownst to her and to him, Thais Knotts would be his true truelove and mother of his unborn child, Sparky.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 8)

Gunn crumpled to the porch like the Constitution during the first, second, and third Bush presidencies. "I am feeling severe angst."

"It will pass," O'Malley said in passing. "She's gone, me lad."

"Gone?"

"She has left the building," O'Malley said rightly.

"She walked out on me?" Gunn cried out. "I mean, I have her new Geo Storm, so she would have had to walk on her seriously nice stems, and with all her second- and third-degree burns, I doubt seriously that she could walk very far."

"No, me lad," O'Malley said in a negative tone. "She's resting in the arms of Jesus."

"She ran away with my accountant?" Gunn gasped unaccountably.

Officer O'Malley shook his head. "I said Gee-zuss, not hey-Zeus."

Gunn pursed his lips. "That's the way my accountant says his name."

"Your accountant has a messiah complex, does he?" O'Malley asked with complexity in a messianic way.

"Don't they all?" Gunn mused. "His full name is Jesus God, if that's any indication. His real name was Romulus Remus, but he paid to have it changed."

"Fascinating," Officer O'Malley said irreverently. "But Cat didn't run off with Jesus. She's wandering Jordan's bank and the Stygian shore, she's pushing up peonies, she's off to the happy hunting grounds, and she has sung her own requiem. She is defunct, non-operational, permanently stagnant, and torpid."

"You don't mean ..."

"She is a stiff, she's ripe for the cutting, ready the rib spreader, she's primed to be embalmed, better call the funeral home, write that obituary, she's prepared to biodegrade."

"You can't mean ..."

"She's dead as a doornail, she has kicked her last bucket, and she's dead and gooey as the potatoes in Ireland during the blight that forced my ancestors to flee to Boston to root for the Celtics against our will."

Gunn crumpled to his knees like Cost-Cutter aluminum foil, you know, the kind that never tears in a straight line, and no matter how careful you are, when you pull out exactly the amount you need, it still tears like snaggle-teeth and no longer fits the container you're trying to wrap, and then you have to tear off another piece to cover the open spots, which is a conspiracy, I tell you, a scam that cuts less cost and even more aluminum foil!

"I feel your angst," Officer O'Malley said metallically and rapidly.

"Why?!?!?!?!" Gunn exclaimed questioningly and markedly. "Why did she have to die?!?!?!"

"Well, me lad, she bled out, stopped breathing, and became brain dead," O'Malley said breathily in a brainy manner.

Gunn looked up. "She was kind of like that when she was alive!"

"Not like this," Officer O'Malley said naughtily. "I counted thirty-four bullet holes along with a fierce looking infected hangnail on her left ring finger."

Gunn curled into the fetal position and sucked his thumb since he didn't have cigar handy to chew on. "What will I do with all the roses?"

"They'll look lovely on her casket, me lad," Officer O'Malley said lovingly.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive to the right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 7)

Suddenly, sirens interrupted Gunn's romantic thoughts. Miles of police tape circled his mansion like little, thin, yellow, plastic children playing "Ring around the Rosie." He leaped out of the new Geo Storm like a man-sized bullfrog who ate Wheaties and felt the turmoil of tumultuous emotions. He had a jillion emotions going through his mind, all of them extremely emotional and emotionally draining.

He ducked under some police tape near his porch and ran smack dab into an Irish cop named Shamus O'Malley.

"What's happened here?" Gunn asked by happenstance.

"Is this your house?" O'Malley asked residentially with an Irish brogue, kicking his little legs together and cackling like a leprechaun.

"Yes, this is my house," Gunn said domestically.

"It's also a crime scene, lad," O'Malley said criminally.

A crime scene! Gunn thought excitedly. Here? At my house? Today? It can't be! I have laundry to do! "Where's my Cat?"

"I didn't know you had one, so it must have run off," O'Malley said, running his Irish mouth in a runny and offhand manner.

Gunn smiled catatonically. "I don't have a cat, Officer O'Malley. Do I look like a cat man to you? Huh, huh, huh."

O'Malley joined him with ironic Irish laughter gilded with angst.

"My girlfriend's name is Cat."

"So you're the boyfriend?" O'Malley asked boyishly.

Gunn nodded. "I am the boyfriend. I bought her some roses." He pointed at the back of the new Geo Storm.

Officer O'Malley looked at the roses. "They look like some empty stems to me."

"It was windy," Gunn said breezily.

"It might have had something to do with you having the windows open," O'Malley said openly. "Son, we need to talk."

Gunn blinked fifty times in a minute, the international sign that he was totally clueless, confused, nervous, or had something in his eye. He was glad he wasn't a parrot (twenty-six blinks per minute), a newborn baby (two blinks per minute), or an ostrich (one blink per minute), and that calmed him somewhat, but he couldn't stop thinking thoughtful thoughts.

Is Officer O'Malley my long-lost father? He called me his son just now! Am I Irish? Is it why I like the color green so much? Is it why I root for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team even though those guys come in as blue chip NFL prospects and go out as undrafted free agents thanks to horrendous coaching by guys who look like Rodney Dangerfield? Is it why I like women who have green eyes? Is it why I think little people live under stairs, eat cereal filled with marshmallows, and have magical powers? Is it why I prefer weeping to laughing, wool to cotton, and redheads to brunettes? Is it why I want to be the middleweight boxing champion of the world someday?

"Are you my father, Officer O'Malley?" Gunn asked paternally.

"No, son," O'Malley said, suddenly full of darkness.

"Dad?"

Officer O'Malley took a little silver flask, which magically never emptied, from his pocket and inhaled a long swig of Irish whiskey. "'Son' is just a stereotypical Irish cop expression designed to keep you calm before I tell you some really, seriously awful, you're gonna be really, really angry bad news."

"Oh." Gunn had a sinking feeling. That's when he realized that he needed to replace a few sagging boards on his porch. Lousy contractors, Gunn thought. Always substituting inferior 6.0 Eastern white pine when they run out of Western red cedar.

"Your girlfriend Cat had some seriously nice stems," O'Malley said seriously and nicely.

"Thank you," Gunn said thankfully.

"Your roses were once lovely son, but she'll never see them," O'Malley said blindly.

"You don't mean ..."

Officer O'Malley nodded.

Gunn crumpled to the porch like a three-piece suit made of crepe paper and recycled toilet tissue. "She's blind? I just bought her that contact lens! Was it recalled without my knowledge? I thought most recalls were for toys and cribs covered with lead-based paint from mainland China, where pollution is rampant, freedom is just another word, and they have far too many people!"

"Yes, they are, son."

"Dad?"

"No." Officer O'Malley helped Gunn to his feet. "I can see you have some deep seated father issues. I'll just call you 'me lad' from now on."

"OK."

"Me lad, she's not blind," O'Malley said not as blindly.

"St. Patrick be praised!" Gunn shouted trickily.

"St. Patrick came to Ireland, me lad," O'Malley said outlandishly. "Thus, he wasn't Irish."

"Oh. Um, what was he?" Gunn asked in all one-syllable words.

"Probably Swedish or Scandinavian," O'Malley said unintelligibly. "He talked with an indecipherable accent and claimed he wrote Nobel Prize-deserving books."

"Oh," Gunn said shortly.

"So, she's not blind, me lad," O'Malley said visually. "It's worse."

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 6)

The next day, Gunn felt something like guilt. It reminded him of the time he ate too much Halloween candy and his stomach felt like the Hindenburg before it exploded in New Jersey in 1937, oh the humanity! It reminded him of the time he set fire to the class gerbil, only no one noticed since the gerbil usually smelled pretty bad and ate its own poo. It also reminded him of Spam for some reason, though he had never eaten Spam in his life.

Thus, out of guilt he couldn't completely explain, Gunn bought flowers for Cat to mend the tremendous rift between them caused by the dreaded but-as-yet-purchased Pomeranian. These weren't just any flowers, however. They were nice flowers, and he bought these nice flowers at a florist called, aptly, Nice Flowers. They smelled like roses even though they looked like daisies. He supposed that Nice Flowers kept all their nice flowers in the same nice refrigerator. He hated when his food smelled like other food. A single onion left in the fridge turned his milk oniony. One time a moldy piece of cheese made his lettuce taste cheesy. It was a good thing Gunn's condiments came in several thousand sealed fast food packets.

"Here are your peonies, sir," the girl said.

"Peonies?"

"Yes, peonies."

"I can't tell my soul mate, 'I want to make up with you, here are your peonies!'" Gunn yelled tellingly.

"You picked out peonies, sir," the girl said in a picky manner.

"I want roses!" Gunn howled rosily. "I said, 'Give me those roses there!'"

"You pointed at the peonies, sir, so I wrapped up peonies," the girl said pointedly.

"You knew what I meant," Gunn said knowingly in the past tense.

"I do not have ESP, sir," the girl said using her sixth sense.

"Oh." Gunn wrinkled up his incorrigible rogue's face. "Well, I want roses, every last rose you have! All of them!" He pointed at some long yellow flowers.

"Those are daffodils, sir," the girl said in a daffy and dilly manner.

"Just roses! Spare no expense for my sugar muffin!" Gunn bawled expensively.

The girl smiled a smiley smile full of smiles. "Is she your sweetie?"

"Yes." Gunn stood tall. "Cat Mann is my snookums, my boo, my sweetest, my girl, my main squeeze, my honey, my darling, my treasure, my truelove, my sweet patootie, my inamorata."

"Oooooooh, you are a dream," the girl cooed dreamily. "Are you foreign?"

Gunn flexed every muscle in his body and gave himself some severe cramps in the bottoms of his feet and just under his third rib. "I am a man of the world."

The girl flushed with romantically romantic feelings of romance and wished that she, too, could have a man of the world who was clueless about flowers and spared no expense for his sweet patootie. Her life just plain sucked like a calf sucking on its mama's teat, only not as milky or freaking gross.

"Do you have a brother?" she asked in a brotherly way. "I mean, gosh, if I can't marry you, maybe I can marry your brother and make you some nieces and nephews."

"Sorry, my dear girl," Gunn said in a dearly sorry way. "I have no brother. They killed him!"

"Who killed him?"

Gunn looked down on the little waif. "You're much too young for such tales of woe, my child."

"I'm eighteen."

"Oh, in that case, you don't need an adult present. They killed my brother Herb about ten years ago in Amsterdam."

"What happened?"

Gunn felt suddenly full of angst. "I do not want to talk about it."

The girl pouted and decided to have a meaningless conversation with a pizza delivery guy later that night.

"Oh, and can you remove all the thorns from the roses for me?" Gunn asked thornily.

A few minutes later, the girl's hands completely punctured and bloody and therefore unattractive to even the most desperate pizza delivery guy, Gunn drove the new Geo Storm to his house, ninety-two dozen roses packed into the back seat with all the windows open.

On his drive home, Gunn planned the fireworks to come. He'd say, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," and Cat would purr and say, "Meow." She would then slink across the floor on her hands and knees in the Catwoman suit she wore to protect her second and third-degree burns. Then she'd rub her back against his legs. "Have you been a good kitty or a naughty kitty?" he'd ask, and she'd say, "Meow" again, only this time very cattily.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 5)

When Cat suggested getting a Pomeranian, Gunn put his foot down hard and sprained his right pinkie toe. "No dogs!" he yelled doggedly.

"You don't mean that, do you?" she asked meaningfully.

"I say what I mean and I mean what I say!" he hollered redundantly.

"Do you mean that, too?" she asked repetitively.

"We need to talk," Gunn said talkatively.

"Isn't that what we're doing?" she asked questioningly.

"Yes, we are talking, but that's not what I thought I was saying when I said, 'We need to talk,'" he said thoughtfully.

"So it's really, really serious," she said really, really seriously. Her voice caught like a sleeve on a rusty hangnail.

"Yes, it's serious, so very, very, very, very, very serious," he said very often.

"Oh." Her voice caught again, but this time it caught like a knitted scarf thrown carelessly into the spokes of a speeding 1959 FLH Custom Harley Davidson motorcycle, unseating the rider, and creating a human skid mark 1,034 feet long in the far left lane of Interstate 81.

"Is that all you can say? Oh? Oh?" he echoed.

She nodded and shivered as if the Ice Age had returned, T-Rexes and flying dinosaurs with huge wings and long beaks and goofily spelled names trudging and soaring around in her head, her thoughts a murky tar pit full of maggot-infested saber-toothed tiger carcasses.

"Huh?" Gunn asked with a grunt.

Cat hadn't been paying attention. "What?" she asked, as if she had ADHD, which, indeed, she had. She had never outgrown her hyperactivity, and because her parents had seriously overmedicated her as a child, Cat wept herself to sleep every night thinking of all the other overly overmedicated children of the world with cruel parents who believed hyperactivity to be a sin punishable by military school, spankings, Ritalin, and membership in the Republican Party.

"I said, 'Huh,'" Gunn said with another grunt.

"Huh?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Is that all you can say? Oh? Oh?" Gunn suddenly had that strange feeling of deja vu and knew he had lived before as a praying mantis, even though he didn't believe in reincarnation or particularly like praying mantises because of their close biological relationship to termites and cockroaches.

The T-Rexes and flying dinosaurs had returned to befuddle Cat's mind. They mistook her singed red hair for a nice geranium to munch upon.

"Huh?" Gunn, the incorrigible rogue, said for the umpteenth time.

"We need to talk," Cat said.

"We are talking."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry about saying 'oh' so often."

"Huh?"

"What?" Cat was flusterated.

Gunn was flusterated, too, and without another "huh," he stormed out, got in Cat's new Geo Storm, went to the last Blockbuster on earth that still rented movies and didn't have a Starbucks attached to it, rented Storm of the Century, and spent a stormy night a-low-un in his secret crash pad across town.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 4)

They fell asleep in each other's arms until Gunn rolled over and nearly suffocated Cat with his chest hair.

They awoke on the couch, which smelled of burning lust. They woke up sticky and smelling like musty damp lettuce and mildewed cabbage, their body odor intermingling and forming a mist of lust that floated from the couch to steam of the picture window overlooking the meadows, streams, mountains, and forests of Gunn's estate.

The lust mist obscured the Thornhill Mountains, upon which, in 1863, Colonel Ornes "The Bearded One" Jordan led an expedition in search of the renegade rebel Samuel Thompson, who, as it turned out, was really a dandy chess player from Amherst who dreamed of playing football in the NFL, which, as we all know, didn't exist in 1863--but it should have. Maybe there wouldn't have been a Civil War if professional football had been around to give folks the chance to vent, paint their faces, and wear pig noses and dresses. They could have had the first Blue vs. Gray game and gotten the war over and done with in sixty minutes, thereby ridding the world of 140+ years of Civil War books including nearly a thousand pages of Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, Gone With the Wind, and The Red Badge of Courage.

Later, Gunn bought Cat a new nose to replace her old nose that jingled like loose change because of the exploding airbag in her Geo Storm. He bought her one red contact to cover one of her green eyes so she could look festive and blend in at Christmas.

Cat bought Gunn a new blade for his blender and one cufflink because she was dirt poor and had gone barefoot until she was seventeen. She was so poor she had to lay away clothes at K-Mart for several years, and by the time she had finished paying for them, her clothes had gone out of style everywhere except in Amish country. She was so poor she couldn't afford to fix the horn on her Geo Storm, yelling, "Honk!" at other drivers instead. She was so poor she had to use her last scented candle to heat her apartment. She had shivered a lot, but she had cinnamon apple-smelling goose bumps.

They talked of marriage. They talked of kids. They talked of a lifetime together cuddling morning, noon, night, and sometimes during the between times like when the sun is just coming up or going down or when there's an eclipse and you really can't tell day from night.

Gunn wanted twelve kids.

Cat wanted fifteen.

"We'll need more bathrooms," Gunn said often in a needy manner, and Cat flushed whenever he said it.

He was her everything, and she was his everything, and they shared everything together all day long and all night long, and neither had to go to work because of The Settlement. His lawyers at Gregg, Muse, and Berger had seen to that.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 3)

Their eyes met again, and then they did some hot, smoking, crazy, burning hot as smoldering Geo Storm necking, the monitors flashing their lights in perfect rhythm to their kissing.

Afterward, Gunn asked her, "What is your name?"

"Cat," she purred.

"Me ... ow," he said with a hiss. "Move in with me," he said movingly.

"OK," she said shortly.

They moved in together that very night, even though no major moving company would be open until 8 AM, and it was a virtual impossibility to get a U-Haul on weekends when most people moved because they didn't want to take a day off from their jobs, and they always lie about how much stuff you can fit in one of those trucks anyway because "Can contain three rooms" really means "Can contain three closets and two empty shoe boxes."

Cat complimented Gunn on his central vacuuming, his gourmet kitchen, his Cuisinart, his indoor/outdoor pool, his robot vacuum that circled the living room, and his collection of rare embroidered tea cozies.

They were instantly in love.

They felt love and full of love from the bottoms of their feet to the tops of their craniums. They felt love from their ingrown toenails to their dandruff. They felt love from their corns and bunions to the tops of their split ends.

They felt, obviously, a lot of freaking love.

And they shared their love all night, loving everything about each other and necking continuously without hydration until the Vicodin kicked in.

After four hours of intense tonsil hockey, they each lay back on Gunn's enormous black leather sectional sofa to think thoughtful thoughts.

Cat thought thoughtless thoughts. Did I turn off my curling iron this morning? I hope I did. I forgot to check. I have no memory at all. Did I turn off my curling iron this morning. Wait. I thought about that already. I think I thought about it. The economy really sucks! What is a recession anyway? If a recession is bad, is a procession good? Why don't they ever say we're in a procession? I need to wax my legs again. My legs could sand a redwood tree down to a toothpick. I wonder how high this ceiling is. This is a nice sofa. I'll bet Gunn rotates his cushions every three months like you're supposed to do. I never do it. The ants eating the crumbs under my couch cushions won't let me because they claim that they were subletting the apartment first. I hope he likes dogs. Did I eat today? That wench of a nurse gave me dirty looks. I'll bet she wanted to hook up with Gunn, too. And why was she wearing makeup? It must have been because of all the lights and cameras. She didn't even speak English. Did I pay my electric bill this month? I hope I didn't and they cut me off. Then I won't have to worry whether or not I turned off my curling iron.

Gunn tried in vain to focus on Cat. She is so hot. I'm hungry. Her skin is so smooth and soft! I'm very hungry. There is some leftover tuna casserole in the fridge. I like her stamina. Wish I had some Gatorade. I am so dehydrated. I can reheat that casserole. It might taste just as good the second time. Soup! I could eat some chicken noodle soup with some crackers. I hope they're not stale. Once I ate a cracker that bent to a ninety-degree angle before it broke.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 2)

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 ground, Al-a-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.

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.

Once inside the ER, doctors and nurses, all of them wearing makeup and generally looking young, hot, and foreign, rolled Cat and Gunn side-by-side on gurneys into the same trauma room since they had similar, non-life-threatening wounds. Tubes snaked from their veins in all directions, and their bill was going to be a whopper.

After stitching them up, all the doctors and nurses walked out to talk, flirt, do Sudoku puzzles, fill out malpractice reports, steal Oxycontin, and eat donuts and pizza, thereby leaving Gunn and Cat completely alone.

Their smoke-ravaged eyes met, her eyes matching her still smoking red hair. Gunn burned for her, and Cat burned for him. They burned for each other.

She had been on fire, after all, only an hour ago.

"Where are the doctors and nurses?" Cat asked wonderingly.

"Nowhere," Gunn said warily. "And that's why we need national health care in this country. They bring you in, they make you sign papers, you sit in the waiting area with a thousand other sick and disease-infested people including people who aren't really sick and just have the blahs or like to hang out watching other people in pain, and the nurses might call you back before next month or whenever they good and well please. Then all they do is take your blood pressure and pulse, declare you alive, and send you on your way with a huge bill you have to take out a second mortgage to pay. It's a disgrace, I tell you!"

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<

Needy Greedy Love (Part 1)

(The following romance novella is embedded in my latest work-in-progress, The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written. My protagonist, Johnny Holiday, writes "horrific" novels and has decided to write Needy Greedy Love, perhaps, in my humble opinion, the worst romance novella ever written. If you are reading this post first, you are ready to begin. If not, casually drift your eyes to my archive at the right and go in order. I have a suspicion, however, that reading this "ridiculous" novella out of order may make it better ...)


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.

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.

>Go to the next part by clicking on the archive at right<