Whitney Collins - Big Bad - Stories

LENORA’S FIRST HEART arrived in a box of Rice Krispies. It fell into her cereal bowl with a damp thud, and for a brief moment she mistook it for a hunk of roast beef. It was crimson in spots and silver in others—as if it had touched a hot skillet—but when Lenora, startled, splashed it with some 2%, the heart turned an all-over vivid fuchsia and fully came to life.

It twitched off a few grains of puffed rice and sputtered for a time, its veins and arteries unfurling like bean sprouts. When it finally found its bossa nova, it thumped the cereal bowl clear across the table and onto the floor, where the bowl shattered. The heart escaped, dancing out of the kitchen and into the hall, where Lenora trapped it with an overturned spaghetti strainer, the way she might secure a loose hamster.

Lenora bathed the heart in the kitchen sink. She washed the cereal from it with care, as well as some dust and lint and two fragments of cereal bowl. When she was done, Lenora set the heart on a potholder and stared. Its beat was now serene, and Lenora, single and childless, felt a rush of self-satisfaction she had always assumed was reserved for the married or maternal. She retrieved her old fishbowl and filled it with tap water and three iron tablets. She added six drops of red food coloring. She placed the heart in the bowl and the bowl on her bedside table. By bedtime, its beat had synced with hers. It was better than a pet. Maybe even better than a baby or husband.

Lenora’s second and third hearts arrived as a pair on her front stoop, in a Styrofoam box packed with dry ice and marked as fresh seafood. These two hearts were smaller and pinker, and not content in glass bowls. They only kept beating when Lenora let them perch on her shoulder like lovebirds, so she let the hearts have their way. When Lenora had to leave the house, she put the hearts into the refrigerator, where the cold, at first, sent them into a temporary hibernation, and she was able to go to the bank, the dentist, the grocery. But after a while, this tactic lost its effectiveness, and the two tiny hearts, furious when abandoned, wreaked havoc inside the fridge, smashing the butter flat and spilling soy sauce and ketchup. Eventually, Lenora let the two hearts perch on her shoulder all day. She went out less. She worked from home. She let a tooth nag her for longer than a tooth should nag someone. Lenora became a hermit, but she also became necessary.

The next ten hearts came into Lenora’s life in quick succession. In her mailbox, a giant brown heart. In her backyard, a violet one under a fern. On the hood of her rarely used car, a dried-out specimen that required an hour of compressions. Bewildered by her new charges, Lenora took to wearing sunglasses. She wore a floppy brimmed hat and tried to never look down. She thought that this approach might keep her from seeing hearts, but the hearts found her anyway. They followed her home on brisk walks around the block. They appeared in her bed when she pulled back the sheets. Lenora could not escape the hearts. Eventually she had thirteen in total. They bounced on her shoulders, they jumped at her ankles. Save for the original heart, which was content in its bowl of metallic, pink water and never gave Lenora any trouble, the twelve other hearts demanded everything of Lenora. And Lenora gave them everything she had. Why shouldn’t she? The hearts loved her like she had never been loved.

Every night, before bed, Lenora sat on the floor. The hearts ran to her. They piled in her lap and beat their approval. Lenora was exhausted but validated. She sang to them. She read to them the sorts of things hearts liked hearing. Pablo Neruda, mostly. But also the personal ads.

“Divorced female, lapsed Catholic,” Lenora would begin, and the hearts would flutter in her lap. “Seeks recovering priest for champagne and chess.” If Lenora paused for too long between ads, the hearts would jump into the newspaper and rattle it. More , they seemed to say. Go on! Go on!

So, Lenora would. Single man, gay and Jewish, seeks badminton partner. Married but lonely atheist seeks backseat hugs in secret parking lots. Adventurous couple seeks adventurous couple for naked skydiving. Hippie seeks hipster for road/acid trips .

One night, when Lenora had read her heart out and the hearts were asleep, thumping contentedly in her lap, she came across a personal ad like no other. Single woman completely unsure of how to love or be loved , it read. But completely sure she is ready to try .

Lenora couldn’t sleep that night. She kept the personal ad folded in a square in her pocket, for a week. She bathed the hearts and read them Neruda and let them take from her what they needed to take. But she did not read them the ad. When she finally decided to call the number, she did so in the car, locked inside, while the hearts hammered the hood and windshield like heavy rain.

“Hello,” Lenora said, when the voicemail picked up. “Ready To Try? This is Also Ready To Try.” The two hearts that Lenora had found on her stoop in the fresh seafood box pounded on the glass. Lenora thought they might explode. “I was wondering,” she said to the voicemail, “if you might like to meet.”

Ready To Try did. Later that day, Lenora received a thumbs-up emoji on her phone and a 7PM ? And Lenora responded with her own thumbs-up and her address, before considering what she was going to do with the hearts. She needed a plan, and fast.

Lenora put on a long prairie skirt. She located her copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets. She ran around the house, the hearts at her heels, until they were exhausted. Then she sat on the floor and called them to her lap. She read 89 of the 154 sonnets until, finally, all the hearts were asleep. Gingerly, Lenora lifted her skirt full of hearts and closed the front of it with her fist. She stepped out of the skirt and walked in her underwear to the metal garbage can in the garage. She knotted the skirt and set the hearts down in the can. She noiselessly placed the lid on the can. She put two bricks on the lid. Then she put on a new, fresh skirt and lipstick and waited.

At seven, Ready knocked on Lenora’s door. Lenora took a deep breath and looked through the peephole. Ready looked exactly that. Her eyes were both hopeful and nervous. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Lenora envisioned her heart as plum-colored and muscular from longing. Lenora put her hand on the knob, and then she removed it. She put it back on the knob and took a breath. When Ready knocked a second time, Lenora opened the door and smiled.

“Hello,” she said.

Ready held out her hand. “Hello,” she said back.

Behind Lenora, past the kitchen, past the hallway that connected to the attached garage, Lenora heard a single metallic thump. And then she heard another. She gave an awkward smile and cleared her throat. The hearts were waking up, it seemed, and before Lenora could invite Ready inside, the hearts launched into a distant, rhythmic banging.

“What’s that?” Ready asked.

“Oh.” Lenora shrugged, walking out onto the stoop and closing the door behind her. “I have some shoes in the dryer.”

Lenora and Ready went out to dinner. They ate roast beef and talked about all the things they weren’t, all the things they’d never done, all the things they would probably never end up being. When they were finished, they went for a long walk. Lenora was afraid she might find another heart, or that another heart would find her, so she refused to look down. Instead, she looked right at Ready and Ready looked right at her. At the end of the night, on their way back to Lenora’s, Lenora worried about asking Ready in. Not because she wasn’t ready for Ready, but because of the hearts. How would Lenora explain the shoes still in the dryer?