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  DEAD MEN

  ARE EASY TO LOVE

  Copyright ©2012

  by Hillary Kanter

  Published by Slightly Off Kanter Press

  Nashville, TN

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

  by any means, without permission.

  For more information, visit

  www.DatingSucks.net

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks go to these people, without whom this book would have been permanently filed … in the wastebasket.

  Even Stevens, Jan Buckingham, Thom Rutledge, Bill “V” Matseas, Nancy Reed Kanter, and Lavada June Roberts.

  Extra special thanks must go to Eric Wilson, for his patience and talent to help turn what was a bunch of stories, into an actual book. He believed I could go the extra mile … and helped me to get there.

  Chapter One:

  DATING SUCKS

  I am, and always have been, a poor liar. If you knew me at all, you’d know that it is completely out of character for me to make up the story you are about to read—just ask my shrink.

  As ludicrous as it may sound, it is all true. Whether you choose to believe me or not is entirely up to you.

  ***

  My best friend, Jeanette, is an attractive blonde who complains a lot about the size of her thighs. She says that if she only had skinny thighs like me, she’d have no problem finding a good man. Being a brunette, I always thought that if I only had blond hair like hers, I would have no trouble finding a man. So I dye my hair blond, and she joins Jenny Craig and gets skinny thighs, and guess what?

  Did either one of us find Mr. Right? Wrong.

  I confess, though. I’ve never had a relationship quite so bad as Jeanette, who for some time dated a “nice guy”—in her words—but whom she would come to refer to ever after as Battering Bob.

  Here I am, an attractive, single, thirty-something woman, in the hook-up capital of the free world—New York City—and my love life can be summed up in two words:

  Dating sucks.

  I’d have a PhD in bad dating if there were such a thing.

  There was Dr. Dick, a shrink but thankfully not mine, one of the expert healers I’ve dated who had a few problems—ahem—“raising the ole flag.” He tried everything in the world known to man, and still only managed to get to half-mast.

  How about Mr. Stinky, who had no sense of smell and must have thought the deodorant aisle in the drug store was simply for decoration?

  What about Dr. Know-It-All? After I mentioned I had stomach problems during our first date, he insisted I should let him give me a colonoscopy as soon as we were done eating dinner. I wondered if we might have time for a little dessert first.

  Recently, there was another doctor I went out with for an entire month. After getting to know each other, we had a few issues in the intimacy department. Viagra works for three out of four men. Just my shitty, friggin’ luck, he is the one out of four. He finally injected something into his “thing” and Hallelujah, Houston, we have lift off. The problem was that it would not go down! Finally, I couldn’t help blurting out, “Would you finish already?” Five hours later I drove him to the hospital, because “his thing” was still saluting the stars.

  Many times, big, fat men are attracted to me. They assume I’ll be blown away with them regardless. As the late humorist and songwriter Shel Silverstein so aptly summed up in one of his funniest songs, from a woman’s point of view, “the day that you can see your own ____, I’ll be glad to look at it too.”

  My sentiments exactly.

  But just last week I went out with a man who was a human skeleton. Seriously. Quite a change from the big, fat men. He was so skinny you’d think you were looking at an X-ray. It lasted only one date, because I couldn’t picture myself hugging a telephone pole.

  Hmm. Am I too picky?

  I tried a matchmaker website. Several, actually.

  One man flew in from Missouri to take me to dinner. He said he was a dead ringer for Ben Affleck. He looked like Buddha. First date, over dinner, he proudly presented me with an HIV-negative report. He was a presumptuous, pompous idiot. But at least he was a considerate presumptuous, pompous idiot. I couldn’t send him back to the airport fast enough.

  As I rode a taxi home, the Iraqi taxi driver got insulted when I asked him to take me by way of Second Avenue instead of Third. He yelled at me in broken English, saying if I were his wife, he’d beat me with a chain. Then he apologized and asked me out to dinner. A very nice end to the day.

  What is the matter with men today? Did all the good ones die off in the past?

  My luck really ran out when I fell in love with Mr. Sociopath.

  ***

  Sociopath, noun, a person with a personality disorder

  manifesting itself in extreme antisocial behavior

  and a lack of conscience.

  He looked good, smelled good, and kissed without slobbering all over my mouth and forcing his tongue down my throat. I must say he had that going for him. I stayed with him for the most nastily imaginable four years because of it. I plead temporary insanity, brought on by thirty-something, raging hormones.

  Mr. S was a congenital liar. Read that as, he was born that way. He lied all of the time about everything, big and small: his past, his present, his height, how much money had had, his sex life, you name it. He was sexy, though, and charming—at least when he wanted something from me—and wrote me poetry.

  Looking back, his poetry sucked. I know now that if someone offers me love poems after only a second date, it means head for the hills. I’m not saying the man did not have his good side, though I’m sure if you asked Ted Bundy’s mother, she’d tell you Ted did too.

  But he did one thing right. He made my memories of lovemaking with past bedmates look about as exciting as eating boxes of stale saltines. He had limos pick me up, took me on trips—first-class all the way—and bought me jewels and La Perla lingerie. He spent money like an Arab sheik. Except he was no Arab sheik. He was a nutcase maxing out on credit cards, sliding headfirst into bankruptcy court.

  Oh, and did I mention he was superstitious?

  That’s right. He didn’t want to work any week with a Friday in it.

  In four years we broke up more times than Elizabeth Taylor said “I do.” During our final breakup, I ran into him with a woman I came to find out he’d secretly married one month after they met—while Jake and I were still seeing each other.

  The night I found out, I cried and ate two packages of Oreos. I sobbed and obsessed. I walked endless miles for weeks on end, for no particular reason, until each night I collapsed into a heap of empty, grieving flesh.

  Finally, on a cold New Year’s Day, I had a picture- and letter-burning purge in the fireplace. Rifling through my apartment, I sorted out all the expensive gifts he’d ever given me, and I mailed them to my sister in California, who appreciates nice things and might not view them as arsenic offerings.

  Yes, I’ve had my share of dating turmoil, but who would ever guess that a flaky psychic would be the culprit for what was to come.

  Chapter Two

  IT’S ALL IN THE CARDS

  My friend Sandy was throwing her annual “Spring Fling All-Women Get-Together.” This party typically wound up being nothing more than a gaggle of single women getting together for a colossal bitching session about our collectively sucky dating lives.

  It was held at her mother’s lux condo overlooking Central Park West, an impressive home with its expanse of windows, twelve-foot ceilings, and Louis the XVI furniture. After a third divorce, Sandy’s mother was newly single lik
e most of the twenty who attended. Those dropping by might include a couple of writers, a teacher, a struggling actress or two, a buyer from Bloomingdale’s, an interior decorator, maybe a few lawyers thrown in for good measure.

  Sandy’s parties always had a theme, and she often invited a surprise guest. One year, she had a handwriting analysis expert, who hinted I might be a sociopath by the way I scripted my y’s. Hmm. Another year, a jewelry designer pushed to sell me a $100,000 canary diamond ring, even though she knew I was a writer still trying to get a first novel published and didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Last year, a makeup artist who specialized in mini-makeovers thought it her business to inform me that my eyes were uneven. Well, there was a nice ego boost.

  This spring our guest was Serenity, a psychic who specialized in relationship readings. I couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say, since all of my relationships had sailed and sunk, assuring me of my perpetually single status.

  A screen in the back corner of the living room provided privacy. I waited my turn. Having flushed hundreds of dollars down the toilet in the past on psychic quacks, I was highly skeptical, even though Sandy assured me Serenity was “truly amazing.”

  Serenity had a crystal ball—for real—and a deck of tarot cards. She had long, wispy, blonde hair, a diamond stud in her nose, and three toe rings on her bare feet. And she was single herself.

  If she was such a great relationship psychic, I wondered, why didn’t she have one?

  But I digress.

  When my turn came, the first thing she asked was to look at my palms. “Ahhh, you have a long heart-line, Ariel. But as you can see,” she said, pointing to a crease in my hand, “it’s very broken.”

  “With as many broken hearts as I’ve had, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”

  I could tell the direction this was headed.

  She asked me to select a tarot card from the deck. I picked the upside-down hanging man—a dead man, by the way. Though I didn’t realize the significance at the time, this wasn’t a promising start.

  Next, she peered into the crystal ball. She furrowed her brow—and since she didn’t do Botox, I could actually tell she was furrowing. Deep in concentration, she said, “Hmmm … I see … Uh-huh.”

  I scooted up, wondering what was so fascinating. I saw nothing in the ball except a funhouse reflection of my moon face—excessively magnified and scary beyond words.

  Sighing, Serenity sat back in her chair and gave me an intense look. I shifted in my seat. I was sure she was about to say something that would affect me profoundly—and maybe not in such a good way. She studied me for what seemed like an hour. I waited with baited breath.

  At last she spoke. “You have not had good luck finding a man.”

  “You have not had good luck finding …” That’s it? You gotta be kidding.

  Not only did this likely apply to every woman in the room, but probably to more than half of the single women in New York City. The dingbat!

  “Ariel,” she continued, “you don’t think men these days have anything to offer you, right?”

  “Correcto-mondo,” I replied. “I have not met a good single man in forever. No matter how you slice it, the selection’s weak. And the ones who do capture my interest are either married or gay. Available men today are just plain dull. They had to have been more chivalrous and interesting and romantic, in the past, don’t you think? Like what about the ’20s or ’30s? Or how about even before that, like the turn of the century? The men of any other era must have been better than this one.”

  “I see,” Serenity said.

  “Even the movie stars aren’t the same today as in those days. Even guys like Brad Pitt. Do I ever dream of him? Hell no. Now someone like Clark Gable? That’s what I’m talking about. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

  The psychic listened intently, then reached into the pocket of her long, flowing skirt. She lifted into view a tiny cut-crystal heart on a chain. “Take this,” she said, placing it in my palm.

  “No, I—”

  “Please. I can tell you’re just the right person for it, and I promise your luck will change,” she added, with a strange smile. “As long as you wear it, until the day you give it away, you’ll have all the romance and adventure and charismatic men you could ever dream of.”

  Well, that was quite the claim. Crystal balls, crystal hearts, and clueless as to how the real world worked. But it was pretty. It glinted in the light as though it contained a small fire inside.

  “Thanks,” I said, dumping it into my purse.

  Yes, indeed. This was the most inane reading I’d ever experienced. At least this time I hadn’t flushed down the toilet a hundred-dollar bill that would be of more use wiping my ass.

  “Now,” the psychic added, “I’m going to rid you of all negative vibrations.”

  Negative? Who, me?

  Serenity lit what looked like a fat stick of incense but stank more like poo, closed her eyes, waved the stick over my head, and chanted in some dialect I didn’t recognize. Her chants were intensifying when that stick got a little too close and my hair caught fire—just on one side, thank God. I started screaming. The other women ran to peek around the curtain and stared in horror. The psychic’s eyes snapped open, and she threw her glass of water in my face to douse the flames.

  For me, the party was over.

  Journal Entry

  It is the end to another sucky weekend. I do adore Fridays, though, because of my weekly appointments with my good-looking therapist.

  When I tell Mr. Perfect that my time with him is the pinnacle of my week, he tells me that’s “not a good sign.” Well, I don’t think it’s a “good sign” that I haven’t kissed a man in six months! My friend Lola, who happens to be gay told me she actually just kissed a guy after throwing back a few mojitos at a bar down in the meat-packing district. Shit. When your lesbian friend is kissing more men than you are, you know you’re in trouble.

  Looking for something to do, I took another bunch of photos of my cats again this weekend. Shot after shot after shot. I’m no great photographer, but I think they’re pretty good. For three weeks in a row, I’ve emailed them to my sister. She finally emailed me back, wondering if I’d ever actually thought of including people in any of my pictures.

  I never answered back.

  Chapter Three

  THE LAST DAIQUIRI

  If we’re honest, do we ever really know what life’s shocks—physical or psychological, real or imagined—will do to us?

  I certainly didn’t.

  It had snowed for the past three days in Sun Valley, Idaho, and white glistened on the branches of the evergreens like diamonds in the sun. I was “flying solo” on this ski trip, having just broken up for the umpteenth and final time with Mr. Sociopath. A little thing such as a break-up was no reason to cancel a trip I’d so looked forward to.

  The jolt, if I can call it that, happened on the last run of my fifth and final day. The late-afternoon shadows were growing long, the temperatures beginning to fall. This was no easy mountain. It was intimidating and steep, never allowing me to catch my breath. I was cold and tired. A narrow catwalk led to another part of the slopes, but even that trail did not run flat.

  I lost my balance and fell, spinning around, hitting my head so hard that I saw stars. I lay splattered in the middle of the trail like some skier road-kill, the wind knocked out of me, my hat and goggles and ski poles scattered in different directions.

  A lady stopped and told me she was a nurse. She asked if I was okay, if my vision was blurred—which it was not—and several other questions to determine whether I’d suffered a concussion. I had not. I told her I felt good enough to ski down the mountain, and I proved it by doing so—albeit, a bit shakier than when I’d started the day.

  By that evening a big bump had appeared on my head. I didn’t feel quite right, so I ordered up dinner from room service and crawled into bed with a book.

  Between the covers—of the book,
of course—I snuggled up with Ernest Hemingway. Ahem … I mean his letters. I found a book that contained ones he had written throughout his life to various friends and lovers, and let’s just say I was enamored. I definitely could have fallen in love with this guy, had I lived back then. I clutched my new cut-crystal heart to my throat, and thought about how romantic and interesting Hemingway must have been. Not at all like the men I dated.

  Eventually, these thoughts lulled me asleep, and when I later awoke, I could only surmise that I had slipped into a dream. I had no reason to believe otherwise—until, of course, much later.

  This was the first of many odd journeys I would forge into the past.

  I opened my eyes to the 1920s …

  ***

  It was a hot spring day, and I was traveling by train from Miami to Key West. I’d been lucky to grab an empty seat by a window. The train was crowded. There were men a little rough around the edges whom I took to be fisherman, and couples in linen pants and fancy hats that I supposed were upper-class tourists who had heard about Key West while vacationing in Miami. The man across the aisle from me was reading a brand-new, shiny, hardcover copy of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

  As my train wound its way to the southernmost tip of the United States, I touched the hem of my blue silk dress, noticing the strange shoes and hat I was wearing. These clothes did not reside in my closet. I did not recognize them. All the women on the train wore the same garb, typical 1920s or ‘30s attire.

  From my window, I caught a familiar glimpse of the Florida Keys. The water reflected the color of the sky, varying from deep shades of turquoise to light emerald green. It sparkled in the sun, stunningly, blindingly beautiful. Masses of mangrove trees teemed with herons and waterfowl. We passed clapboard bungalow houses raised on stilts—to allow storm surges to go under, as opposed to over—and an occasional diner or two; in essence, just small shacks serving fish.