One Paper Heart
Donan Berg
DOTDON Books
Moline
IL
DOTDON Books are published by
DOTDON Personalized Services
514 17th Street
PO Box 1302
Moline IL 61266-1302
Author e-mail:
mystery@abodytobones.com
Library of Congress Control
Number: 2015908571
All rights reserved. No part
of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of the copyright owner and DOTDON Books, Moline, IL, except for
brief quotation in a review.
This is a work
of fiction. The places, characters, and events represent the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, is unintentional and purely coincidental.
Cover by James GoOnWrite.com
Copyright ©2015
Donan B. McAuley
ISBN 13: 978-1-941244-09-8 (E-book)
ISBN 10: 1941244092
ISBN 13: 978-1-941244-10-4 (Paper)
ISBN 10: 1941244106
First U.S. Edition:
August 2015
10
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To
lovers, now and forever.
There
is a heart of muscle and blood.
There
is a heart that guides our soul.
There
is a heart of yearning and peace.
There
is a heart we search ever for.
May
the full benefit of all be yours.
Express
your love, and pray for
all
who have or will sacrifice
to
keep this world safe.
Chapter One
The romantic flames of Alicia Danielson’s sweet dreams flared into
conscious panic. A sliver of red light from the triple ones on her digital
alarm clock oriented Alicia to her bedroom door. Two coughs of acrid
smoke convinced her to abandon her search for a robe. On hands-and-knees, she
crawled toward her three-room Minneapolis apartment’s hallway exit. Sweat drips
and the fear of being burned alive snowballed to spur her determination.
Yesterday’s funk of dying a twenty-six-year-old spinster laminated by a budding
hysteria.
A raspy third
cough tore at the raw lining of her constricted throat. When her heartbeat
amplified the faint hallway doorknob jangle, she willed her butt not to rest on
her heels and lurched her shoulders forward. Smoke curled and swirled past her
ears.
Unable to hold
her breath and lessened the pain of her smoke-irritated lungs, she whispered,
“Dam. Hoover Dam.” For twenty-three years since age three, she’d deleted the
“n” and disguised the profane word “damn” by pairing it with real concrete
dams. While at first it was to avoid her mother’s soap bar inside her mouth,
her quirk blossomed into moments of schoolyard pride. If challenged, her
dog-eared atlas proved her prowess to name each and every United States dam.
For those itty-bitty dams without names in Minnesota’s Hennepin County, she’d
rattle off the numbers of highways leading to and across them. It grew to be a
crutch to relieve stress.
When her
forehead banged the metal hallway door, she shouted as loud as she could,
“Help.” Grand Coulee Dam. “Help me.”
Alicia
flinched. She sucked the twinge from three right-hand fingertips. “Where are
you?” Alicia’s throat ached. “I’m here.” The door’s hot doorknob confirmed that
flames, prepared to sear human flesh, lurked inches away. Intensified
gray-blackish smoke seeped under her high-rise’s tenth floor door. Sirens
outside blared. With each blast, Alicia cursed the ditzy blonde rental agent
who pooh-poohed fire emergencies to extol the virtue that higher floors muffled
late night street noise.
Alicia
rejected all worry about makeup. Neither she nor any other woman needed
lipstick at two in the morning for firemen in Darth Vader masks. Her three
spaced shrieks inflamed her vocal cords. I’m
doomed. Fire engine ladders never
extend higher than the seventh floor.
The medical
examiner won’t care. With her chest sliced and peeled back, her god-enhanced
bar-coded breast assets would wiggle as a synchronized dancing pair on a
stainless steel audition tray while her toes dripped water droplets from the
corpse washing spray.
Alicia
flattened her torso to the floor to breathe in the coolest heated air. Her
teary eyes burned. Don’t be hysterical.
Gather your wits. Slow your emotions. Lock
and Dam No. 4, flow south Ol’ Man River.
A thunderous
crash on the other side of the hallway door bounced the floor beneath her body.
“Have the
police checked this floor?” The muffled gruff voice goose-bumped her skin.
Looters?
Alicia held her breath. A second crash flung her rearward. Smoke billowed.
A gloved hand
forced her lower jaw into her upper lip and then the pressure subsided.
Alicia
screamed. She shuddered as a sprayed callused hand compressed her cheeks. Alien
prickled-skin fingers rubbed as if to probe and scrub the innermost recesses of
her skin’s pores. Her paralyzed vocal cords unable to squeak. Her left instep
painfully scraped her threshold’s hard lip. Strong powerful hands squeezed her
waist.
Alicia wished
she could’ve gazed into her rescuer’s heavenly eyes to be smitten forever. His
Neil Armstrong bubble helmet temporarily denied her all opportunity.
Muscular arms
clutched her tight to connected hoses and the oxygen tank strapped to her
rescuer’s chest. They dashed to chilly air beneath a street lamppost. A thin
blanket warmed her boobs indented by metal tank edges and braided-hose
connectors. She expected the crenated depressions to disappear in two weeks if
no scars lasted.
Chapter
Two
Alicia loved her new South Minneapolis third floor
apartment. Macho alpha fireman hero Joel energized her life with her first real
dates in two years. True to her Mom’s admonition to save herself for marriage,
Alicia’s dates began and ended outdoors, in daylight, to avoid all suggestion
of physical contact encouraged by darkness. Her and Joel’s dating length broke
her previous longevity record.
It had been a
year since her fire escape and Joel’s inspection of her new building before she
signed the lease had set her mind at ease. What Joel couldn’t prevent was her
loss of her third grade teacher employment nor offer her a solid lead to an
elementary vacancy.
Alone in her
bedroom, she stretched her fingers above her Dell keyboard to invigorate blood
flow. Coy with Joel, she labored in secret to revise her romance novella after
a New York City literary agent had scribbled in the margins of her
thirty-second rejection letter the first encouraging professional words she
ever received. Her fictional fireman, christened Joseph and nicknamed Joe,
lived happily ever after with the damsel he rescued from an East End warehouse
fire. Alicia prayed the novella would garner the recognition necessary to
jump-start acceptance of her full length novel, “A Search Fulfilled.”
Atop her
frilly bedspread, Alicia’s cell phone chirped and vibrated.
Alicia’s
slipper heels propelled her and the computer desk chair rearward. The chair’s
rollers caught her elongated floral-patterned blue nightgown hem. Without last
year’s protruding stomach fat, she grabbed flannel and jerked her chair
sideways to free her hem.
“Claiborne
Lock and Dam, Alabama,” she whispered. The shrill chirps stopped; she pressed
redial to connect with her Mom. “Yesss, Mom.” How many times did she have to
repeat herself? “I’m applying for a new teaching position. No, Mom. I haven’t
given up. Sure, I’ll be home Sunday for dinner.” Alicia bit her tongue. “No,
Aunt Agnes shouldn’t bring her card-playing friend’s visiting nephew. Love you,
too.”
Connecticut
Dam. Mansfield Hollow Dam. Her quirk soothed Alicia’s frustration.
She sighed.
Her irritation with Mom had ebbed since her twenty-first birthday. Deep down
Alicia realized an embedded uncontrollable grandmother DNA gene governed her
mother’s actions. Her diminutive aunt last Christmas nearly burst the blood
vessels on Mom’s forehead by asking Alicia if she’d ever visited Le Adult Toys
on East Jervis, off East Hennepin Avenue. Mom’s icy glare, and near faint,
distracted Aunt Agnes from Alicia’s failure to answer.
With her
novella revision fresh in her mind, there wasn’t time to brood about Mom’s
latest matchmaking attempt. Mom would never relent. Alicia would bet all the
calories in a Dunkin Donut glazed donut dozen, a favorite she’d given up with
her diet, that Mom had cajoled Aunt Agnes to bring the nephew.
With her blond
hair air-dried from an earlier shower, Alicia hustled to slip into a brown
peasant dress and sandals. Joel would ring the lobby buzzer within the hour.
She loved his attention, his sweetness. To protect her diet from the salty
French fries Joel craved, she’d filled a picnic basket with tuna fish
sandwiches and cut vegetables.
Alicia
answered the buzzer. “You’re early. I’ll be right down.”
Neither Joel’s
puffy gray eyes nor his brief lobby hug lingered. The smoky scent of burnt wood
did. Her stomach turned over, over, and over, almost in sync with the fire
engine lights she imagined and repressed. A year, and her fire fear never
completely vanished.
“I’ll carry
that.” Joel’s muscular right arm reached for her picnic basket. “Lake
Minnetonka here we come.”
As they turned
the apartment building’s north corner for the parking lot, late morning sun
beads twinkled on the complex’s swimming pool surface and wherever splashed
water collected on the its terra cotta deck. The pool’s ambiance didn’t excite
her. Her agreement to Lake Minnetonka saved her from packing the black Lane
Bryant one-piece bathing suit since discarded.
Within minutes
they were in luck. No picnic table, but a clean grassy knoll dappled with shade
beneath a fifty-foot oak. Alicia straightened the Army blanket’s corner after
Joel snapped it and allowed it to float to the ground.
“Let’s take a
walk,” Alicia suggested.
Joel’s droopy
eyelids struggled to maintain the narrowest of slits. “Sorry. Little tired.
Fought a four-alarmer into the wee hours.”
While she
begrudged his audacity, she accepted his apology. Alicia extracted her portable
radio from her picnic basket. As she spun the dial, bits of music, most
jumbled, permeated the air until she lit upon easy-listening.
Propped
against the oak, Joel muttered, “If you don’t mind, I’ll eat in a few minutes.”
He rolled onto his left side.
Alicia bit her
lower lip. Her open Harlequin paperback lay upside down beside her. To
onlookers, she and Joel appeared to be an old married couple. Like her
physician asking her to estimate her pain on a scale of one to ten, she rated
her loneliness at ninety-nine. She aimlessly watched two pairs of parading
mallards splash into the lake. Nature created romance. How could she write
romance if only despair floated through her system?
“Whatcha
doing?” Alicia tried to smile through her question.
“Twins
baseball is on ‘CCO.”
Alicia
squelched her anger as he switched the dial from music to sports, not her
thing. During the between inning commercials she expected at least limited
conversation. Didn’t happen. In the secret chambers of her heart, where her
pride reigned, rational thought of six months of dates with Joel dissolved into
emotional nothingness. When Joel snored, she stared at him lying on his back,
eyes closed. To be polite, she nibbled on a tuna fish sandwich rather than
chance disturbing him with repeated crisp celery bites.
His lips
moved. Alicia leaned forward and couldn’t decipher his words until he muttered he’d
have her sweaty, pinned against the tree. He didn’t spelled out “have” and
Alicia chose to play it safe and not challenge her assault imagery or the
word’s definition. She loathed to be a prop to Joel’s ego.
When the
nearby church bell chimed three times, she jostled Joel’s shoulders twice. She
pointed out the lengthened sun rays and suggested they leave. She entered her
apartment with a still heavy picnic basket and the tingle of a lingering kiss
on her cheek.
Twice in the
next two weeks, Alicia declined Joel’s date requests. His third week telephone
calls she let ring without answering.
