Paper Hearts
by Bruce Holland Rogers
Remember, my love, how innocently it all started, a few cards with black hearts appearing among the more traditional selections of Valentine's Day cards? The I-Hate-Love books released on February 14? Candy hearts started appearing with anti-love messages. The newly divorced gathered at parties for the ritual burning of their marriage certificates. Valentine's Day vandalism was minor back then, grafitti spray painted on florists' delivery vans: VD Sucks! ?
It turned ugly. Slashed tires. Jewelry shop windows painted over in black. Gangs of singles barging into nice restaurants to dump buckets of salty ice water over dining couples. We'd have been among the casualties that time at The Savoy Truffle if we had been sitting one table closer to the door.Now, here we are huddled in the dark under the stairs, away from the windows, listening to the drunken revelry outside. This is the one night of the year when, if you're going to be out on the street, you're safer to walk alone. Not that we could safely go out from our house now, even one at a time. They know who we are. By now, one of them will have painted our names on our front door, inside a heart. There's the sound of chanting at houses up and down the street, the words indistinct but the playground rhythms familiar.
It starts up outside of our door. "Steeeeven," they call out. "Are you in there with Melodeeeee? Do you like her? Do you loooooove her?"
You lean back against me, and I press my cheek against the top of your head. I inhale the perfume of your hair, hug you close.
"Oh! Oh! My heart's on fire! My heart's on fire!" Laughter. I don't know what they're doing. Burning a paper heart, maybe?
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
One of them starts in: "Steven and Melody sitting in a tree. . . ."
Others join in the chant: "K-I-S-S-I-N-G. . ."
Glass shatters with a pop. Only a bottle. They haven't started breaking windows, and maybe they won't. Maybe they will just taunt us from outside and go away this year, satisfied that they have done enough by driving us out of view.
On the other hand, they could be out for blood. Last year in Portland, they dragged couples into the streets, surrounded them, and screamed for them to renounce one another.
"Melodeeee," they call. "Is Steven the one for you? Is he your soooul mate?"
"Izoo in lub wid him?"
Mock gagging and retching.
You squeeze my knee. I hold you tight. They could come and drag us out, invent any ordeal, and I wouldn't give you up. In the meantime, I am holding you close in the dark. I say in your ear, "You and me against the world, babe. Poor world."
You start to shake. I shake, too, the same way. We can't make a sound. If we did, if they heard us, that would really set them off. It would make them crazy. They would light the house on fire if they knew that we were huddled together like this, laughing.
Bruce Holland Rogers is an American writer living in London. He was recently in Lisbon to launch the Portuguese edition of his story collection The Keyhole Opera. More of his fiction is available at www.shortshortshort.com, and he teaches fiction writing at the Whidbey Writers Workshop, a low-residency MFA based in Whidbey Island, west of Seattle.