Disclaimer: The reader will note that certain sentences and phrases in this story are written in italic script. These are not the author's original words. Rather, the italicized parts were taken from a random list of "bad analogies" published by the Washington Post in the late 1990s. All non-italicized analogies here are the creations of the author. The fiction below was inspired by the sheer badness of those borrowed analogies, and they are strung together here to make a story.
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Anna gazed out over Good Harbor Bay on this warm September evening. The summer was gone, the tourists had left, and she had the beach to herself. Even though she was now free in this glorious setting to, say, yodel or perform naked cartwheels away from public notice, she carried not feelings of liberation, but feelings of utter desolation. She felt like the last flea standing after a dog emerged from a flea bath.
Anna's footprints had signed this Lake Michigan beach a hundred times before. She had learned to swim here and in the summers of her youth you could see her head bobbing off shore like a soggy slice of banana in a bowl of Cheerios. But to Anna at this moment, the whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00, instead of 7:30.
Anna's dreams were blowing up like a man with a broken metal detector walking through an active minefield. She reflected back on those lost dreams. Oh, how she had longed to be an artist! Ever since she was seven years-old, she had wanted to perform -- to dance, to sing, to act! Her life became forever changed when her mother took her to a performance of Swan Lake at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Such beauty, such grace. Anna sat spellbound when the ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
Even though her physique was somewhat ill-suited, Anna attended ballet classes and took to the art like sea gulls flock to a city dump. She performed at class recitals and would walk down neighborhood sidewalks resplendent in her pink tutu and golden crown. But then in a few years, her dreamy bubble popped. Her mother had adorned the refrigerator with pictures of Anna, including one of her smiling in her ballet costume while accepting roses after a recital. Anna overheard her uncle Jim peering at the photograph and commenting, "Wow. Now that's one beefy ballerina!" Her heart imploded and she torched them all -- the pink tutu, ballet shoes, and golden crown -- in the backyard incinerator like Joan of Arc at the stake going up in smoke.
It was many months before Anna could shake her despair. But like a bright-eyed badger emerging from its winter hole, she awoke renewed one spring morning and vowed to resurrect an artistic life. She found out The Old Town Players in Traverse City were holding auditions for a production of Guys and Dolls, and Anna decided to try out. Over and over again, she watched the DVD of the old movie and soon she was singing along. Thus prepared, she took a seat in the theater's large audition room where the musical director and an accompanist called the contestants for their big chance at the limelight.
Anna heard her name and stepped forward. She had rehearsed Adelaide's Lament until the wee hours the night before and was delighted that it was chosen for her tryout. The piano began the prelude, Anna observed her cue, and boldly opened her mouth. The director winced, the pianist paused, and the collected contestants looked away and shifted in their seats. Truth be told, when she tried to sing, Anna sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment. She didn't get a part.
And, of course, there was Reginald. Dear, dear, long lost Reginald. They met at Michigan Tech last Spring as by chance they sat across from one other at a campus cafeteria. Their gazes met and held. Her eyes twinkled, like the moustache of a man with a cold. His eyes were like the stars, not because they twinkled, but because they were so far apart.
Physical appearances of others held little significance for Anna. The once beefy ballerina trimmed down when she bloomed through adolescence, but she could not evade verbal assaults from haughty and insensitive sorts. In high school, a boy told her she was like a magnet: attractive from the back, repulsive from the front.
But Reginald, with those gecko eyes and uneven complexion, like a stucco facade at a Mexican restaurant, often complimented her looks and manner. He murmured that her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. He, too, raved about the beauty of her posterior, and kindly refrained from any comments about her lazy left eye that seemed to scan the terrain like a lighthouse beacon. Out in the community, he preferred to walk two steps behind, which embarrassed her, yes, but thrilled her all the same.
College life became all about constant texting and sleepovers. In a short time, their love burned with the fiery intensity of a urinary tract infection. And how Reggie made her laugh! Once while sitting in the House of Flavors, he inhaled with a straw a swallow of his strawberry milkshake up through his nostril. She roared with her deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes before it throws up.
When the semester ended, they parted ways with wet cheeks and an embrace as close as a pair of two-by-fours plastered together with a nail gun. They promised to text, to call, and to visit. Anna returned to Leland, Reginald to Kalamazoo. But then, nothing. Complete silence. She texted and called a hundred times. She pleaded for an answer, and at last for her dignity. She wanted to call the police. It made no sense! She suffered in a chaos of feelings, like the chaos of an ancient African ant colony just disrupted by cherry bombs. For Reginald had grown on her like he was a colony of E. coli and she was room temperature Canadian beef.
His absence had poisoned her summer, a summer meant for love, and now Anna just sat with toes immersed in the Good Harbor sand like little sausage links buried in an egg casserole. She hadn't the heart or mind to return to school, and to make ends meet, robotically punched her timecard five days a week at the Leland Mercantile.
A mosquito lighted on Anna's thigh, but she hadn't the emotional strength to brush it away. She watched as it engorged with her blood, like a water balloon at a faucet. But she found focus in the gloaming: she tried to forgive herself for her many missteps and to forgive the many insults over the years that had pummeled her pride. She recalled a beautiful ballerina from long ago, a melody from Guys and Dolls, and a thick pink liquid running up Reginald's nose. Anna allowed a weak chuckle, and just when she happened on a moment of peace, her lazy eye glimpsed a hand, a hand like a flyswatter from the heavens, that slapped down on her thigh and ruptured red the bulbous mosquito that had squatted there. Anna screamed. Her eyes rolled back and she made that high frequency squeal that pigs make when they're hoisted up by their hind legs.
She jumped to her feet. "Reginald! Oh my God! But how? And where? And why?" She gasped for breath. "Reginald! Reggie! How could you!" She lunged at him.
Reginald held and subdued her as Anna pounded his chest the way a butcher tenderizes a large cut of tough beef. He explained that he was sorry to startle her but he needed to save her from that vampire mosquito before she lost all her blood. And he explained that after he got back to Kalamazoo, he flew to Bolivia on a Mormon mission where he could focus his faith and think through their relationship. He was sorry that his silence had hurt her in such a nasty way, the way a swarm of angry bees puncture human flesh and leave the skin as blistered as a chronic case of herpes. Through those long South American weeks, he came to realize that he would love her forever. He rushed north to Leland as soon as his plane touched down in Grand Rapids.
"But why didn't you tell me you were leaving?" Anna pleaded through a torrent of nasal mucus.
Reginald's jaw dropped like the barometric pressure of a typhoon. "Oh my God! Before I left, I wrote you a twenty page letter from deep in my soul. I asked my mother to put it in the mail! You mean you never got it?"
So this was the missing link. Reginald's mother was as absent-minded as a lobotomized mental patient trying to fill out a medical form.
Anna at last dissolved in his arms like two tablets of Alka Seltzer in cold water. They were together again and that was all that mattered. And when all the tension finally lifted, Reginald asked Anna, for old time sake, to turn around, and like a cattle rancher at an auction, he made a careful inspection.
All was well on Good Harbor Bay. And the sun sank below the watery horizon, like a diabetic grandma easing into a warm salt bath.
