Kim Roberts
Fiction Writing

     The simple, child-like nature of the poem terrified her. Roses are red, Violets are blue. . . .  It should have ended like other poems of its kind.  Sugar is sweet, And so are you.  It should have ended like that, but it didn't.
     "Coffee or peanuts, miss?" The smiling flight attendant distracted Heather from her disturbing thoughts.
     Coffee or peanuts?  Yeah right, she thought.  Coffee and peanuts were for normal people with a family, good job and a Buick.  She used to be a coffee-and-peanuts girl.  In fact, three weeks ago, on the flight out to Miami Beach she ate peanuts and drank coffee.  Now, on Flight 402 from Miami Beach to Cincinnati, all she wanted was a martini on the rocks.  For not the first time during the flight, she wished she'd flown first class.
     "No, thanks."  Heather let her mind slip back to its strange state of pain and shock.
     Three weeks ago, Heather Jones, R.N., had taken several weeks of vacation from Cincinnati Hills Hospital where she worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit.  It hadn't been difficult to leave ICU; very sick patients drained her of energy.  Henry Rogers, age 17, was in for knife wounds that would probably be fatal.  Louise Vanderhoff, age 53, received severe injuries and
internal bleeding from a car accident on an isolated road.  She had lain in agony for two and a half hours before someone found her.  Bill Lawrence, age 34, was dying of AIDS and Jill Drake, age 7, was going through the final stages of cerebral palsy.  No, it hadn't been hard to leave death behind for a few weeks of sunshine and relaxation.
     Heather chose Miami Beach because it had a reputation of showing girls like her--single, and in their twenties--a good time.  She figured she'd make some new girlfriends, and maybe, if there was a God, she'd meet her fairy tale prince.  Even if none of that happened, she'd get a good tan and would rest up from the stress of ICU.
     Heather filled her first few days of vacation with sunbathing and shopping at little boutiques that she figured charged at least 20% higher than stores in Cincinnati.  She didn't care much; it was vacation, after all, and she had left her world of budgeting behind in Ohio.  At one of the shops, she found a sleek, black swimsuit that did all the things to her figure that her mother said a good swimsuit should do.  
     She peered critically at the image reflected back in the tri-sided mirror of the posh dressing room.  After assuring herself that the suit tamed what she called her "Thunder Thighs," she mentally prepared herself for examining her back side.  She hated her rear, hated looking at it in a swimsuit, hated other people looking at it in a swimsuit, or worse, not looking at it
at all.  Oh, for crying out loud, woman.  Vacation means no criticism.  Heather quickly glanced back.  The sight, while far from pleasing, was not as horrific as she had imagined.       Satisfied, she perched on the edge of the red velvet mini-throne in the corner of the dressing room and flirted with the image in the mirror.  She flipped back her dishwater blonde hair and tried to make her lips pout like numerous beautiful women she'd seen. She mockingly told herself that the suit, combined with her charm and that sexy cleft in her upper lip like the one that made Tess of the d'Ubervilles a target of male attentions, would surely ensure her of a good time.
     Armed with the suit, the cleft and the charm, Heather made her way down to one of the city's popular beaches.  For a brief moment she considered the nude beaches, but couldn't rid herself of her grandmother's voice.  Easy women, the lot of them.  No good Christian would be out there taking their clothes off in front of complete strangers.  She chose a public beach with screaming kids instead.
     Setting up camp in the only area free of bright umbrellas and lawnchairs, she surveyed her sunbathing neighbors.  To her right was an elderly couple.  She glanced at them and quickly looked away.  Something about white, sagging skin exposed for all the world to see turned her off.  In front of her was a young, thirty-ish couple with two children, a boy and a girl.  The kids had adorable golden blond curls and the parents were obviously
very much in love.  Heather smiled.  Behind her, a camp of teenage kids sang at the top of their lungs to Green Day and Offspring boomed out on a battered Panasonic.  She knew they would annoy her by the end of the afternoon.  To her left a man sat under a bright red umbrella.  He was reading the latest issue of Time.  The bold red headline on the front page stated New Genetic Finding Raises Troubling Questions. She unfolded her lounge chair, put on her new Calvin Klein sunglasses and reclined beneath the Florida sun.
     She slept for an hour and would have slept longer if not for the teenage boy from the Green Day group that fell onto the back of her chair while doing an Adam Sandler interpretation.  He apologized and went back to performing.  The man under the red umbrella smiled at her.  
     "Teenagers!" he grimaced.
     "No kidding.  You come to meet Don Juan and get stuck with pimply-faced Romeo."
     He laughed.  "You came to the beach for love?  I hear it's much easier to find men in bars.  They kind of require you to be at least twenty-one."
     Heather smiled.  "Actually, I'm from Cincinnati and just wanted a good tan.  My name's Heather, by the way."
     "I'm Dan.  I live here in Miami Beach.  It's nice to meet you."
     They talked a little while longer about Florida weather and
their occupations.  Dan sold real estate and jokingly tried to get her to buy an apartment. Then he stood up.
     "I have to run," he said.  "Got to show a house in an hour. Listen, it's been great talking to you.  I'd like to get to know you better.  How about dinner tonight?"
     "I'd like that," Heather smiled.  She told him where she was staying.
     "How about eight o'clock?"
     "Great."
     She went back to her room thinking about him.  He wasn't really a Tom Cruise, but she wasn't exactly a Nicole Kidman herself.  He did have really beautiful green eyes that resembled emeralds and dark, criminally long eyelashes.  She didn't think it was fair that a man should have those eyelashes.  After two coats of Maybelline, her lashes didn't even look that good. Besides, he had a great sense of humor and seemed very nice; he'd been respectful to her the entire time at the beach.  She figured she'd be safe with him.
     He met her in the lobby at 8:10 bringing a box of six white long-stemmed roses.  White roses were her favorite.
     "Sorry I'm running a little late," Dan said.  "Showing the house took longer than I thought."
     "That's all right," Heather smiled.  "I just came down myself."
     "You look beautiful."  His voice charmed her with its
careful, practiced sexuality.  "Absolutely stunning."
     Heather burned with pleasure from the compliment.  "I wish I could say the same for you," she joked, trying to regain her composure.
     He laughed.  "Please, don't overdo the compliments."     
     He took her to a seafood restaurant on the shore.  Over shrimp platters and chardonnay, they talked politics and other surface subjects.  Half-way through the meal, Heather found out some very disturbing news.  
     "You're a Republican?"  Heather grimaced.  "I never thought I'd see the day when I was sitting contentedly across from a Grand Old Parasite."
     That Dan was misguided about politics didn't weigh heavily on her mind.  The difference, in fact, attracted her.  The more time she spent with Dan, the more Heather wanted to know all about him, intimate details as small as what the color of his sheets were to what kind of relationship he had with his parents.
     She began the interrogation casually.  "So, where in Miami Beach do you live?"
     "Oh, somewhere in the middle," he answered somewhat abstractedly.
     "I'd really like to see it some time," Heather encouraged.
     "Oh, it's not that big of a deal.  Actually, I'm rather embarrassed of it."
     "You should see where I live," she laughed.  "It's the
definition of 'not that big of a deal."
     He smiled and asked the passing waiter for the check.
       After dinner, they went to the Swinging '80s Dance Club. They sweated to Madonna and Aerosmith and held each other while Steve Bono of U2 huskily sang, "I can't live, with or without you."   Heather couldn't believe it was real.  Is this a dream? It all seems so perfect.  When Dan wasn't looking, she pulled her right ear hard to make absolutely sure she wasn't going to wake up in her bed in Cincinnati.  
     They danced until the club owner turned out the lights and with exaggerated patience, escorted them to the door.  It was after midnight. They walked along the beach, Heather barefooted. Dan had chosen the one where they had met; it was empty now, free from the hundreds of people who had given it life.  As they rambled down the beach, Heather took the opportunity to check out his rear.  Nice and tight.  She sighed to herself.  The thought flit across her mind that if they had children together, the children would at least have a chance of getting a nice behind. Aghast at this new train of thought, Heather distracted herself by bombarding him with questions about his job, his family and any other topic that would make the night last longer.  She particularly wanted to know about his family.
     "What are your parents like?"
     "Oh, you know, like everybody else's parents," he replied. "So what's it like working in ICU?"
     She told him about the patients that she cared for and about the emotional pain of losing each one.  He asked dozens of questions about death and what it was like to see people die.
Heather delighted in his interest in her job.  
     "Do you enjoy your job?" she asked.
     "Oh, it's great.  I get to make my own schedule on my own terms.  That's the good thing about real estate."
     His attitude intrigued her. She was always under the authority of someone else in her job.  The idea of freedom attracted her.  They also discussed religion; Dan didn't think there was a God and if there was, God didn't care about people.
     "Just think about all the crap there is in this world."  He scowled.  "All the violence, disease, hate.  How could a loving God really allow that?"
     Heather wasn't so sure God didn't exist, but she didn't say so.  At the time, it hadn't mattered what Dan thought about religion.  He could have been Buddhist for all she cared; she was already in love.
     "Do you believe in love at first sight?" she suddenly asked him.
     "I didn't used to," he smiled.  "Now. . .now I'm not so sure.  It seems like I knew I was going to fall for you the moment that kid bowled you over."     
     He cupped her face with his two hands and brought his mouth down on hers with a kiss that Heather thought was better than the
final kiss on the Princess Bride.
     "You give so much to people at your job," he said.  "I'm going to make your vacation something that you'll never forget."
     The next two weeks flew by.  She spent every second of her days with Dan, who took time off from his job to be with her. And then one night, the night before she left for Cincinnati, he spent the night with her.  It had been the most fantastic night of her life, except for the one minute afterwards when she worried about pregnancy.  In the heat of the moment, they had forgotten protection of any kind. Only a girl of loose morals would be expecting out of wedlock, she heard her grandmother say. She cursed herself; she was a nurse, she should know better.
     "It doesn't matter if you get pregnant," he assured her. "I'm going to marry you anyway."
     Heather squealed, "Really?"  She ran naked around the hotel room letting out whoops.  Never, never in her wildest dreams did she think that she would meet the man of her dreams on this vacation.  And marriage, for crying out loud.  She was getting married!
     They discussed marriage plans early into the morning.  As the sun rose, she leaned over and whispered, "I love you."  He smiled.
     He drove her to the airport and told her that in two weeks he'd come up to Cincinnati and they'd be married.  He gave her his address and telephone number and told her to call every
night.  He also gave her a long, narrow box wrapped in brown paper.
     "Don't open this until your plane has taken off.  Understand little girl?" he teased her.  "It's a surprise and you can't open it until you're in the air."
     She agreed and cried and told him again that she loved him. He hugged her.  She boarded the plane and didn't look back at him because she figured it would be easier that way.  After all, she'd see him again in two weeks.
     She cried for the first ten minutes of the flight.  She missed him already.  How ridiculous.  She was acting like a baby. She remembered the package he had given her and wondered what it was.  A diamond necklace?  A gold chain?
     Heather eagerly ripped the paper off.  The contents of the package confused her.  It looked like, well it looked like a coffin.  A black, black coffin.  She opened the lid.  Inside was a poem.
     Roses are red,
     Violet are blue,
     I have AIDS,
     And now so do you.