A Cigar for Cupid: An Unromantic Novel

By A.C. Glasier

Ned Snodgrass, a bookkeeper in a sleepy village in Upstate New York, has had his heart torn to pieces more times than he's kept track. His heart goes a-thudding when Misty Vale, a beatific yet aloof graduate student, walks into his bookstore. Despite his plight, her heart remains cold.

But when Ned rescues Cupid from drowning in the river, the love god rewards him with the ultimate chance—one magical arrow, to be used upon any human being he desires. The offer seems too good to be true, for the chain-smoking, rambunctious god of love is far from the charming, rosy-cheeked cherub of endless Italian paintings. Can Ned trust Cupid's word, or is there something sinister in the love god's intent? Will Ned's love for Misty Vale end in happily ever after, or will he pay for cheating the rules in the game of love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329815179

Book preview

A Cigar for Cupid: An Unromantic Novel

A Cigar For Cupid

A. C. Glasier

© Adam Glasier 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Adam Glasier

All rights reserved. This book may not be copied, distributed, or sold illicitly. If you wish to obtain additional copies for friends and family, save yourself the trouble and guilt of stealing (if you have a conscience) and just purchase another copy from the nearest available book retailer. You guys know how this works.

ISBN 978-1-310-85145-2

A.C. Glasier

171 Barrett Ave., No. 5

Jamestown, NY 14701

www.adambombwriter.wordpress.com

Dedication

This one’s for you, Thom Dean.

Wait for me, you bastard.

Quotes

Oh, innocent victims of Cupid,

Remember this terse little verse;

to let a fool kiss you is stupid,

to let a kiss fool you is worse.

— E. Y. Harburg

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.

― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Foreword

Virtually no permission has been asked or given for the use of specific locations in this book. I expect that many a good bartender, restaurant owner, shop keeper, and landlord in Fredonia will be very surprised and puzzled to find their property somewhere in the story. It should go without saying that these characters are fictitious, neither real nor based on any living people, though anyone who knows me too well may hear their words echoed in conversations. Only Cupid is real.

Chapter 1

On the morning of February 14th, 2014, at 5:45 a.m., the cell phone on the bedside table rang, but Ned Snodgrass was so lonely and miserable that he could not move from his bed and answer it.

The ringing did not wake up his wife, who slumbered with the blankets tucked over her head and her hair tangled around the pillow, only her back facing him. He did not see the rising and the falling of her supple abdomen, didn’t hear a moan or a drowsy sigh, but he knew that she breathed in her own special way. He wondered if riding an elephant into the room or playing the bagpipes would break her sleep. No, nothing could ever wake up his wife.

Ned moaned piteously, fumbled blindly, and snatched his phone. He read the new message, his brain addled by foggy drowsiness.

Happy Birthday to my wonderful boy! You make our family so proud. You are a precious gift from God and I will never, ever stop believing in you. We’ll be over later sweetie.  :)

XOXO #JOHN 3:16

Mom

Ned whispered to his wife. Time to wake up. It’s my birthday, and it’s Valentine’s Day. I’ll make us a special breakfast. What do you say?

He pulled the blankets away from her face. The gray illumination from the window fell onto her plastic eyes, her plastic nose, her plastic lips molded into a peaceful smile. He ran his fingers through her blonde strands, took a brush from the bed stand and combed her, whispering sweet nothings and nipping the hard artificial ear. He rolled her hollow plastic body gently onto her back, entered her, and rubbed himself against her for a few minutes of quiet love-making. When it was finished, he cried a little bit.

Finished, he climbed out of bed and clicked on the lamp, casting light onto an empty picture frame and a black velvet box sat on the bedside table. He took the box, blew off its dust, and opened it with a tiny creak. A wedding ring glinted in the scarlet bed. It was silver; the ancient Egyptians prized silver even more than gold, so he purchased the ring in his youthful optimism believing love could outlast history. It held no diamond stud, bore no inscription, it was just a simple circle of polished metal—the ring itself, he reasoned, is the true heart of the ring’s promise, the symbol of two woven bound so tightly together no eye can discern where one ends and the other begins, two souls cyclically reuniting one lifetime after the next.

He fondled the ring in his hands. It was a slightly shameful secret that he purchased the ring at the local Wal-Mart on Route 60 over twenty years ago. He was in college and broke, but spent his last eighteen dollars and thirteen cents, and he’d starved for two days afterwards. Now he couldn’t even remember to which girlfriend he’d planned to propose. What did it matter? She didn’t accept him. Rejected, he kept the ring, and there on that table it waited for almost two decades. He kissed it tenderly and set it back in the case. The ring was his most precious possession.

In the shower, Ned masturbated vigorously. He was born on St. Valentine’s Day, yet despite what many might assume about a man born on all-lover’s day, not a single woman had ever fallen in love with him—or exhibited any sign of sexual attraction to him, for that matter. Despite his most arduous attempts to woo women, he had never been able to win a lady’s heart. To think, he was nearly halfway through his lifespan and not one single woman had ever wanted him. He pumped his phallus viciously. Never before had Ned seen the brightness of affection in a lady’s eyes, had never heard a flattering word or a tempting invitation whisper from one’s mouth. Never had he felt the press of soft, moist lips against his own, and he had never, ever driven his member into the silky fuzz of a lady’s peach. He craved these things to the point of madness, more than a lion craves the taste of a fresh antelope or a desert lily basks in the sun, yet love perpetually remained elusive, always just another distant and abstract idea. This angered and humiliated him endlessly, and he ejaculated painfully into the hot mist of his shower stall.

Stepping out of the shower, he wiped the condensation from the mirror on his medicine cabinet and looked deeply at himself. He fingered the haggard skin-folds around his eyes that were going to be wrinkles in a few years, scratched his dark matted hair (which was retreating to the back of his head), rubbed his palm on his pale cheek, blinked and furrowed his haggard brown eyes, and pursued his tall, slender frame. He wasn’t ugly; he’d been chosen for the part of Atticus Finch when the college drama club performed To Kill a Mockingbird and won an award. So why couldn’t he ever be seen as handsome, or even just a little attractive? He took his razor from the drawer and lifted the blade to his cheek, then put it back and decided against it, making a gamble that maybe any women he was bound to encounter would prefer a scratchy five ‘o clock shadow. He plucked his nose hairs and his ear hairs, which had been growing more and more obnoxiously lately. He put on his glasses, adjusted them to find the most attractive manner to wear them, gave up when he found none. Disappointed by whatever it is his physical appearance lacked in order to attract the opposite gender, he swigged a cup of water and swallowed two pills.

Ned flipped pancakes in one pan and swished around scrambled eggs in another. He glanced over his shoulder. See? I even mixed blue berries into the pancakes!

The mannequin, wearing a purple dress and globs of lipstick, sat at the table and stared at him, her lips in a secretive-yet-stupid Mona Lisa smirk.

He frisked the food onto two plates and sat at the kitchen table, a chipped and scratched oak table and two cheap fold-up chairs he’d bought at a garage sale. He set a plate down for his inert wife. How did you sleep? he piped with vivacity.

The mannequin stared.

I’ll say! We should really fix the bed springs—I’ve got a kink in my back. He opened the newspaper and scanned through the headlines briskly. What do you know, the high school girls’ basketball team won another game! Isn’t that wonderful?

The mannequin stared.

You’re right. I don’t care either. Not until we have our own little girl. When do you think that’s going to be, eh? He winked.

The mannequin stared.

You know what? We should take a walk today, maybe go down to Barker Commons and have a picnic. I’ll call off work, and then we can have the whole day to ourselves!

The mannequin stared.

What? Fredonia’s not boring. This is a lovely town. You just have to find things to do.

The mannequin stared.

Sweetheart, it’s Valentine’s Day! I’m just trying to be extra kind for you. You know, show you how much I love you.

The mannequin stared.

Okay, you’re right. I shouldn’t just wait for one day out of the year to demonstrate my love, it should be every day. I get it—

The mannequin stared.

Calm down, God. Are you PMS-ing?

The mannequin stared. A fly circled around its wig.

Fine! I get it!

Ned pushed his plate and rose from the table, adjusted his collar vigorously. I’m going to work. I tried, you know? I tried real hard to make today special for you, and you just go and… just… I have to go. He marched to the door. He grabbed an apple and left his apartment, leaving the food untouched and his wife staring at nothing.

Ned tore a bite into the apple as he shut the door behind him, locked his apartment, and headed down the stairway. As he reached the bottom step, he heard an infuriated shriek behind the door of the lower apartment, followed by the pock of porcelain exploding against the wall on the other side. Susan and Drake were at it again. The girl had been living with her boyfriend for a year, and they had between two to three fights a week—one on Wednesday, one on Saturday, and one every other Monday, every fight occurring anytime between 8 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. By now Ned had come to learn that these fights were merely the clockwork in the routine of their love, so he barely paid the ruckus any mind, because he knew that tonight at precisely 9:32 p.m. the two will have reconciled; the rhythm of bouncing mattress springs and rutting grunts beneath his bedroom floor would prevent him from falling asleep until 9:58 p.m.

He climbed onto his bike. As he left his driveway, his eyes lingered to something across the street so bizarre that he paused, adjusted his glasses, and peered more closely.

A little man sat on a white wooden fence, buck naked save for a cloth around his loins that looked like a giant diaper or a toga. He was reading a long parchment scroll, what appeared to be a list of names. He sported a pair of aviators and smoked an enormous cigar. One foot hung lazily over the fence, swinging back and forth.

Ned slowed his bike, kept eating his apple. As he passed, the man casually raised his head and puffed a heart-shaped smoke fume into the air. He was balanced so perfectly that the fence didn’t give way under his weight, as if he were floating in the air. To top off all these strange things, he had a pair of fluffy white angel’s wings on his back.

He stopped the bike. He wanted to call out to the man, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to say, having never encountered a fat naked man with wings hanging around his lawn. What if he was crazy? The man could attack Ned, or worse, try converting him to scientology. He might be homeless, but then what would he be doing with a cigar and a parchment that could have been robbed from a Roman museum exhibit? Ned considered calling the police, but then decided it would be frivolous.

The man’s head lifted suddenly and the sunlight flash of the aviators fell directly on Ned. The hair on the back of Ned’s neck prickled. Neither moved. A minute passed.

He thought the man might say something, a greeting, or an insult, but he puffed his cigar and returned his attention to his massive roll of parchment.

Ned hurried away quickly. He was resolved that whoever lived in the house across the street would deal with the naked fellow sitting on their fence. It wasn’t very long, however, before Ned had a change of heart. He glanced back over his shoulder.

The man was no longer there.

Ned shuddered.

As he pedaled his bike over the swooping hills and around the wide, ponderous, pot-hole ruined streets, he could not deter his thoughts from the strange man on the fence. It could have been a hallucination. Wonderful, he thought, I really am insane. He wished he’d asked the man a few questions. He’d never seen the likes of him in town before, and if there were a madman in Fredonia, he would have heard about it.

On his way through Barker Commons, he crossed by the Koala Cafe, where he caught a glimpse of a young woman sitting by the storefront window sadly sipping coffee from a white paper cup. Her name was Misty Vale. For two years, every Sunday for two years he watched her through the window, where she would sit in the exact same spot sipping the exact same drink. Sometimes, he would even muster the courage to cross the street and walk inconspicuously across the window, so he could catch better looks at her while pretending to be stretching his back, or glancing at his window, or looking for someone else through the window. The sunlight falling through the glass framed all of her pretty features in a semi-heavenly glow; shining blonde hair, cascaded to the small curve of her back, streaked with two sharp black highlights perfectly framed her flawless pale face (always filled with an unspeakable sorrow). Gold circlet earrings sparkled on either side of her neck—swanlike, sinuous, and tender. She was so pretty, even her farts must have smelled like roses.

Ned lingered. He wondered why Misty Vale was sad. He had told himself a great number of stories about her which explained her years spent in melancholy; her family was murdered by the Irish mafia, her lover was killed in a fire while trying to save a child, or she fought some slow and dreadful form of cancer. But somehow, he knew she was not lonely. He stared at her, wanting her, willing her to look back at him, wishing she were as lonely as him. But he couldn’t go inside himself. So he pedaled onwards, feeling another moment slipped away and lost.

Chapter 2

Ned was a clerk at the Book Worm, a paltry little book shop tucked in a plaza that ran off of Central Avenue and the only book store in Fredonia besides Wal-Mart, indicating that literature was in a comatose state.

Dull green walls and four rows of white painted shelves oppressed with a pall of humdrum that made the extended periods of time he spent working in the bookstore torturously boring. At the service desk, Nancy Cockwringer, his manager, squinted while she played solitaire on the cash register computer. She was of incredible age and of immense girth, yet made a pathetic last-ditch effort to appear beautiful: there was enough foundation on her face to paint the broad side of a barn, a bright pasty layer of lipstick, and a glittery blonde wig. It wasn’t news that she’d had over dozen face lifts (having lost count at eleven). But the result was not even within spitting range of beautiful. In fact, if all ugly people in the world were to be quarantined on a remote desert island, Nancy would be its all powerful goddess-queen; Ned would end up as the court jester.

Today she had forced him to alphabetized every book based on its author’s name instead of the title. Ned swatted a fly off of a cheap paperback romance. It soared around the room until it flew into one of the cheap florescent lights and died with a small spark, then that light flickered and went out. He grumbled. He was going to have to repair that light bulb. Eventually.

A faint odor of tar, smoke, and nicotine filled his nostrils. Someone was smoking in the store. Irritated, Ned glanced around for the perpetrator, was befuddled to find himself the sole sentient being within the four walls.

There was whistling. It was a bouncy, cheery tune. This stirred his irritation even further, because (a) he couldn’t whistle, and envied all those who could whistle, and (b) it sounded an awful lot like Zippidy-Do-Da, which he absolutely hated. He peered through the shelf in front of him through a gap between the books.

The hairy man in a diaper stalked past his field of view. His hands were clasped behind his back innocently, and there was a little dance to his step. He puffed his cigar like a freight train.

Ned raised his voice. Sir, there’s no smoking—! but as he rose to his feet, Ned pounded his head against the upper shelf, sending the whole row of books tumbling onto the floor. He hissed and spluttered profanity, then looked back through the gap in the shelf. There was no trace of the strange man. The whistling ceased.

He rubbed the welt on his head. He wouldn’t bother.

He looked down and noticed a black leather Bible on the floor, embalmed in a thick layer of dust. He picked it up, mystified: what was a Bible doing in the middle of the romance section? He ruminated upon his younger days, when he’d bought into the promises of the fancy gold-rimmed pages of that book.

God made lots of promises, but there had been one promise he had trusted more than any other. He was in ninth grade again, in the church basement, a spacious room with bright orange painted walls sprawling with colorful cartoon posters depicting such scenes as David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, and Jesus preaching on a hillside. He sat cross-legged beside his friends, gazing up puppy-eyed at Pastor Charlie Charlson. Charlie was a robust man in his mid-twenties with blonde crew cut hair and blubbery jowls, who proclaimed his message with shining eyes and a voice infused with quaking passion.

God has a special partner for you, he said, sweeping his arms. His eyes fell on each of them, as if he were sharing a precious secret to each of them. God has created someone from birth, someone who is a perfect match, just for you. Here, let me quote the Book of Genesis: ‘A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and the two will become one flesh!’

At this part, he’d slammed the Bible shut and returned his gaze back on the children, and his demeanor shadowed over, intensified in its urgency.

So never, ever let your eyes stray or your hearts wander into adultery. Obey God’s commands, follow Him with all your soul, all of your mind, and all your strength.

It was at this precise moment, Ned could have sworn, that the pastor’s eyes had locked dead into his own, and his fervency had reached its peak.

If you do these things, then you shall be rewarded with a husband or a wife who will cause you great joy for all your days on this earth!

Ned traced his finger across the Bible’s dusty cover, the reverend’s voice echoing. Oh, the sweet hope that message had imparted to Ned throughout his youth, enough hope that he never glanced at another dirty advertisement nor watched a Victoria’s Secret commercial again. He even had enough hope to discipline himself with extra prayer-time and tape for having simply fondled his genitalia a little too earnestly. He wouldn’t even watch women’s beach volleyball or read a fitness magazine.

Thirty-eight years of abstinence trailed by, and unless God was going to wait until he was as old and sterile as Abraham, it was thirty-eight years wasted. As far as he was concerned, if there truly was a God threading and tying the strings of peoples’ fates, he should have given Ned a wife many, many years ago. Guess the big boss upstairs, the trusty match-maker for the human race, had apparently forgot all about poor Ned Snodgrass. He laughed bitterly at the irony and shoved the Bible back on its shelf.

Nancy screeched.

NE-E-E-ED! Get over here NOW!

Ned heaved a sigh, stretched his back to crack a few kinks, and walked to the counter, entered her cloud of perfume, a concoction that could have been used for chemical warfare. Nancy swung an arm covered in a thick hide of hair against the table. Sweet-hawt, where is the steering wheel on this thing?

The computer doesn’t have one.

What?

It’s a computer. Computers don’t have steering wheels.

I can’t hear you.

The computer doesn’t have a steering wheel!

What??

It’s frozen again, isn’t it? Just press control, alt, and delete at the same time.

Nancy looked at the computer, confused, then turned back to him wearing a small, sly smile. Why don’t you just do it for me, dear?

He cringed. He knew what