The Secret Valentine

On Valentine’s Day, Monica received the manuscript in the mail. It was written in felt-tip pen, on the back side of three copies of an intra-departmental correspondence with the subject line of “65+/Chronic Health Conditions Essential Employees.” The printed letters were large and blocky. Each page featured a different color ink, starting with red and ending with gray. The message read as follows:

“I hate most people in the United States of America and I hate all people who work in mental hospitals and mental health facilities. I hate most of the employees that work in this hospital, where they have me trapped. I wish you were all dead because I hate you. I am the devil. Kevin Ray Saunderson is my name, and I want to kill EVERYBODY.”

It wasn’t love at first read, but Monica was intrigued.

A few weeks later, Kevin showed up in front of her apartment. Monica was leaving for work and almost tripped over him. He was curled up on her doorstep, hugging a bottle of MD 20/20. Green splotches of the flavored wine stained the front of his t-shirt.

“Did you send me a secret Valentine?” she asked him.

“It wasn’t a secret,” he said, yawning and scratching his belly.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend then?”

“Fuck you, if you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“Fine. I’ll do it,”

For their first date, they went to a deer park. Monica watched Kevin feed the ducks in the algae infested pond with the popcorn that she bought from the the little

lame balloonman.

It was her first objective look at Kevin. He had some aesthetic deficiencies. There was no denying that. His posture was not good. He slumped. And his hair looked ridiculous. It was dyed cotton candy pink for one thing, and the cornrows someone had put it in were sloppily weaved. She saw Mickey Rooney in his face — they shared the same cartoonish smile lines, she thought — and that made her wonder: Did that make her Judy?

They had their next date at Red Lobster. She got a little dressed up, but he wore what he always wore. Jeans, baggy t-shirt, old Vans. During the appetizer, she went back and forth about asking him the BIG question.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He shrugged.

“Why do you want to kill everybody?”

“I’m not going to take this abuse from you anymore,” he said. He belted it out like he had been waiting to deliver the line all night.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. Where are you going?”

“I got somewhere to be.”

“No, don’t go. You have to eat your entree. It’s expensive.”

The depression hit Monica hard. People died because of bad break-ups. They had heart attacks and strokes. Others were taken by tuberculosis. It was like losing a parent or a very close grandmother. Monica knew she would never be the same happy-go-lucky person she had been. Kevin had ruined her.

On the other hand, they hadn’t been together that long. She got over it pretty quickly.

The moon cycled twice. One morning she went out for the mail and came back into her apartment with another manuscript. It was from him, of course. It was only a single sheet of construction paper this time. He used red crayon. Inside a big heart shape he had written the words, “I love you.”

Monica tossed it in the trash. She was done dating edgy guys. And the stupidest thing was, it wasn’t even Valentines Day.