The Revolving Heart
Chuck Augello
© Copyright Chuck Augello 2020
Black Rose Writing | Texas
© 2020 by Chuck Augello
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.
Second digital version
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-477-3
PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING
www.blackrosewriting.com
Print edition produced in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Recommended Reading
Dedication
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Acknowledgements
Note from the Author
BRW Info
Voices from the Town: Mario C., Holman Beach Diner, April 20XX
“What happened to that little girl was a damn shame. I remember her coming into the diner with that Marcino kid and his girlfriend two or three times a week. They always bought her a vanilla sundae with a maraschino cherry on top. Such a cute little kid. You couldn’t help but want to tussle that curly blonde hair. Like Shirley Temple …the good ship lollipop and all that. What were we talking about again? Yeah, Sarah Carpenter …such a goddamn shame.”
-1-
I was still in bed, half-asleep, wrapped in a tangle of blankets and sheets when the ring tone smacked me awake. It was that old Nirvana song “Lithium” with its cool opening bass line and depressed stoner lyrics about finding your friends inside your head. After the first five notes I knew that it was Amy, but I let the song play out anyway, at least the first few lines. Talking with Amy was always easier after a few bars of “Lithium.”
I rolled over and grabbed the phone, careful not to wake Kelly.
“Hey, Donatello, it’s me,” Amy said. “I’m surprised you’re awake. Isn’t it like three days earlier out there?”
For almost ten years I’d been living in California, a perennial sore point with Amy, who’d never left Holman Beach, the little shore town in New Jersey where we’d both grown up. For some reason she blamed me for this, as if there’d been a single ticket out of town and I’d snatched it from her fingers. Not true. She’d had her chances but hadn’t taken them. Our last contact, two months earlier, had ended with an e-mail about some new guy she was seeing titled “Thirty-Seven Reasons Why Mark is Better than You.” I disagreed with reasons nine and fourteen, but otherwise her logic was sound.
“What’s up, Amy?” I whispered. It was Saturday morning. Kelly had spent the night and was sleeping beside me.
“I was just thinking how great it would be to get away from here,” Amy said in her hangover voice, deep and scratchy. “My head is killing me. It’s like the Army is testing new explosives in that little space between my eyes.”
I peeked over my shoulder to see if Kelly had stirred and realized that she was gone, the sheets pushed down from her side of the bed, her pillow jammed between the mattress and the headboard. For a second I panicked, abandonment being a thing with me, but her keys and her phone were still on the nightstand, her dress folded neatly over a chair by the dresser, and I heard the water running in the shower. This was a good thing. I had just assigned her a new ring tone, The Cure’s “Just like Heaven,” which meant I was hooked and hoping to hang on.
“I’m sorry about your head,” I said. “Excedrin and Dr. Pepper; it works every time. Listen, I’ll call you later, okay? I’m kind of busy…”
“What’s her name?” Amy asked.
“It’s not a woman.” I ransacked my brain for an excuse. “I’m late for my run. I’m training for a 10K.”
There was silence, and then a sigh of immense disappointment, as if I’d been letting her down since birth.
“Please don’t lie to your oldest friend. A 5K, maybe, but a 10K? No way. You’d quit somewhere between the seventh and eighth K. Christ, my head is killing me. What’s her name?”
“Kelly.”
“Blonde or brunette?” she asked.
“Strawberry blonde.”
“Great—she’s not one of those carbon copies of me. Congratulations: all that therapy must work,” Amy said. “I think I approve. I wish you love and happiness and at least six weeks of decent sex. I’ll bet she’s a wonderful person, isn’t she, our little strawberry blonde California Kelly?”
“Yes, she is.” It needed to be said—for both of us. Amy had a habit of dismissing my relationships as weak substitutes for her, but Kelly was different.
“Kelly, Kelly, Kelly,” Amy sang, like Woody on Cheers, and I couldn’t tell if she was baiting me. I was out of practice in the art of Amy, a genre in which I’d once been the world’s foremost expert. It sounded like play, but my instincts sensed trouble.
“That Kelly is such a sweetheart,” Amy said. “I’m sure she’ll understand when you tell her you’re flying back home this afternoon. I’ll bet she even drives you to the airport. You’re a lucky man.”
When we were kids, Amy would throw rocks at my bedroom window and expect me to jump out whenever she wanted to play. She’d walk into the pizzeria where I worked and ask for a ride to the mall while my hands were still sticky from kneading dough. Saying
