Timothy Gager - How Do You Fix It?

Timothy Gager

How Do You Fix It?

First, Michelle tried to put the slick wet thing back into Jessie, but it was shaped like a cinder block, and the hole in his chest was small and round.

“I don’t think you can do it,” he told her. Michelle manipulated the heart much like the way a gorilla would try to fit a sofa up a narrow staircase. It was small but difficult; a dead weight.

“Remember that game, Perfection?” she asked while straining with the hardly beating organ, turning it this way and then that.

“It’s useless,” he said. “I don’t know why you would continue--” Michelle gently placed the heart onto the living room floor and tried to massage it. Jessie lay on his back and watched the ballgame. The doorbell rang.

“Don’t answer it,” Jessie moaned, but it was too late; Michelle turned the handle and faced Jessie’s previous lover.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Jessie thought Michelle should have been the one who asked that.

“I’m working on the problem…I think it’s a really good heart,” Jessie answered. The former lover walked over and kicked it like a soccer ball.

“I think you should leave,” Michelle said sternly.

“Uhhh,” Jessie said, as his heart slowed to a silence.

Timothy Gager is widely published in print and on the web. He has seven books of fiction and poetry published, and over two hundred more things. He lives at www.timothygager.com.