Content Disclosure: None
Harley Fuentes fingered the price tag of a concrete frog in aisle fifty-one of the Great Garden Super Store. She then switched her attention to a gang of little men with long beards and red cone hats. A sign read “Trolls,” but Harley knew the genial characters in pointy hats were gnomes, like the roaming gnome in the 2001 French romantic comedy Amelie. Meanwhile, the Earth rotated on its axis, and fire raged on the surface of the sun.
Harley smiled. Gnomes, trolls, leprechauns—it was all campy fun, but what blockhead didn’t know gnomes were friendly caretakers of the forest while trolls were ugly, treacherous enemies of gnomes? She rummaged in her suede handbag for a Sharpie. Her loose-fitting, sleeveless flannel top revealed two of her three tattoos: on her right shoulder and bicep, a black wolf howling skyward, silhouetted in front of a cratered white moon, and on her left shoulder, a cartoonish sunburst with a comical face. Harley’s toned, youthful legs were gripped by tight, gray leggings. Her feet tilted forward slightly in medium-heeled, blue leather clogs. She found the permanent marker she sought. She crossed out the word “Trolls” and wrote “GNOMES.”
Harley browsed further up the aisle. She stopped to consider white plastic deer. The deer were cutouts, less than an inch thick but nearly life-size in height and length. The bucks held their antlered heads high. The females bent to the ground in grazing mode.
“Hey, Rick, what do you think about these for the front lawn?” Harley asked without looking up to see where Rick had gone. Rick wasn’t far. He sat in a black wheelbarrow reading a book titled The large-format paperback chronicled
