The Gnome Queen of Ocean Parkway

The plan was simple: meet Ben on the platform, look him soulfully in the eyes, and deliver the speech Frederick had been rehearsing in his bedroom mirror all morning. It was a good speech. It had pathos (‘I feel like we’re drifting’), a clear objective (‘I need to know you’re as serious about this as I am’), and even a little flourish of vulnerability. He’d practiced it so much the words felt smooth and polished in his mind, a perfect tool for the delicate emotional surgery he was about to perform.

The problem was, the Church Avenue station was a terrible operating theatre. It was hot, loud, and smelled like someone had spilled a Slurpee on a radiator. The acoustics were all wrong for a heartfelt confession. Still, it was their place. The halfway point between his house and Ben's. He leaned against a pillar, took a deep breath, and silently mouthed his opening line: *Ben, we need to talk.*

“Don’t you dare start a sentence like that, young man. Nothing good has ever followed the words ‘we need to talk’.”

Frederick snapped his mouth shut and looked around. A woman with a magnificent plume of white hair, wearing a sequined tracksuit, was wagging a bejewelled finger at him. She stood proudly beside a shopping cart that was, to Frederick's astonishment, filled to the brim with garden gnomes.

There were gnomes fishing, gnomes sleeping, gnomes pushing tiny wheelbarrows. One particularly smug-looking gnome sat on a toadstool, holding a little sign that said ‘Go Away’. They were all chipped and faded, clearly veterans of many garden campaigns.

“A speech like that needs a proper setting,” the woman continued, adjusting a leopard-print scarf around her neck. “A windswept cliff, perhaps. Or at the very least, a booth at a diner with vinyl seats you can stick to. Not a wretched hole like this. There’s no dignity.”

“I… I wasn’t talking to you,” Frederick stammered.

“Of course not. You were rehearsing. I do it all the time. My name is Brenda, by the way,” she announced, extending a hand glittering with costume rings. He shook it reflexively. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

“Frederick.”

“Frederick,” she repeated, tasting the name. “Good, strong name. Now, Frederick, I need a favour. I require a lookout. My nemesis could appear at any moment.”

“Your… nemesis?”

“Mr. Henderson from 4B!” she hissed, her eyes darting towards the station entrance. “The man is a fiend. A gnome-napper. A terracotta tyrant! I liberated this squadron from his oppressive front lawn this very morning.” She patted a gnome with a long white beard. “This is General Finnegan. He led the charge.”

Frederick could only stare. The speech, his carefully constructed emotional architecture, was beginning to crumble in the face of this sequined, gnome-liberating whirlwind.

A Strategic Withdrawal

“Now, your job is simple,” Brenda instructed, pointing towards the main stairwell. “You will position yourself behind that rubbish bin. It offers excellent cover. If you see a man with a comb-over that defies both gravity and good taste, and who walks as if he has a secret pickle clenched between his buttocks, you will give the signal.”

“What’s the signal?” Frederick asked, weakly.

“You will pretend to be a pigeon. A loud, convincing coo. Can you do that?”

“I… think so?”

“Excellent. I knew you had hidden depths.” Brenda turned her attention back to her cart. “Now, Sergeant Puddles,” she said to a gnome holding a tiny watering can, “You will secure the flank. Henderson always comes from the flank.”

Frederick was so bewildered by the sheer, unapologetic strangeness of the situation that he found himself actually moving towards the bin. He was hiding. In a subway station. To avoid a man with a pickle-clench walk. For a woman named Brenda. His serious, life-altering conversation with Ben was now the second-most important mission of the afternoon.

He peeked over the edge of the bin. No sign of Mr. Henderson. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple. This was, without question, the most ridiculous moment of his entire seventeen years.

He heard footsteps and ducked down, his heart pounding. He risked another look. It wasn't Henderson. It was Ben.

Ben, who was supposed to be met with a soulful gaze and a devastatingly earnest speech, was instead being greeted by the sight of his boyfriend crouching behind a bin. Ben stopped, a look of profound confusion on his face. He looked from Frederick to Brenda, who was now delivering a rousing speech to her ceramic army.

“Hey,” Ben said, slowly approaching Frederick’s hiding spot. “Are you… okay?”

Frederick stood up, trying to brush the grime off his jeans and reclaim some shred of dignity. “Ben! Hi. I was just… uh…”

“He’s my lookout!” Brenda called cheerfully. “We’re preparing for an incursion from the Hendersonian forces! This is Frederick’s boyfriend, I presume? He has kind eyes. A keeper.”

Ben blinked. “The Hendersonian forces?”

Frederick buried his face in his hands. The speech was gone. Every carefully chosen word had evaporated, replaced by the mental image of a man clenching a pickle. He looked at Ben, who was now looking at the gnomes with an expression of dawning amusement.

“Is that General Finnegan?” Ben asked, pointing. “My grandma has the same one.”

Frederick dropped his hands and just stared. The tension that had been coiled in his stomach all morning, the anxiety about their future, the weight of the Big Talk… it all just… vanished. Pfft. Gone. He started to laugh. It wasn't a small chuckle; it was a huge, uncontrollable, gasping laugh. The absurdity of it all was just too much.

Ben started laughing too. “Dude, what is happening?”

“I have no idea,” Frederick gasped, wiping a tear from his eye. “But I think we’re at war with Mr. Henderson.”