The Fussy Virgin

by McGarvey Black

  “Let me get this straight,” said Ed Rossi, the short stocky PI assigned to work with Patrick. “You want me to find a woman but you don’t know her name, what she looks like or even what city she lives in?”

  “When you say it like that, it does sound ridiculous. I do know a few things about her,” said Patrick. “She’s a writer but her day job is telemarketing.”

  “A writer? That might be something. What did she write?”

  “She’s working on a guide for young, single women…something about finding your true love. She’s blonde, likes the Museum of Modern Art, is a big supporter of Ben Huston’s run for Senate…and she likes to be right.”

  “Yeah, like every other woman in New York,” said Rossi, snorting out a laugh. The private investigator scratched his chin, mindful of how he responded. His company got a lot of business from Patrick’s firm and he didn’t want to alienate the young lawyer. “Look, I’d love to help you, Patrick. But, I gotta be honest with you. You’ll be wasting your money. You want me to find a blonde who likes museums, Ben Huston, and has to be right all the time.”

  “Exactly,” said Patrick with a hopeful smile.

  “You know how many women in New York City fit that description?”

  “A lot?”

  “Got to be millions,” said Rossi. “There’s a lot of blondes in New York who go to museums and like Huston, he’s very popular here. My wife’s a blonde and she likes Huston. Take my wife, please. Honestly, I wouldn’t even know where to start on this one. I’m sorry.”

  “I guess I knew that before I called you,” said Patrick, shaking his head.

  “My advice, find another blonde who likes museums. There’s no shortage of them in this city. Better yet, find a blonde who likes baseball. Now we’re talking.”

  After the meeting with Rossi, it was obvious to Patrick that if he was ever going to find the MW, he’d have to do it himself. The writing group he crashed told him she had an old red MoMA tote bag. With that knowledge, he went to the Museum of Modern Art twice a week for the next few months. He was there so often, he knew all the exhibits intimately, and even the names of some of the security guards.

  “Nice picture,” said Patrick to one tall, heavyset male security guard with black curly hair and a beard who he had seen on earlier visits. “It’s one of my favorites. Picasso.”

  “It’s nice,” said the security guard. “I notice you come here a lot. You must really like modern art. Me, I don’t get it. I like landscapes myself.”

  “It’s new to me, but I like it,” said Patrick as a new idea formed in his mind. “Hey, one of the reasons I come here is because I’m trying to reconnect with an old girlfriend. I moved away and we lost touch and she has an unlisted phone number. She loved this museum and I thought maybe I’d find her here.”

  “You try looking for her online like on Instagram or something like that? That’s what I’d do instead of hanging out in this crypt.”

  “She wasn’t into social media,” said Patrick. “Really likes her privacy. Maybe if I described her to you, you might remember seeing her?”

  “I don’t pay much attention to people who come in here. My job is to make sure nobody touches nothing,” said the guard.

  “You noticed me.”

  “Yeah, because you come in here like every two days,” said the security guard. “Frankly, I thought you were a little weird. I mean, the exhibits don’t change that often.”

  Undaunted, Patrick continued. “She’s twenty-nine, blonde, and petite.”

  “That sounds like half the people who come in here,” said the guard, looking around.

  Frustrated, Patrick thought for a minute. “I’m sure she’s exceptionally pretty.”

  “What do you mean you’re sure?”

  “I meant to say she is pretty, she is extremely pretty.”

  “Nah, I ain’t seen nobody like that lately. Wish I did. We mainly get old ladies and high school groups, no hot young blondes.”

  Patrick thanked the guard, gave him his card and asked him to call if anyone showed up who fit the MW’s description.

  “What’s her name?” the guard called out as the lawyer crossed the room.

  “I’d rather not say,” said Patrick as he walked into an adjacent gallery.

  For two more hours he strolled from floor to floor looking at paintings and sculptures. All the while his eyes darted around the space, watching for any petite blonde that passed. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a small curvaceous blonde woman in a bright pink Lilly Pulitzer mini-skirt standing across the hall in front of a sculpture. He could only see her from behind and held his breath as he walked over to her and waited until she turned around. When she did, Patrick nearly fell over.

  That woman’s gotta be ninety-five! But damn, she’s got a good body.

  He continued to wander through the museum when he saw another small blonde and walked towards her.

  This could be her. This might really be her.

  The woman was looking intently at a painting—Joan Miró’s The Hunter.

  “You like Miró?” said Patrick as he sidled up to the small blonde.

  “He’s okay,” said the blonde, looking up at Patrick.

  She’s kind of cute. It could be her. She looks a bit like Emma Stone. “There’s another great Miró painting around the corner. I can show it to you, if you like.”

  “I’m good,” said the girl, taking a few steps away from Patrick.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Patrick asked, following her.

  “I guess,” said the girl suspiciously.

  “Do you come to MoMA a lot?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “Are you… are you the Fussy Virgin?”

  “What?” gasped the blonde woman, moving further away from him.

  “Wait, you don’t understand—”

  “I knew you were a sicko,” said the woman getting louder. “The second you came over to me, the little voice in my head said, ‘Brooke, get away from him, he’s a card carrying perv.’”

  “I just wanted to know…”

  “I’m getting security, there are young kids in here,” said the young blonde as she ran off, looking for a guard.

  Alone in the big exhibit room with a bright red face, Patrick sat down on a brown leather bench and stared at the Miró painting in front of him. He took stock of his life since the Valentine’s Eve phone call.

  I haven’t been out in months. My old girlfriends have disappeared. I’m not sleeping. Finding the Mystery Woman has consumed my life. I leer at every blonde woman under fifty. Even Lorenzo said I’m getting weird and he’s someone who pops quarters out of his eyes. What am I doing?

  One flight up, sitting on a brown leather bench next to Jess, Callie stared at a painting by Salvador Dalí, her favorite surrealist artist.

  “I love Dalí, he’s so rad,” said Jess. “Callie?”

  “What?”

  “You haven’t said a word in fifteen minutes,” said Jess. “This museum visit was supposed to cheer you up.”

  “What?”

  “See, that’s what I mean,” said Jess, turning and facing her friend. “Where are you?”

  “At MoMA.”

  “I mean inside your head, where are you?”

  “With you,” said Callie.

  “You’re not with me. You’re with him.”

  “Jess, I know I’m right about him.”

  “Do you always have to be right about everything?”

  “Yes, especially when I’m right.”

  Jess let out an exaggerated groan. “You’re giving me a headache,” she said, getting up. “Let’s go downstairs and see the Miró exhibit and then let’s get something to eat, I’m starving.”

  One floor below, still seated on the bench, Patrick stared into space. He looked around the room one last time, gave the Miró one final glance, knowing he would not be back and walked to the elevators. When the elevator doors opened, Callie and Jess got out in the middle of a s
mall crowd as Patrick and a few others got in. For a split second, before the doors closed, Patrick caught a glimpse of the back of Callie’s blonde head. Out of habit, he craned his neck to get a better look but stopped himself as the elevator doors closed. He had already made his decision; the hunt for the Mystery Woman was over.

  On his way out of the museum, he called Lorenzo. Twenty minutes later, the two friends were seated at the bar at O’Toole’s, each with a pint of Guinness.

  “You’re really done with all this MW stuff?” asked Lorenzo.

  “I’m over it,” said Patrick, taking a swig of his drink and smiling as the flavorful liquid ran down his throat.

  “That’s a relief,” said Lorenzo. “I gotta tell ya, I was thinking of doing an intervention.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  “Terrible.”

  Patrick started to laugh. “As an attorney, now that I look back on my antics these past few months, it’s amazing I didn’t get myself arrested.”

  “Everyone keeps asking me where you are all the time,” said Lorenzo. “I had to make up excuses. I told them you were working on some big case.”

  “Not anymore. Watch out baby—Houdini’s back,” said Patrick as he finished his drink and slammed the empty glass on the bar and called out for another. “Text those models we met a few months ago in Bryant Park.”

  Lorenzo smiled and pulled out his phone.

  22

  May 2017

  The night after her visit to the museum, Callie tossed and turned for hours, not falling asleep until nearly 3am. When she woke in the morning, she had an epiphany.

  I haven’t written anything in weeks and the quality of my research has taken a nosedive. George dinged me four times in the last few weeks for making stupid mistakes. I’ve never done that before. Searching for the MM has overtaken my life and not in a good way.

  “Caledoni-aah, I need a word with you,” George had said the day before as he walked by her desk, indicating that he wanted her to follow him. Once they were inside his tiny gloomy office that was woefully sparse on decorations, he asked her to shut the door. “Lately, Caledoni-aah, there have been a number of inconsistencies in your work,” said George, looking down at some of her recent reports. “Historically, your research has been impeccable but for the last three months, it has been occasionally shoddy and rife with inaccuracies. To what do we owe this change in the quality of your work? And, when can we expect a return to your previous level of excellence?”

  Callie let out a breath. “I’ve been going through some personal issues and—”

  “Therein lies the problem. We don’t bring our personal problems into work. When you come in here I expect your full, undivided attention.”

  “It’s just that…you wouldn’t understand,” said Callie, shaking her head.

  “Try me.”

  Callie told George the full story of the Mystery Man and the seminal Valentine’s Eve phone call.

  “I see,” said George with no discernable expression on his face. “Why did you think I wouldn’t understand?”

  Callie’s eyes bugged out as she grimaced and squirmed in her chair. “Well, I guess…it’s because you…”

  “You think those kinds of things don’t matter to me,” said George.

  “No, I mean…well, yes.”

  “This may surprise you, Caledoni-aah, but I was once madly, deeply in love.”

  “Really?”

  “His name was Marcel Durand. He was French. Wavy black hair, dark brown eyes, and a dimple on his chin,” said George, half smiling while looking off in the distance. “I was completely in love and I thought we’d spend our lives together. I had so many plans.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone else came along and I missed my chance. I never told him how I felt. I heard he got married.”

  “That’s so sad, George. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. Life goes on.”

  “I don’t think you ever get over something like that,” said Callie, certain she saw George’s eyes fill up.

  Sensing she was studying him, he cleared his throat. “Keep your mistakes to a minimum, and keep the fallout from your personal life out of the office. We’re trying to run a business here.”

  Callie mumbled something about getting back on her A-game and left as quickly as possible. Walking back to her desk she tried to shrug off George’s rebuke, knowing there was some truth to what he said.

  “You were in George’s office forever,” said Jess with raised eyebrows as she popped her head around the partition between them.

  “He told me I needed to get my act together and focus on my work,” said Callie. “Guess all the Mystery Man stuff has taken my mind off the job.”

  “George is such a troll,” said Jess, sticking out her tongue.

  “Did you know he was once in love with somebody?”

  “Human?”

  Callie ignored her friend’s comment. “His name was Marcel. He was from France and he married someone else before George could tell him how he felt. I never would have guessed George was ever in love.”

  “In my opinion, the French guy dodged a bullet. He would have had to live the rest of his life under a bridge with George,” said Jess, grinning, and then disappearing to pick up a call.

  George’s stern warning caused Callie to reflect on the state of her life. I’ve crashed cycling clubs and every coffee shop in Manhattan. I’ve scanned faces in crowds and chatted up every man under fifty and over six feet tall. I’ve even skulked around in front of the Bar Association building hoping he might show up.

  “Lawyers don’t hang out at the Bar Association, Callie,” Jess had said after Callie told her how many times she stood in front of the association’s building on West 44th Street. “My dad’s a lawyer, it’s a trade organization. Attorneys don’t congregate there.”

  “It’s only a block from our office so I stop on my way to and from work,” Callie had said defensively as Jess buried her head in her hands.

  I almost committed fraud by lying to a personal injury attorney and I was nearly hit by a taxi following a tall man out of the New York City Civil Court building on Centre Street.

  Since that Valentine phone call, everything else in her life had come to a halt as she devoted all her energy to her single mission—finding him.

  There’s no such thing as a soulmate, it’s a made-up fairy tale promoted by literature and Hollywood. He was just a nice man who answered my questionnaire. He’s probably never given me a single thought.

  The following Sunday morning after another sleepless night, Callie dragged herself to the corner diner to meet Jess for a late breakfast. Her friend was already seated in a booth with a fresh cup of coffee, texting. Callie slid into the red plastic upholstered bench across from her.

  “You’re late,” said Jess, not looking up from her phone.

  “I barely slept. Got stuff on my mind.”

  “Like?”

  “Do you think I’m too obsessed with the Mystery Man?”

  “Define too obsessed?”

  “Do you think I’ve let my search for him dominate the rest of my life?”

  “Dominate isn’t really a strong enough word.”

  Callie threw her head back and groaned. “I’m making an official announcement. As of today, I’m putting the MM behind me,” she said. “I was so sure I was right about him but…I guess I wasn’t.”

  “You mean it?” said an astonished Jess. “You’re really done looking for him and you’re admitting you were wrong? If only I had that on video. Can you say it again and I’ll record it?”

  “This whole thing hasn’t been good for my mental health,” said Callie, turning her palms upward as if to prove her acceptance and willingness to surrender to the universe.

  “Or mine.”

  “I need a fresh start. You think Henry still wants to hang out?” asked Callie.

  “He told me he thought you were cute that time he met you,” said Je
ss. “I tried to get you two together again in a group. You always bailed because you were too busy chasing fantasy man.”

  “It was all my fault,” said Callie. “Henry doesn’t know why I was MIA, right?”

  “No. He just thinks you’re flakey, but I can spin that into ‘quirky and creative.’ Leave it to me.”

  “Let’s get a group together for Tuesday night and go listen to some music or something,” said Callie. “Ask Henry to come?”

  “Texting him now,” said a smiling Jess as she hit send.

  23

  June 2017

  Two tall attorneys, both in suits, chatted about their upcoming case while riding a subway downtown towards the Brooklyn Courthouse.

  “Remind me why you’re coming with me to this inconsequential hearing?” shouted Patrick over the grinding noise and squeaks of the #2 train.

  “I told you already. The senior partners want the junior partners—me—to be more hands-on with the associates—you,” said a grinning Danny Vitello, who had been promoted from associate to junior partner two weeks before. “Now, that I’m a junior partner, I’m here to give you my guidance and share my wisdom.”

  “You finished law school a semester before me and you just got promoted. Two weeks ago you and I shared the same office,” said Patrick. “Exactly what kind of guidance and wisdom are you going to give to me?”

  “Beats me,” said Danny with a laugh. “Consider this like a judicial field trip. You can sit back and watch the master in action. I’ll do all the heavy lifting. It’ll be a piece o’ cake.”

  “Be my guest,” said Patrick with a sweeping hand gesture. “You do know this case has no teeth, right? That it’s totally frivolous and our client is a money-grubbing weasel?”