Virtually Mine: a love story

by Susan Rohrer

  With that, Charlie spun to leave, but M.J. pushed him back inside, just before she scooted out and closed the door.

  Suddenly alone with Kate and completely unsure how to behave, Charlie slinked past her, toward the kitchen, filling the awkward air the best he could. “I’ll just... Trust me. You won’t even know I’m here. It’s an extraordinary facility I seem to have with...all women, actually.”

  three

  ♥

  Under normal circumstances, unstopping a garbage disposal wasn’t as engaging a task for Charlie as it was on this particular night. It wasn’t so much about the mechanical challenge that the job presented as it was the opportunity it afforded for time with this specific tenant.

  Charlie wasn’t given to crushes. He knew they were an exercise in futility. But from the moment M.J. had brought Kate in as a roommate, something had done somersaults inside of Charlie. It happened every single time he saw or thought of her.

  Kate wasn’t a fashion plate. She didn’t have the kind of beauty that got applied every morning and washed down the sink at night. Kate was just girl-next-door, fresh-scrubbed pretty. Unlike most girls Charlie met, Kate actually looked him in the eyes when she talked to him. She’d ask about his day, then stop to listen. She said please and thank you when she requested his help. She let him walk with her to church, since Dustin had to work.

  Charlie had known Kate was taken from the very beginning when Dustin had helped her move into her so-near-yet-so-far apartment next door to him. It’s not that Charlie found Dustin to be worthy of Kate, but he reasoned it was just as well since he didn’t deem himself worthy of her either.

  Kate was the girl of Charlie’s dreams, this marvel of a creature who sat on the counter to the right of where he worked on his back, underneath the sink. As he cleared the culprit cucumber peelings from the garbage disposal trap, she vented the pains of her unexpected break-up, dangling her shapely calves from her perch, driving his smitten soul berserk.

  “How can that not turn personal,” she asked, not really waiting for an answer. “He’s human. He’s wired to respond to sensory stimuli. And an acted kiss—I don’t care what anybody says. It’s still in the same physical universe of kissing.”

  Conversation about kissing was almost too much for Charlie in this company. He sat up too quickly and bonked his head.

  “You know what it’s like,” she assumed.

  Charlie did not. Here he was, a grown man of twenty-seven, living in the big city, and he’d never once in his life kissed a girl, except for his mom and his great aunt Cecelia, neither of which he figured should count.

  Kate went on, elaborating every detail of what Charlie had never experienced. “Your mouth gets all tingly,” she described, “and your hormones go completely wha-ho! And even if it is in a technical sense work, it still pushes exactly the same chemical buttons inside. Whether you claim you’re acting or not, a kiss is a kiss. Don’t you think?”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Blocks away at the neighborhood Fluff & Fold, M.J. toted an armful of wet Meter Maid uniforms toward an open dryer. As she stooped to pick up a renegade sock, an elderly man and wife toddled by in front of her. They took the last open dryer, right out from under her.

  “Oh, look, Honey, here’s one,” the woman beamed.

  “Actually, I was going to use...” M.J. sighed. There was no way she was going to wrestle the dryer away from that sweet old couple. Instead, she put her wet wash down and plopped into a plastic chair. “I’ll get the next one,” she said, as nicely as she could muster.

  Missing M.J.’s nuance completely, the woman chattered merrily to M.J. as she loaded their clothes into the dryer. “You know, we met sixty years ago, right in this Laundromat. I was waiting on a dryer at the time, just like you.”

  “Were you, now?” M.J. replied with more enthusiasm than she felt. As the old woman nattered on about their story, M.J.’s mind drifted. She glanced out the window just as a dog walker stopped out front to untangle the leashes of the five pooches in her charge.

  “There he came,” the matron continued, “right through that door. I’m telling you I would have missed him entirely if I’d gotten into that dryer when I wanted it. Good Lord slowed me down, though, let me see what I was supposed to see.” She patted her husband’s back. “Haven’t missed a Tuesday night here since, have we, Dear?”

  “Nary a one,” her husband replied. “Just goes to show, the bug bites and love can grow from just about anywhere.” As the old man started the dryer, his wife leaned in for an affectionate squeeze.

  M.J. took the couple in. Her parents had hardly been models of affection, toward her or toward each other. It made her want better than they had ever had. M.J. turned her gaze outside, where the dog walker resumed her duties.

  Suddenly, an idea struck M.J. She forgot about losing her dryer. She tuned out the elderly couple. All she could see was that dog walker heading down the sidewalk, behind that band of canines.

  Watching intently, M.J.’s wheels turned. This idea had possibility written all over it.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Dustin sat on his sofa, half leafing through the pages of a scene and half monitoring Wissy in his kitchen. With a confident smile, she kicked off her shoes and picked up the wine bottle. Dustin waved her off, showing her his half-full glass. “Thanks, I’m good.”

  Wissy eased herself onto the cushion beside him. “I suspected that.”

  “What?” Dustin asked, not really getting it.

  “That you’re good...at whatever it is you do.” Wissy put the wine bottle down and cozied up to Dustin, looking over his shoulder at their scene.

  Dustin scooted away a bit and handed Wissy her own copy.

  Wissy accepted the pages. “I was thinking we should just jump right into character, see where it takes us.”

  Dustin wrestled with what to do. He thought about Wissy’s job in casting. He thought about what Kate had said. “We don’t have to do the whole kissing part yet. I mean if you’re—”

  Wissy moved away. She tossed the scene aside and stood. “Maybe an exercise would help. Ooh. I have one. We’re going to speak to each other without words.”

  “We are?” Dustin stymied as to how that was possible.

  “Go ahead, Sweetie,” she coaxed. “Stand up.”

  Dustin stood a few feet away, but Wissy waved him closer. “Come as near as you want, feel the chemistry building for the scene, but resist actual contact.”

  Confusion clouded Dustin’s mind. “Don’t touch you?”

  “Let me show you,” Wissy offered. “Turn around.”

  Dustin pivoted, not altogether sure what to expect. From behind Dustin, Wissy moved her hands slowly around his face and neck, millimeters away, never grazing him.

  She whispered softly into his ear. “If we do it right, we should be able to unearth what these characters are feeling without even so much as the slightest physical brush. We just light the match under it, let it simmer a little, disturb the molecules as they say and... Do you feel that?”

  With Wissy’s warm breath and the sound of her sultry voice in his ear, Dustin’s resolve fell as his temperature rose. “This is an excellent exercise,” he pronounced. “I’m just a little...whoa...okay...”

  “You’re not nervous about this, are you?” Wissy teased. “Come to think of it, maybe you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t rehearse the kiss. Maybe we should let everything we’re feeling here compound, right up until the actual performance.”

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Kate paced opposite the sink where Charlie still busied himself with her garbage disposal. From his vantage point under the sink, he had to fight not to watch her willowy legs as they passed. They were just legs, he told himself. He had seen legs before, just never from this exact angle.

  “What do you think they’re doing right now?” Kate asked.

  “Well, I...” Charlie blustered, “I try not to think about those kinds of things, things I can’t—”

  Kate sto
pped pacing. She hopped back up on top of the counter. “You’re right. Why am I torturing myself? I should just focus. Think about...I don’t know, I should conjugate verbs or contemplate asparagus or—”

  “Sometimes I think of pi,” Charlie interjected, understanding the feeling.

  Kate seized on the suggestion. “Back home in Virginia, my Mom makes the best pie. It’s this apple custard with little bits of apricot jam dotted in it. I’m telling you, Charlie, there’s not a sweeter thing that could ever touch your lips.”

  Charlie felt himself going even paler than he normally was. In fact, he came close to passing out altogether. “I was thinking of the mathematical kind of pi, solving it, but—” Charlie tried to scoot out from under the sink smoothly, but he banged his head soundly on the cabinet frame. “Ow-ow-ow,” he yelped, before he could stop the words from exiting his mouth. He’d always felt like something of a doofus, but never more than at that very moment.

  Kate jumped off the counter. “Charlie, are you okay? Let me look.”

  Kate’s close proximity only increased Charlie’s anxiety. She brushed the hair back off his brow. “Hold still. Lemme see.”

  Charlie winced. “It’s only a little...blood and—”

  Kate examined Charlie’s scalp. “You sure? I could put some ice or...we don’t have ice. How about ice cream? Ice cream might work.”

  As quickly as he could, Charlie rose to his feet. In fact, he rose so quickly that he made himself a bit woozy. “That’s okay. I should... You look good...I mean, the disposal looks really...good, now, and I better go.” With that, Charlie hurried out.

  It’s not that he wanted to leave Kate. He craved every moment of any and every excuse to be in her presence. But there was something about this conversation that had escaped his control. It had been more challenging to his constitution than he’d ever before experienced with Kate.

  So, as much as Charlie wanted to stay, he knew he should go, before he said or did anything to overstep his self-imposed bounds or to embarrass himself more thoroughly than he already had. He needed a bathroom, his bathroom, and he needed it just as soon as was physically possible.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  Kate poured coffee for regulars at her day job at the Doo-Wop Dinette. It was a kitschy kind of “Mom and Pop” eatery that had been part of the Santa Monica landscape for generations. Petitions had saved it as a landmark when it was threatened for demolition. Fifties music and throw-back uniforms completed the theme.

  Kate had been grateful to Dustin for getting her hired to work alongside him there, but given their exchange from the previous night, she felt unsure just how to behave. She wondered if she should try to act normal, as if nothing had happened, but that didn’t feel right to Kate. Something had definitely shifted between them and she had no idea what more to say than what she already had. What she knew for sure was that she needed her job to pay her bills, Dustin or no Dustin.

  Mercifully, Kate was on the sunrise team that week. She’d been up before dawn, at it for hours before Dustin coasted in for second shift. Careful to avoid his notice, Kate watched Dustin as he trailed the head waitress. At forty-five, Reesa Davis was a straight shooter with a heart of gold, very at home in her plus-sized body.

  “I promise, Reesa,” she heard Dustin plead. “I’ll be gone an hour, ninety minutes tops.”

  Reesa studied Dustin with a skeptical look on her face. “Didn’t you just get here? Kate’s off in ten and I’ve been slinging hash since the birds woke up.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t, okay, the absolute biggest break so far in my entire career,” Dustin justified.

  Reesa chuckled. “Uh-huh. And just what is this commercial for?”

  Filling sugar jars nearby, Kate bent an ear toward the conversation

  Dustin’s shoulders bobbed. “Some kind of cold stuff.”

  Reesa drew back in her inimitable style. “Sneeze medicine? Baby, if this is as good as you got, then far be it from me to stand in your way.”

  Overjoyed, Dustin planted a wet one on Reesa’s cheek. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Reesa chortled with a nod toward Kate. “Best stop that kissin’ on me, now. You’re gonna make that girl of yours jealous.”

  Kate averted her eyes as Dustin glanced over at her, but she overheard his reply to Reesa.

  “Yeah, we sort of, well...” Dustin shuffled. “She brought it up that we should see other people.”

  Dinette cook, Andre, rang a bell and placed a steaming plate of spaghetti and meatballs on the pickup counter. He called to his wife. “Order up!”

  Reesa whirled to Andre congenially. “I got ya, Cup Cake. No need to go mashin’ that bell.”

  Gathering her courage, Kate approached Dustin, who was already removing his apron. “Hi,” she managed. Awkwardly, he returned the greeting.

  Kate struggled for a way to break the ice. She followed Dustin toward the staff locker room. “So, I’m sorry I interrupted your...rehearsal.”

  Dustin opened his locker, oblivious to the elephant in the room. “No problem.”

  “You going somewhere?” Kate already knew the answer, but she still had to ask. It was the only way to keep the conversation going.

  Dustin bubbled over with excitement. “Okay. Try to remain calm. Wissy called me this morning and she said she’s already getting me in on a national commercial.”

  Kate didn’t know whether to be thrilled or devastated. “Really?”

  “I’m not on the official list,” Dustin continued, “but she’s working the session and she says she’ll let me crash if I can get over there in the next thirty minutes, so—”

  Kate shook her head. “I thought you said she was an intern to an assistant to a semi-monstrous sized casting director.”

  “Who is slumming in commercials in between, where I can meet her, I know! How do I look?”

  Kate tried her best to hold it together. “Like a waiter?”

  Dustin began to unbutton the shirt of his uniform. “Doesn’t matter. It’s shirtless.”

  Kate watched as he took the shirt off and hung it in his locker. “Shirtless. Great, of course. Then you’re... Great. Just great.”

  There were times when Dustin could be completely nonsensical and this was certainly one of them. For an actor, he had very little grasp of nuance. He didn’t seem to get what was being said between the lines, what Kate wished to heaven he could hear without her having to come right out and say it. Instead, Dustin grinned broadly, accepting her words as a compliment. He turned his bare back to her and ambled out the door.

  four

  ♥

  In the privacy of his sparsely decorated, one-bedroom apartment, Charlie painstakingly labeled a stack of color brochures. The leaflets were every bit as slick as the company they advertised: Virtually Mine. Neatly, he affixed a sticker that said “Operator 52” to each one. Charlie lined each label up as straight as he could, right beside the contact info, wanting it to look as legitimate as possible. After all, he reasoned, he was finally a bona fide Operator for the company and he wanted to do a good job.

  Charlie opened one of the brochures. He studied its offering of Imaginary Boyfriends for lonely-hearted souls desiring a sense of beau-like companionship and attentions. The Imaginaries pictured were a variety of ages and types, but every one of them, in his own way, was just as insanely good-looking as Eric Bender had been. There were chiseled jaws, broad shoulders, and perfect hairlines straight across the board. There wasn’t a single unstraightened, unwhitened tooth in the bunch.

  Charlie looked into the mirror, examining his reflection image in contrast. It’s not that he was bad looking, but he knew he was no Eric Bender. That was for sure. Charlie had never given much thought to his average, boy-next-door looks. With his dark hair and brown eyes, he was the spitting image of his father, something that had delighted his dearly departed mother to no end.

  Maybe I should get contacts, Charlie thought. He took off his glasses to check out the change,
but quickly put them back on, unable to see himself without them.

  Charlie cracked the door of his apartment and peeked out. The coast was clear. He sneaked door-to-door, hanging one of his Virtually Mine brochures on each knob, even Mrs. Teasdale’s.

  Circling back to Kate’s door, right next to his, he checked around. There was still no one to be seen. Surreptitiously, he dangled a brochure on Kate’s doorknob, then whispered heavenward:

  “Okay, I know in the tenth grade I told you I was putting the whole chimichanga on Gina Paphites, and I’m not saying I’m faulting you for not coming through for me on that one, but...okay, this once... Just—”

  Suddenly, M.J. opened their apartment door. Charlie whirled.

  “Charlie, hi!”

  “M.J! You’re not—”

  “Littering Santa Monica with parking tickets? Yeah, I...took a personal day. Check out what I just made.” M.J. flashed a computer-generated business card. It read:

  No time to walk your favorite pooch? Just Call: M.J. Poster, Dog Walker Extraordinaire! 310/555-6243

  “Okay,” M.J. went on, “I get that there are pet limits in this building, but it’s totally a house-calls thing. So, what’s all this?”

  Charlie panicked, realizing that M.J. had noticed the brochures she saw in his hand. “Me? What, you mean these? I... Well, you know those pesky solicitors, always selling some new something or other. Yesterday it was botox coupons, today it’s...” Charlie looked at the brochures. “What are these, anyway? Because I’m just, sort of, collecting them—in my capacity as...manager—picking them up, so all of you residents don’t have to be bothered with recycling them.”

  With that, Charlie reached for the brochure on the knob to Kate and M.J.’s apartment. He buckled as M.J. snagged it first, then tossed it into the apartment and closed the door.