Apotheosis

by Joshua Edward Smith

  “Oh, yeah. I have to figure out where I know him from. I thought I’d image search him, and I found a match, but it’s just another ad.”

  “Try searching for the image from that ad,” Alice suggested, pointing at the computer screen. “The color is a little different than the one on my desk. Maybe that’ll help.”

  “Good idea,” Cynthia agreed. She turned back to her computer and continued the search with Alice looking over her shoulder. There were dozens of matches now. “Popular guy.”

  “Looks like you have your work cut out for you,” Alice said. “Keep me posted. I have a meeting to get to.”

  “I will. And thanks!” Cynthia said, as she started looking at the matches. The picture was popular in the home furnishings business. She thought that made sense, since the shoppers were mostly women, and his was a face any woman would want to imagine in her bedroom. Then she found the match she was looking for—a stock photo site.

  She went to the site and learned that Elaine Johannsen took the picture. There wasn’t much more to learn there, so she Googled “Elaine Johannsen Photography.” She quickly found the studio’s web page, but it was a minimal storefront. She got up and walked to the break room to get herself some coffee.

  As she waited for the Keurig, she planned her next move. Sitting down at her computer, she took a glance at her emails. Ugh. She had a busy day ahead. But she figured a few more minutes on this task would be okay. She picked up the phone and called the photo studio.

  “Good morning, this is Elaine.”

  “Oh! Good morning,” she said. “I’m with Mutual Beneficial Insurance Company.”

  “Yes, I see that on the caller ID,” she replied. “I’m not really looking for insurance at this time.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry. I’m from…” Cynthia thought a moment. “I’m from the marketing department.”

  “Oh! How can I help you?”

  “We are thinking of using one of your photos in an ad campaign,” she lied.

  “Okay. Well if you found it on the stock photo site, they handle the payments and license agreements and stuff.”

  “Yes, but you see, the photo we like has a person in it. And my legal department is concerned that we need to see a release from the model himself. Right of publicity or something? You know how legal departments are.”

  “Huh. Yeah, okay. I’m sure I have that, but it’ll take me a while to find it. Can you email me a link to the picture you are planning on using? I can dig up their paperwork and fax it to you.”

  “Perfect! Yes, I see your email address here on your website. Should I use that one?”

  “Yes, that comes straight to me. Include your fax number in the email, too.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Thank you so much. My boss is going to be thrilled.”

  “Glad to help. I’ll watch for your email.”

  “Thank you. Goodbye,” she said as she hung up.

  Her heart was racing. She had never done anything like that in her life, as far as she could remember. She felt proud at what a good job she had done lying to the photographer. She didn’t have much of a plan when she called—she’d ask for his rights release, which she remembered having to sign when she was in a photo shoot back in college. Everything else she made up on the spot. I’m an actress! she told herself.

  She put together the email, inventing a title for herself in the marketing department of her insurance company. She was reasonably sure her company didn’t have a marketing department. They were the kind of company that merely subcontracted to other, bigger companies. But her gambit had worked, so no matter. She held her breath as she hit Send.

  THREE

  Cynthia watched the fax that served her set of cubicles like a hawk all day. Late in the afternoon it finally delivered the paperwork she was waiting for. She rushed back to her cube to study the page. Mister Pickles had a name. Evan Schrodinger. He also had an address, telephone number, and an impressive signature. She was slightly disturbed at how easy it had been to get this information.

  She resisted the urge to search deeper while at the office. Almost everything she did was recorded, and she had already pushed her luck with the earlier Google searches, phone calls, and fax. No, from now on, she decided she would only do her detective work on her phone or her home computer. Anyway, she still had a bunch of claims to process and less than an hour to get them done.

  When she arrived home, she skipped dinner and went straight to her computer. His unusual name was a big help when it came to searching. She didn’t even need to know his address, although the city she turned up for him did match the one on the release form—Malibu. From where she sat outside Portland, Oregon, that was a haul. Fifteen hours by car, according to her phone.

  She decided that before she fell any harder for this guy, she needed to check for red flags. Was he single? Was he a deadbeat dad? A criminal? An alcoholic? She was not going to get tangled up with another train wreck like her ex Randy had become. She decided to spring for the deluxe $19.99 public records search offered by one of the banner ads that jumped in her face when she started searching his name.

  A few minutes later and most of her questions were answered. He owned a house and there was no co-owner. All signs indicated that he was single. No women’s names at any of his previous addresses. His current address was different than the release form indicated, but the one she had was his address a few years ago. So he was now a few years older than he had been in the picture. That explains why he looks older in my dreams, she surmised.

  Cynthia did not believe in magic, or tarot, or horoscopes, or astrology. She was a realist and knew logically that her dreams were just dreams. There was absolutely no reason that her connection to this man should mean anything. And there was no way that him being older in her dreams made any sense, simply because he was older in real life than this picture. This picture, which logic told her was absolutely the seed of the idea of him, which sprouted into the man in her dreams. Her logic told her all of that, and she didn’t believe a word of it.

  This was different. He was different. She and Evan were connected on a different plane of existence, and her logic could fuck right off—she knew it was true. Down in her gut. Her gut served her well for forty-five years, and she trusted it.

  She continued her search. The public records had enough information that she was able to create an account for Evan at a free credit reporting site, and soon she knew that the credit agencies adored him. His score was 831. Damn. Cynthia didn’t know people existed with credit that good. And it was no wonder—he had a lot of credit cards that he paid off every month, he had a six-figure salary, and he owned a million-dollar house and a Porsche. What the hell? Does modeling really pay that well?

  Something didn’t add up. She decided to figure out exactly what this man did, and after a few more searches—the trick was including his middle name, which she learned on the credit report—she discovered he was a doctor. A plastic surgeon. In Malibu. I can see that, she thought. The modeling must have been an ego thing. Or maybe he knew the photographer.

  This man was too perfect to be single. There had to be a girlfriend, right? She turned her attention to social media. Any woman who managed to land this guy would certainly have spread his beautiful mug all over her account. But she found nothing at all on Facebook. He didn’t have an account. Not under his real name, anyway. She found the medical group he worked for, and she picked him out of one of the group shots at a retirement party, but nobody in the picture was tagged.

  It was late, and she was hungry. Cynthia decided she had done enough detective work for one day and poured herself a glass of wine. She sipped it as she stared at the cupboard trying to convince herself not to make instant macaroni and cheese again.

  ¤

  “Of course, this was the summer before I started med school. If I had realized back then how important my hands were going to be for my career, I never would have done it,” Evan explained to a group a women.

 
Cynthia stood at his side, tapping her champagne and watching the bubbles release from the side of the glass, float to the top, and explode into a tiny cloud of mist. She scanned the faces of the women, all of whom were focused intently on Evan. He’s mine, bitches, she thought, smiling slightly. She had heard this part of the story before. His endless string of tales from the summer he spent in Tibet before med school. The girl he met, got separated from, and never found again. The rock climbing. The incident with the wasps in the temple. All of it. And she’d listen to it again, and again, for the rest of her life if she had the chance.

  Sensing that the story was reaching an end, she drained her glass and handed it to him. It was the perfect move. It established to the pack of women that he belonged to her, and he never failed to do the chivalrous thing and take care of her needs. All her needs, but in this case, her need for more champagne. He wrapped up his soliloquy and took Cynthia’s arm, turning away from the throng of disappointed fans.

  “I’m sorry you had to sit through that story again,” he said.

  “Nonsense. It’s a great story. And it gets better every time you tell it,” she said with a wink.

  “Are you implying I embellish?” he asked.

  “Oh heavens no. I’m sure you are just remembering little details you previously left out.” Cynthia gave him a broad smile.

  “You are far too good to me,” he said. “I have to admit, I have no idea where I’m supposed to refill this.”

  “Oh, they are walking around with trays. I didn’t really need you to refill it, I was just afraid the drool from all those women was going to build up and damage my shoes.”

  Evan laughed. “Oh stop. They weren’t that bad.”

  “Uh, yeah. They really were,” she replied. “But I don’t mind. How many have you done work on?”

  “Oh, none of them. My clientele tends to be a bit older. I’m more of a mechanic. Fixing things that go wrong. Putting things back where they used to be.”

  Cynthia nodded and poked his side with her index finger. “You want to fix me up?”

  “Fuck no. You’re fucking perfect exactly the way you are,” he said, scanning her from head to toe and back, letting his gaze linger at various stops along the way.

  “Stop. You are so incredibly full of shit.”

  “Honestly. Imagine a beautiful mahogany table asking if it would look better in polyethylene.”

  “So you’re comparing me to a table now? I still have some curves left,” she teased, running her hand over her hip.

  “You’re impossible. You won’t let me compliment you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I’m just teasing. Thank you. You are very sweet. But I don’t believe you that you wouldn’t find something that needed fixing.”

  “I really wouldn’t. I’ve seen it all. You know that. I really like that you aren’t something that I—or worse, someone else—hand carved. That you are exactly as you are. After spending… what is it, like twenty years?”

  Cynthia shrugged.

  “Well after spending something like that erasing all the character from women’s bodies, I really have come to appreciate character. I’m so tired of the perfect, plastic, airbrushed-in-real-life doll bodies. I want to be able to trace my finger along a stretch mark. Kiss a mole. Explore a little cellulite.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You were doing really well up until cellulite. You should have stopped when you were ahead.”

  He laughed. “Dammit! So close!”

  A waiter walked by carrying a tray, and Evan deftly snatched two glasses from it. The waiter paused as they returned their empties. Then he moved on.

  “Geez, even the men are checking you out,” Cynthia said.

  “What? Oh! Really?”

  “Yeah. You certainly don’t set off my gaydar, but I think you set off his.”

  “Well that’s kind of flattering, actually,” Evan said, adjusting the knot in his tie.

  Cynthia laughed and shook her head. “You are such a whore.”

  Before Evan could reply, there was a tinkling of glasses. They turned to the main stairway to see who was speaking. But the tinkling of glasses continued. Cynthia was annoyed. She couldn’t hear what the man was saying over all the chimes. She looked at Evan, exasperated, but he wasn’t there. Nobody was there. The room turned dark.

  Cynthia rolled over to her side table and silenced her phone alarm. 5:30 came too soon again.

  ¤

  Cynthia arrived at the office energized. She had confirmed that Evan was a viable prospect in every way she could imagine, and her dream from the night before was as vivid as the others had been. There was nothing dream-like about it. She was starting to believe that she was either seeing an alternate reality, or perhaps her own future. Either way, she wanted to get to that place in her conscious life as soon as possible. She worked through the day’s emails quickly and efficiently, so that she felt no guilt at all sneaking out a little early at lunchtime.

  She went to a nearby park that nobody from her office used and found a bench. She pulled out her phone and searched Facebook again. She had his contact information, of course, but she thought reaching him out of the blue might have the opposite of her intended effect. She thought a casual social media introduction was the way to go. But Facebook proved fruitless. There was simply no sign of him, even knowing everything she did.

  She decided to dust off her old Twitter account and try searching there. She never understood Twitter. It seemed nobody over there knew the people they interacted with. It was weird. But as she thought about it, that might be a better fit for this situation anyway. She searched his name and immediately found his account. Her heart leapt to her throat. Could it have been that easy? she wondered.

  She looked through his timeline. It was a typical list of tweets, as far as she could tell. Retweets of stories about politics and natural disasters and celebrities. The occasional random remark about liking a restaurant or needing some coffee. And there were several pictures. They were definitely him. Although she noticed that none of them were selfies. Who is taking these pictures? she wondered. No sign of a girlfriend in the tweets, either. She clicked the Follow button.

  She stared at her phone awhile. She wanted to do more, but she was sort of at a loss. She noticed that she could see the tweets Evan liked—ones written by other people. Perhaps if there was a girlfriend, she could detect it there. She pored through the list. Nothing. Totally random stuff and no indication of anyone special. There didn’t seem to be anyone at all that he talked to regularly.

  Cynthia decided if Twitter was going to be her introduction to him, she should improve her timeline. She hadn’t used Twitter in nearly a year, and the last time was to enter some contest on TV. She immediately swapped her profile picture with something more flattering and found a bathing suit picture she could post with a self-deprecating comment. She deleted all the contest entries and un-retweeted various tweets that, in retrospect, she wasn’t sure why she liked so much the first time around.

  She then looked at the trending hashtags and found some funny accounts to follow and retweet. She looked at what those accounts did on their timelines and she emulated them. By the time she finished, she thought she had done a good job of creating a fun-loving, somewhat sexy, interesting Twitter persona. There was nothing more to do but wait.

  Her lunch break was over anyway, so she put away her phone and walked back to the office. She arrived back to her cube and Alice immediately came over. “You’re back! I was going to try to catch you at lunch, but you disappeared.”

  “Yeah, I had to drop by the pharmacy to get something,” she lied. I’m getting good at this lying thing. “What’s up?”

  “I was wondering what you found out about our mystery man!”

  “Oh, that,” Cynthia shrugged. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. The photo search was a dead end. He’s a popular model, but that’s about all I know.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah,
well we tried anyway. Let me know if you find anyone suitable for my desk next time you’re frame shopping,” Cynthia said.

  Alice laughed. “Look at us. How pathetic. But you know I will.”

  “Sisters gotta look out for each other.”

  Alice fist-bumped Cynthia before returning to her cube. Cynthia felt a little ashamed about having lied, but not much. Evan belonged to her, and the last thing she needed was Alice getting all up in her business about him. She checked her phone. Nothing yet. She wondered how long it usually takes for someone to follow back. She wasn’t allowed to send him a direct message until he did. She put away her phone and pulled up her email, ready to plow through the second half of her day.

  FOUR

  Cynthia resisted the urge to look at her phone until after she had made and consumed a healthy dinner. She refreshed her wine and settled into the couch. She opened the Twitter app and had quite a few notifications to look through. It seemed her activity earlier that day had garnered some attention. Several of the accounts she retweeted had followed her back. There were a lot of likes on her swimsuit selfie, along with several drooling replies from men she didn’t know.

  There was activity in her direct messages as well. A lot of “Hey, baby,” and “Well hello, beautiful” sorts of messages from random men, many of whom were obviously married. Yuck. She didn’t realize Twitter was like a dating app now. She blamed herself for having put up those pictures, but she wanted to put her best foot forward with Evan, and if this was the price, so be it.

  He hadn’t followed her back yet, so she went to his timeline and liked a lot of his tweets. She found a couple to retweet as well. That seemed to be the best way to get people to follow you, she observed, based on who followed her that day. She scrolled her feed to read the tweets and retweets of the people she was now following. She found it surprisingly entertaining. There were plenty of jokes and some links to news articles she found interesting. Then a little blue banner flew across the bottom of her screen, “Evan Schrodinger followed you.”