Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) (9 page)

All right, so they had just gone in a circle and the woman’s
face didn’t crack a smile or show warmth of any kind, even though it seemed
rather obvious to Charlotte that she was feeling weird here. If she had been
sitting there talking to an awkward woman who was obviously struggling with her
own awkwardness, she would have helped her out. Lent her a smile. Something.

Then Charlotte began to think: What
were
her qualifications?
If she were to make out a resume right now, what would be on it? Administrative
Assistant to Professor MacDougall. She could type; she didn’t know how fast,
exactly, but, um, pretty fast. She knew Microsoft Word. She could email things.
She knew that her husband tended toward passive voice and he could never spell
“persevere” or “receipt” correctly. She knew, instinctively when he needed a
pep talk and when he needed a break from his writing, and she could provide
either of those two things at a moment’s notice.

She knew how to drive carpool and keep track of everyone’s
schedules. She knew how to make a damn good chicken potpie. She knew how to
field phone calls and letters from Caleb’s fans.

Her stomach dropped. She was a
summa cum laude
secretary. A middle-aged washed-up has-been who faints dead away on the floor
if called upon to do anything before breakfast. Who is good with kids but isn’t
sure she likes any but her own. How would that look on the resume? Her face
flushed hot.

After a few moments, the stylist removed the woman’s cape
and she stood from her chair and shuffled through her handbag.

“Here,” she said, extending a business card. “When you
figure out what it is you want and what it is you do, give my husband a call.”

That might take while, Charlotte thought. For the more time she
spent on this earth, the less sure she was about what she was supposed to be
doing here.

***

Fiona burst into the great room, flanked by a spastic Turd
and a roiling Rufus. “Did you call yet?”

Charlotte was lying perfectly still on the sofa. The day’s
last stripe of sunshine was warming her though the skylight.

“You have to call, Charlotte! You can’t leave a woman like
Helga hanging. Besides, it’s in the pact. Clause Number Four. ‘Say yes. Stop
hiding from life. Take the jobs that are offered to you.”’  

“What makes you think I didn’t call?”

“No offense, but, like we talked about, you like to
think
about things. You don’t always like to
do
things.”

“I’ve been doing lots of
doing
. Ever since I got
here.”

“Well?”

“I did
think
about calling…”

“Charlotte. You
have
to call.”

“And then I called.”

Fiona spoke right through Charlotte’s response. “It’s
just…she’s one of the salon’s most important clients. And she really wanted you
to call. Besides, her husband is an important man in this town. He may even run
for mayor.”

“So he can get me a job in town hall? A job so boring I can
watch time tick by. Whoopee.”

“You don’t know who her husband is?”

“Sure I do.” She had just called him, after all.

“He’s Tony Giordano.”

“Yes, that’s what his business card said.”

“
The
Tony Giordano.”

“Still not impressed.” Fiona seemed to want Charlotte to
gasp, and so Charlotte made up her mind not to.

“From Tony and Estelle.”

“Oh,” Charlotte laughed. That was kind of cool. Tony and
Estelle had been a crooner couple for decades. Her mother played their album
when she was a kid. They had a show in Vegas for years and years. “Was that
Estelle today, in the salon?”

“No. That’s his new wife, Helga. Estelle is dead. God! Don’t
you read
Fanfair Magazine
. Ever?”

“I guess not.”

“I have it in the salon. You really should. That’s another
one of your assignments now. Come to the salon and read
Fanfair Magazine.
There’s opportunity for some good celebrity sightings in this town, and you
can’t just be oblivious to it all.”

“So…what? Is Tony Giordano looking for a new backup singer?
Why does this lady think Tony can help me?”

“Tony knows everyone in town. And if Helga tells you to call
him, you just do.”

“He was perfectly nice on the phone.”

“So you really did call?”

“Yes, I told you I did.”

“Oh. Well. Good,” Fiona pulled on her blouse and wiggled her
chest around a bit. “So?”

“We’re meeting tomorrow. After my workout.”

“Perfect! What are you going to wear?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t everything in this town casual?”

“Nope.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Oh.”

“Let’s go. Come on,” Fiona grabbed her handbag. “Girls, your
mom and I are going out. You two are in charge of the boys.”

This was how Charlotte came to be wearing a green shift
dress and silver sandals after the next morning’s workout with Leopold. He was
starting to come around, she felt. He talked a little more, and he grunted his
approval with a variety of sounds. Plus, she had made it through the entire
workout without passing out. She had figured out the secret, at least for her.
She simply ate two MuscleBars on the way to the training session. The dense,
gritty taste made her want to urp while she was eating them so early in the
morning, but they made the lightheadedness go away. And she was never, ever
going to faint like that again. Not ever.

This morning, the MuscleBars had powered her through
standard pushups, wide pushups, military pushups, decline pushups, and pike
pushups, plus a few hundred squats and a hill climb workout on the treadmill.

She felt a little weird eating an eight-hundred calorie
snack before her workout, but she figured she burned more than that. Definitely
more than that. Afterward, her upper arms were so sore she could hardly raise
her hands to suds her hair in the shower.

When she arrived at Tony Giordano’s office, he was sitting
out front. She recognized him at once. He hadn’t changed a lick from the old
album cover her mom had in the eighties.

What was the protocol here? Should she check in at his
office and then have them send her back down? Should she go sit next to him?
She studied him for a moment, hoping he would turn to her and make it easy. He
wore cowboy boots and a bolo tie under a white pressed shirt. His hair was
silver and brushed back. He had to be in his seventies. Maybe even his eighties.
And still a very attractive man.

She walked past him, into the building and then she stalled
at the elevator. How she wished she wasn’t intimidated by every situation. Even
in this new place, where she could redefine herself, reinvent herself, where no
one knew she was the type to be nervous to meet new people, she couldn’t do it.
She took a deep breath. She turned and saw him watching her through the glass
on the front of the building. Oh, hell. She walked back out the doors. “Mr.
Giordano?”  

Tony Giordano was apparently accustomed to looking at women
however he wanted. He slid his eyes toward her, then up and down, stopping at
her chest. Then he flicked his eyes up to meet hers.

“You are late.” His Italian accent was thick but laced with
Texas twang, rather the way she expected an old Vegas singer to speak.

“Sorry. I got hung up at the health club,” she said, sinking
into a seat next to him.

“Ah. Well. How was the health club?”

“I’m meeting with this trainer…” Charlotte was often at a
loss for words in these types of situations, and when she was particularly
nervous, this gave her the tendency to over-share.

“Oh, don’t tell me. Leopold?”

“Yes.”

“My wife trains with him. Mercy. Isn’t he something?  Like a
caricature, he is.”

That’s better than calling him an asshole, like Slicky had,
Charlotte thought.

Then Mr. Giordano said, “I think they are having sex.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

“Huh.” Charlotte decided not to worry about over-sharing.
Mr. Giordano seemed to be down with that.

“Did that shock you? That I said that?” he asked, sliding
his eyes over her once again.

“Yes. As a matter of fact.”

He leaned back, propping his arms behind his chair and
puffing his chest out. “Are you two having sex, too? You and Leopold?”

“No.” Charlotte crossed her arms.  

“Give that some time. I think this is why he is so popular.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, I think it’s pretty well known that this is what he
does.”

“So you don’t mind. That your wife…”  

Tony began to laugh. “Oh…I’m past all of that. I lived in
Hollywood for thirty-five years and then Vegas for twenty more. Marriage is a
business arrangement. We get married and divorced to sell records and tickets and
books. Surely you know that?”

She stared at him, and a thought occurred to her. Had her
sister known that Leopold had this kind of…reputation? Is this why she set the
two of them up? She felt her face flush.

“Why are you blushing?”

“Well…” She let out a nervous laugh. “A lot of reasons
actually.”

“Tell me.”

Charlotte shook her head. He was staring at her, waiting for
her to say something, so, finally, she managed, “You just say whatever’s on
your mind, don’t you?”

“Of course. Who would I need to hide from?”

“Right.”

“Why don’t you? Speak your mind?”

Was this a job interview? A counseling session? A prank?

But Charlotte thought about his question for a moment and
came up with a number of reasons: not wanting someone to know what she really
thought; not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings; not wanting to offend someone…
She thought about saying these things. And then she said, “You haven’t even
spoken to me yet. Maybe I do speak my mind. All the time.”

“Well, do you?”

“No.” She laughed.

He didn’t laugh with her but he waited for her to finish.
Then he said, “I know. I can tell.”

Then Charlotte laughed again, that nervous tittering sound
that she couldn’t stand but that she also couldn’t help. This man, he was odd
and oddly sexy and his words just seemed to slide out of him. Everything about
his was fluid: his words, his gaze, everything. She wasn’t sure if she was
creeped out or turned on by him. It was an odd mixture of both.

“So your wife asked me to come and see you,” Charlotte said.

“Yes,” he replied, in a breathy voice. “She said you needed
a job.”

“I do.”

“What are your qualifications?”

She had thought about this the night before. “I am
disciplined, a real self starter, and I am persistent. I like people and I am
very conscientious.”

“But what do you
do
?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Anything that a business might demand.”

He was silent for a moment. The breeze fluttered the nearby aspen
leaves, a faint rattle. Finally, he said. “Tell me how to reach you. I’ll have
you placed in your ideal job by the end of the business day tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay. Do I have any say?”  

“Of course,” he chuckled. “You have the right to turn down
whatever I find for you. But what I find will be just right. You won’t want to
turn it down. You’ll see.”

Is this how things went in this town? Was he some kind of Godfather?

But she was curious. What would Tony Giordano decide was the
ultimate job for her?  She took a pen and a receipt from her handbag, and she jotted
her cell number on the back, feeling oddly like she shouldn’t, even as she did
it.

***

It was odd to have her daughters doing their own thing each
day. For a decade and a half, her mornings started with a quick check in with
Gracie and Hannah. What they would be doing that day, where they would be
going. If they needed a ride or help with their homework or a pep talk or a
bubble bath or a brownie.  

But here, the girls were off, each morning. They ate their
breakfast, artfully prepared and smilingly delivered by a Hispanic woman whom
Charlotte did not know and hadn’t yet spoken with. Today, she had wanted to
tell the girls about the Strangest Job Interview in the History of the World,
but they were nowhere to be seen.

Leopold had rescheduled their session for later in the day because
something had come up that morning. He had texted her at 4:30 a.m.: “Go back to
bed.” Charlotte wondered if Helga was by his side. Or maybe one of his other
clients. How many women in town was he sleeping with? And is that why his
prices were so high? She had never met a gigolo before. And here she had been
using his services for days, without knowing it. Ew. And what about Slicky? Was
he one, too? All of these thoughts had raced through her mind for the
minute-and-a-half it took her to roll over, nestle deeper into the covers, and
fall back to sleep.

But now the day had begun, and the house was empty, and she
was awaiting her call from Mr. Giordano. Or, as she decided to call him, Pompi,
a name that just came to her probably due to that magnificent silver pompadour
he sported. Or because he was so pompous. Either way, she could tell that this
was a name that would stick.

It was strangely exciting and gave her a nervous feeling in
the base of her stomach. Imagine, a man who prides himself on knowing exactly
what you are all about, the moment he meets you, and he matches you up with the
perfect job for you. Whatever would he determine?

She was just tying her aerobic shoes for her rescheduled
training session when her text message chimed.  “Preschool teacher. The Little
Purple Polka-Dotted Schoolhouse. Arrive and begin, tomorrow, 7 am.”

Preschool teacher?  The Little Purple Polka-Dotted
Schoolhouse? Well, now, that sounded like hell on earth. Who would call a
preschool that?  Plus, this was the same job that Helga had mentioned in the
first place. Was this the only job in town? Did she
look
like a
preschool teacher? Is this what her entire persona screamed out: “I don’t know
how to talk to adults, so stick me with kids.”

She thought of the way she felt whenever she volunteered at
her children’s elementary school. Like her energy was escaping out her toes.
She got all floppy and lethargic and her head would kind of buzz. When too many
children were squeezed into the same room, it smelled like scalp and earwax. She
had marveled, plenty of times, at the way she was such a patient, understanding
mother to her own children, even her nephews, and yet so tentative and
uninterested in other young people.  

Yet, this is what Pompi had come up with, and Fiona would
hold her to it. She had already made it clear that Charlotte was expected to
say yes to life, and she was especially expected to say yes to Pompi.

The doorbell at the main entry chimed. A long sing-songy bell:
Dong dong dong dong, dong dong dong dong. Turd and Rufus scooted down the
stairs, hardly touching the floor. They yipped and skittered from her to the
door and back again.  

She felt strange answering the door in this place. Shouldn’t
a butler do that? She waited a moment. No one appeared. Instructing herself to
get a grip, Charlotte flung open the door.

There stood Caleb, clutching a bouquet of gerbera daisies. Her
favorite. Bright and simple: no extra adornment, just a plain bold flash of a
zesty color. He thrust them toward her and grinned. His eyes were wrinkled at
the corners, and they were kind.

Was she really married to this man? It all seemed so surreal
now. The past thirteen years of her life. How could it have been that long? How
could she be so deeply entrenched in her thirties and still have no idea who
she was?

 Caleb had a scar on his chin. It wasn’t a new scar, but it
stood out to her now. He was the kind of man whose sex appeal rumbled forth
from somewhere deep inside. The kind of man who knew when to speak and when to stay
quiet.

“Are you going to invite me in?” 

She found, suddenly, that she wanted to, and so she was glad
that she could not. “I am running late, actually, so, no,” she said.

“Late for what?”

She didn’t answer. 

“Looks like you’re dressed for a run.”

She shook her head.

“Come on, Charlotte. Whatever it is, can’t it wait?”  

“No, actually, it can’t. I’m meeting someone. At the gym.” Caleb
wouldn’t like it if she called it a health club. Too froo-froo.

“Are you meeting Fiona?”

“No.”

“Gracie and Hannah?”

“No.”

“Who else do you know here?”

“My trainer.” She blushed.

“Ah. Your trainer. Don’t tell me it’s that Leopold guy.”

Charlotte’s breath caught. “It’s whoever Fiona set me up
with.”

“There was a gal at the college who was talking about him
the other day. Be on the lookout for this guy. I heard…”

“Caleb, really? I’ve got to go.”

He thrust the flowers into her hands and then he swept his
arms forward in an entirely uncharacteristic way. “For what it’s worth. I don’t
think you need any personal training. I think you look gorgeous exactly the way
you are. I wouldn’t change a thing about you. Not a thing.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “So the wooing has begun,” she
said.

He beamed back at her and bounced on his heels. “It has. Put
those flowers in water, will you? I’ll be back.” He winked and turned to go.

She had to admit, she did enjoy the wooing.

***

Caleb sat in the car and rested his forehead on the steering
wheel. This car suddenly seemed so stupid, so cliché. Like something a
philanderer would drive. He didn’t need a new car and certainly not a muscle
car. She was the one who needed something…something besides that late model
minivan, shaped like a tampon, the upholstery smelling of old cheese and feet. Maybe
that was the way to Charlotte’s heart.

He still couldn’t believe she had run off so fast. No amount
of pleading or explaining would convince her that he hadn’t done anything
wrong. That it was just Loopy Lisa doing what Loopy Lisa does. She had seen
what she had seen. And then she was gone.

Seeing her just now. It made him gulp. She was so perfect.
And her lip had trembled a little when she saw the flowers. She was responding,
on at least some cellular level, to the wooing.

Why hadn’t he started it sooner? There comes a time in a
marriage when you know you are being lazy. When you expect to make love by just
showing up in the middle of the day and announcing, “Hey. Nobody is home.” When
you are constantly forgetting to flush. When you start showering after sex
instead of before. It was great to be comfortable; he loved to be comfortable.
But he could see where it might have caused things to slide off the tracks.