“I know what you figured, Ben” Charlie replied amiably, “I’m still a popular guy with the ladies, don’t worry. But you know as well as I do that every woman in this town knows every other woman and all of them knew Mary Jo. Why in the hell would I want to go out with somebody who is going to sit there all night telling me what a bitch Mary Jo was for leaving me? Shoreville is already small enough. It’s even smaller for a bachelor. What if I went to bed with one of the local women, Ben? We both know that the next day the whole damned town would know it. They’d be hearing wedding bells. ‘Charlie’s finally found somebody!’ You know it’s true.”
“I guess you’re right Charlie. I hadn’t thought about that side of it. I’m not trying to pry, you understand. It’s just that, well, folks around like you Charlie. They like being with you.”
“Right!” thought Charlie, “that’s why you must have called me at least twice in the past ten years!”
“No problem, Ben. It was good to run into you. Who knows, maybe I will show up at your house one of these weekends to join you and Sally for dinner?’
“Oh, ah, uh, yeah, good idea Charlie. Oh, I gotta go, Sally is calling for me. But, ah, Charlie, make sure you call. You know how fussy Sally is. If you showed up and she didn’t have the very best on the table she’d be embarrassed.”
Charlie noticed that Sally had her back turned to him and Ben. She would have found it difficult to call to him from that position. He smiled inwardly at Ben’s discomfort. He imagined himself showing up at the Hopkins’ door, “Hi, Ben. I thought I would take up your offer and show up for some overdue socializing.” He let a small smile begin as he watched Ben fidgeting.
“Well, Charlie. Gotta be goin’. Sally’s calling me. Wouldn’t want her thinking we’re hatching up some bachelor party now, would I?”
“God forbid, Ben. You better get going. Nice to see you again and say ‘hi’ to Sally for me.”
“See ya, Charlie. Show up one of these days, OK?”
Ben took off in the direction of his wife who still had her back turned and was talking to one of her friends.
A few minutes later Charlie saw Ben talking animatedly to a group of people. He was telling them what he had just learned from Charlie. He was gesticulating and most certainly telling the group how he almost had to invite Charlie to dinner, how it appears that Charlie has girlfriends in other places, how Charlie wants to avoid getting hooked to just one local girl so he leaves them all alone, and so on. He knew he was the subject of the conversation because every once in a while someone in the group would glance at him as Ben was talking.
Charlie watched Ben and made a mental note of every person that he had been talking to in case he should come across them or Ben again soon.
After the Easter Party a small group of “Charlie Watchers” began to develop among some of the people Ben Hopkins had talked to. They started looking for Charlie whenever they went anywhere. Charlie noticed their attention during the week when he would show up at the bowling alley or at softball games. They would stare at him when he walked into the Royal Bar or into Jimmy Balsamo’s restaurant. They would then start talking animatedly and every once in a while one or the other would glance over at Charlie. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that he was the topic of the conversation at the table.
At first, Charlie found the local surveillance amusing. He was going to the same places he had always gone during the week. The only thing that was unusual was the increased interest of others. However, he was concerned for that kind of curiosity with regard to his weekend behavior. That was his private time away from Shoreville and he did not want that time invaded and subject to the scrutiny of Shoreville’s busybodies.
Some of the housewives in the “Charlie Watchers” group even looked for Charlie during weekday shopping trips to Wilmington at 11-o-clock in the morning when it was obvious that at that time of day he was in his office at the Shaw Corporation.
The group picked up on every “Charlie Sighting” report. Bill Gallagher thought he saw Charlie coming out of Bookbinder’s Restaurant in Philly. Diane Simms said that a friend of hers told her in absolute confidence that she had seen Charlie Mullins on a Saturday night coming out of the chic Positano restaurant with a really attractive girl on his arm. “So help me God,” Diane said, “she told me the girl did not look a day over 18!”
It wouldn’t be long before people started swapping “Charlie Stories” and women would be trading information and speculations at the local beauty parlor.
Some of the rumors started making their way back to Charlie and he made it a practice to remember the name of the source whenever he could get it. Charlie wanted to make sure that he knew who was trying to invade his privacy and, even more important, to be sure that he really had not been seen where someone said they saw him. After all, he had been at the Positano and he had not been alone. He pretended to be amused by the surveillance, but he was not.
On at least two occasions, Charlie noticed what he was sure were Shoreville residents following him on the Interstate to Philly. Both times he got off the Interstate and did some evasive driving around the port city of Chester, and then headed back to the highway. He managed to shake his followers but not before noting the license plate of the car. If necessary he could check the plates with a friend in Philly who had contacts in the New Jersey DMV. But he didn’t have to bother because on Monday morning he saw the car pulling out of the YMCA where a lot of Shoreville wives went to aerobic classes. He recognized Diane Simms in the passenger seat and Sharon Gallagher at the wheel.
“Jesus Christ!” he thought, “two horny, nosy broads with nothing to do on a Saturday morning decide to follow me around. Shit! What a pain in the ass!”
Charlie noticed that the rumors were getting back to him with increasing frequency, implying that more people were claiming to have seen him. The thing was snowballing. The small community of Shoreville had found something more interesting to talk about than bond issues for the school, property taxes, and who was screwing whose wife. The town had a mysterious bachelor. Imaginations ran rampant. It was said that Charlie secretly frequented porn shops in Philly. He was supposed to have been seen on weekend binges in bars in Chester. Someone said they had seen him in a gay bar in Philly. Just about anything and everything that someone could imagine a bachelor doing on a weekend was attributed to Charlie.
To many bachelors this kind of attention might even be welcome. Mystery adds to romance. An enterprising bachelor could play that kind of curiosity for all it was worth. Charlie Mullins was not the least bit amused. This was more than a minor irritation – it was a big damned problem.
Sooner or later it had to happen. Somebody who claimed to have seen Charlie really did see him. Someone had told Tony Mazza that they saw Charlie coming out of the Ritz-Carlton on Penn Square. The snitch told Tony that Charlie was with a beautiful brunette with “legs up to her neck!”
When Charlie showed up at the bowling alley one Wednesday night, Tony confronted him with the news. “Hey Charlie, you old dog! I heard you were seen around Philly with a real looker. You holdin’ out on your old pals?
“What are you talking about, Tony?”
“C’mon, Charlie, somebody here in town saw you comin’ out of the Ritz-Carlton Saturday night. He said you had a dame with you that would make Sharon Stone run for cover. That wasn’t no local girl, no sir. They don’t make ‘em like that in Shoreville! You holdin’ somethin’ out on your old high-school buddies Charlie?”
“Who said it was me, Tony? What the hell would I be doin’ with some broad who looked better than Sharon Stone,