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, huh? Jesus, Tony, where would I meet somebody like that?”
“I don’t know where you might meet someone like that, but somebody swears it was you. Maybe you could tell me where I could meet somebody like that!”
“Tony, I’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about people claiming they saw me in one place or another and sometimes two places at the same damned time. It’s all bullshit, Tony. I don’t even know how all this stuff got started. It’s crazy! Who told you it was me, huh?”
“Oh hell, Charlie, it was Tommy Peterson. He said he was sure it was you and that he would never forget the woman you were with. C’mon Charlie, level with your old buddy. You got a new love in your life?”
Charlie wondered whether to try to brazen this one out or simply confess. Tommy Peterson had been his next-door neighbor when they were kids. He definitely knew what Charlie looked like and would not have mistaken someone else for him. Besides, he had been at the Ritz-Carlton on Saturday and he had been there with Gina. And Gina was everything that Tommy said she was. He decided that it was too risky to try to deny. Tommy probably did see him. He decided to take the hit.
“OK, Tony, you got me. Yeah, I was at the Ritz-Carlton Saturday. I was with a friend of mine.”
“Yeah? Well based on what Tommy said that was some friend. He said nobody in this town ever saw anything like that except on a movie screen. Has she got a sister?”
“Tony, you know Tommy. He probably exaggerated. I mean it was a good-looking girl I was with, but Tommy’s description sounds a bit over the top.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but he did say that if he ever saw her again he would sure as hell know it was her. He said you don’t forget a woman like that! C’mon Charlie, what’s the score?”
“No score, Tony. I was just out with a nice looking lady. Is that a sin?”
“Hell no, Charlie, not for a good-lookin’ bachelor like you. It’s just that, well hell Charlie, you have become a kind of a game in this town.”
Charlie felt a sudden discomfort. “Game, Tony? What kind of game have I become in this town? What’s going on, Tony?”
“Aw hell, Charlie, you know. This town’s so goddamned boring that when you got divorced everybody figured after a couple of years you’d be married to some other local girl. Well, it never happened. Then you started disappearin’ on weekends. Everybody figures you’re pissed or embarrassed, right? Goes on for another year. Now all of a sudden nobody sees you around in Shoreville on weekends, right? You go to softball practice on Saturday morning and then you disappear. Soooo, all the wives get to talking. ‘Charlie’s never gonna get married again.’, ‘Didn’t Charlie like Evelyn Patterson? He never called her back after the Durkens invited them both to dinner.’ You know what I’m talking about, Charlie. You know the kind of trash people talk around here. All of a sudden the thing got blown out of proportion. People started betting…”
“Betting?” Charlie almost shouted it. “Betting on what, Tony? Wait a minute. Let’s go down to Jimmy Balsamo’s place and have a drink. This sounds like a long and complicated story.”
They walked down Broad Street to Jimmy Balsamo’s bar and restaurant and got a booth. Tony started his story.
“It’s like this Charlie, you’re kind of a celebrity in Shoreville. At least people made you one. Hell, the last time anything exciting happened here was when Frankie Phillips tried to shoot off Tommy Porter’s prick because Tommy was screwing his wife. People talked about that for years.”
“Yeah, I remember, but keep going, Tony. How did all this get started?”
“It’s like I told you. Folks thought you would get married after a while. When you didn’t they tried to fix you up. When that didn’t work everybody kind of forgot about it for a while. You started disappearing on weekends and most people figured you had a gal stashed away. But then you still didn’t get married. Fact is, for a while people even forgot about you. But then one day, aw, I forget who it was, said they saw you coming out of an Italian restaurant in South Philly. They said you were with some really great looking broad. That started people talking again. Then there’s all those company affairs, art shows, concerts, you know, and you still show up alone and go home alone. You take off on weekends, and you still don’t show up with a woman.”
“Well, so what, Tony? I mean it’s not like I have to, right? I mean, hell, everybody knows I’m normal. Everybody knows I’m not gay. What’s the big deal?”
“If you lived in a bigger town, Charlie, it wouldn’t be a big deal at all. But this is Shoreville. You aren’t the most eligible, mature, good-looking
