Читать книгу The Story of Charlie Mullins: The Man in the Middle - Jim Wygand - Страница 8

III

Every year the Shaw Corporation sponsored an Easter Party at a local national park in Shoreville. The park was a former World War II military installation along the shores of the Delaware River. It had been converted to a national park after the war. There were picnic tables in abundance and lots of room for the kids to run. The party was for the community of Shoreville, not just Shaw employees. There were Easter egg hunts and games for the kids. Everyone in Shoreville who worked for Shaw and a great many of those who didn’t, always showed up for the event. That and the Christmas party were the two big social events that the company sponsored that everyone truly enjoyed.

Even though he had no children and both parties were always scheduled for a Saturday, Charlie never missed the events. He liked to watch the kids play and he could talk to the adults in a relaxed atmosphere.

One of the first persons he saw at the Easter Party was Ben Hopkins, a marketing manager at Shaw. Hopkins came striding straight toward Charlie, “Chaarlie! How ya been, buddy?”

“Fine Ben, how ‘bout yourself?”

“Doin’ all right Charlie, all right. Haven’t seen you around in a while Charlie.”

“C’mon Ben, you saw me in the cafeteria in Wilmington just yesterday.”

“Oh yeah, the marketing meeting. No, but what I mean Charlie is I haven’t seen you around town. You know.”

“You’re looking at me right now, Ben and we are, as you say, ‘around town’, aren’t we?”

“Of course, Charlie but you know what I mean. C’mon we went to school together ever since third grade. I mean, well, you know, I haven’t seen you at the Royal Bar, Jimmy Balsamo’s joint, dating any of the available broads, you know, that kind of ‘around town’. Jeez Charlie you were always a popular guy with the ladies in school and bein’ single and all, I just figured….”

“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, 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 bachelor in this town. You’re the only eligible, mature, good-looking bachelor in this town. See what I mean, Charlie? Every divorced woman, every unhappily married woman, and every woman with hot pants is talking about you. The thing just kind of snowballed. Hell, it even got to the point that Sharon Gallagher said she was going to follow you to Philly one of these days. I heard that she did but lost you around Chester. In fact, I think that’s how the drinking rumor got started.”

“DRINKING rumor?! Tony, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Well, I think it started with Sharon. When she lost you in Chester she figured you were doing something in Chester. What do you do in a town with nothing but docks and cheap bars? You drink, I guess. I guess Sharon just figured that was what you were doing there and you know how it is. Something starts along the chain as speculation and ends up as fact.”

“Jeez, Tony, did you buy that story? How long have you known me?”

“No, Charlie, I didn’t believe it and I even said so to people who asked me about it. I’ve known you since grammar school and drinking alone in sleazy bars is not your style. In fact, I don’t think you even drink much at all to be honest. But who the hell goes to Chester on a Saturday morning, Charlie?”

“Who the hell cares, Tony?”

“Yeah, I know, but don’t take it out on me, Charlie. I didn’t do anything, so help me. Like I said, you just started being a hot topic around town and then people started guessing about your life. It didn’t take much for gossip to become fact when some people started saying they saw you with a gal who looked like a movie star. I mean, that’s how peoples’ minds work in a town like this. People start living other people’s lives and building fantasies. You know that. Hell, you make good money, you live modestly so you probably have a big stash, you’re free, and you’re young and good-looking. Jeez, Charlie, are you surprised that you would be the subject of a lot of crap?”

“Nah, I guess not, Tony, but please do me a favor.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Next time you hear that kind of nonsense, just tell people that my life is none of their damned business. Will you do that for me, Tony? I don’t need this kind of stuff. There is nothing going on in my life that is worth all that conversation and speculation. I’m just a single guy, who was seen dating a good-looking woman in Philly. I’m not breaking any laws, not putting the make on anybody’s wife. I mean when you think about it, I am not doing anything at all unusual or weird, right? I’m just not discussing or showing off my private life to Shoreville! There’s no big secret out there, Tony.”

“I’ve done that already, Charlie. But I’ll be glad to continue doing it. You’re right. Those women would do far better to just take care of their own business and not worry about yours. And some of the guys are no better. But you know that this town has no secrets and when people think you have some kind of secret life, they start getting nosey and stupid. It’s even worse when you are a well-to-do eligible bachelor in a small town.”

“Yeah, OK Tony, I know what you mean. Just do what you can to try to put a stop to this shit, OK? It’s inconvenient as hell and it’s my private life that when you analyze it is nothing terribly special. So, if you hear anything else just ask whoever is talking to you why they give a damn about Charlie Mullins’ personal life. Just tell ‘em you’re my friend and you are sure I don’t like it.”

“Will do, Charlie, how about one for the road?”

“Fine Tony, and thanks!”

They ordered another round, reminisced about old times and eventually laughed about the whole silly affair. But Charlie Mullins was not amused. He walked back to his car and drove slowly home.