Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) (8 page)

She sat in her car and gobbled the pastry as quickly as she
could, before anyone could see her and report that embarrassing piece of
information, too.

All hail the buttery goodness. And that toffee! Some things
did deserve exclamation marks after all, she decided.

Before she knew it, the whole bar was gone, and she was left
with nothing but a waxy brown paper bag and a tablespoon of crumbs, which she
poured straight into her mouth. It was easy as long as you managed to tip your
head just so and you didn’t have any wrinkles in the bag.

And then that wonderful feeling of fullness. Blissful. Right
in the heart of her. She slurped the iced coffee until the straw squeaked, and
then she got out of the car, brushed off the crumbs and threw away the bag and
cup. She wouldn’t need to show any physical evidence of her snack. But it was
making her feel more powerful by the second.

***

What were the chances that Kamal drove a Camaro? Because
there was a shiny red Camaro parked in front of the house when she returned
home, just like the one Caleb had bought with his last royalty check.

She pushed open Fiona’s front door. There went the twitching
muscle fibers again. And Leopold was going to have her work out like that for
two hours? Thank the Lord she had passed out cold.

As soon as she was inside the house, she heard Hannah’s
voice, the high-pitched fast tone she used when she was excited. “It’s so
beautiful. You should see it. So beautiful. Seriously. And there are shampoo
bowls and these long squirty hoses that you can wash people’s hair with, and Aunt
Fiona says I can help her. I can shampoo people for her and for the other
stylists and they will even tip me at the end of the day. I can make so much
money, Dad. So much.”

Charlotte’s stomach dropped. She thought for a moment about
turning to go, and then Caleb rounded the corner. “Charlotte.” He smiled and
winked. “Surprise!” He opened his palms and waggled his fingers. His jazz hands,
which he used only when he wasn’t feeling sure of himself.

She wanted to run at him, yelling and pushing, with all the
newfound caffeine-induced strength she felt. How dare he interrupt her summer
away? But then he gave her his shy smile and her breath caught.

She shook her head and squared her shoulders. She had to
admit that being single agreed with him. It was probably all the swing-from-the-chandelier
sex he was having. His dark brown hair was close-cropped and combed forward just
so. That fair skin. Those aqua blue eyes. Kind of like Slicky’s, it now
occurred to her. But he
was
losing his hair. It was definitely getting
thinner on top. Ha.

Hannah skipped behind him and made a little leap right in
front of her. “Dad’s here for the whole summer, mom. He’s working at the
college. A special guest. Leading workshops…writing workshops. Isn’t that amazing?”

Gracie came in to the foyer then, too, and Caleb put his arm
around her. “I couldn’t let my girls go for the whole summer. I know you
understand. You wouldn’t have been able to either.”  

She shook her head. She wouldn’t.

“And you. My most important girl.”

Charlotte took a step backward and tried to gauge the
response of her daughters. She suddenly didn’t feel so well again.

“Are you okay, mom?” Gracie asked.

“Fine.”

 “Your color isn’t quite right.”

“I’m fine. Just…surprised.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re kind of…white or pale or
yellow or something.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You look beautiful, Charlotte,” Caleb intoned. “As you
always have.”

She dropped her gym bag to the floor and looked toward the
dining room. “Where’s Fiona?” she asked.

“Early morning client,” Gracie responded. “We’re helping get
the boys up. She gave Consuela the day off because we said we would be nannies
for the day.”

Just then four-year-old Maddox came bouncing down the stairs
on a green fuzzy blanket, riding it down, down, down, and landing with a thump
on the tile. Watching the way his spine lurched upon each riser made
Charlotte’s back ache. Maxwell, two years older, bumped along just behind. Maddox
and Maxell. Mad and Max. The girls, had, in fact, begun calling this house the
Thunderdome because the boys were always pounding through it on rapid heels, shooting
something with Nerf bullets or firing balls at the plate glass windows.
Anything that could be hurled, would be…spoons, banana chips, ramen noodles.

“Are you sure you can handle it?” Charlotte asked, but she
smiled at Maddox who leapt into her arms. The force of it nearly knocked her
over, but she caught herself by kicking a foot backward.  

Maddox clung to her with one arm and pushed his other hand
along her forehead, smoothing her bangs out of her eyes. His hands smelled
earthy.  “You have pretty hair,” he said.

“Doesn’t she, though?” Caleb agreed.

“Thank you, Maddox,” Charlotte said, “And you have darling brown
eyes.”

He wiggled to get down. Then he poked out an arm and a leg
in an exaggerated runners’ pose.  “Chase me, girls!” he cried, and he dashed down
the hall. Hannah and Gracie hurled themselves after him, sliding on their
socks.  

Charlotte turned to Caleb. “So. You’re really here all
summer?”

“I am. Well, most of it. Until the release.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Not here. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Does Fiona know you’re here?”

He shook his head. “Can’t imagine she would want that…what
with her Grand Transformation Pact for you.” He winked.

Her stomach clenched.  “How did you know about that?”

“The girls told me. Or Hannah did. Gracie didn’t think you’d
want me to know, for some reason.”

“It’s embarrassing, for one. You know Fiona, though. There’s
no stopping her.”

“Well, I have a Transformation Pact of my own.”

“Oh?”

“Charlotte. I miss you so much. I am going to get you back. Convince
you that I did nothing wrong. Even if it kills me. Whatever it takes. I am
going to woo you.”

“Woo me?”

“You have never been properly wooed, you know.”

Well that was true. Their first date was hardly a woo. And
then she was bound to him. Apparently forever. Because here he was.

“Don’t look so doubtful. I can woo.” His false enthusiasm
was beginning to wear on her. “I’ve learned to woo.”

“From the other women. The other woos.”

“Nope. All for you. All my wooing is for you. Because you
are my woo-man.”

“Alright,” she said. “Don’t you have someplace to be?” But
she remembered this side of him, how he played with words, how just having a
conversation with him could take you places you never imagined you would go.

“You still are, Charlotte. My one and only. And this could be
the best thing ever. We just…we both need to make it so. We both need to make
some changes. Just don’t give up on it. Please, please don’t.” He reached for
her hand. He kissed it. She allowed him to and then she pulled away. What
changes did
she
need to make?  

“I am going to change,” he asserted.  “And I am going to woo
your head off.”

She turned then to walk up the stairs, and she could feel
him watching her, with every step, every rise. When she had climbed halfway up
and was about to disappear from sight, he said, “Charlotte, I will be coming
back. And the wooing will begin.” And with that, he opened the front door and
closed it softly behind him.

“Woo woo!” cheered Hannah’s voice from the hallway, the very
sound of desperation and of hope.

What was this smell in art rooms? Every studio she had ever
worked in shared it…an earthy scent, of pigments, of wet clay, of pure
possibility. Of creativity and of the mystery of what she would create on this
day.

As she arrived at the college for painting class, she
wondered suddenly if she would run into Caleb. Maybe she could pretend she was
having an affair with
him.
That would be something. It wouldn’t be
adultery. She was married to him after all. What would the wooing look like?
What might he have in mind? Did this count under the Transformation Pact, Item
Five?

She kicked along, looking for an open space, and there
didn’t seem to be any. Was she arriving late? Surely not, but all of the workstations
were taken. She saw one, there in the front row, and in her haste to claim it, she
tripped a bit over the silver stand of the neighboring easel.

As she did, the metal clattered and a stack of papers dashed
to the floor, flying up in all directions. She sank to her hands and knees to
retrieve them and then was struck with the notion that this wasn’t the most
dignified position, so she jerked her head up and that’s when she came face to
face with both a man and a most magnificent scent.  Freshly baked bread, laced
with cinnamon.

The man had a strong jaw and tiny black whiskers that
disappeared into the cleft in his chin, a pocket of beauty on his perfectly
chiseled face. He might have been the most beautiful person she had ever seen.

They were still for a moment, looking at one another, on hands
and knees on the floor. Then she apologized, and he shook his head. 

They both stood then, and he towered over her. Her face
would fit right into the space between his pecs, she thought. She moved to her
easel and the delicious scent began to fade, so she moved closer to him once
again and sniffed. It
was
him. Did he have baguettes in his trousers? Cinnamon
oil behind his ears? It was the damndest thing.

He stood back, a smile on his face.

 “I am so sorry. I’m such a klutz,” she said, and he shook his
head again. She tried to come up with her imaginary name for him.

Yeasty? No, that wouldn’t be right.

Bready? No.

Hunky Slab-of-Man Who Emits the Scent of Buttery Goodness
From His Pores? Too long. 

Doughboy? Uh huh. His body was too perfect.

Breadboy? Nothing boy about him.

Breadman? Still not right, but it would do for now.

She had to know the explanation. Plus she wanted to hear him
speak.  “Are you a baker?” she asked, quite surprising herself.

“Pardon me?” His voice was honey smooth, as soft as it was
deep. 

“Do you bake?”

“Uh. On occasion.”

“Do you work at a bakery?”

“No.”

“Did you bake bread this morning?”

“No.”

Just then, a voice screeched and Charlotte startled.

 “It is time to begin.” A woman with a perfect, tiny body
stood at the front of the room. Her lipstick matched her hair color exactly.
How did she manage that? “Are you quite finished?” the woman spit toward
Charlotte.

“Quite.” Charlotte said, feeling like she had in second
grade after she knocked over the classroom’s lizard cage. Her brushes fell from
her bag just then and clattered to the floor. She dove to retrieve them.

The woman beat her eyelashes, frowned, and continued. “For
those of you who do not know, I am Professor Rachael Whitmore.”

Charlotte knew her name, from the course catalog. But was
this supposed to mean something to her?  Was she standing on the shoulders of
giants here?

“In my course, we will be exploring techniques, materials
and concepts utilized in opaque painting processes. This means oil and acrylic
painting. We will be emphasizing composition and the development of content as
well as investigating a multitude of approaches that you must have to discern a
variety of visual perception techniques.”

Breadman turned to Charlotte and whispered, “Wow, and I
thought we were just going to get to paint shit.”

When she laughed, Professor Whitmore turned to her. “I fully
realize this is an introductory course. However, if you are not here to create
great works of art, let me suggest that you are in the wrong classroom.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte whispered back to him. “She’s kind of a hard-ass.
For an art teacher.”

Art teachers were supposed to wear clogs and brightly
colored aprons and smell like tempera paint. They were the kind of people who
put tennis balls on the bottom of all the stools in their classroom. You
couldn’t take yourself too seriously and be an art teacher at the same time. Charlotte
thought this was one of life’s rules. Art class was supposed to be a safe
place. A safe place to make mistakes. To make a mess and paint over it again. Wasn’t
it?

“You.” Professor Whitmore pointed to Charlotte. Her nails
were long and pointy, and they matched her lipstick, as well. “My noisy and
chipper friend.”

“Yes.” Charlotte lifted her head in a gesture of what she
hoped would be interpreted as confidence.  

“What art instruction have you undergone, prior to this
class?”

“Oh, none since college.”

“And this was ages ago?” 

Ages? Yes, she supposed it was. “I’m just spending a summer
here. I live in a small college town in Missouri.”

“Ah. So you are a scholar there?”

She had the immediate wish to lie to this woman, but she did
not.

“I am not. But I am trying something new today. Here.”  

Ms. Whitmore brought her finger to the side of her nose in a
deliberate, methodical way. Was this some kind of code? “I expect maximum
effort from each of my students. Including you.”  

Charlotte nodded and turned to Breadman, who was laughing at
her. She slapped backhanded at his arm, which, she noted, was extraordinarily
firm. Charlotte spent the next few minutes watching him, and she realized then
that she was smiling. Had perhaps been smiling since class began.  

“Let us see where you all stand in terms of technique. Paint
this still life for today, paying particular attention to form and shadow.”
Professor Whitmore plucked a white sheet off a still life scene at the front of
the room. A crystal vase holding a smattering of peonies was arranged atop a
draping black velvet cloth.  

Charlotte loved the way, when she created art, she could
burrow inside a hole. She could step inside there and poke around and be in
this other place, this other reality. Once she had begun, she would hear only
soft murmurs and she would draw back on occasion to see it from a distance.
This might be her best painting yet. It looked like the image before her, but
her own. Charlotte smiled to herself. She was far better at this than she
remembered. She had captured the lighting from the window and how it cast upon
the petals. The shadows and the textures. She felt nearly giddy. An excitement
bubbled in her belly.

Ms. Whitmore clicked on her taupe heels around the room.
Lightly touching a shoulder here or there, pointing and making general
impressions in a direct, voice, occasionally firing off little jokes. When she
arrived at Charlotte’s easel she said, “I see you have not yet learned the
techniques of perspective.”

 “No. I have. I just see things differently, perhaps.”

“The assignment was not to create an abstract rendering. It
was to paint
this.”
She gestured grandly toward the table. “This.  Are
you having trouble seeing? Do you need to move closer?”

“No ma’am.” Charlotte’s stomach dropped. Was she delusional?
In this and so many other things? Professor Whitmore was standing at Breadman’s
easel now, rubbing at his back and nodding. Charlotte leaned back to see what
he had come up with. On his canvas, a painting of a purple ball balanced on a
gray cone.

Two things became obvious: Breadman smelled better than he painted,
and Ms. Whitmore had it in for her.

“Eyes on your own work.” She hissed toward Charlotte and
then continued her heel-clacking to the front of the room.

“What did you do to her?” Breadman asked. Then he smirked. “Did
you eat Professor Whitmore’s baby?”

She laughed and dipped her head. “I was hungry.”

Every so often, there came along a person with whom she felt
immediately comfortable. Whom she could banter with. And when that person came
along, she held on. She drank them in. Caleb had been like that. Maybe he
had
wooed her, if just for that first night they were together, before the baby and
all its complications and entrapments. Or maybe she had just been an easy woo,
she thought now.

And with all the Breadmans in the world… What had she been thinking?
Had she given up all the fun that was to be had, because of one mistake
fourteen years ago, which led immediately into another mistake. And on and on,
and here she was. And why on earth did Caleb have to follow her here?

As she was thinking all of these things, class wrapped up
and, along with all of the other students, she cleaned her station and packed
her belongings. Breadman flashed her a smile. His teeth were white and sort of roundish,
like tiny plates. And, then, just like that, he was gone, leaving only the
faint bouquet of Cinnabon.

Next class, she promised herself.  Next class.

***

Charlotte stopped by the salon, finally, on her way home. She
knew the general area, but not the precise address. And then…there it was. The
life-size porcelain Pegasus, positioned just off the sidewalk.

“How do you stop people from climbing all over that thing?” Charlotte
asked as she breezed in.  

“My darling Charlotte!” Fiona called out. “You’re here at
last!”

A number of heads turned from their salon chairs and smiled
toward her. A few waved. She smiled and dipped her head and blushed. “Seriously.
The town lets you keep that thing out there?”

“Of course,” Fiona said. “It’s an object of beauty.”

“I would just think you’re liable. If someone were to fall
off and sue you.”

“Oh, heavens, Charlotte. No one would sue.” Fiona flipped
her wrist downward. “I mean I’m nice enough to let them crawl on it.”

Fiona stood behind a salon chair, twirling a pair of
scissors in the air. “So…What do you think?”  

Charlotte had to admit: the place was dazzling. The interior
walls appeared to be wrapped in aged gray leather, and the floors were tiled in
tiny black and white squares. Each bench and salon chair was upholstered in a cheetah
print, and each light fixture glittered with dangling rhinestones and crystals.

“It’s like walking into a jewelry box,” Charlotte said.

“Aw. You know just what to say. That is precisely the look I
was going for.” Her scissors were moving fast now, clipping and snipping, atop
the head of a breathtakingly beautiful woman.

Fiona turned to Charlotte then and twirled her scissors once
again, toward the back of the building. “Your children are tainting mine. But
they are having so much fun, I don’t have the heart to step in.”

Tainting? She went back to investigate and found Gracie and
Hannah, dizzy, in two salon chairs toward the back. Maddox and Maxwell were spinning
them as hard as they could, considering that each boy held a rainbow-colored
lollipop as large as his face.

“Wow!” Charlotte bugged out her eyes and knelt on the floor
beside the boys. “Wherever did you find those?”

“At the candy store, silly,” Maddox answered. “We have a
huge candy store, right on this street, and we didn’t even know that!”

“Do you want one? We can get you one. A lolly of your own,”
Maxwell offered.

Maddox pumped his head up and down. “They really are so
delicious. Would you like one? We can walk back down there. With the girls.”

“Thank you, but, no.”

“Take a lick then,” Maddox said, and pressed it against her
lips.

“Mmmm.” She pantomimed.

When Maddox had taken his lollipop away from his face, she
noticed that he had a bright, shiny penny stuck to his cheek. Also,
inexplicably, a lot of green fuzz.

“You’ve got something there.” she said, pulling off the penny
and showing it to him.

“Aw, Mom, No!” shouted Hannah. “Gracie and I noticed it at
the arcade and we were trying to see how long it would stick there.”

Gracie laughed. “I mean, have you ever seen a kid with such
a sticky face?”

Yes, there was some tainting going on.

“Put it on again! Put it on again!” Maddox clamored, finally
in on the joke. “Again! Again.” He was hopping up and down.

“Great nannies you two are,” Charlotte said, as she pressed
the penny back onto this cheek.

“They are. They are the best nannies!” Maddox said, and
Maxwell came to fling his arms around Gracie’s waist.

“You aren’t taking them away, are you?” Maxwell asked.

“No, no. I just finished class, and I’m kind of on a
roll…Figured I had better start looking for a job now.”

“You must be Charlotte,” said a silver-haired woman, sitting
at another stylist’s station.

 “I am.” She was getting used to this.

“Well, Charlotte…” She spoke in a grand way and she
over-enunciated, which gave Charlotte the distinct impression that she was
somewhat drunk. “I have a friend who could use some help. In her day care.”

“Child care, huh?” Charlotte rubbed her hands on her jeans.
“As much as I’m grateful to you for the offer, I have to admit that I was
hoping to work with adults. For a change.”

“Oh, so you have formerly worked in childcare?”

“Um. Just with my own kids. But I think at this point, I
need to work with other adults.”

“Perhaps there is something. My husband knows everyone in
town. He can help you procure something, if anyone can. Tell me, what are your
qualifications?”

“Well,” she paused, thinking. Her mind had gone blank. What
was she good at? “I’m good with kids,” she blurted.