Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy)

by Bethany Bloom

  “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.

  Chapter Six

  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 sof
t 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.

  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.”