It was a nice little café, perched on the waterfront and open to the sky. Kind of an old Italian style, or as close as can be managed in Fort Lauderdale. Simple white furniture and ivy all over everything, with small tables stretched along the ocean shore and roasted garlic in the air and the hinted suggestion that any second now the pope might stop in for a bite. I had never been here before but that was fitting because the café had been suggested by the love of my life, whom I had also never met before.
I had never been so nervous in my entire life.
“So,” came a voice from above. “You got your exit strategy ready?”
It wasn’t the pope, unless His Holiness was picking up some extra bucks working tables in his spare time. “Excuse me?” I said.
“You’re here to meet a girl, am I right? Someone you really like, but have never seen?”
I goggled at him. I figured him for his early twenties, same as me, but where I was the roundish, good-natured, best-friend-type from a thousand buddy movies, he was a dark and rakish leading man in an entirely different kind of movie, possibly one you needed lots of quarters to watch. “How did you know that?”
He glanced around and then sat across from me. “You got the look. Also you’re alone and looking around every three seconds and you’re sweating hard enough to put out a house fire. So, I’m guessing someone you met online, really sweet, some smart girl with a funky avatar and a ballsy attitude that can tell you anything because you two are soul-mates.” He sat back and looked smug at my stunned expression. “So, what’s your exit strategy?”
“I, I don’t understand…”
“When you look up and see some four-hundred-pound wolf woman coming towards you, smiling and dragging her three screaming kids behind her, what then?”
“Then I sit down and have a nice dinner with her,” I said, annoyed because I had been worrying about that very situation. “I fell in love with her mind, I don’t care what she looks like–“
“Which means that, deep in your heart, you know she’s a woofer. That’s dating code, like ‘nice personality’ or ‘I think we should get married,’ it doesn’t mean anything. OK, look out! I’m making my prediction!” He sat there, eyes closed, and held his thumb and forefinger to his forehead for dramatic effect. “She’s… what’s her name?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Charlene. What are you doing?”
“Charlene is… tall, like 6’2”, 6’3”, and lanky.”
“You just said she was fat.”
“At 65, she is hairier than most people would consider normal, but she’s quite attractive when seen in the right light despite having just the one nostril. She enjoys Italian food, long walks on the beach, and manually masturbating bulls for a living.”
“Then at least she has skills. Don’t you have other customers?”
The waiter opened his eyes and smiled at me. “Hey, don’t worry, guy. It’ll work out for you. You’ll have lots of cute grandkids, you just wait. Be right back with your drink order.”
Before I could mention that he hadn’t taken it he was gone and I was back alone with my now thoroughly visualized nightmares.
What if Charlene didn’t like me? What if she panicked and fled as soon as she saw me, leaping over the railing and disappearing forever? Was that why she had requested our meeting at an outdoor café? Had she already planned her dramatic helicopter getaway? Would it be able to lift her if she really did weigh 400 pounds?
Damn that waiter. I sank down in my chair, cleared my mind of all intrusive doubts and fears, and thought about my angel.
She had hair like flowing caramel, I had seen it in my mind a thousand times. Skin like cream, probably. Clover green eyes, perhaps, a button nose, and even, white teeth beneath lips like the first spring wine, almost certainly. I smiled. I had been doing that a lot for the last few months, smiling.
We’d met in a science fiction chatroom during a spirited discussion about the “I, Robot” debacle. I think I fell in love right away, with her sensible attitude and her adorable, self-effacing charm and her sweet sexiness and her usage of complete, correctly-spelled sentences and her Tank Girl avatar. We argued for hours that night on every topic you could think of: science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, comic books, movies, science fiction movies…
I’d never met anyone with whom I’d bonded so quickly, or at all. Guys like that waiter probably picked up girls like library books; casually, with the understanding that in two weeks they’d be going – slightly worn — back on the shelf. Didn’t work that way for me. The idea that someone was interested in me was… interesting.
Then she made her move.
We were arguing over whether “Firefly” was better than “Babylon 5” when she went private and came on to me. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she’d typed.
I admitted I didn’t.
“Would you like one?” she’d asked.
I admitted I did.
“Would you like one like me? I come off as pushy, but I’m very biddable. Try me. Bid something.”
We stumbled through some virtual foreplay. She quickly realized it was my first time, although I somehow failed to mention it was my first sexual interaction of any kind, and she led me through it with tenderness and more than a little simulated hunger.
“Have I been a good girl for daddy?” she’d asked.
“Well, you have been kind of naughty… But please, call me Chet. Nothing personal, the daddy thing just creeps me out. And I like it when you say my name.”
“Say my name!” she’d typed immediately, over and over. “Say my name! Hee!”
“You know what I meant.”
“Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help it. You make me giggle a lot. I bet you could make me moan, too. You want to teach a girl some tricks?”
“You probably know more than I do. What if I touch you… here?” I had typed, inordinately proud of myself. I had moves! Who knew?
She had typed back, “Ohhhh…”
Ultimately it had involved very… detailed… chatting for almost an hour, during which time she had used some very descriptive, very eager language to tell me exactly what it felt like until I was forced to rethink my whole “masturbating in front of your computer is pathetic” theory. I had described to her just as carefully what it felt like to me, to her delighted response, and afterwards I felt warm and loved and virile. Sitting there with my eyes closed in the Florida sun I remembered that feeling, of being powerful and masculine and–
And suddenly a very large man in a black suit and sunglasses was looming over me, blocking out a sizeable portion of the sun. “Mr. Gellert? Chet Gellert?”
Oh, crap. Suddenly my heart was pounding faster, for entirely different reasons. OK, yeah, I was aroused in a rather pronounced fashion but surely that couldn’t be bothering the other customers unless they were hiding under the tablecloth. “Yes? What’s going on?”
He sat down as if he’d been specially trained to do so. It didn’t reduce his height by much. His craggy features stared at me over tented fingertips, grim and professionally serious, like Tommy Lee Jones dropping by to tell you your dog is dead. “You were waiting to meet Charlene Davies. I regret to inform you that you will not be meeting Ms. Davies here today. Or any day.”
“What? What have you done to her?”
“You were asked to come here, Mr. Gellert,” he said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement, “because we felt that you deserved an explanation for Charlene’s disappearance.”
“You’re damn right I do.” I jumped to my feet and backed away, keeping the table between us. That bulge in his coat could be a gun, or a detonator… Images from thirty years of Bond movies flashed before my eyes. “Why can’t she tell me herself? Where is she?”
“Please, Mr. Gellert, you’re making a scene—“
I kept backing away, bumping into tables and stumbling over the legs of the other patrons who were either trying not to notice or were staring openly. Suddenly the quaint little café seemed awfully enclosing. Where was Charlene? Did this guy have her somewhere? Was she hurt?
“Come back and sit down, Mr. Gellert. Let me explain–”
I turned and ran for it, throwing chairs behind me as I passed. With luck he’d trip on a few of them and sprain his trigger finger before he could shoot me in the back of the head. I spun around the surprised waiter and ran into the cool interior of the café. I knew there was a door there somewhere, I remembered coming through one. I saw daylight and dove for it, causing a few customers to scream and one unfortunate one to spill a pitcher of beer over both of us that hastened her trip to the floor and my trip to the outside world. My mind was spinning with plans, one after the other. Get to the police, get out an A.P.B., and save the girl I loved in a daring rescue. I had just enough time to imagine the grateful look on her face before I slipped on a puddle and heroically smacked face-first into the door jamb.
There was a distant voice calling me through the darkness, and a cool cloth pressed against my forehead. “Chet?” the voice asked. It was a female voice.
I opened my eyes and sat up suddenly, causing more sharp pains. In front of me was a vision, a glorious vision of honeyed hair and clover-green eyes and… well, a few more crows-feet than I expected. In fact she was probably a good twenty years older than I was, but she had a lovely smile and there seemed to be a lot going on behind those eyes, and that was more than enough for me. “Charlene?”
She smiled again, a little sadly this time. “My name’s Agent Stark, Chet.”
“Oh, crap,” I said. Now that I could see a bit more clearly I noticed the name badge. A gravelly voice next to me said, “We just want to talk to you, Mr. Gellert.” The big guy was right there, holding me up. We were inside the café now, in a private kind of booth around the side of the bar. Agent Stark appeared to be kind and friendly and was very effectively blocking my way out.
“Where’s Charlene?” I asked, trying to sound a lot more forceful than I felt. “Are you her parents? Did they call you? Did she call you? What? I demand to talk to her right now or I’m calling the police! Now!”
The guy slumped, as much as he was capable of, and sighed. “You are, Chet.”
“What? Talking to her or to the police?”
“Both.” And then he did an amazing thing. He took off his sunglasses and he smiled at me. It was an honest, almost rueful smile, and I was completely unprepared for it. “I’m Agent DeCarlo. We’re with the FBI. We work online to catch pedophiles, people that prey on children to feed their perverted needs.”
“I’ve seen the after-school special. But Charlene is over 18, I asked! A couple of times!”
“We know. Don’t worry; you’re not in any trouble here.”
My waiter showed up with drinks for everybody. Apparently commerce had occurred while I was away. “Just so we’re clear, no one’s suing anybody over loverboy’s face plant, right?” he asked. We nodded at him, me a bit more carefully than the others. He turned towards me, motioned at the agents with his eyebrows and leered. “You gotta admit, I got the height right,” he said, and left.
“You see,” DeCarlo said. “Sometimes guys will talk up some teenybopper online, get her all hot and bothered, convince her that he’s the only one who really understands her, and then he asks her to meet him somewhere. That’s where we come in. When he shows up to collect his jailbait, he finds us. And I don’t use my handcuffs for fun.”
“Charlene’s parents called you? But if you know she’s of age, then why–”
For the first time, the agents looked uneasy. “Responding to parental reports is only part of our job,” Stark said. “Sometimes the kid is the one to call us.” She shifted her feet uncomfortably. “And sometimes we go online ourselves.”
Sitting there, I could feel my testicles crawling up into my body. “Oh my God. You’re—“
“Yeah,” she said. “Surprise. Nice to finally meet you, Chet.” She held her hand out and I shook it limply, trying to grab on to some part of my functioning brain for long enough to form actual English words. “We realize how awkward this must be for you.”
“Awkward? No, no, ‘awkward’ is when you walk in on your sister when she’s naked, holding her schnauzer and a big bowl of peanut butter. I just found out the love of my life is really an FBI agent, there’s gotta be a new word for that.”
DeCarlo had the grace to look embarrassed. “Two FBI agents, actually,” he said. “We work together.”
“Oh, God. Look, can I have a few minutes? This is very… I don’t know what this is, that’s what I need the minutes for.” They nodded but kept looking at me, which didn’t help any. I put my face in my hands and rubbed. “And here I’d thought I’d planned for everything, Dog-ugly, secretly married, escaped felon, anything. You could have been a quadriplegic arsonist who set municipal buildings on fire with your teeth and I would have made it work for us, somehow. This is a little out of my league, here.”
Stark said quietly, “It was a mistake. We’re taking a chance here, you could bring both of us up on charges for abuse of office. But Agent DeCarlo and I felt you had the right to know. You fell in love with a lie.”
“After we determined that you were not a pedophile,” DeCarlo said, “we had no right to continue pretending. I take full responsibility.”
Stark glared at him. “The hell you do. It was my decision to seek you out again after the first contact, Chet.”
“Why?”
“Do you remember when you stayed up all night comforting ‘Charlene’ when her cat died?” she asked.
“Yeah, the second time we talked. Great, it’s good to know that treasured memory of mine is backed up at Langley somewhere—“
“That was me,” Stark said. “My youngest was very sick, in the hospital. I was terrified I’d lose her. My husband was out of the country and I needed some blind sympathy from someone with the time to cheer up a total stranger. You kept me sane that night, Chet.” She looked up at me with moist eyes and smiled. “OK, you kept telling me I could always go buy another one that looked like her, but you didn’t know I wasn’t grieving for a pet. You helped me a lot.”
“Is she all right?” I asked. Stark nodded happily and wiped her eyes. “And after that?”
She shrugged. “I had told you things that night I hadn’t told anybody. You were a friend, and you’re easy to talk to. It got to be a habit.”
“Also one hell of a security risk, and a violation of I don’t know how many regulations,” DeCarlo muttered.
“Like you were any better,” she said.
“Yeah, well…”
Stark grinned. “He chewed me out for being unprofessional, then went online to say break things off with you and ended up chatting for six hours about Major League Baseball.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud at that. “The World Series! She… He said he couldn’t watch the game so I typed a play by play for her. Him. You. God, what a night!”
“See? I was at my desk, dreading what he’d say when he came back to work, and he comes in all embarrassed and goes, “He’s a great guy, isn’t he?” So we kept talking to you.”
“I guess that’s why we only had sex once,” I told her. “I met your basic “not-a-pedophile” condition. Jeez, that’s a relief, sort of. I was sure I’d done it wrong or something, I didn’t want to push. You must have a very understanding husband if you’re spending your work hours cybersexing other guys.”
They exchanged glances, looked at me, then did it again. Finally DeCarlo coughed. “Um,” he said. “Usually I, ah, I do that part.”
Suddenly we all became very interested in our drinks. I looked at him – huge, husky, five o’clock shadow and all — and tried very, very hard not to remember Charlene telling me, approvingly, what I tasted like.
It must have been obvious what I was thinking about. DeCarlo turned away, blushing like a rosy sunset over a rocky ridge. “I got a good imagination,” he muttered. Stark laughed, clearly amused.
“He does all our sex scenes,” she said. “He’s got a gift, I never know what to say.”
“You’re gay?”
“No!” he said, shocked. “I mean, no, I’m straight. Got a girlfriend and everything, you know. I just… I got a good imagination. You were pretty good too.”
“As God is my witness I have absolutely no idea how to answer that.” I frowned. “Wait a minute. ”All our scenes?” So you’re saying there have been others?”
“Well, yeah, we do this for a living,” DeCarlo chuckled. “We’ve got a pretty good arrest record, if I do say so myself.”
“You slut,” I said. “So my girlfriend has been taking on the whole Internet? I was just a casual fling?” I was joking, but oddly enough I found myself getting choked up anyway. It’s devastating to discover your lover’s infidelity, even when she doesn’t technically exist. “Were you thinking of Bill Gates while you were with me? Go ahead, I can take it.”
DeCarlo put a beefy arm around my shoulders as Stark took both my hands in hers. “No, Chet,” she said. “’Charlene’ retired from active duty. It didn’t seem right after that.” She smiled. “Our new girl, ‘Trixie,’ she’s becoming a serious vamp.”
I snorted loudly. “You mean I ruined you for other men?”
“Get a room, you three,” the waiter said. He set down fresh drinks and appraised the two agents. “When’s the good lovin’ commence?”
“I think this is the “we can still be friends” part of the meeting,” I said, and the agents relaxed, which was good because I was pretty sure they were both armed.
“Damn,” the waiter said, “because this could be some hot shit, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Stark leaned forward to stare soulfully into my eyes. “Besides,” she said, “it can never be. For you see—“
“He thinks “Babylon 5” was better than “Firefly”,” DeCarlo finished. “And those kinds of mixed marriages never work.”
I sat back and looked at both of them. Solid, dangerous, probably sudden death on four legs, and they were clearly nervous at the thought that my feelings were hurt. I imagined what my life would be like if I didn’t have Charlene in it anymore and my chest hurt at the thought. “I guess I’m not ready to break up yet.”
Both my new friends smiled broadly. Stark patted my hand and DeCarlo sighed happily. We ordered some food and relaxed, finally at ease with each other for the first time.
“And hey, who knows? Play your cards right, you might get lucky again.” I timed it perfectly. Suddenly Stark and I were laughing and wiping coffee off our shirts while DeCarlo coughed. “See, I knew you were lying,” I told him. “You are a spitter.”
“I’ve still – cough – got my handcuffs, you know,” he wheezed.
The waiter beamed at all of us. “Ah, young love,” he said.