All Dolled Up!

Charlie’s POV

“So, how is she?” Suzy asked.

“Mom? Doing fine.”

“No, I mean your girlfriend,” she said. “I haven’t seen her around even a single day. I’m starting to think that she doesn’t exist.”

“You spoke with her,” I reminded her.

“And never afterwards,” she said. “Is this one of those ‘I have a girlfriend, she just goes to another school’ sort of deals?”

I sighed. “She’s been busy lately, but if you want to talk to her…” I dialed Charlotte’s number, but not before I texted her beforehand letting her know what I was doing. If she didn’t want to speak to Suzy, she just had to say that she was busy when I asked her that. “Hey, yeah, how are you?”

“Doing fine,” Charlotte said. I thought I heard the faint sounds of the old ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series we had been watching in the background. Did she want to see it again? Well, she hadn’t liked the modern series, so I guess she went back to the old stuff.

“Right, well, I know you’ve been busy, but my sister was visiting me, and I just wanted to know if you’d maybe be free to have a chat with her,” I said.

“Sure,” Charlotte said. She sounded nervous, but I couldn’t imagine her saying something too offhand to embarrass herself.

I handed Suzy the phone. “Long time hearing your voice! I mean, you could’ve called way earlier, you know…”

I couldn’t hear Charlotte’s side of the conversation, only my sister’s, so it was a bit hard to follow, though I could get the gist of it.

“So, how come you haven’t visited my brother yet? I would’ve thought that the two of you are in a long-distance relationship or something,” Suzy said.

“Well, I hope to see you one day.”

“Oh- I hope he hasn’t given you too much trouble.”

“Really?”

“Is that so?”

“Hmm… I see.”

As the conversation drew on I couldn’t help but tap my foot. It had been nearly fifteen minutes since they started! What on earth could they possibly be talking about? They barely even knew each other!

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was far shorter, the call ended.

“Ah, so how was it?” I asked her.

“I was not mistaken the first time I spoke to her - she has a very cute voice,” Suzy said. “Sounds much better than Josephine.” She then began typing again before she paused. “You didn’t tell me she was a security guard?”

“What?! I mean, yes, that must have slipped my mind,” I said. I could imagine how that would have come up - when asked what her profession was Charlotte must’ve been hesitant to say ‘nothing’ as she knew it was expected that she would have one in this day and age.

And so, she came up with something on the spot.

That said, if one thought of her as a nightly security guard, one could say that she was quite effective as one - against most people at least.

“I mean, how could you not mention that?” she asked. “I mean, it’s cool, but it's not what you’d expect from someone who sounds like that. Is she like really muscular and tall?”

“No, she looks how she sounds,” I said.

“So she works the night shift too?”

“Yeah, she always works the night shift.”

“Is that how you two met? Does she work at your warehouse?”

“Uh, no that’s not where we met…” I trailed off as I tried to think of a place where the two of us could say that we’d met, before realizing that I should’ve just said ‘yes’ to Suzy’s earlier question as that would’ve explained things.

“You know, you don’t have to rush so much to tell me the answer,” Suzy said. “Unless you met somewhere weird… I don’t get why it’s taking so long to answer a question like that.”

I wanted to retort back something, but there was little that I could respond with. After all, these were just normal questions people would ask, and as long as I dated Charlotte and kept her existence a secret, I’d be unable to answer a few of them.

“I actually met her at the house,” I said.

“Really? How’d that happen?”

“She uh, her car broke down nearby and she needed some help.”

“Wow, I was wondering how you’d met her when you’ve stopped going to places, especially in this county in the middle of nowhere which looks like it has a population of three hundred, and it looks like she almost literally fell into your lap,” Suzy said.

“Yeah, that is kind of what happened,” I said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be able to meet her in person one day.”

“Sure,” Suzy said. After a few moments passed, “Do you still have her ring?”

“Whose? Oh, right, yeah I do, couldn’t get a good enough price on returning it, so I still have it,” I said, shrugging.

“You should get rid of it,” Suzy said. “I mean, if you really want to get over her, get rid of anything that would remind you of her, especially that.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Hey, let’s leave my romantic life out of this.”

“You’re interested in mine, it’s only tit for tat,” I told her.

“No, I am actually interested in yours, you are only asking that to deflect the question, you don’t really care,” Suzy said.

“Really? You think so?” I asked her. “You really think I don’t care? Why would I agree to let you move in then?”

She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean it like that, what I meant to say is that you’re not interested in the nitty-gritty details of who I’m dating, are you?” Well, I couldn’t deny that she had a point there.

She started to yawn despite the espresso, and I suggested going back home, and I remembered to shoot a text to Charlotte to that effect. She would know anyway though, given she would be able to hear my car approaching, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Suzy went to sleep once we got home, vowing to finish her project the next morning, and it was still dark out, so I walked over to where Charlotte was.

“Hey,” I said, closing the door and letting her know that it was safe to move. “How was the conversation?”

“It was… interesting,” Charlotte said.

“Well, as long as it was good,” I told her. “By the way, I told her that we met when your car broke down in front of my house, in case she asks.”

“Keeping track of this fake love story is going to be a headache,” Charlotte said.

“You’re telling me,” I said. “But not for much longer.”

“Do you plan on telling her?”

“Not immediately, but I think I’ll work the concept to her slowly.”

“Slowly? How so?”

“Bring up ghosts and stuff as a topic, and then show her what you are. I think we can do it gradually over a week or so…” I said.

“I still think it’s going to be very much a shock to her,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah,” I said. Though, in all honestly, how did you prepare someone for something like this? I guess you can’t, but I didn’t think just going downstairs, waking her up, and having Charlotte introduce herself as she was was the solution either. When I had first seen her moving, I thought that she was about to grow some extra limbs and kill me - which is why I had hit her with a chair. I didn’t want my sister to pass out, or worse, get something like broken heart syndrome from fright. “But, we can try to prepare her.”

Charlotte nodded. She then asked, “Can you tell me something, Charlie?”

“Sure.”

“Do I… look strange?”

“What? Of course not!”

“I don’t mean to you obviously,” she said. “I mean, other people seem very frightened when they see me, even when I’m not moving. Why is that? Even your sister shrieked like a banshee when she first saw me.”

“I think people are just scared of mannequins and dolls in general,” I told her. “And, I think horror movies have a lot to do with it - remember the ones we tried to watch?”

Charlotte shuddered.

“And, the environment of the house probably also lends itself to it,” I told her. “Empty house, in the middle of nowhere, you know. It’s nothing about you Charlotte. You are absolutely lovely - it's just, I guess it’s more of the context in which people meet you, you know?”

“I see,” she said. We didn’t have much time before the sun came back up, so she gave me a peck on the cheek before returning to her usual resting position.

I went to sleep a while later, not wanting to wake up my sister by doing maintenance on the house, though it felt like I was woken up instantly by someone shaking me.

“Eh? What happened?” I asked Suzy.

“You won’t believe it!” I couldn’t deal with the excitement in her voice in my current state of drowsiness.

“Believe what?”

“So that job I told you I didn’t get-”

“Yeah?”

“The person who joined, well they declined it at the last minute! They just gave me another quick phone interview right now, and the job’s mine!”

“That’s great. Can I go back to sleep now?”

“C’mon, you can at least pretend to be excited.”

“I need to sleep in order to have the energy to pretend to be excited.”

“Ugh, okay, main thing is that I’m leaving tomorrow!”

Now that got my attention.

“Tomorrow? So soon?”

“I could leave earlier, but I want to get a head start in seeing an apartment in the area.”

“Can you afford to leave for a few days?”

“Sure, I’m going to get paid for this latest project soon enough, and I know a friend over there whose couch I can crash on.”

“And yet you chose to come here instead because…?”

“Because I thought that it would be way longer than just a week! Duh!”

“Okay…” I said before rolling over. I tried going back to sleep, but my thoughts were now tinged with a bit of regret. She was going to leave - so I wouldn’t be able to introduce her to Charlotte right now. I had been planning on acclimatizing her to the idea slowly, but now that the chance was escaping, I began to doubt myself. When would I get another chance like this? When would Suzy visit me again?

The thoughts continued to torment me even as I drifted off. I woke up, looked at the clock, and went out to see Suzy hurriedly packing up.

“You sure you don’t want to stay a few more days?” I asked Suzy.

“Nah, I’m good,” she said. “I’m sending the finished version of the manuscript now, and I should get the payment soon. Not to mention I have more than enough for a few days.”

“Yeah, I mean, but you’re leaving, like immediately tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sorry about that and leaving on such short notice, but my job starts soon and I want to get things in order before then, you know with the packing and whatnot,” she said.

“Alright, I get it,” I said. “Good luck!”

“Thanks,” she said, flashing me a smile before I left for work.

The thought of her leaving and how I could’ve done things differently over the weekend continued to play in my mind even at work. But, looking back, without the benefit of hindsight I couldn’t see what I could have reasonably been expected to do differently.