CHARLOTTE — CHOSEN AGAIN

She spent years being wanted for all the wrong reasons. Then the chime changed what being wanted meant. I suppose the easiest way to tell my story would be to lie. Not a big lie. Just the kind women learn to tell when the truth makes other people uncomfortable. I could tell you that I was twenty-five when I became the personal assistant to the CEO of a major corporation because I interviewed brilliantly, because somebody saw potential in me, because I was ambitious and intelligent and happened to be in the right place at the right time. None of that would be true. I got the job because I slept with him. There. That is usually the point where people decide what kind of woman I am. Go ahead. I have had plenty of practice. His name doesn't matter, and neither does the corporation, although you would recognize both. I had no experience remotely appropriate for the position. I had worked ordinary jobs, had an ordinary résumé, and owned exactly two outfits that I thought qualified as corporate clothing. I met him at a private event through somebody I barely knew. He liked me. I liked being liked by him. More importantly, I liked what being liked by him appeared to offer. Three days later, somebody from his office called. “Mr. —— would like to offer you a position.” I actually laughed. “What position?” “Personal assistant.” “I don't know how to be a personal assistant.” There was a pause. Then the woman on the telephone said, very calmly, “I don't believe that will be a problem.” It wasn't. Because I wasn't really his personal assistant. For eighteen months, I traveled first class, stayed in suites I couldn't have afforded for a single night with three months of my salary, ate in restaurants where nobody put prices on the menu, shopped in Paris, woke up in Singapore, went to sleep in London, spent weekends in New York and once complained because the company apartment they gave me downtown didn't have enough closet space. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION I was twenty-five years old. I thought I had won. My official salary was ridiculous for somebody with my qualifications, my apartment was paid for, almost everything I did was put on an expense account, and my actual job consisted primarily of being available whenever he wanted me. I knew what the arrangement was. So did he. So did everybody around him. Nobody said it. That was part of the elegance of the arrangement. Then, one evening, he told me we had an important customer arriving the following week. “Okay.” “He likes you.” I smiled. “A lot of people like me.” He didn't smile back. “He would like you to spend Thursday evening with him.” It took me several seconds. “With him?” “Yes.” “At dinner?” He looked at me. And suddenly eighteen months of pretending disappeared. “No.” “Charlotte.” “No.” “You haven't even thought about it.” “I don't need to.” “He is extremely important to us.” “Then you sleep with him.” That was probably not the smartest thing I ever said to a CEO. He stared at me for a moment and then actually laughed. “All right.” That frightened me more than anger would have. I remember standing there, waiting for the argument. There wasn't one. The following morning, a blonde woman who couldn't have been more than twenty-three was sitting outside his office. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION She was beautiful. Nervous. Excited. She was wearing a new suit. She looked exactly like I must have looked eighteen months earlier. My access card stopped working before lunch. There was no severance package. There was no generous goodbye. There was no reference. And when I became angry enough to threaten lawyers, somebody from corporate legal explained, with extraordinary politeness, precisely how little my official employment record showed that I had actually done. Then came the sentence I still remember. “You should also consider whether you really want prospective employers in this industry asking questions about the nature of your previous responsibilities.” That was it. Eighteen months of my life disappeared before dinner. Three months later, most of the money was gone. That sounds impossible until you remember that I had learned to live like somebody earning considerably more than I was earning, and when the apartment disappeared, the travel disappeared, the expense account disappeared and the credit-card bills did not, reality arrived very quickly. I went home. I won't name the town. It isn't important. It was the kind of place where everybody knew who I had been in high school, everybody knew I had gone away, and within two weeks everybody knew I had come back. I moved into my aunt's house. I got a job at a bank branch during the day and worked several nights a week at a local bar. And then I made everything worse. Some of the men remembered me. Some had gone to school with me. Some were married to women who had once been my friends. Some had wives who worked with me. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION Some simply knew the stories that had already started circulating about why Charlotte had come home. I was lonely. I was angry. I wanted to feel wanted. And I had become very good at confusing those things. So there were nights. Too many of them. A drink after closing. A ride home. A married man telling me his marriage had been dead for years. Another one telling me he'd had a crush on me since eleventh grade. Another telling me I deserved somebody who appreciated me. By then, people weren't even particularly subtle. I heard the names they called me. Easy. Available. Fun. One of the women at the bank stopped speaking when I entered the break room. Another moved her chair away from mine. A former girlfriend sent me a message consisting of four words. Stay away from him. I wish I could tell you that was when I woke up. It wasn't. That happened in a motel. I don't remember why we went there instead of his house. Maybe his wife was home. Maybe mine wasn't the only house he couldn't take women to. I remember waking up alone. Cheap curtains. Cheap carpet. My dress on the floor. My shoes beside the bed. And on the nightstand were two one-hundred-dollar bills. There was a note beneath them. See you next Saturday. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION I stared at those bills for a very long time. Then I started crying. Not because I had been paid. Because I hadn't. I had never asked him for money. He had simply decided what I was. Two hundred dollars. Saturday night. No conversation required. Somewhere along the way, I had apparently done such a convincing job of becoming the woman everybody whispered about that he hadn't even considered the possibility that I might see myself differently. I picked up the money. I picked up the note. And for one ridiculous second I nearly left both of them there, as though refusing the money would somehow undo what had happened. Then I looked around that miserable motel room and thought, Why should they get it? So I folded the note around the bills and put them in my purse. I still have them. I've never spent the money. The original note is still folded around those two hundred-dollar bills in a little box at the back of my bedroom drawer. Sometimes I think I keep it because I'm angry. Sometimes I think I keep it because I never want to forget the morning when I finally understood where I was headed. I went home. I packed. Three days later, I was gone. The second city doesn't matter either. That was the point. Nobody knew Charlotte there. Nobody knew the CEO. Nobody knew the bank. Nobody knew the bar. Nobody knew the motel. I became a front-desk clerk at a very nice hotel. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION Not glamorous. Not terrible. Just nice. I rented a decent apartment. I bought normal clothes. I paid my bills. I went to work. I smiled. I became extremely good at smiling. “Good afternoon, welcome.” “Of course, sir.” “Let me check that for you.” “I hope you enjoy your stay.” Men flirted. I declined. Guests left telephone numbers. I threw them away. A bartender asked me out. No. One of the assistant managers asked me to dinner. No. A guest who stayed with us every month told me he could make me forget whatever man had hurt me. No. I stopped explaining. Eventually, people stopped asking. I went home after work. I ate alone. I watched television. I read. Sometimes I sat on my sofa without turning anything on. Sometimes I cried. Then I went to bed, got up the next morning, put on my makeup and became Happy Charlotte again. For eight hours. The old messages were the worst. Wish you were here. Remember us? I miss those legs around me. Some were considerably worse than that. I changed my number. It helped. Silence, I discovered, can be both peaceful and absolutely unbearable. By thirty, I had accepted something. Nobody was coming. There wasn't going to be a knight. There wasn't going to be a man who knocked on my door and somehow understood everything and rescued me from the life I had made. There wasn't going to be a miraculous second act. There was work. There was my apartment. There was sleep. There was tomorrow. And then somebody left a magazine in the hotel lobby. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION It was Vampire Dating Magazine . I knew what it was. Everybody knew what it was. I had seen the covers at newsstands and rolled my eyes at them. Vampires. Women dating vampires. Women claiming that one night had changed their lives. Permanent girlfriends living in penthouses. Ridiculous shoes. Private elevators. Feeding nights. I thought most of it was fantasy dressed up as journalism. The magazine sat on a table near the lobby chairs for most of my shift. At eleven-fifteen that night, when I finished work, it was still there. I put it in my bag. I still don't know why. I read the entire thing at home. Then I went online. At two in the morning, I was still reading. At three, I found VamFem.com . At three-oh-seven, I closed it. At three-eleven, I opened it again. Women apply. Vampires choose. That frightened me. It also fascinated me. Nobody promised anything. Nobody told me I deserved to be chosen. Nobody told me that uploading a photograph guaranteed a date. Nobody even pretended it was fair. I created an account. Then deleted everything before submitting it. The next night, I tried again. There was a section asking me to write about myself. I wrote three paragraphs. Deleted them. Wrote six. Deleted four. Then I wrote the truth. Not all of it. Enough. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION I wrote that I had spent part of my twenties confusing being desired with being valued. I wrote that I had made choices I regretted. I wrote that I had been used. I admitted that sometimes I had used people too. I wrote that I had stopped dating because I no longer trusted my own reasons for saying yes. By the time I finished, I was crying. Then came the photographs. That was almost worse. I took one. I looked miserable. Delete. Another. My eyes were red. Delete. Another. Too frightened. Delete. I changed my blouse. Changed it back. Put on lipstick. Took it off. Tried smiling. Hated the smile. At some point I was sitting on the edge of my bed staring at my phone and laughing through tears. “This is insane.” I took another photograph. Then another. Finally I uploaded them. I pressed SUBMIT . Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. I went to bed. Three weeks later, on a Saturday evening, I was curled up on my sofa reading the newest issue of Vampire Dating Magazine when my phone made a sound I had never heard before. A soft chime. I looked down. For several seconds, I couldn't breathe. YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION There was a photograph. A name. A hotel. A time. And beneath it, the countdown had already begun. 29:43 I screamed. Actually screamed. Then I stood up so quickly the magazine fell onto the floor. “No. No, no, no, no.” 29:31 I ran into my bedroom. Opened the closet. Nothing looked right. Everything looked wrong. I pulled out a black dress. Too much. Blue. Too boring. Green. Why did I own green? 27:58 “Oh my God.” I called nobody. There was nobody to call. So I stood in front of my mirror with one shoe on, one shoe off, mascara in one hand and my phone in the other, looking exactly like the frightened, ridiculous woman I had tried so desperately not to show in my profile photographs. And somehow I made it. She was waiting for me. Beautiful isn't the right word. Beautiful sounds ordinary. She looked perhaps thirty-two. Maybe thirty-three. She stood when I approached the table. “Charlotte.” I almost turned around. Instead I whispered, “Yes.” She smiled. “You came.” “You gave me thirty minutes.” “I did.” “I changed dresses four times.” “I know.” I stared at her. “You know?” “You wrote in your profile that you panic when you're nervous.” “Oh.” “Are you nervous?” “I'm considering escaping through the kitchen.” She laughed. And somehow that saved me. Dinner lasted almost three hours. I told her too much. That is what I thought afterward. I told her about the CEO. The replacement. The bank. The bar. The husbands. The motel. The two hundred dollars. The note. At one point I stopped talking and stared at my plate. “Well,” I whispered, “there goes my evening.” “Why?” I looked up. “Because now you know.” “I knew before I chose you.” EDITORIAL RE-CREATION That stopped me. “What?” “I read your profile, Charlotte.” “Not all of that was in my profile.” “No.” She leaned slightly closer. “But enough was.” I couldn't understand it. “You still chose me?” “Yes.” “Why?” She considered me for several seconds. Then she said something I have never forgotten. “Because you finally learned the difference between somebody wanting access to you and somebody choosing you.” I cried. Of course I cried. I was becoming very good at crying in expensive places. She reached across the table. She didn't grab my hand. She simply turned hers palm-up between us. And waited. That mattered. I put my hand into hers. I won't tell you everything about that night. Some things belong to me. I will tell you that I had never experienced anything remotely like it. Not with the CEO. Not with the married men. Not with anyone. I had spent years believing experience meant I couldn't still be overwhelmed. I was wrong. By morning I was exhausted, dazed, aching in places I hadn't thought about in years, embarrassingly emotional and so completely happy that I started laughing while I was trying to find one of my shoes. She found it for me. “You're laughing.” “I know.” “Why?” “I don't know.” That made me laugh harder. She kissed my forehead. And eventually I went home. For three days, I floated. I smiled at work and didn't have to fake it. One of my coworkers actually stopped me. “What happened to you?” “Nothing.” “Charlotte.” “What?” “You're glowing.” I laughed. “Good moisturizer.” Then the fourth day came. And I understood. It was over. That was the deal. One night. I sat on my sofa and looked around my apartment, and suddenly it seemed quieter than it had ever been. Because now I remembered what happy felt like. That was worse than never remembering at all. I cried that night. I cried the next night too. And then, eleven days after my first selection, while I was making pasta, my phone chimed. I dropped the spoon. YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. Different photograph. Different name. Different hotel. I stared at it. Then I started laughing. “Oh, you've got to be kidding me.” 29:51 I turned off the stove. That was more than six months ago. I've stopped counting the dates. Almost. I have a calendar. Don't judge me. Sometimes two weeks pass. Sometimes only a few days. Once I was chosen again the following Friday. I have been chosen by vampires who barely spoke through dinner and vampires who made me laugh so hard I embarrassed myself in restaurants. I've met one who loved jazz, one who collected antique books, one who could discuss shoes for forty-five minutes with terrifying expertise, and another who looked at the contents of my closet and said, with genuine concern, “Charlotte, we need to do something about this.” She did. I still own the shoes. No, I'm not telling you what they cost. I am not a permanent girlfriend. I don't know whether I ever will be. Maybe one day one of them will ask me to stay. Maybe none of them ever will. That used to frighten me. It doesn't anymore. I still work at the hotel. I still have my apartment. I still come home alone most nights. But I don't cry myself to sleep anymore. I go out now. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION Sometimes alone. I bought season tickets to a little theater. I found a restaurant where the bartender knows my name and doesn't try to take me home. I made friends. Real ones. I even started traveling again, although now I buy my own ticket. And yes, sometimes my phone chimes. When it does, my heart still tries to escape through my throat. I still run to my closet. I still change my dress twice. All right. Three times. And every single time, just before I leave, I look at myself in the mirror. Not because I need to know whether I'm beautiful enough. I spent too many years worrying about that. I look because I remember the woman who took twenty photographs for her VamFem profile and deleted almost all of them because every photograph showed exactly what she was trying to hide. Lonely. Frightened. Ashamed. Waiting for somebody to rescue her. Nobody did. That's the part the exposé doesn't understand. VamFem didn't rescue me either. The vampires didn't rescue me. They didn't give me a job. They didn't pay my rent. They didn't erase what I did when I was twenty-five or twenty-seven or twenty-nine. They didn't make my choices disappear. They did something much stranger. They made me want my own life back. And perhaps that is why, when people ask whether I am embarrassed that I've been dating vampires for more than six months, sometimes nearly every week, I laugh. Embarrassed? No. You want embarrassing? Try waking up in a motel and discovering that a man has left two hundred dollars beside the bed because he has decided, without even asking you, what you are worth. You want frightening? Try walking into a restaurant to meet a vampire who already knows the saddest things you were brave enough to write about yourself. You want surprising? Have her look at you anyway and say: “I chose you.” My phone chimed last Saturday. EDITORIAL RE-CREATION I was halfway through the newest issue of Vampire Dating Magazine . I looked at the screen. A woman I had never met was smiling back at me. Beautiful. Dark hair. Thirty minutes. I put down the magazine. I walked into my bedroom. Opened my closet. And smiled. “Okay,” I told myself. “Don't panic.” I reached for the red dress. Stopped. “No.” The black one. I held it against myself. “Definitely.” Then I noticed the shoes. The ridiculous ones. The ones a vampire had bought me three months earlier after declaring my closet an emergency. I slipped them on and looked into the mirror. The woman looking back wasn't crying. She wasn't frightened. She wasn't waiting for anybody to save her. My phone showed twenty-four minutes remaining. I smiled at myself. A real smile this time. “Charlotte,” I said, “you're going to be late.” And I ran for the door. REAL PHOTO