Charlie Opera by Charlie Stella, Peter Skutches

“I’m sorry. Please, forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
    Charlie seemed to take it in stride. “It’s a legitimate question. How could she do that in the middle of a vacation? I don’t know. To be fair, though, her note said it wasn’t planned.”
    Samantha couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
    “I think Lisa wanted out for a long time,” Charlie said. “This vacation must have been her breaking point.”
    Samantha steered the conversation away from his marriage. She told him about her roommate, Carol. She explained how they had met on the Internet and how Carol was a victim of abuse until she ran away from her husband six months earlier.
    “So you took her in?”
    “She’s run from two places since she left Alabama. The first was New Orleans. Her husband found her there after a few months. Then she ran to Chicago. He almost got her there after another few months. Carol thinks he’s determined to kill her.”
    “How long has she been with you?”
    “A little less than a month. But she keeps one suitcase packed, she carries her laptop computer everywhere she goes, and she hides extra money for the day she says she knows she’ll have to run off all over again.”
    “I assume the law can’t do a thing.”
    “Not until she’s dead. O.J. proved that.”
    “O.J. proved you could get away with it, too,” Charlie said.
    They had coffee in the kitchen. He liked the way she looked in the cut-off jeans and white T-shirt. When she let her hair down, he liked the way it curled in around her face.
    “How far are you from your degree?” he asked.
    “Thirty-four credits. But it may as well be ninety-four. Either I can’t afford to take the classes I need, or they don’t offer them, or I can’t take the time off when they are offered.”
    “I was a two-year wonder before I dropped out to become a window cleaner and get married.”
    “High-up window cleaner?”
    “Very high.”
    “And your kids were from your first wife?”
    “Both.”
    “So, where does the opera come from?”
    Charlie smiled. “My grandfather,” he said. “He lived with us when I was young. Listened to opera all day. You hear something enough, you start to like it.”
    “Or you think you do,” Samantha said.
    “Touché,” Charlie said.
    Samantha mentioned how long it had been since her last relationship with a man and how she was trying to be extra careful with men since she was so close to erasing the final debts from her marriage to a compulsive gambler.
    “So you don’t trust men anymore to punish yourself,” he said.
    Samantha was taken off guard. “Huh?”
    “That’s what it sounds like. You’re pissed at yourself for what happened with your deadbeat husband so now you don’t take chances.”
    She looked at him with one eye closed. “Is this a trick question?”
    Charlie smiled again.
    “I had a boyfriend from where I work until six months ago,” she said. “A partner.”
    “Like I had a wife.”
    “I guess. Only he didn’t live here. But he wanted too much too soon.”
    “Marriage?”
    “And kids.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Exactly. So we broke up. So it has been a while.”
    “For what it’s worth,” Charlie said, “it’s been a while for me, too.”
    It was pretty late by the time they finished their coffee. He asked Samantha if it would be all right if they went out again before he returned to New York.
    “Take off your glasses,” she said.
    “My eyes are black.”
    “I can tell a lot more about you if I can see your eyes.”
    He took the sunglasses off. She stared into his eyes a moment and giggled. “You look silly,” she said. He put the sunglasses back on. Samantha took them off again. “No. It looks even sillier with them on.”
    “This part of a ritual? Humiliation before a simple yes or no?”
    “I’m sorry. I can get used to your eyes like that. Well, not used to them, but, you know. I’d rather see your eyes.”
    “Well, will you go out