Ghosting Zoë

Part 7

"Why, Zoë?" Maple asked the following Monday at work. "Why did you do it?"

Despite the words of caution from Maple and Chuck, Zoë had gone online and used her credit card to pay the registration fee for Macy's acting class. "At least, the little girl won't have to suffer," she said.

"If she even is a little girl," Maple said. "Now that Edgar knows you're a soft touch, he'll just want more and more. What else has he asked you for?"

"Nothing," Zoë said. In fact, it had been radio silence since Saturday night, even after she texted to let Edgar know that she had successfully paid the fee. Over the course of the next week, she texted him several more times.

How does Macy like her acting class? |

Did you get things sorted out with your bank? |

What's up with you and your job? Did you figure out why you couldn't reach them? |

But Zoë was stuck in Ghost City, right smack dab in the middle of town square. Edgar — as sensitive, intelligent and caring as he initially seemed — was once again AWOL.

At first, Zoë wondered what the girl Macy must have gone through in her life and visualized her enjoying her acting class. Zoë thought of herself at that age and how she needed encouragement to be herself and try new things.

But slowly, thoughts of Edgar and how he'd used her crept in like a fog, obscuring the image of the good deed she'd done.

"Jesus — good hippie that he was — said the poor will always be with us," Maple said. "But what he didn't say, which is equally true, is that the jerks will always be with us, too."

Zoë began to think Maple was right. Edgar was a jerk. But then she remembered the napkin from the coffee shop. She took it out of her pocket and spread it out on the counter at the New Age Universal Emporium.

"Take a look at this," she said, smoothing out the wrinkles with her fingertips.

"What is that?" Maple said. "A poem?" It read:

Come sit with me and coffee sip,
Which slidest past thy lovely lip,
And down yon throat in beauteous neck,
While mine nerves lie in a wreck.

While caffeine take and brownie pinch,
Mine hand shall travel inch by inch,
Until me taking yours in mine,
'Mid visions filled with Valentines.

And while the nymphs and cherubs sing,
Around mine heart you'll wind your string,
'Til it be joyfully in thy grip,
Come sit with me and coffee sip.

"It's beautiful," Maple said. "Where did it come from?"

"From Beans on the Boulevard," Zoë said, turning the napkin over to show the shop's name. "He left it on the table that night."

"Who? Edgar? But I never saw him."

"Neither did I, but he was there just the same. He mentioned in one of his texts that he left me a poem."

"It can't be!" Maple said as the store's serenity chime gonged.

They were still looking over the poem when Chuck walked up to the counter with a box.

"Hey, ladies," he said.

"More geodes?" Maple asked.

"No, this one's addressed to Zoë."

Zoë's brows pinched together as she took the box and slit it open. Out came a purple teddy bear holding a heart that read, "Go out with me?"

"I'm singing at Beats and Brews again this Saturday," Chuck said. "I've worked up some new material, and I think it would sound even better with you in the audience to hear it."

Zoë's massive curls bounced over her brow as she nodded an enthusiastic "yes." She reached out and wrapped her arms around Chuck just as her phone sounded an incoming text message.

Will Zoë end up happily with Chuck, or will Edgar's cyber presence continue to linger over her life? What's really going on with Edgar anyway? Find out in the final chapter, Part 8.

R.J. Post is the author of "Lion Taming, Dating and Other Dangerous Endeavors" and "A Shovelful of Winter," which are available on Amazon.