His Name Was Eric

Reading text messages from a stranger can arouse levels of curiosity you’ve never dreamed of. This was a first for me and I liked it.

“So why did you move from New York?” I asked. It took him a while to reply. I assumed he hopped offline for something important and I waited, patiently.

I checked the phone every now and again. His reply three hours later, “I heard a rumor that here women are exceptionally beautiful and I needed to know,” he said.

 I couldn’t see his face or hear him speak, however, I imagined the charm and conviction in his voice and I wanted to meet him even more. In all of his photographs his hair, eyes and eyebrows matched, being dark brown, giving him a mysterious aura but he didn’t smile in any of them. His beard was short and well groomed with streaks of silver almost symmetrically gracing the sides of his lips to join with his seamless moustache, but he never smiled.

“Can we meet for brunch tomorrow?” he asked, and that completed it for me. In my own anticipation I began combing my hair with my fingers until I remembered he couldn’t see me at all.

“Yes, where will we meet?” I checked the spelling and grammar of this very simply question before sending it. His reply was swift.

“Café Brie at nine thirty, I’ll see you tomorrow. Btw, the rumors are true because of you, rest well.” he replied.

“Perhaps I’ve met the perfect gentleman,” I thought, and carried the phone with me into the bedroom where it stayed glued to my fingers just in case another text came in. After twenty five minutes of waiting my anticipation waned. He was offline long enough.

The Café Brie was my ideal first date, he paid attention.

I slept and dreamed a dream come true. This tall, dashing man with silky dark-brown hair, a tidy beard of experience and charm to match was like a gift from heaven, and I would be meeting him at a fancy café that day.

 I showered, brushed my teeth thrice, and squeezed into a pair of Levi’s I’d worked hard to squeeze into for three months, topping that off with a cotton white, high-neck, sleeveless crop.

Frantic to best the images I posted online I carefully applied foundation, dusting all flaws away with carefully applied powder after. Mascara checked. I also meticulously inspected my brows to ensure they were perfectly, symmetrically drawn and filled. I smeared the sexiest shade of lipstick, which I found to be plum red, on my pursed lips, and then watched while the blow dryer caressed my free-flowing, golden hair in the mirror, hoping that if he never saw me before, he’d see me and only me when we finally met.

I walked, a mile, as uncomfortable as it was to do so in a pair of beige stiletto ankle boots. I guess better judgment prevailed when I thought about asking him if he would be willing to pick me up at home.

Still, I entered the Café early and looked for him.

It was a quiet, yet bright, sunny morning with few patrons in the inside. At a second glance I glared in surprised when I spotted him sitting in a corner away from the entrance, waiting for me and looking quite different from what I expected. He had a much longer beard, less muscles than I imagined he’d have in a sleeveless shirt, and he also wore a pair of jeans, a pair of jeans that had seen better days.

A sinking feeling of disappointment overcame me. I tried to hide it however unsuccessfully. He acknowledged my scowling afterwards, and with a straight face pushed his nose under his armpit and inhaled.

I couldn’t contain my giggling which I felt in the pits of my stomach and I tried to contain it in a lady-like way. He started giggling too. While I approached him he stood and took my hand. We both shuttled laughter away, making room for the official in-person introduction, “You are even better looking in person, hello gorgeous, I hope I didn’t disappoint you,” he said, in a gentle tone, and I envisaged the same man I imagined the night before, only imagining him with a welcomed taste for dark humor, which I also have.

He made me realize everything I did before that moment was overkill. I relaxed more when he did the gentlemanly thing to have me seated before he took his own, and doubts I had about Eric no longer being the esteemed and proper knight in shining armor whittled away.

His eyes were as mysterious as they were in his photographs, even while he smiled. Dimples on both sides of his face complimented his alluring charm greatly. His teeth were lightly coffee stained, hard to notice. Since he offered to meet me at a Cuban café, I gathered coffee was something he enjoyed. Those stains didn’t bother me at all as I presumed I may have had them too and I smiled back.

I also covertly tried catching whiff of his breath whenever he spoke, it was a challenge given the distance between us across the table. I needed to know if he had foul breath before we started eating. Finally the opportunity came when his dark sense of humor surfaced again. This time I matched it on grounds of compatibility to make him like me even more, “My Cuban is terrible, I have no idea what on this menu is good to eat, just in case you wanted to know. This is all for you, so you can order for me as well,” he said, and then he picked up the menu,”

“So I’ll order coffee for you, in case it isn’t Cuban,” I replied, and he chuckled, giving me the opportunity to pay attention and detect a combination of tobacco, fluoride toothpaste and wintergreen mouthwash on his breath. Well he was definitely a smoker. I wasn’t sure whether or not to accept it or be bluntly inappropriate and ask a question I could already answer, trying to open the door to a conversation about how he felt about his habit. I chose not to make him uncomfortable if doing so would, and I believed, once again, that my better judgment may have changed how subsequent events unfolded.

 I ordered the most Cuban thing on the menu for him, a Cuban sandwich, and for myself I ordered the more American omelet, which, based on his investigative eyes panning back and forth across plates and with knitted brows, I got the impression he would have preferred after the fact.

“Would you like to switch? I’m ok with that,” I asked.

“Yes I would,” he said, and before I finished asking. We switched plates.

Our eyes locked for only a second and Eric’s lips spread slightly. He tried not to smile too excitingly before focusing on the pizza-like omelet we were both salivating. However, I got the feeling he was in a hurry to eat so that we could move on to conversation.

In conversation we clicked like an old married couple, comfortable, content and charismatic. Incomers could also have believed that we were, and we enjoyed this two hour introduction, until his countenance changed completely in reaction to the sirens of an emergency vehicle blaring past the entrance of the building and fading in the distance. Shortly after another one followed, and that was when he rubbed the bridge of his nose in a bland stare at the table.

“Are you ok Eric, are you feeling unwell, was it the omelet?” I asked, and he came back to the table, from wherever he briefly travelled.

He forced a smile, and said, “No worries Elise. I want to do this again if you don’t mind. I really, really like you. Let me take you home. My car’s right outside.”

We exchanged phone numbers. We exchanged phone numbers. We exchanged phone numbers because we never did before. We always communicated through the app where we met right up until we saw each other in person. I let him drive me home, and he drove a single mile as if we walked it, as slow as a turtle.

 I still believed he tried to hide some kind of illness from me, something related to the omelet he ate earlier. I rested my hand on his thigh and asked him, “Are you sure you’re ok. You don’t look well at all. How far do you have to go to get home?”

“I’m fine, really,” he said, and he held my hand, which he kept on his thigh, glancing at me whenever he could with half a smile, I enjoyed it too, good God!

I watched him drive away before going inside, impatiently waiting for my phone to alert me to his text message once again.

Twenty five minutes later he texted, “Elise I’d like to see you again, same place, this could be our thing,”

Twenty five minutes of driving put him close enough for another rendezvous, and I wanted one, “Yes, I’d love to Eric, Saturday is ok for me, if you like,” I replied.

Again I waited for him to respond, wondering why it usually took him so long after he initiates. Three hours late, he did, again, “Saturday is fine. I’ll pick you up, if you want,” he said.

On the site he said he worked in law enforcement. When someone tells you they work in law enforcement, you leave it at that. If they want to, they’ll tell you exactly what they do when the time is right.

I needed to accept it, long pauses between messages was something I would have to deal with whenever he was on duty, if our first date turned into something more.

We sent each other sweet romantic messages until Friday night. I was ready to see him again.

 Saturday morning I dressed down, considerably. A pair of ripped jeans, a pair of New Balance sneakers, a grey v neck T tucked away in my jeans and a fedora is what I should have worn on the first date when I walked a mile in high heels.

When I got there I expected to find him in the same spot, but he was late, and so I asked for the table, only so I could make fun of him by throwing my hair back with my fingers to show him how to whiff your own armpit, gracefully. I waited like an idiot for almost two hours before trying to contact him online. He wasn’t online for more than six hours, and he never showed.

I thought about things in that embarrassing moment. He had coffee stains on his teeth. He smoked cigars, he was also twenty five minutes away, by car, he drove one, and he suggested meeting at the Café Brie.

Our chance encounter on that dating app was no chance encounter at all!

A waitress approached me and asked, “Excuse me, will you be ordering soon?”

I could tell she was also embarrassed for me as her anxious tone suggested I order or leave in a hurry. I turned to her and shook my head,” Apparently not,” I said.

“She put her hand on my shoulder, “He’s in here every other week with a different face on his arm. Consider yourself lucky. You’re the only one who’s been in here twice honey,” she replied.

Why oh why didn’t I see it. I gave the waitress her table and shot out the door with a new found purpose to report him on the app, and I did.

I checked frequently. His account was inactive for days. I hoped and begged God to ensure my report had something to do with his absence.

Disappointment morphed into depression. I rang his phone in anger, as expected he didn’t answer. When he finally returned my calls I believed I was returning the favor, and ignored his until he stopped calling.

I ate everything I previously avoided. Fitting into my Levi’s didn’t matter anymore, and I didn’t care for encouragement or company. I deleted the app and withdrew into a cocoon of despair, thinking, “I’m not pretty enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not this or that enough, I’m not enough of anything,” the phone rang again, and I finally broke it, catapulting it into the concrete living room wall where it’s hard plastic and touch screen shattered, the way I saw any hope of finding love.

 I reclined on the sofa and fell asleep there. A knock on the door woke me in the morning, a very persistent knocking.

“Leave me alone! Whoever you are,” I shouted and rolled on my side, prepared to call the police if I needed to. To my astonishment the man at the door identified himself as a federal agent, Special Agent Roger McDonald. At first I apprehensively replied, “Agent McDonald, both you, and Eric, know I have rights. This is harassment and I might add the word ‘sexual’ if it persists. Leave me the hell alone!”

His persistent knocking subsided, and he stayed quiet for a moment, rethinking, I believed, his reason for being there in the first place, until I heard his muffled voice beyond the door again, “Ms Blair, Eric is not a police officer, but I am here to talk to you about him, and it is important that I do. Please, this is urgent,” he said, after a pause he recited his badge and ID number and asked me to write it down if I felt uncomfortable. I wrote them down and tentatively approached the door, cracking it open, slowly pulling it back and checking him from head to toe. Agent McDonald seemed to be genuinely concerned.

“Ms Blair, did you meet Eric online?” he asked.

“Yes, I did. What did he tell you?” I asked, furious that Eric might have tried to turn the tables on me with my complaint about him on the app, but this was more than tit for tat. Agent McDonald stepped inside uninvited and quickly looked around the apartment before asking, “Did you let him inside your apartment?”

“No sir. Maybe I would have invited him in for a drink if I wasn’t stood up at a Café on what should have been our second date. Is there anything else you’d like to know besides that he is a despicable human being?” I asked.

“Before I answer you I’m going to ask you to have a seat and turn your television on to the local news channel,” he said, and he even sat beside me.

When I turned on the television and saw Eric’s face on a mug shot I died. Numb and shivering inside my warm apartment trying to catch my breath, the only warmth I experienced came from Agent McDonald’s hand on my shoulder, “This is not going to be easy to listen to. Turn the volume up,” he said, after which I listened in fearful anticipation.

The male reporter’s haunting voice rang in my ears for almost a month thereafter, Egerton Whiles was Eric’s real name, and he was charged with five counts of capital murder in five different States, all his alleged victims were female, and, by all accounts, he met all of them online!

I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t move, my eyes were wet with tears and those tears eventually ran out unchecked. Agent McDonald’s stern voice didn’t help my emotional state either, “We found him because you reported him on a dating app. We were looking, and even came up with the sketch of a clean-shaved Caucasian male until he vanished behind a myriad of profiles on the internet. You are the only person who reported him. That’s how Eric popped up on our radar,” he said.

Eric, he said his name was Eric and that he worked in law enforcement.

THE END

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