Hallie Rose

by Corey Mesler

"In a sense we deserve the person we need."
Alexander Theroux

"Unquenchable desire is finally given its rope: movement begins."
Joseph Campbell

Initially, she went out with him exactly once. This hurt. It would have been better, he told anyone who would listen, if she had never shown one bit of interest. A taste of honey is worse than none at all.

"Hallie Rose looked like the actress Heather Graham, if Heather Graham had copper hair instead of blond, if she were a college professor teaching the great unwashed the rudiments of English literature."

Actually, Dean had to admit to himself, she really had not shown one bit of interest. The "date" seemed to just be an excuse for her to do something on a weeknight when nothing else was going on. They went to a play and afterwards to a diner for dessert. Dean was sick to his stomach. Hallie was aloof, a practiced froideur, and at the end of the night turned a flower-petal cheek toward Dean's attempted buss.

Dean Kenton had worshipped Hallie Rose from afar for months. She was as beautiful as April-clouded skies. When she first came into the bookstore where Dean worked he was totally flummoxed, such was her personal magnetism. And she had been sweet to him, if only in a customer/clerk fashion. She had thanked him for his recommendation of a John Fowles novel.

Hallie Rose looked like the actress Heather Graham, if Heather Graham had copper hair instead of blond, if she were a college professor teaching the great unwashed the rudiments of English literature.

And Dean Kenton was, well, most women might admit "cute." But he was not handsome and he was wittier than he was good-looking. This is good and bad.

It turned out that they had a mutual friend, the wife of a teacher in the same department as Hallie Rose. This woman, Judy, had worked with Dean for a while at the bookstore. Dean thought it was a miracle that Judy knew this woman, this angel among men. He talked to Judy about her and just saying her name was a guilty pleasure.

"Yes, she's very pretty," Judy said in that way women have of talking about other women.

"He had barely spoken to her at all and a week after their date could not remember one word of what they had talked about. Presumably they had spoken to each other, Dean thought. Now it was dead history, like the Hottentots."

Screwing up the courage to ask her for a date took Dean weeks. She was out of his league—he knew this—but she was so attractive it outweighed all caution. Dean knew he should be fishing in other ponds but a man needs an unobtainable goddess, he reasoned, if reason isn't too much of a misnomer. And after the disastrous date Dean sunk into such a black funk that he not only vowed never to ask Hallie Rose for a repeat date but never to ask anyone. And Hallie Rose didn't make a return visit to the bookstore either. It was as if he had done something illegal. Did she like the John Fowles? He had forgotten to ask her on their evening out. He had barely spoken to her at all and a week after their date could not remember one word of what they had talked about. Presumably they had spoken to each other, Dean thought. Now it was dead history, like the Hottentots.

So, Dean went to work. He sold his Pipefitter Handbooks, his Leon Uris novels, his occasional John Barth or poetry book. And nights he watched TV, idiot show after idiot show. It didn't matter. His heart, as Flaubert had said, had been bricked over.

Occasionally, he thought about Hallie Rose but it was so painful he had to will himself to stop. Every time he thought of her—her flower-petal cheek, her perfectly round eyes, her gently curvaceous cruciform shape—he punished himself. He took to holding his left index finger over a candle flame. The pain did not prevent him from thinking about Hallie Rose. But it felt ceremonial, cleansing, ritualistic. He was satisfied with his self-induced penalization for drawing near the princess.

"You're too young to die," Dean's friend, Jack told him.

"Too late," Dean answered with only a hint of his former wry self.

"She's only one—"

Dean cut him off with a raised hand.

"Don't speak about her. She is all. She is everything. I don't deny I was foolish to think she could ever look my way but she is still the ultimate female. I have no doubts about this."

"Ok, Deano," Jack said. "What about Wendy Ward?"

"Ok."

"I mean, I think she'd go out with you."

"Yes, she might."

"Well ... "

"Not interested," Dean said.

"What are you going to do, Buddy? The priesthood doesn't seem a viable alternative."

"I am one of the damned. Hang up a sign above my cage: Bobo, The Unmateable Gorilla."

"Ha."

"Yes," Dean said. "Ha ha."

"What the hell happened to your finger?"

"And then he noticed something, something consequential, something corrupting like the small handprint-birthmark in the Hawthorne short story."

Months passed. Dean stuck to his guns; that is he kept to his promise of keeping them holstered. He was lonely, flesh-lonely. But he talked to Jack a lot and read a lot and those times when the sequestered life tormented him with its insistence on sexual appetite Dean resorted to age-old remedies. Post-orgasm he felt, if not better, then less frantic.

It was April, a Tuesday morning at the bookstore, his co-worker Fran was bitching about her girlfriend as always—she was lazy, uninspired, boring, cash-poor and she thought that there was a toilet paper fairy, in Fran's words—when Hallie Rose made her return visit. Outside, in the workaday world, the weather was as generous as an old uncle and had that special enchanted, unleashed feel to it, as if the atmosphere were made of purer stuff. In one very concrete way it was a time of extra-sadness for Dean: women were wearing less clothing, soft, ivory limbs were making their first yearly appearance, flesh was in the air. Women were performing an ages-old sacral dance.

And Hallie Rose was dressed in short shorts. At first glance Dean's heart turned over like an itchy dog. Fuck, he thought. Beside him Fran's voice droned on, oblivious to Dean's blanch.

"Hello," Hallie called across the store.

"Hi," Dean said. He tried to invest that single syllable with indifference but it was difficult.

Hallie Rose began browsing in the fiction section. Dean redirected his attention to the invoice in front of him. His vision swam; he couldn't make out the numerals on the page.

"You ok?" Fran asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Hm? Yes. Yes, sure," Dean managed.

Fran resumed her list of grievances.

He had to look. Dean could not help himself. Hallie Rose was as beautiful as a white star, he deliberated; he could look for the sheer pleasure of it. Besides, her back was turned; she was reaching for a Garrison Keillor novel.

Garrison Keillor, Dean thought. Shallow.

And then he noticed something, something consequential, something corrupting like the small handprint-birthmark in the Hawthorne short story.

Conclusion—»