What’sApp?

…Love. That feeling that we all wonder and dream about. Love is everything. Since the pandemic I dream about falling in love. In a recurrent dream, I tango with a short stocky man. I waltz with ghosts. I feel a yearning for romantic love. I watch the movie, The Notebook, over and over again. I also watch Gone With The Wind, and obsess if Rhett Butler ever goes back to Scarlett O’Hara.

Terrified of catching the virus, except for a morning walk, I stay home. I write, learn cooking on you tube, and paint. I paint a lot. I love to paint — -images from my dreams, abstract gardens and ladies wearing hats. As if the pandemic is shedding who I thought I was, I reflect a lot, searching my inner life and past for truths like a child searches for lost toys.

This morning it is a little past dawn. Since the pandemic, in anticipation of my new routine, teaching writing workshops on Zoom, learning technology, and trying to find new pathways to my dreams, I wake early. Drinking green tea with honey, I sit by the window, admiring the haze of daylight stretch slowly along the Victorians, the clouds changing shapes, the rosebushes in bloom. Nothing is as beautiful as San Francisco, like one of those carved ivory cities on the bottom of a glass ball you shake up. Upstairs, sounds of Mr. Wilson waking, his heavy footsteps, and the slam of a door, are strangely comforting in the midst of this alternate pandemic universe we’re living in.

As morning stretches along the sultry summer sky, I feel enchanted by nature — clouds changing shapes and the roses are in bloom. Across the street, a burst of sunlight shakes patterns along the billowing rows of trees. It is now full morning. I rinse my cup and dress. Even though I’m quarantine, I dress as if I’m somewhere in Paris: ankle-strap high-heels, black turtleneck, a black feather clipped to the side of my very long hair, a colorful scarf dangling over my shoulder.

In anticipation of email messages, I rush to the computer. There are tons of face book messages, friend requests, video requests. Not that I’m interested in reading about what people eat, looking at pictures of their kids, cats, but face book is a place where I can rant against President Trump and protest the injustice of our administration. A way of communicating with the outside world, saying what I want the way I want.

I read a message from Prince Mugabooboo in Nairobi. He requests a video chat. Abdul Ninni invites me to Dubai. I scroll down, stop at a message from Joshua Johnson. “How are you,” he asks. He’s wearing surgical blue scrubs, a mask dangling from his neck. He has a face like you’ve never seen: intense, intelligent, a head of silver hair waving close to his perfect shaped head. Even in the small photograph you can see his blue emotional eyes. Definitely younger? On his bio page I read that he’s an orthopedic surgeon and lives in New York. I reply that I’m fine, and add that I live in San Francisco and that I admire the work he does. The world needs you, I write. Humbly, he replies, Thank you very much.

The following weeks, we exchange messages. Because of his surgery schedule, and the time difference between our cities, he replies a day later. As the Covid rises, and there are more deaths, every day, moving vans park along Broadway, helping families make their exodus.

Today, it’s breezy and I’m glad the sun has disappeared, and you can smell the fog. It is afternoon and I’m at the computer writing, when I decide to check my e-mails. My heart leaps. There’s a message from the handsome doctor. I read: “Are you married?” I reply: “No. I’m a widow. Marriage is not for me. PS. You’re very handsome.”

Days pass. I study his pictures. Always I was hooked on emotionally unavailable men and this one exacerbates my neurosis. Or is this love? He resumes his messages and always a day after in the middle of the night. When I suggest that I’m “much older,” than he is” he writes back that age has nothing to do with a “deep connection. Let’s see where this takes us.” Defensively, I write: “Only the moment counts. There’s nowhere to go.” He writes: “Connection is everything. I lost my wife and my beautiful daughter in a terrible accident.”

I’ve been hit. Tears come to my eyes and oh I want to reach through the screen and hold him, comfort him, and I’m burning with love. “If you ever want to talk, I’m here. I write my text number. Feel free to contact me.”

I wait.

And I wait.

Wait.

I break down and write that I miss his messages . “Any time you want to talk,” I write. I google his name and read that he’s a surgeon and that he lost a family in a car accident but it says he lost a brother. Is there more that I don’t know? I find myself obsessed. Burying myself in my writing routine, teaching writing workshops on zoom, and painting, I continue my daily routine, but so far still no message from the handsome doctor. I’m walking around like I’ve had a divorce. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. Then one day, there’s a message: “May I call you on WhatsApp?”

My heart sinks. What’sApp is a way of not tracing his call. I’m suspicious. Why not just pick up the phone or face time? And why would a successful doctor in the country need to call me on WhatsApp? I google WhatsApp and it is used by criminals. I confide to my friend Moo Moo about the saga. She goes on Joshua’s face book page. “Anyone would fall in love with that face,” she says. “But it’s a fake.”

“Like one of those stock images?” I ask.

“Attached to a surgeon’s body,” she agrees. “Someone sitting in some country with a goat and a laptop, adapted someone’s life and composed this image from stock this hunk.

I write Joshua: ‘’I don’t use What’sApp? I use face time or the phone. I’m not interested in being scammed. Whatever country you’re in, stay safe.”

I never heard from him again.

BarbaraRoseBrooker/author/latest novel Love, Sometimes/Post Hill Press/SimonSchuster/ available in all bookstores and on line. A journalist, teacher , activist, she is working on The Corona Diaries, stories and essays about the pandemic. www.barbararosebrooker.com