The Fussy Virgin
McGarvey Black
Copyright © 2021 McGarvey Black
The right of McGarvey Black to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Print ISBN 978-1-913942-22-9
Contents
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Also by McGarvey Black
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Acknowledgements
Book Club Questions:
A note from the publisher
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This book is dedicated to my soulmate and husband, Peter Black.
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible — Nora Ephron
1
Valentine’s Day Eve - February 13, 2017
Nervously twirling a strand of her shoulder-length golden hair, Caledonia Swan read a short story to a new writing group, unaware she would meet her soulmate before the day was over.
Sitting around her in a circle, nine stone-faced authors listened intently to the twenty-nine-year-old newcomer. As a form of self-preservation, Callie had devised a little test to determine the sincerity of a group, having tried several other groups whose members had demonstrated a level of competitive meanness. When Callie finished, she held her breath and waited for their comments.
The leader of the group started by giving his blunt, unvarnished opinion of the piece Callie had just read. His comments contained nothing positive or constructive. With a fake smile plastered on her face, Callie bit the inside of her cheek.
Other remarks were mixed, but leaned toward negative. For fifteen minutes, the band of would-be authors who met every Friday morning in the basement of a Catholic church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, illuminated Callie on what was wrong with her writing. With each stinging review hurled at her like a lacrosse lob, Callie’s body temperature rose and her back stiffened. “Anyone else?” she asked, smile frozen on her face.
“Writing is hard work,” said the leader, nodding patronizingly.
“I know that,” said Callie maintaining a smile while stuffing papers into a tattered red Museum of Modern Art tote bag. She took several steps towards the exit before she turned around to address the small crowd. “By the way, that story I just read—the one you all trashed—it was written by Ernest Hemingway.”
Without making eye contact, Callie walked dramatically through the open metal fire door and pulled it closed quickly so it made a loud vibrating sound. The room remained silent for several moments as the literary dust settled.
“That was Hemingway?” said a red-headed woman named Corrine. “What the hell?”
“We just slammed one of America’s greatest authors?” said the leader, visibly embarrassed, frantically googling Hemingway.
“Not everything Hemingway wrote was so great,” said Corrine with a smirk. “Have you read For Whom the Bell Tolls—IMO, a snooze fest.”
A collective groan sounded throughout the room.
“Shut up, Corrine,” said the leader shaking his head.
Outside in the hallway, adrenaline pumped through Callie’s veins as she leaned against the gray cinderblock wall. Taking a deep breath, she wondered if she would ever find a group of simpatico writers who met her standards and were also nice. She climbed the stairs to the street and checked her phone for the time. It was almost two o’clock. Damn, I’m going to be late again, she thought, as she bolted out of the doorway and down frigid East Third Street.
2
Her phone vibrated—it was a text from her best friend and “work wife” Jess.
Where are you? Cranklepuss George is on the warpath again.
With only fifteen minutes left to get to work on time, Callie picked up her pace, taking long strides, alternating walking with running, and artfully dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk. Only last week, her boss George Lewis had called her into his office and talked to her about being “chronically late.”
“It’s bad for morale, Caledoni-aah,” George had said. He affected a quasi-British accent even though he had been born in New Jersey. The only person besides her grandmother who called her Caledonia, George was either a well-preserved sixty-two or a thirty-five-year-old who time had been woefully unkind to. Painfully thin with thick black utilitarian glasses and a receding hairline, George favore
d a regular work outfit that always included a bold multi-colored cardigan sweater. With an annoying habit of clearing his throat when he wanted to get your attention or to signal that you should get back to work, George was not an employee fan-favorite at Ariom Marketing Research.
The staff didn’t hate him, they just didn’t get him—at all. He rarely talked about anything besides the telemarketing projects he was in charge of. He was all business and the only time he’d half-smile was when a polling or telemarketing project finished ahead of schedule. He took no pleasure in a sunny day, a corned beef sandwich or a puppy. Shifts at Ariom Marketing ran from 8am EST until midnight to include the time differences in Hawaii and Alaska. Since George was always there no matter what the shift, most of the employees speculated that he lived in the walk-in supply closet in one of the back rooms of the office.
“You do a good job, Caledoni-aah,” George had continued as Callie squirmed in her seat. “You complete more surveys than any other person in the marketing group, which at the end of the day, makes me look good. Your materials are the most comprehensive and your reports are usually singled out by our clients as being the most insightful. That, too, makes me look good. But you still have to get here on time.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Because you do good work, it doesn’t mean you get a different set of rules. Is that clear?”
Everything George had said that day was true. She did get profoundly more comprehensive research than most of her co-workers. So, I’m occasionally twenty minutes late? All my work is complete and it’s always perfect. Still, she needed the job, at least until her writing career took off. The previous year, she had made only a thousand dollars from her writing and even less the year before. She needed her day job as a telemarketer so she sprinted towards the subway entrance.
“Grand Central Station,” said a garbled voice on the subway car loudspeaker as crowds pushed their way in and out of the open doors. With only five minutes to spare before she was officially late, Callie bolted off the train and took the subway stairs two steps at a time. She looked at her phone again. If the elevators didn’t mess her up, she’d make it to her desk on time. Racing diagonally through the cavernous and crowded main hall of Grand Central Station, dodging and weaving around flustered commuters, she picked up speed. People in heavy coats, hats and scarves were already heading out of town for the Valentine’s Day weekend.
Noting the time on the big clock in the center of the terminal, she broke into an Olympic-esque run and soon darted up the steps of the iconic art deco Graybar Building. Fidgeting anxiously for twenty seconds while waiting for the elevators, she was poised to jump on the first set of doors that parted. With only two minutes left to spare, the elevator bell rang, Callie jumped in and pushed the button for the tenth floor.
With only a minute remaining before being officially late and the recipient of George’s wrath possibly leading to her dismissal, Callie held her breath. When the doors opened on the tenth floor, she bounded off the elevator and pushed open the glass door of AMR. With fifteen seconds left, she waved at George on the other side of the large open room that contained fifty individual phone bank stations. He nodded and pointed to an imaginary watch on his wrist. Catching her breath, Callie pointed to her own imaginary watch and smiled. She gave George the thumbs up sign while she made her way across the open bullpen towards her cubicle. Still panting, she slid onto her chair, and within seconds unpacked her bag and put on her headset.
Next to her, a pretty young woman with long, curly black hair, dark brown eyes, fair skin and ruby red lips, leaned around the half-wall partition between them. Cuban-American Jessica Rivera, Callie’s best friend, was wearing a red sweater dress and her signature holiday headband with two wiggly sparkly red hearts sticking up like antennas.
“You look like a walking Valentine,” said Callie.
“I was going to buy headbands for the entire office but when I got to the dollar store, there was a picket line,” said Jess, “so I didn’t go in.”
“Why were they picketing?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t cross picket lines.”
“That makes no sense,” said Callie, pursing her lips.
“Does to me,” said Jess, making a face.
Callie let out an exasperated sigh.
“Sigh all you want, but this girl doesn’t cross the line.”
“Got it.”
“It’s a good thing you got here when you did,” whispered Jess. “George has been circling the bullpen every five minutes for the last half hour looking for you. He kept making his annoying throat clearing sound each time he walked by your chair. ‘Jessic-aah,’” Jess said, imitating George’s faux-British monotone, “do you know the whereabouts of Caledoni-aah?’”
Callie giggled as she unpacked her red MoMA tote.
“I told him you had a doctor’s appointment. He really needs to get a life,” said Jess.
“Thanks, Jess. I was at a writing group that ran long,” whispered Callie. “I didn’t get to read until the end.”
“And?”
“They trashed Hemingway,” said Callie, shaking her head.
“No way,” Jess said, laughing. “The last group destroyed Stephen King. And didn’t the one before that rip Toni Morrison to shreds?”
“And they call themselves writers,” Callie said dismissively. The automatic dialer on her console lit up. “I’d better focus on my calls if I’m going to get out of here on time tonight.”
“Don’t forget, drinks with the girls, eight thirty at O’Toole’s for our big GAL-entine’s Eve party. Tonight, you’ll finally get to meet the fabulous Henry,” said Jess as she handed Callie a heart headband and disappeared behind the partition to pick up her next call.
“Good afternoon,” said Jess using an extremely professional voice from behind her wall. “I’m calling from Ariom Marketing Research. We’re conducting a national opinion poll. Would you have a few minutes to…hello? Hello?”
Jess stuck her head around the partition and crossed her eyes for Callie’s benefit. “Another one bites the dust. I didn’t even get to my second sentence.”
Callie smiled in solidarity, straightened her headset and waved her friend away. She put on the sparkly heart headband and pulled out her packet of questions. AMR did telephone research and surveys for all sorts of organizations. One week she might be asking consumers how much they liked their toilet paper and the next, it could be questions about a congressional race in Arizona. She particularly enjoyed the political assignments because politics was her second passion, after writing. She had grown up in a liberal-leaning neighborhood with parents who were lifelong registered Democrats, until her father made the unholy choice of switching parties and becoming a Republican after the Bill Clinton impeachment fiasco. Callie had some very definite opinions on politics. Her strong beliefs combined with the fact that she was a political news junkie proved to be a real asset when it came to asking the right probing questions in polling research.
This month, with a number of presidential candidates beginning to throw their hats into the ring for the national election twenty-one months ahead, AMR had scored a big year-long political research contract. Until the big national election, Callie’s group would be calling consumers to get a beat on the political pulse of America. Political accounts were her favorite clients because of the subject matter and because she had the opportunity to make a bonus each week. If she picked up forty calls per hour and got two fully executed twenty-minute surveys each hour, she’d make an extra fifty bucks. Most people who agreed to take the survey, would bail out midway through when it became obvious it wasn’t as fun or interesting as they thought it would be—or if their favorite TV show was about to start, or if their frozen pizza in the toaster oven was ready. If she didn’t complete the questionnaire, she’d only get partial credit and it wasn’t counted in terms of a bonus. Getting someone to spend half an hour answering her client’s questions wasn’t easy, especially when ther
e wasn’t anything in it for them.
Callie was one of their best researchers, but even she fell short occasionally. Sometimes, she had to go through dozens of random calls before she’d get anyone to talk to her. After she explained the purpose of her call, people would often curse at her but most just hung up without a word.
Every now and then, she’d reach some bored or lonely individual with an axe to grind, or an older person who had no one to talk to and they’d agree to take the entire survey. Those were the people she was looking for, the chatty ones who had all the time in the world. Once in a while, they were so talkative, they didn’t want to hang up after the survey was finished. One old woman wanted to know if they could speak again another time. “I’ve really enjoyed our conversation,” she’d said. “It would be so nice to talk to you again. I hardly have any visitors and I don’t get out much.”