As the Chamber turns

Keith was in love, and he thought she loved him, too.

He had caught her on the rebound from Joe, and he wasn't letting go. She'd moved in, temporarily, and everything seemed to be going fine.

But Keith knew there was always the threat. He sometimes saw the faraway look in her eyes, as if she were gazing toward the south, thinking about how things might have been.

She had left a wonderful relationship and a downtown home, with all the perks that entailed. It seemed idyllic, but finally something snapped and she couldn't take it anymore: the rent, the parking, the traffic.

Maybe Joe was a little distracted. He was a bit of a workaholic, and at night he watched a lot of baseball.

She left.

Keith tried to make it better, convince her that she had found a new home. He over-compensated, promised her everything: security, square footage, ample parking and easy access to the I-26/526 interchange. The finest barbecue in the Lowcountry.

He would give her anything.

But then this week her old flame walked back into her life. Joe made promises of penthouses and water views. He loved her, too. How could Keith compete with that? Joe has everything: mansions on the water, five-star restaurants, heck, even a big aquarium. Besides that, he's popular. Everybody loves Joe.

What could a regular guy like Keith offer her that Joe didn't have — aside from an old Civil War submarine.

She was conflicted, couldn't decide. Joe wasn't pressuring her, he said. Of course not, he was much too nice a guy to do that.

Still, Keith couldn't take it anymore, stormed out of the room, threatened to find somebody new.

The next day, after he calmed down, Keith applied pressure — he could not help himself. He said that he was "waiting for a response to the proposal I made." He was cordial, polite, but it was difficult. He had been so close to happiness, and now felt he was right back where they'd started.

She said she needed more time. Joe was willing to wait, she said, wasn't he?

He was, he admitted. He knew that he'd wait forever if he had to.

It seemed all his life he'd been competing with guys like Joe — well, let's be honest, Joe. In recent years, he'd won a few, chipped into Joe's empire. He had gotten the coliseum, the Performing Arts Center, the convention center, the flashiest movie theater in the hemisphere, and the promise, someday, of something called Noisette. Whatever that is.

Joe wasn't invincible, he'd found — just very, very good. Maybe it was that knowledge that ate at him, the truth behind all this emotion, the thing driving this soap opera.

Did it really matter who she was with as long as she was happy? Did he really want her that bad — or did he just not want Joe to have her?

It seemed he would have plenty of time to think about that one.