E-Mail Tale Has New Dimension: It’S Three-Sided

When we last left Rollie and Melie, the two Internet lovebirds were sizzling the e-waves with their burnin’ churnin’ chat.

Three months and two noncomputer screen encounters have scrolled by since then. A new character has entered the drama, a Spokane dance instructor with a lot more than the lambada on his mind.

All the above has created a new episode in this cyberspace soap opera. But before we get to today’s installment, let us recap our saga: Roland Hill, 41, is the pickup-driving Canadian firefighter who has carved out a chunk of the slow life in the wooded lands near Trail, British Columbia.

Melida Viera, 40, is a politically connected Cuban American lawyer who sails the high-pressure seas of Miami.

Though galaxies far, far apart, the two met by chance while surfing the World Wide Web. Rollie and Melie felt more attraction than electromagnets in an angle iron factory.

They were tighter than Elvis in a jumpsuit, writing and calling each other a dozen times a day. Telephone bills shot into the stratosphere. They didn’t care.

Rollie had found the “beautiful lady” of his dreams. Melie talked about dumping the ol’ law practice and moving to Spokane to be near her he-man.

It was love at first byte, right?

Well, stay tuned for the latest from Melie, who spent the week after Christmas visiting Rollie in Oh, Canada:

She complains that he doesn’t work as hard as he could, doesn’t go to many movies, and doesn’t have a book in his house. “He took me to a party and his friends were much more interesting than he is….”

Melie says she expected more “Northern Exposure,” but found the Northwest equivalent of “blue collar.”

Ouch! And now a few collected musings from a rather glum-sounding Rollie:

“We’re not seeing each other anymore. It’s just one of those things. Until you’re together, you never have that reality. I’m not surprised. I don’t know if I can ever see her again. She wasn’t comfortable here….”

Rollie says Melie doesn’t understand the life of a shift worker, being on four days and off four days. “She almost called me lazy,” he adds sourly.

Could it be this vast Internet dating pool is really a perilous, shark-ridden lagoon where only fools dare rush in?

Tell it to Glenn Braunstein.

“You don’t find women like her around here,” he says. “This is intense.”

The 40-something Spokane dance instructor has fallen under the Melie spell. And like poor Rollie, this man owes it all to the computer.

Melie started e-mailing Glenn - let’s call him Glennie to stay in synch - when his name came up under her search of higher education in Spokane.

Melie figured she might teach if she moved to Spokane and wanted to see what was available. Braunstein’s name came up as a dance instructor at Gonzaga University.

A dance lover at heart, she fired off a note. “She’s intriguing as hell,” says Glennie, a bachelor. “And what’s really wild, she can dance!”

That’s just what they did. On Dec. 26, a day before Rollie picked his sweetie up in Spokane, Melie and Glennie dipped the light fandango at his Avalon dance studio.

They moved to the merengue. He taught her to tango. The lambada was la-la-luscious.

So swell, in fact, that the two met for more dancing at the Havana’s Club (where else do you take a Cuban in Spokane?) a week later before Melie left town.

The dancer is now e-mailing the lawyer. He plans to fly to Miami heat over Valentine’s Day weekend. “There is an interest,” he claims, the hope oozing in his voice. “There’s maybe some possibilities.”

And so, will the latter-day Fred Astaire win the heart of his Latin Ginger? Will the Canuck take his fire ax to this light-footed interloper?

We pause from our romance with a final thought:

Turn back, you salsa-drunk idiots! But before you do, place your computers under the wheels of your cars and drive ahead slowly.