For Better or Cursed. Mary Leo

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      Cate looked into his sweet brown eyes and said, “Yes.”

      “This is bullshit,” he said.

      It was at that exact moment that the waitress tripped while walking by, nearly dropping her tray of drinks in his lap.

      “No, this is real. You’re the last in a long line,” Cate said. “I’m giving it up.”

      “What? You’re not going to date anymore?”

      “That’s absolutely right. I’m embracing celibacy. I hear it’s quite calming.”

      He stared at her for a long moment, then stood up, pulled some cash out of his pocket, slipped it under his plate and left.

      Cate let out a heavy sigh.

      THE NEXT MORNING Cate and her father, Ted, sat in their kitchen eating breakfast and reading the Chicago Sun Times. Ted ate soft-boiled eggs out of the shells, really-bad-for-you bacon, and vitaminless white toast, while Cate crunched on her completely-good-for-you bowl of organic Optimum power breakfast cereal with flaxseed, soy fiber, dried blueberries and 500 mg of OMEGA-3’s.

      They at least agreed on the coffee—Starbucks house blend, strong and black.

      “Will ya get a load of this?” Ted announced with a flourish, tossing part of the paper across the table.

      “What?” Cate asked as she picked up the sports section.

      “Look whose mug is on the front page,” he said while tightening the belt on his plaid robe. It was chilly in the large kitchen and her father not only wore a wool robe over flannel pajamas, but he liked to wear a white stocking cap on his balding head…to keep the heat in.

      Cate took the paper, and there, spread across three columns was Rudy Bellafini, lying prone in the snow, looking absolutely awful. Aside from the fact that his body was the shape of a pretzel, his hair was way too long—shaggy and over his eyes, with a little curly flip just under his right ear—Cate wondered if the slight mustache and almost beard was due to a lack of shaving or if he had done it on purpose, for that scruffy-Hollywood effect.

      She caught herself lingering over the picture a little too long. Cate purposely didn’t react. A reaction would send her father into some lecture on “the guy who jilted you,” and Cate didn’t want to get into it, especially after last night.

      “He never did like to get his hair cut,” she said as she tossed the paper back to her father.

      “That’s all you got to say?”

      “No. I’m sorry he’s hurt.” She took a big bite of her cereal. The crunching muffled her father’s voice, but unfortunately, she could still make out what he was saying.

      “He ain’t just hurt. It says there that some girl named Allison might’a pushed him off one of them ski chairs.”

      “What does that have to do with me?”

      “Because of him, you’re thirty years old with no husband.”

      “I’m twenty-nine and I don’t want a husband. I’ve got a good life just the way it is.”

      “You ain’t got such a good life. He’s got a good life. Winnin’ all them gold medals, and for what? Slidin’ down some bumpy hill. Who with a sane mind is gonna do that? Nobody, that’s who.”

      “Those bumpy hills are called moguls, and it’s an Olympic sport. You know that. You were glued to the TV every day during the games.”

      “Yeah, well it don’t look like no sport to me. Skiing down a mountain like Alberto Tomba does is a sport. He’s a champion. But them bumpy hills, that’s no sport. It’s just dumb.”

      She pushed herself up from the table. “No. This argument is dumb. I have to get to work. I’m booked all day.”

      But once her father started, there was no stopping him. “And what about them restaurants of his? He’s made a million bucks on them bad Italian restaurants. What have you got? Sore hands.”

      “I like what I do. I’m a great therapist. I make a good living.”

      Cate leaned on the table ready to go at it with her father.

      “Well, it ain’t right for a single woman to be rubbing on some guy’s hairy back all day. Only perverts and them weird sex people who like ropes and chains do that kind of stuff.”

      “Here we go!” She sat back down in her chair. “We’ve locked up all our ropes and chains. They leave marks.”

      “It wasn’t so bad when you was going to school and working out in California. I don’t know those people, but now that you got your own business right here in the neighborhood, I don’t like it. I gotta see these people every day.”

      “Then don’t go out.”

      “See what I mean? You don’t care about the shame I gotta live under. It ain’t right. You should be married to Rudy Bellafini and have a million bucks.”

      Cate grabbed her bowl and cup and put them in the sink. She hadn’t really let herself think about Rudy in years, and now he was back, like lint in her dryer. “I have to go to work,” she said, and kissed her father on the cheek.

      “And tell that sister of yours it’s time to get up. She does this every morning. Always late, that one.”

      Cate obeyed her father and knocked on Gina’s door, but that was all she would do. She wanted to get out of there quickly and had no time to coax her sleepy sister awake. Not this morning. Not with Rudy Bellafini on the front page of the sports section.

      As soon as Cate stepped out of the house, she walked straight to the newsstand on the next corner, bought her own copy of the paper and sat down on a cold, worn-out bench at the bus stop to read all about Rudy Bellafini, the man she never could shake. The man who had single-handedly cursed her entire adult love life. The putz.

      The story read like it should have been inside a tabloid rather than a reputable newspaper. The focus of the piece was Allison Devine, Rudy’s latest squeeze. According to insider sources, Allison had a temper that most of Hollywood tried to avoid. They listed her many outbursts: she had thrown a chair across a movie set; trashed several dressing rooms; assaulted an unnamed costar; and backed her BMW right into her last boyfriend’s Ferrari. The article went on to say it was highly unlikely that Rudy had fallen without some assistance from the “Shrew of Hollywood.”

      As if anybody cares!

      Cate threw the paper into the overflowing trashcan next to her and proceeded to walk to work. Part of her thought he deserved Allison Devine. She was perfect for him. Maybe they’d get married and live miserably ever after.

      She could only hope.

      But the other part of her wished he’d come back to Chicago, just once, so she could somehow expunge this curse thing and be done with Rudy Bellafini once and for all.

       2

      FORTUNATELY FOR RUDY nothing was СКАЧАТЬ