For Better or Cursed. Mary Leo

      “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 actually broken, but the two-hundred-pound amazon therapist who currently pulled on his very sore legs only made matters worse. He had been in therapy for almost a week. Granted, he was older now, thirty-one, and it took longer for him to heal. His knees were shot, so he didn’t expect much healing to go on there, but she really didn’t know what she was doing.

      “Dude, this is crazy. Do we really have to do this now?” Rudy asked in between bouts of shooting pain. He was on the floor lying across a very thin mat.

      “It’s good for the spine,” she said, smiling at his agony.

      “I’ve got a great spine. A perfect spine. It’s my hip that’s hurting.”

      “That’s why I’m pulling on your leg.”

      “But it’s my other hip.”

      “Oh,” she said, and dropped his leg, then picked up the other one. The heel of his foot hit the mat with such force that it took all that was in him not to howl in pain.

      “Look,” he said trying to yank his leg away. “Could we do this some other time, like when you’re at home and somebody else with more experience is on duty? I’m too tired for all this pulling and hurting right now.”

      “Nope. We have to do it now. Can’t let that hip lock up. I’ve got a whole routine planned for you. Once I finish with your leg, I move up to your neck.”

      “Look,” he glanced at her name tag, “Linda. You seem like a nice enough girl, a little rough around the edges maybe, and it could be, a lot unprepared, but, hey, there’s a whole group of guys who like rough, incompetent girls. Gives them a mission in life. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Let’s get this straight. There’s nothing wrong with my neck. It’s my shoulder.”

      She stopped pulling and looked at the clipboard she had carried in. “That’s not what it says on my chart.”

      “Well, your chart’s wrong.”

      She flushed, then looked from left to right. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bellafini, but I’m not really a therapist. I work in the front lobby, but when I heard you were recovering here, I thought I could get the real story on how you fell off that lift. I mean, like, I don’t want to be a receptionist forever. I’m studying to be a journalist. I go to night school. You’re this week’s assignment. So, tell me, Mr. Bellafini, did your girlfriend really push you off that lift?”

      “No. It was an accident.” But he wasn’t so sure about that himself. Rudy tried to remain calm, tried to move away from her and ring for a nurse, but the red emergency alarm was in the middle of the wall, well out of his reach. “All I want is some rest. Can’t a guy get some rest?”

      “Sure, if you’ll just answer a few of my questions. I’m your biggest fan. I was rooting for you when you won your first gold medal. By the way, when you hang all three medals around your neck, are they heavy?”

      “Where’s the nurse? Who let you in here?”

      “Mr. Bellafini, please don’t get upset. Just one little question.” The woman straightened up, cleared her throat and said, “Is it true that you were caught messing around with some other Hollywood actress and that’s why your girlfriend, Allison Devine, pushed you off the lift?”

      She smiled at him and waited for her answer, as if he would actually give her