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 one. Rudy stared at her, trying to imagine what kind of insanity ran through this woman’s mind. When she opened her mouth to begin her next question, Rudy lost it. “Nurse,” he yelled. “Help! Nurse!”
The journalist-in-training got scared and stood up, turned on her heels and quickly walked out of the rehabilitation room, carrying the chart but leaving Rudy sprawled across the mat, entirely unable to move.
IT HAD BEEN a little over a week since Cate had seen Rudy’s picture in the paper, and so far she’d been unable to think of anything else. She blamed it on her new vow of celibacy. She was positive once she fell into the rhythm of this self-imposed, sex-depravation thing, all men would completely vanish from her thoughts, and she’d become as saintly as her aunt Flo, her mother’s fifty-eight-year-old, silver-haired sister.
“I heard Joey’s left nut blew up to the size of a melon,” Aunt Flo said while she lay on her stomach on a table at Cate’s Wellness Center.
Cate stopped the massage. “I’m not going to treat you if you keep this up.”
Cate had been working on Aunt Flo’s neck and shoulder every other day for the past month, but she still wasn’t getting any better. Cate didn’t know if the kink was real, or if Aunt Flo just wanted the attention. Cate was hoping for a little of both. She didn’t want to believe that all her hard work wasn’t helping.
“What?”
“Can we talk about something other than my love life?”
“Sure, doll. Anything you want.”
Cate continued with the massage. “How about the weather? That’s a neutral subject.”
“What’s to talk about? It’s winter. There’s not much conversation about ice and snow. And speaking of ice, at least you still got Henry O’Toole. He took care of Rocky pretty good. And come to think of it, you probably never would have met him if poor Rocky hadn’t croaked on your wedding day.”
“Rocky passed on, Aunt Flo. He didn’t croak.”
Cate speeded up her treatment. She wanted to get Aunt Flo out of there.
“You’re right, but them undertakers sure do make good money, and he’s Irish. The curse won’t take him. And even if Henry is old enough to be your father, sometimes that’s what a girl needs…another father.”
“Henry’s just a friend.”
“They were all your friends, but you didn’t love any of ’em but Rudy, that’s your problem.”
“My only problem is everybody telling me about Rudy Bellafini. He’s gone and out of my life, and that’s the way it is. Forever.”
“So, we won’t talk about him. Who is he, anyway? Just some boy who hurt my beautiful niece, that’s all. Just the boy who stood her up at the altar, like that devil Pinky did to me thirty years ago. And now you and me both gotta carry the curse.”
Cate refused to admit to anyone in her family that she actually believed in the curse. It just gave them more fuel.
“Rudy and I never made it to the altar. We set a date, that’s all. He never even gave me a ring.”
“I guess you’re right.” She paused for a moment, sighed and went on. “I mean, it don’t matter that your first fiancé was in a hospital for three weeks when he got run over by the flower truck on your wedding day. Or that your second fiancé, may he rest in peace, Rocky Dilantano, the prizefighter, collapsed right there in church while you was walking up the aisle on your dear father’s arm. It’s a good thing your sweet mother isn’t here to see all this, may she rest in peace, or she’d be worried sick, like me.”
“Rocky had a bad heart, and stop worrying. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
“You’re right. Nothing to do with our curse. But, still and all, it’s good to see that Rudy is getting what he deserves for jilting you.”
Cate stopped and looked at her aunt. “I didn’t get jilted.”
“What do you call it, then?”
“Over,” Cate said while gently tugging on Aunt Flo’s arm.
“Excuse me,” Gina Falco said as she leaned against the doorjamb of the private therapy room. Gina helped out at Cate’s Wellness Center three days a week while she worked on her degree in sports medicine. Gina took after their mom, tall, slim, dark blue eyes and silky red hair that touched her tiny waist. The only thing she and Cate had in common was their height, everything else was completely different. Cate’s eyes were amber, her hair short and brown with some blond highlights. She worked out a lot, so her figure was good, but she hated her big fat butt, and her too-small breasts, 34-B. And to top it all off, she had pulled out her first gray hair that very morning. Cate felt certain that soon she and Aunt Flo would look more like sisters rather than aunt and niece.
Cate turned to face Gina as she walked over and whispered in Cate’s ear, “Rudy Bellafini just limped into the front office.”
Cate pulled on Aunt Flo’s arm with such force that the poor woman let out a glass-shattering yell, “Eeyow!”
“Aunt Flo,
