The Lovely Chocolate Mob - By Richard J. Bennett Page 0,14

deal with, also. Miss Planter said this was normal, and she was one smart cookie.

The next step was to figure out how to help people, and how to do this with good motives, and not just because it would make me “feel better,” although that may be reason enough.

Game Changer

I had arrived home after work, and was preparing supper-for-one in the kitchen. Eating healthy had become a concern, so I had read up on how to make something that was supposedly healthy taste good as well. Like I had told Miss Planter, I used to be able to eat anything, with no repercussions, but that had all changed. My clothes had become tighter in recent years, and now I’d sometimes get headaches after eating out, probably from too much salt. I wasn’t a diabetic, but did work with people who were, and saw how they had to handle their problems with diet, exercise, and medicine. I didn’t want that in my future. I also wanted to have a strong heart and healthy muscles, but working out seemed to be getting more and more strenuous. So it came down to concentrating on cooking, for now, as one means of keeping the health intact.

Anyhow, I was in the kitchen, trying to cook, and the telephone rang. I walked into the den where the hard-line phone was and picked it up. It turned out to be a blast from the past; it was Helen Ceraldi.

If you’ve ever been in love and lost what you had, then you know what it’s like to have your heart cut out with a rusty three-pronged fork. I had been stupid in love with Helen Ceraldi, a school beauty from both my high school and college years. She was as American as apple pie, mixed with a bit of Europe, which gave mystery to her persona and personality. A dark-haired beauty, a dark-haired Italian-American beauty, she spoke with a hint of the Italian accent. Tall, slender, smart, from a large family in the community, she became too much woman for the withdrawn-type former bookworm and now computer-literate social freak like me. What was she doing on the other end of my telephone line? Guess I needed to find out.

The heart jumped when I heard her voice; all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry anymore, and also, wasn’t she married to a medical doctor and living on the wealthy west side of Lovely?

“Hello, Helen; it’s good to hear you,” I forced myself to say. “How are you?” I guessed that was pretty safe territory; I couldn’t just come out and say, “Hello, wench. What the Sam Hill are you doing calling here, and how in living blazes did you drop me for a good-looking medical student with a bright future ahead of him a quarter-century ago? Yes, yes, I know a girl’s got to be practical, but do you know what that did to ME?”

Helen answered that she was working on a school reunion and would like to see me. She would like to see me? Lots of scenes went through my mind in the few seconds I had before I caved in and answered in the affirmative. Maybe I could have sent her a picture of myself on e-mail, then she’d be able to see me all she wanted; maybe we could do the “Skype” thing, talk face-to-face on the computer; would that have made her happy? What about her husband, her kids, her family? What would they think about me, an old thrown-aside boyfriend, being seen with her, the Italian-American beauty who’s probably still a beautiful beauty at the age of… 47 now? Yes, that’s right; she was three years younger than me. Did I owe her anything? I had to think quick, quick! Because she was on the phone and waiting for an answer, I didn’t want to be rude and have this door slammed shut in my face again for another 25 years!

“Yes, yes, Helen. I’ll meet with you. Where are you now?”

Now there’s a man of iron for you. Some girl practically leaves me at the mental altar and I manage to crawl back to her, through the mud, just to kiss her rear end when she finally decides to glance in my direction, perhaps just out of curiosity, or worse, pity. It doesn’t matter; I’d soon be seeing Helen. Hopefully she’d be fat, then I could laugh, but not to her face.

We decided to meet at a restaurant on the far north side