She tossed the Mrs. Dash bottle into the trash, then took all the bags of Rudy’s things she’d collected and threw them down the chute in the hall. She’d wait until morning and call Patsy to find out what herb it was she was supposed to burn.
And that would be it for Rudy, she thought, getting back into bed. She’d been through this before. Five times in the last six years, as Phan had pointed out. She knew it would hurt for a few days or so, and she’d feel sorry for herself for a few days longer. Then she’d move on. These hadn’t been huge losses in her life. They had left her lonely, and blue, and with the sense that maybe she was going through all this for what had been not such a great relationship, to start with. Already, she was feeling she was over Rudy. She wasn’t longing for him. For someone, yes, but if she was being honest, she couldn’t say that it was Rudyness that she wanted, that she missed. McKay was probably having a harder time tonight without Dolly than she was without Rudy.
Somehow, that wasn’t as comforting a thought as it should have been.
“OH, YOU TOLD HIM RIGHT FUCKING OFF, DIDN’T YOU?” her sister Patsy yelped into the phone, later that morning. “Tell me you told him right fucking off!”
“Sure, I told him right fucking off,” Pru said. “You know me. Just try and stop me from telling people right fucking off.”
“God, it’s like an alternative universe,” Patsy said. “Rudy breaking up with you. I just never would have imagined it, in a million years. He was weak, Pru,” she concluded. “Beware of the weak. They’ll throw you overboard first, if you know what I mean.”
Pru crawled into the window seat where she could look out onto Columbia Road. The neighborhood was just getting moving. One of the Manoushian brothers was opening the Manoushian Brothers carpet shop across the street. And today was the day they set up the farmer’s market in the bank’s parking lot. Soon the street would be crowded with people, shopping. With couples, shopping. She and Rudy used to be among those couples, vetting vegetables for Saturday-night dinner, holding hands loosely as they moved through the stalls.
“What’s going on with you guys? How’s my baby girl?”
Patsy ignored her. “They hate it when your chi dominates theirs. It was bound to happen. You have to find someone who has chi equal to yours. Rudy’s chi was for shit.”
“I’ll have to start asking if I can see a guy’s chi before going out with him.”
Pru had waited to call until her mother’s Saturday-morning Senior Scrabble, but now she could hear her voice in the background, saying anxiously, “Rudy? What about Rudy?” Patsy had her own house, just down the street from the house where they’d grown up, and where Nadine still lived. But she was almost always there, anyway, doing her laundry and, Pru suspected, mooching whatever she could.
“That pig,” Patsy continued, ignoring Nadine. “I can’t believe he took you to a movie first.”
“You would have laughed. It was hilarious.”
That’s what she’d decided to tell everyone: It was hilarious! The whole thing was just a big, comical spoof. With her family, it was always the best tack to take. There was no sense in getting everyone riled up. Patsy and Nadine were ready to be riled up at the drop of a hat, when it came to such things. Her father used to help keep a lid on their extremism, with a dry comment or two. Best to downplay things. Otherwise, she’d be hearing about Rudy Fisch when she was sixty.
“What do you mean, hilarious?” Patsy said. “Yes, Mom, Rudy broke up with Pru.”
“Oh, come on, don’t get her all worried,” Pru said. “Tell her it was no big deal. Tell her it was funny. What’s she doing there, anyway?”
“She won early and decided to come home. She opened with ‘quartz’ on a double-word. And what do you mean, no big deal?” Patsy demanded. “I thought old Rudy was going to be my brother-in-law. I even started watching The Simpsons so I’d have something to talk to him about.”
“Oh, Lord, no,” Pru said. “I was the sous-chef on this one. I just got him ready for someone else.”
“Come on. You don’t have to be such a tough girl, for me.”
“Okay, well, maybe I was sort of keeping him in my back pocket.”
“In your back pocket,” Patsy snorted. “A person isn’t a comb, you know.”
“No,” Pru agreed. “You’d get more use out of a comb.”
Luckily, Patsy laughed at that, and Pru was able to move the conversation along to their upcoming visit. Once or twice a year, Patsy came without Annali, to shop and carouse and do the museums. Pru always enjoyed these visits, although by the end of the weekend, she was ready to see her sister leave. Somehow, when she stayed in Pru’s apartment, Patsy seemed to take up a space many, many times her actual size.
THEY WERE IN THEIR CUSTOMARY PLACES, PRU ON THE couch next to McKay, Bill in his enormous, soft reading chair. She was telling them the same thing she’d told Patsy. They were drinking something Bill made called the Billtini, and passing around a package of Rainbow Chips Deluxe.
“Rudy,” Pru said, widening her eyes. “Good riddance, huh?”
Bill and McKay exchanged looks. Rather, they very purposefully didn’t exchange looks, which was actually more pointed than exchanging looks.
“Okay, what?” Pru said.
McKay put down the remote. “I hate to say it, honey, but you had that coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“Rudy was a sinking ship and he was only going to take you down with him.”
“Come on, that’s not fair. I was giving Rudy a chance.
