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Part 1
BITTER HEARTS
an online short story: Part 1 of 4
"Sometimes love is cruel."
Shortly after noon on a Thursday, Celia Wallingford was sipping a glass of wine at the Blue Fox Café. She had selected a table for two in the far corner of the room—just as the Russian had instructed her in his email.
The Blue Fox was windowless, as dark as a cave even on a bright summer day. It was a high-class establishment where the waitresses wore black stockings with pleated skirts, crisply pressed white blouses, and little red bowties. A decorative, glass-enclosed candle burned at every table.
Although the bar was crowded at the beginning of the lunch hour, the other patrons paid Celia no attention. They were serious men and women clad in Armani, Albert Nipon, Brooks Brothers, and similar power attire—the uniforms of Chicago’s banking and corporate elite. Their lunches were working lunches.
Celia was able to spot Yuri as soon as he entered the room. The Russian was as finely dressed as any of the banking execs or corporate heavy hitters in the Blue Fox; but he carried himself differently. Yuri had the gait of a boxer approaching the ring. He betrayed himself as a man from the wrong side of the tracks, one who had somehow clawed his way up into respectable society. He was dressed for the Blue Fox; but he did not really fit in here.
What else do you expect a Russian gangster to look like? Celia thought. But then she corrected herself: Yuri is not a gangster. No—yes is he is. Or maybe he’s something in between.
For the time being, she decided to delay affixing any such labels to him. Yuri was simply a man whom she had summoned to help her with a problem.
Yuri looked to be in his mid-forties; he might have been five-ten or five-eleven. He was stocky but the sleeves of his suit jacket suggested muscles and a degree of physical condition. He wore his black hair in a crew cut. There were traces of gray around his temples.
“And you must be Miss Wallingford?” he said in heavily accented English. He sat down in the chair across from her. Celia had sent him a digital photo of herself by email—that was one of the requirements for a preliminary meeting—so he had no trouble recognizing her.
“I’m glad to meet you, Mr.—”
“Yuri will be fine.”
As she had expected, the Russian was insisting on secrecy. This confirmed to everything she had expected from the proprietor the Bitter Hearts Club. The organization was the subject of dark suggestions on certain internet forums and chat rooms. If you had been wronged in love, the Bitter Hearts Club could set things right, or so the rumors said. In fact, most of the online postings that Celia had found stated that the Bitter Hearts Club did not even exist; it was an urban legend, like the albino alligators that supposedly lived beneath the sewers of big cities like Chicago.
Celia had visited a hundred—perhaps two hundred—websites in search of contact information for the Bitter Hearts Club. Along the way, an innumerable number of people had dismissed her as a crank, or kindly tried to tell her that the Bitter Hearts Club was a total hoax. But Celia had persisted. Persistence had led her to this meeting with Yuri.
“Let us begin,” the Russian said. He removed a small notepad and pen from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and flipped it open on the surface of the table. “Celia Wallingford. Age thirty-three. Occupation: brand manager for a large consumer products manufacturer. You have contacted the Bitter Hearts Club because someone has wronged you. And you wish me to set things right.”
Celia held up her hand. “Yuri. One thing for starters. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. This isn’t about revenge. I’m not like that. You see… ”
Yuri raised his eyebrows. “Go on, Miss Wallingford.”
“I contacted you because I am in love. Sincerely in love.”
Yuri leaned back. With most clients, denial was a standard part of the game. They wanted to make use of Yuri’s methods; but they wanted to preserve the purity of their own motives in the process. It wasn’t enough that they be spared getting their hands dirty. They had to be spared any stains upon their precious self-images as well.
“Of course, Miss Wallingford. You are in love. But I need to know more if I am going to help you solve your problem.”
“And am I going to know anything more about you?” Celia asked. “This is all so—if you’ll pardon me—strange. The Bitter Hearts Club doesn’t even have website, after all. I have nothing but your email address.”
“What do you really need to know about me, Miss Wallingford?” Yuri smiled as he spoke. “As you have probably figured out by now, I am originally from Russia. And I now have the good fortune to be a businessman in this fine country of yours.”
This was the extent of the information that Yuri—whose full name was Yuri Popov—gave out to clients. If they really pushed, he might also tell them that he had grown up near Moscow and studied philosophy at a university in Russia. But there were plenty of secrets that Papov would never tell this Miss Wallingford—or any of his other clients.
For example, none of them would ever know that he had served with the KGB in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation years of the 1980s. And he would certainly not tell any of them that had once skinned a young Afghan woman alive in order to extract information from her husband. The husband had finally poured out everything he knew; but he was too late to save his wife’s life—or his own, for that matter.
No, these details could not possibly be germane to the problems of any of his clients.
“Alright,” Celia capitulated. “I just want you to understand that this is about love—not about hurting anyone.”
“I understand. But the reality is that love isn’t fair. Is it Ms. Wallingford? In fact, sometimes love is cruel. That is what I’m here to help you with. Now why don’t you tell all about your problem?”
No one needed to tell Celia Wallingford that love could be cruel. Not after the enormity of Sean’s betrayal.
Celia had been seeing Sean Bailey for nearly two years. Sean was everything (or well, almost everything) that she could want in a guy. The young investment banker was tall, good-looking, and on the fast track at one of the big investment banks located in Chicago. In recent months their relationship had seemed to be growing more serious. Celia was sure that Sean was going to pop the question any day now.
She had found herself living in a state of constant anticipation—giving in to schoolgirl daydreams even during the workday. In her mind’s eye, she saw the two of them getting married, and then honeymooning in Fiji or Hawaii. The rest of the tale unfolded in her mental vista as well: married life, a nice home in the suburbs, and then a couple of kids. In her most whimsical moments, she had even speculated on the children’s names.
Celia realized that she was jumping the gun, building up her expectations before Sean had actually made a commitment. But she honestly believed that things were headed in that direction. She just felt it. She could tell when he kissed her. This was the real thing. After enduring so many false starts, irresponsible jerks, and immature losers, she seemed to finally have found a solid guy who wanted her too. The fairy tale was on the verge of coming true.
Until five months ago, when Laurie Stinson came into the picture.
Laurie Stinson was an aerobics instructor at the downtown gym where Sean habitually worked out during his lunch hour. Celia had sensed that Sean was growing distant for several weeks. She prodded him about his mood change until he admitted that there was someone else. She continued to prod, and finally he poured out the details, like a Catholic schoolboy in the confessional. Devastated and furious, Celia had stormed out of Sean’s condominium in a rage.
She had not spoken to him since.
After the truth came out, Celia had taken a day of vacation from her job and trailed Laurie Stinson from her apartment to the fitness club where she was employed. The Stinson bitch was everything that she had anticipated: blonde, Barbie-doll thin, and beautiful. Sean’s new romantic interest seemed to have stepped out of one of those posters that adorn the walls of fraternity houses, locker rooms, and other temples of raw, unchecked male licentiousness. This was a pin-up chick come to life, a vacuous male fantasy in the flesh.
But this was apparently what Sean wanted—for the moment at least. And this was the realization that really hurt.
She tried to make an honest comparison between herself and Laurie, so as to figure out the source of Sean’s attraction. The other woman’s looks were the obvious factor. Celia was by no means fat—but her fast-track, high-paying job required late nights and occasional weekends in the office. That left her little time to work out. She looked good—damn good, most men would say—but she didn’t have the abs of an aerobics instructor. (And how many women did—unless they were aerobics instructors?)
But how could Sean dump her for another woman based on physical factors alone? What was wrong with men? Did they pay attention to anything but a woman’s body? Did they always think with their little heads?
And so Celia decided that she would save Sean from himself. She did not delude herself into thinking that she was motivated purely by altruism. Her own interests were at stake here as well, no question about it. But correcting this situation would be the right thing to do. She and Sean just fit together. They were meant to be. There was no way that Sean’s interest in this aerobics instructor could be anything but a fading remnant of his adolescent insensibilities. It could not be of any lasting substance. If she let Sean go down this path now, they would both regret it years later.
That decision had led her to a number of “advice for the lovelorn” forums on the internet. There she found out about the Bitter Hearts Club, and eventually she ferreted out the organization’s contact information.
And here she was with Yuri.
“Just so we are clear, Miss Wallingford. What you want me to do is take Laurie Stinson out of Sean’s life. Am I correct?”
“That’s right.”
“I can manage that for you.”
“But you won’t hurt her—right?”
Yuri flashed a wicked smile. “Do you want me to hurt her, Miss Wallingford?”
Celia put here hand to her chest. “Heavens, no. Nothing like that. I just want that little tramp—Laurie—out of the picture. If she were gone, I know that I would be able to patch things up with Sean. I don’t want her harmed, though. After all, this is more Sean’s fault than hers.”
“It does take two to tango, does it not”? Yuri agreed.
Celia laughed ruefully. “If only they were just tangoing.”
“As one of your country’s former leaders once said, ‘I feel your pain’, Miss Wallingford. I’ll need only about a week to make this right for you. Then Miss Stinson will be out of your life—and Sean’s life—forever.”
Celia sighed. “That would be wonderful. If things could just go back to the way they were six months ago. That’s all I want.”
“There is, however, one additional matter that we need to discuss. As much as I enjoy helping people solve their personal problems, my work does entail significant expenses. We need to discuss my fees before we more forward.”
“Very well,” Celia said. “How much is this going to cost me?”
Yuri reached across the table and lifted Celia’s wine glass. There were two napkins underneath the glass. Yuri removed the top one and wrote down a five-figure number. He slid the napkin back over to Celia.
“My God, that’s a lot of money.”
“I never said that my service was cheap, Miss. Wallingford. Do you want to continue, or do you want Sean to keep spending his nights with this Laurie Stinson?”
Celia ran a mental tabulation of the money in her various bank accounts. Yuri’s fee would put a major dent in her savings, but she would still have a comfortable reserve left over. And it would be more than worth the money if she could get Sean back.
“No, no. I’ll pay your fee, Mr.—Yuri. Just get Laurie Stinson away from Sean.”
“Miss Wallingford, their relationship is already over.”
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Copyright 2009 Edward Trimnell All rights reserved
