A Waltz Yes, a Heart No

By Barry Rachin

Following his divorce, Dr. Stanley Gilford, chief of cardiology at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, restructured his life on the guiding principle of maximum gain, minimum pain. So what is the well-heeled doctor doing with Ruby, a high school dropout and waitress at the local greasy spoon, and what are his options visa vie the pallid, five year old boy whose damaged heart beats in three-four time?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Rachin
• Release date: May 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458041432

Barry Rachin

About the AuthorBorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Barry Rachin spent several years stationed in Yokuska, Japan as a Navy medic caring for casualties during the Vietnam War. He has studied at the University of Jerusalem, lived on a kibbutz for a year and holds a degree in clinical counseling from Simmons College. A self-taught woodworker, he presently lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

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A Waltz Yes, a Heart No

by

Barry Rachin

Copyright © 2016 by Barry Rachin

This short story represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Heart Yes, a Waltz No

Dr. Stanley Gilford, chief cardiologist at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital, was not some mind-in-the-gutter degenerate. He never rented dirty movies - hadn’t bought a Playboy or Penthouse since his college days. More to the point, there were scads of desirable woman - nurses and technicians - who he saw daily at the hospital; he felt no compulsion to undress them with his eyes, to imagine lewd and lascivious trysts. And yet, here he was sitting at the counter of the Central Ave Diner in Pawtucket, Rhode Island indulging his sexual fantasies. In this latest installment, Ruby, the head waitress, was flitting about the restaurant dressed in black, see-through panties and tasseled pasties. The previous week she sported a dominatrix’s leather and chains. Since first coming to the Pawtucket diner six months earlier, he discovered that the erotic possibilities and permutations were endless. Still, it was not his fault. The waitress was a sorceress; she had put a hex on him.

The usual? Ruby eased Dr. Gilford’s mug across the counter, filling it with steaming, black coffee. Less than two feet away behind the counter, her hazel eyes never rose above his Adam’s apple, as though