Losing The Trifecta

Last spring female friend had moved to the Eternal City after the failure of her marriage in the southern hemisphere. Summer had been glorious in the shadow of the Coliseum and the attractive photographer found favor with cinematographers and fashion stylists of Rome. The wine was sweet and Stasia was fluent in Italian. The leggy brunette forgot the macho behavior of her husband and hoped to fall in love, but the summer began autumn without such luck. Even worse was that the only Italian men who hit on her were a guy cheating on his pregnant girlfriend, a sexually dysfunctional misogynist, and a stalker. A daunting trio and I commiserated with Stasia, who was saving her money for a move to Berlin, and wrote, "Men the world around are dogs. When I was living in new York, women would ask, "Do you have any nice men to meet?" I thought about it for a while and said, "No." The only nice ones were married or attached and they needed no temptation to be bad. It's in their nature. Sorry, there are no saints, only Satan's little helpers." Stasia had sadly arrived at the same conclusion, but also added that at least dogs were loyal. I suggested that all things considered the sexually dysfunctional misogynist sounds promising, but she said he was ugly as a frog and no amount of kissing would transform the misogynist into a man. It goes without saying that Stasia was attracted to the unfaithful Italian's looks, but the idea of sleeping with a philander was too reminiscent of her abandoned husband. A friend said that Stasia had scored a hat trick. Despite having resided in Boston for many years, she hadn't understood the 'hat trick' reference and I explained that in the last century whenever a hockey player scored three goals in a game, the fans would toss their hats onto the ice to honor the feat. I saw Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita both score hat tricks against the Bruins on January 31, 1963. My father threw his hat from the stands into the rink. My brother and I almost added ours, except my father said that our mother would give us hell. He had been faithful to my mother every day of their lives together and beyond. Maybe the better allegory for Stasia would have been losing the Trifecta at the track. I can only wish her better luck next time, because there always is a next time.