The Sweet Dreams of Rudy Tushane, Part One

Rudy Tushane is a 54-year-old janitor who just got laid off from the suburban elementary school where he'd worked for the past 23 years. Tall, lanky, gray-haired with a scraggy beard and angular facial features, he lives alone in the suburbs. Temporarily employed in the shipping and receiving department of Menards, he harbors a secret passion for baking and cupcake decorating.

Over the course of the past 25 years (when his first and only wife Mandy Loo divorced him after only six months of marriage, citing his unwillingness to reconcile differences as the grounds, but that's a story for another time), Rudy has devoted the majority of his free time to perfecting his recipe for Better Off Without Loo Cupcakes. A flavor explosion of chocolate and raspberry with just a hint, a mere suggestion, of heat, the recipe is the chef-d'oeuvre of his bachelorhood. Or, as he put it in his diary one triumphant night, the "best darn cupcake since Jesus' time."

Now, finally ready to unveil his masterpiece to the world, he's entered the third annual Cupcakes of Steel Bake-Off, an Iron Chef-style competition held every year in Columbus. The winner gets a guest spot on Up and Adam, the city's morning news show, broadcast across the state, including Beansworth, where his ex-wife lives. Vindication would be the word to describe what Rudy is imagining when he visualizes himself winning the competition. What he actually thinks to himself is something more along the lines of "That'll teach her, walkin' out on the best thing that ever happened to her, just cause I didn't wanna share my bed for sleepin. Man's gotta right to his own sleepin quarters, after all. Psshh. But she'll see her mistake soon enough, yessir...."

To be continued.