Murgatroyd
A Cinderella Story

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, called the Bronx, a little girl was born. The
mother ran off with the refrigerator repairman not long after the baby was born, but her only wish
before she left was that her daughter have a beautiful, important sounding name. Now, the mother
probably meant something like Genevieve or Aurora, but the father just named her Murgatroyd.
As she grew up, little Murgatroyd was known throughout the land for her sweet
temperament. This surprised everyone, considering her father was an evil, evil man. Come on,
only someone really evil would name their daughter Murgatroyd. And everyone expected her to
be evil too, with a name like Murgatroyd. But even though her father hated her, she continued
trying to show how much she loved him. She was always really grateful when he gave her the
table scraps, and was overjoyed the day he let her choose her own clothes from the neighborhood
dumpster. Now, a lot of people may think little Murgie was a fool, and maybe she was, but she
was really sweet.
Murgatroyd's father ran Leo's Pizza Parlor. His name wasn't Leo, it was Frankie, but her
father named it Leo's anyway. Frankie never let Murgatroyd go inside the dining area. He said her
fleas and grime might scare off customers. So he kept her locked in the kitchen, working for
hours making pizza after pizza. By the time Murgatroyd was seven, her pizzas had been the best
sellers for four years. And by the time she was seventeen, Leo's Pizza Parlor was the only place
anyone who was anyone got their pizzas.
Little Murgatroyd didn't only cook pizzas. She could cook any food you can name, even
stuff that's not pasta. Besides pizzas, though, her father only let her cook for him. He was a
greedy man, and he didn't want anyone else to taste her secret sauce.
The richest guy in the neighborhood was Vito Tortellini, who ran Guido's Fine Laundry.
There were three locations throughout the Bronx, so Vito got a lot of business. Vito's son was
named Louie, although everyone called him Tony. Tony was a lover of good food. In fact, he
often went to Leo's Pizza Parlor to get pizzas.
Now, for Tony's eighteenth birthday, Guido's Fine Laundry had a major wash-a-thon,
where everyone in the neighborhood got a voucher for one free load of laundry. Murgatroyd was
delighted to get her voucher. She thought how wonderful it would be if she could clean her
clothes. The cleanest she had ever seen them was when she first pulled them out of the dumpster.
Now they had about eight years worth of dirt and secret sauce all over them. She had to hide her
voucher from her father, though, so he wouldn't try to take it away.
The day of the wash-a-thon came, and everyone in the neighborhood stampeded the three
locations of Guido's Fine Laundry. Murgie was wearing some of her father's clothes, and was
carrying her own. In the tangle by the machines, Murgatroyd was sad to notice that favorite
shawl, the one that doubled as her apron whenever she was cooking, was missing. She had only
had it for four years, it was her newest piece of clothing. And to lose her favorite shawl, it made
her cry. Instead she thought, if I can't clean my shawl, none of my clothes will get clean! She ran
out of Guido's Fine Laundry, tears streaming down her face.
Tony was checking out his birthday celebration, spending time at all three locations. Just
as he was about to enter the last location, a girl came flying out the door and ran into him. He
caught a whiff of the food clinging to her, and did a double take, all two hundred and fifty pounds
of him. But before he could ask her name, she had run off. He bent over carefully and picked up
the shawl that had been on her shoe. It took a big sniff, and decided that he had to find out who
she was, this girl that cooked food with such a delectable aroma. He could tell that it was
spaghetti, but he had never smelled any spaghetti like that before. He rushed to his father, to tell
him about the girl, and his plan to find out who she was.
Vito announced that Guido's Fine Laundry would be sponsoring a spaghetti cook-off the
next Saturday, and whoever won would marry his son, Louie Tortellini. At first, everyone
wondered who Louie was, until Tony stood up, and everyone remembered that Louie was his real
name.
Anyway, all the single women in the neighborhood, ages 12-102, went home and got out
their family recipes. The Tortellinis were the richest family in the neighborhood, after all.
Murgatroyd managed to find out about the contest, and went to work making the perfect
spaghetti.
Saturday arrived, and hundreds of people filled the street where Vito had said the cook-off
would be held. Tony walked by table after table, stopping a couple of times to sample spaghetti.
But he could not find that one amazing aroma that had caught his attention just a few days before.
He couldn't, at least, until he reached Murgatroyd.
They were married that very day. After finding out how his little Murgie had been treated,
he sent a couple of his uncles to go practice baseball with Frankie's knees. Then he bought Leo's
Pizza Parlor, and changed it to Murgatroyd's Fine Foods, where Murgie cooked to her heart's,
and her husband's stomach's, content until the day she died.
The End.