by Alexa Land
Christopher Robin had done them justice. He’d blown up the black and white photos into huge four foot by six foot canvases and framed them with minimalistic black frames. Each was highlighted by a carefully positioned spotlight, which hung from an industrial framework ten or twelve feet overhead. “They’re so beautiful,” I murmured as I approached the display. Modern black lettering spelled out ‘Chance Matthews’ on the top, center of the wall, above a horizontal photograph of a partially demolished building. Part of a mural remained on its crumbling brick façade, hands reaching out of the rubble.
We did a lap around the wall, admiring the photos on both sides. I felt we’d chosen well, and judging by the buzz all around us, people liked what they saw. We returned to our spot in front of Chance’s name, and as I took it all in, a voice behind me said, “I should be so mad at you.”
I turned to look at Chance. He looked handsome in a dark blue suit, and a simple black mask had been pushed to the top of his head. When I saw tears in his eyes, my heart sank. I was surprised when he pulled me into his arms, and I blurted, “I’m so sorry. I know I should have asked. But I believe in you so much, Chance! Your photos are gorgeous and brilliant, and I wanted to share them with the world.”
He pulled back to look at me, and when he smiled and I realized they were happy tears, relief flooded me. “Christopher gave me a heads-up this morning and let me come look at what you guys had done before this place filled with people. It was terrifying at first, but I spent all day thinking about it, and I know this is actually a good thing. I always wanted to get up the courage to show my work, and now, well, it’s a done deal. I wish you’d asked, but then again I would have just said no because I was so afraid of failing at this.”
“You can’t fail. Your work is too good.”
Chance grinned a little. “Christopher says he now insists on selling my work in his gallery and won’t take no for an answer. He’s had more than a dozen people approach him about buying my photos. One of those people is the arts editor for a national magazine.”
“I’m so glad something good came out of me being a total asshole and going behind your back.”
He kissed my cheek and said, “You’re not an asshole. Never do that again, okay? But this one time, it’s kind of awesome. Thank you for believing in me enough to go through all this trouble.”
We chatted a while longer, and when he went off to join his family, I exhaled slowly and told Zachary, “Thank God he’s still speaking to me.”
“You just launched his career. Look at that.” Zachary gestured to a cameraman for a local news station, who was filming Chance’s photographs. “He’ll end up with a ton of exposure from tonight, and the ripple effect is going to go way beyond finally selling his work at Christopher’s gallery.”
“That goes for all the artists in the show, including Ignacio and Skye. Christopher Robin has done an amazing thing here.”
My friend and I continued to make our way down the long warehouse, stopping to enjoy some colorful mixed-media canvases by an artist who went only by Carina before reaching the edge of the dance floor. It was crowded with couples, both gay and straight, families with kids, seniors, and everyone in between. The band was playing a rollicking big band number, and some people were swing dancing, while others just did their own thing to the music. It all just made me happy.
I turned to Zachary and asked, “Do you want to dance?”
Even behind the mask and the cascade of hair, I could tell he was giving me a look. “Have you met me?” he said with a self-conscious grin.
“Come on,” I cajoled, stepping onto the dance floor, flinging my arms over my head and busting out some wild, exaggerated dance moves. “Dance with me, Zachary! Don’t leave me hanging!”
He burst out laughing and turned red as he exclaimed, “Oh my God, stop!”
I twerked wildly and called, “Only if you dance with me!”
Just then, Nana and Ollie found me in the crowd, and they both started twerking right along with me. For some reason, that was her favorite dance and she never let an opportunity to twerk pass her by. Nana’s big, twisted hairdo was starting to unravel, so she looked a bit like a troll doll with her fluffy, rainbow hair sticking straight up. She was having the time of her life though, and hiked up her dress to reveal her skinny little legs in rainbow-striped stockings as she shook everything she had.
Zachary was trying to back away slowly, but I pulled him onto the dance floor. I put an arm around him and held his hand in mine, and started dancing a waltz (more or less). He laughed and let me lead him for a while, and I was so happy to see him enjoying himself.
When the song ended and a slow one began, we stepped off the dance floor. Nana and Ollie went off to find the refreshments, and I glanced over Zachary’s shoulder and grinned as I said, “Incoming.”
Six was making his way through the crowd, his attention totally focused on Zachary. The tall blond was dressed like he’d just traveled through time from the eighteenth century. He wore a knee-length, royal blue velvet coat, heavily embroidered with silver thread down the front, over a black waistcoat, white ruffled shirt, and black breeches with period-appropriate stockings and shoes. The clothes played up his aristocratic features and seemed surprisingly natural on him. He’d seemed like the heir to the throne just in street clothes, but in that outfit he was the ruler of the kingdom.
Zachary glanced over his shoulder to see what I was talking about and murmured, “Oh wow.”
When he reached us, Six greeted us both, then bowed gracefully, perfectly in character. He asked Zachary as he extended his hand to him, “Will you do me the honor of this dance?” His posh British accent just brought it all together.
I was more than a little surprised when Zachary put his hand in Six’s and let the eighteen-year-old lead him to the center of the dance floor. The two didn’t talk. They just held each other and swayed to the music, and my friend put his head on his taller partner’s shoulder. There was a tenderness in the way they interacted, as if each was being so careful with the other. I really hoped something grew between them. I’d gotten to know Six a bit over the past couple months at the races and thought he’d be good for my friend, if Zachary just gave him a chance.
While the two of them danced, I was joined by Skye and Dare, Haley, and a handsome Japanese-American tattoo artist named Yoshi, who was best friends with one of Nana’s grandsons. The first three were wearing street clothes and cute, cartoonish animal masks. Yoshi had gone all out, though. He was dressed in black leather pants and motorcycle boots, and had decorated his muscular arms and bare upper body with a temporary, black ink line drawing. An exotic, leafy vine wrapped around him and snaked up his neck, forming an elegant, swirling mask around his dark eyes. “You look amazing,” I told him.
Yoshi grinned and said, “Thanks. I like your costume.”
“Compared to how creative you were, I feel like I’m dressed to go trick-or-treating.”
His perfect smile got wider. “This is what happens when you forget to plan a costume ahead of time, but have a pen sitting on your desk at work.” Well sure, as long as you were also a creative genius and gifted artist.
We chatted for a while about our mutual friend, Nana’s grandson Gianni, who was sailing around the world with his boyfriend. Then Yoshi said, “Don’t look now, but I think you have an admirer.”
I followed the tilt of his head and spotted Izzy a few feet away, watching me with wide-eyed anticipation. She was wearing a pretty, iridescent white dress with pastel butterfly wings and a butterfly-shaped mask, and she was carrying a wand with a fabric butterfly on top. I exclaimed, “Izzy!” then turned to Yoshi and excused myself.
He said, “Have fun, Jess,” and went off to get a drink while I hurried over to the child. I knelt down in front of her so we’d be eye to eye and pulled off my mask. “Hi Izzy. You look so pretty in your princess dress! Do you remember me?”
She nodded shyly and said, “You’re Jessie. I didn’t know if yo
u’d remember me.”
“Of course I remember! I could never forget my Valentine!” She smiled at that, and I asked, “Where’s your daddy?”
Kai’s voice came from directly behind me. “I’m right here. We’re experiencing a malfunction with the butterfly princess’s crown. I went to see if the bartenders had a twist tie or something so I could try to put it back together, but they didn’t.”
“It fell off and I stepped on it,” Izzy said disappointedly.
“Can I see?” I turned toward Kai and a huge smile spread across my face. “Wow, look at you.”
“The costume was Izzy’s idea,” he said, coloring a bit. He was dressed like a medieval prince, or maybe a king, with a dark blue velvet tunic embroidered with a crest over a gray shirt. Black pants and boots, black leather gauntlets covering his arms from wrist to elbow, and a gold crown completed the outfit. He wore it well.
He handed me his daughter’s little plastic and rhinestone tiara, which had snapped in two, and I turned it over in my hands as Izzy’s big, brown eyes brimmed with tears and she said, “It was so pretty. I didn’t mean to step on it.”
“This is totally fixable,” I said. I sat down cross-legged right in the middle of the floor, pulled out my phone, and sent a text to one of my friends. I then turned my attention back to Izzy and said, “I’ve called for help. While we’re waiting, tell me, are you having fun at the party?”
“It was a lot of fun before I broke my crown,” she said. “You can’t be a princess without one.”
I distracted the little girl for a few minutes by talking about all the costumes around us, and then Christopher Robin and his husband Kieran rushed up to us. Apparently they’d followed my instructions, since they were carrying a silver ice bucket and a cloth napkin. I stood up and introduced everyone as they handed me the bucket and I glanced inside it.
“Christopher organized this entire masquerade ball,” I told Izzy. “He brought a lot of magic here tonight, and some of it’s left over and in this special silver chalice.” I held up the ice bucket and said, “With this, we can turn the crown over to all the fairy godmothers who came here tonight, and they’ll completely rebuild it for us, just like when they made Cinderella’s coach out of a pumpkin. This only works once every hundred years, on a night like this, at a magical ball with a beautiful princess like you.” I waved the broken crown in a circle above my head and placed it in the bucket, then covered the opening with the white napkin and said, “All we have to do to summon the fairy godmothers is to believe with all our hearts that magic is real and miracles do happen. Do you believe, Izzy?” The little girl’s eyes were big as saucers behind her butterfly mask, and she nodded her head solemnly. I turned to my friends and asked, “Do you believe, too?”
Christopher put his arm around his husband. “I absolutely believe,” he said.
“Me too,” Kieran agreed, and kissed Christopher’s forehead.
“So do I,” Kai said with a little half-smile.
I waved my hand over the bucket, pressed my eyes shut and said, “I believe,” then quickly pulled away the cloth. I peered into the bucket and loudly exclaimed, “Oh my gosh! It worked!”
I carefully lifted an ornate rhinestone tiara out of the bucket, then stuffed the napkin over the broken pieces of the other crown and handed the whole thing to Kieran, who quickly hurried away with it. “Princess Isabella Kahale, on behalf of the fairy godmothers, I present you with your new crown.” I bowed deeply and put it in her hands as she stood there with her mouth hanging open. I then straightened up, pulled Christopher into a hug, and whispered, “I owe you one. Was it hard to find a tiara?”
“At a masquerade ball in San Francisco?” he whispered back. “Hell no. I traded one of my friends a stack of drink coupons for it. He felt he came out ahead.”
“You’re the best.” When I let go of him, I said, “You did an amazing job with this event, by the way. You really can work miracles.”
“I had a lot of wonderful people helping me, including you and Nana,” he said modestly, tucking a stray blond curl behind his ears. His phone beeped and he pulled it out of the pocket of his elegant tuxedo. When he glanced at the screen, he said, “I need to address a potential vodka crisis at the bar. I also need to figure out where I left my mask. Have fun, guys!” He bowed to Izzy and said, “Thank you for being here tonight, Princess Isabella. A ball just isn’t a ball without a royal princess.”
As he hurried off, Izzy looked at me and said, “Your friend thought I was a real princess.”
“Of course he did, and that’s because you are. Do you want me to help you put on the crown?” When she nodded, I picked it up and carefully guided its built-in combs into her thick hair, which had been twisted up into an approximation of a bun. The new tiara was made of metal, so it had a better chance of survival than the last one.
She asked solemnly, “Is my new crown going to turn back into a broken one at midnight, the way Cinderella’s coach turned back into a pumpkin?”
“No, it’ll stay like this. That changing back at midnight thing was old fairy godmother technology. But it’s a whole different century now than when Cinderella went to the ball, and they’ve learned a few new tricks.”
“Okay, good,” she said.
I turned to her father and said, “King Malakai, may I request a dance with your daughter, the lovely Princess Isabella?”
He grinned and said, “Only if you hug me first.” I was a bit surprised he’d do that in front of Izzy, since we weren’t going to tell her we were dating yet. When he pulled me into his arms, he whispered, “Thank you so damn much. You’re my hero. Izzy’s, too.” I gave him a big smile when I let go of him, then took Izzy’s hand and led her to the dance floor.
We got the band to play her favorite song from the movie ‘Frozen’, surprisingly not the overplayed theme song, but one called ‘Love is an Open Door.’ For the next few minutes, Izzy and I laughed and danced and spun all around, and Skye and Dare joined in. I introduced them when the song ended, and when I told her Skye had made the sculptures, she exclaimed, “You made the sad angel!”
She was fascinated and wanted to hear all about it, so we all went over to the big sculpture. While Skye was telling her about all the weird objects he’d torn apart and recycled into the angel, Kai picked up my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Izzy might see,” I whispered, even though her back was to us.
He kept holding my hand as he whispered, “I want you to know I think you’re amazing. Watching Izzy laughing like that on the dance floor made me so happy. You really have a way with kids.”
“The trick is to truly not care what anybody thinks. If you want to do a crazy dance, go right ahead. If you feel like standing on a tabletop and crowing, go for it. Kids are taught to feel embarrassed, they don’t start out that way. You have to be willing to act like you did before society tried to make you ‘behave’. If you can do that, kids accept you as one of their own.”
Kai grinned at that. “You obviously have it all figured out. Izzy is mesmerized by you.”
“She’s such a great little girl.”
He kissed my forehead, then whispered, “I meant to tell you earlier that you look gorgeous tonight. I mean, you always do, but I also like your costume.” Kai ducked his head embarrassedly. “I suck at giving compliments.”
“No you don’t.”
Izzy turned to us abruptly and I dropped his hand and stepped back from Kai. She said, “I love this song,” which made me smile. The band was doing a stepped-up rendition of a classic rock song, which she’d probably heard her dad playing. “Can we dance again, Jessie? Maybe my daddy and your friends can come, too.”
We all returned to the dance floor. Kai was self-conscious and shuffled from foot to foot, so Skye and I tried to loosen him up by dancing on either side of him like total lunatics. That made Izzy double over with laughter, and it worked to some extent as Kai smiled and swayed a bit more to the music. I could tell he was making an effort, like he had the ni
ght he’d tried pole dancing.
When the song ended and a slow one started playing, Kai said, “Please dance with me, Princess Isabella.” She beamed at him delightedly. He held her hands and she stood on his shoes, and father and daughter circled around the dance floor. “Aw, how sweet is that?” Skye said. I watched the two of them looking at each other with so much love and was overcome with happiness.
Later on, Kai went to get his daughter a drink, and Izzy sat on a tabletop with her white patent leather Mary Janes beside her. She wiggled her toes in her pink tights and said, “You and my daddy like each other, don’t you?”
I wasn’t sure what to tell her, so I stalled with, “What makes you say that?”
She was very serious when she said, “You have stars in your eyes when you look at each other. It’s just like in the movies when the princess sees her true love. Only this time, it’s two princes.” To my left, Skye and Dare both grinned at that, and Skye nodded.
That made me smile, and I said, “Your daddy is a really special person.”
Izzy nodded. “I know.”
Kai returned and handed her an apple juice with a straw, then gently brushed a few escaped tendrils from his daughter’s face as he told me, “She’s getting tired, we’d better go soon.”
“Did you drive?” I asked.
“No, Mal dropped us off. I figured parking would be impossible. I’m supposed to call her when we’re ready to go and she’ll come back for us.”
“Hang on a sec,” I said, and stood up and scanned the crowd. It was pretty easy to spot Nana on the dance floor with her rainbow troll doll hair, and I jogged over to her and asked her how much longer she was planning to stay, even though I knew the answer (until the party shut down and they kicked her out). I asked her one more question, then fired off a text to Zachary, who I hadn’t seen in an hour, and jogged back to my little group. I told Kai, “If you want, I can drive you home in Nana’s limo.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Nana’s all for it. I think Izzy will enjoy it, too.”
