Marry Me, Charlotte B!

by Carla de Guzman

  “Like carnival, or cowboy? Monte Carlo?”

  “Um . . . yeah,” Nellie agrees.

  **

  “Choosing a theme of your wedding is half the battle,” Charlotte says to the cameras, her fingers steepled under her chin like a guru imparting wisdom. “Once you have a theme, the other big decisions—location, decor, and wedding dress—become significantly easier because you know what not to put in. But for this wedding, we need divine inspiration. We have very little time, and everyone’s watching, literally!”

  **

  “Hey,” Rob says, coming up to the two from behind, making Donna and Nellie jump slightly from their place by the door. Nellie makes a point to straighten up her back. Rob pretended not to notice that they were obviously eavesdropping. “What’s going on in there?”

  “They’re stuck on princess,” Nellie says, casting Donna a look.

  “Why aren’t you in there?” he asks Nellie, who is about to open her mouth when her best friend interrupts.

  “As her biggest fan,” Donna says to Nellie very seriously, placing a hand over her chest and looking disappointed, “I am disappointed that you cannot seem to deliver, Cornelia Canlas! Give the girl what she wants! In that room, she’s just a bride trying to find someone who can make her dream come true. So if she wants royal princess realness, then you better serve royal princess realness! Just give her a fucking royal wedding!”

  Nellie and Rob’s eyes grow wide at Donna’s little tirade, exchanging looks to see if they had the same expression.

  **

  “While Donna has always had a . . . big personality, she usually doesn’t give two coconuts about the weddings that we organize. Even the big celebrity weddings never used to make her flinch,” Rob says to the cameras, a little bewildered.

  “Until now, apparently,” Nellie adds. “Renée should be flattered.”

  **

  “Fine, I’m going in,” Nellie says, putting her hand on the door. “Cover me, Bertram.”

  There is a little light in Renée’s eyes that shines when Nellie and Rob enter the room. She smiles at Nellie, walking over and giving her a kiss on each cheek like they were old friends.

  “I had no idea you guys were close,” Charlotte hissed toward Nellie, who shrugs and takes a seat midway between Charlotte and Renée. She turns her head toward Renée, who, in turn, looks at her expectantly. She is standing under the sun again, and Nellie tilts her head slightly, properly observing the bride. Her eyes trail slowly over everything about her client, from the tip of her head to the ends of her feet, from the way her hands are holding on to Ewan, and the way he reciprocates her touch.

  **

  “I can see why Renée is such a big star—you couldn’t be in a room and not look at her. There is something about her, an elegant grace that she exudes. Sure she sings ultra-poppy teenage music, but she is first and foremost a lady,” Nellie says. “Beside her, Congressman Walters is a picture of quiet strength. Then the answer came to me. I know what kind of wedding we’re going to have.”

  **

  Suddenly, Nellie knows what to say.

  “Grace Kelly is a princess,” she says suddenly, making everyone look at her in mild surprise. Nellie glances over to Robert and promptly lifts her shoulders, catching him in a grin.

  “She was a good actress too: High Society, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder. When she got married to Prince Rainier in Monaco, it was the biggest wedding of the century, and it still is for most of us.”

  Charlotte is frowning slightly, unsure of where Nellie is trying to take things. She doesn’t like not knowing what is going on in a room, and certainly not while it is during her own meeting with a client.

  “It is grand, to be sure,” Nellie notes, “the kind of fairy-tale ending everyone wished for. But everyone remembers the wedding not because of the grandeur—Monaco is a small country if you think about it—but because of Grace and the prince. Everyone remembers the looks of love they shared, the simple way they carried themselves.”

  “Oh, and that dress,” Renée sighs in agreement, leaning her head against Ewan’s shoulder, who places an arm around her. “That is a beautiful dress.”

  “It is,” Nellie agrees, matching Renée’s sigh. “Now, we’re running short on time, and we can’t exactly pull a chalet in Versailles like some celebrities—”

  “The Palace of Fine Arts,” Rob suddenly says, making everyone turn to him in surprise. No one looks more surprised than Charlotte herself. “We can go and take a look, have it reserved right now. It’s eight in the morning, nobody will be there.”

  There is a tense silence in the room as the couple exchange a quiet conversation with each other. Ewan is looking deeply into Renee’s eyes. She is doing the same, biting her lip and nodding excitedly. The corners of his lips upturn into a small smile, one that he seems to reserve only for the bride.

  **

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a couple that seems so in sync with each other,” Nellie says. “Despite all the scandal that surrounded them, there is no doubt that they were enamored with each other.”

  **

  Nellie turns her eyes toward Rob, who is studying the couple, frowning slightly.

  **

  “When Robert first suggested the palace,” Renée says, credited in the subtitle as Renée Winters, singer/actress/bride. “I was a little confused at first. I’ve been all over the world, things like that just slip your mind, forgotten. But when I saw it, we just knew. It is the place for us.”

  **

  They arrive at the palace after a drive-through at Starbucks. Charlotte is riding the service car with Renée and the congressman, discussing diet restrictions, guest lists, invitations, and minister for the ceremony. The cameras catch all of this for the show. They even noted the congressman mention that he is actually a huge sci-fi fan, and if they could incorporate a little something along those lines into their wedding.

  **

  “Merde,” Charlotte groans.

  **

  Meanwhile, Rob and Nellie are in his car, leading the group to the location. He is playing songs from his playlist that are chill and folksy (he knows Nellie likes it, based on her to-download lists on February 9, December 15 of last year, and June 23) and she is nodding her head along slowly.

  “I love this song,” she sighs, humming along to “Sigh No More” by Mumford & Sons. You know, the lyrics are just lines they lifted from the Shakespeare play.”

  “So I heard,” Rob agreed, glancing over at her as she sang along. “Hey, nice job on the meeting earlier. Maman looks just about ready to tear her extensions out.”

  Nellie giggled. “That’s an image,” she says, trying to picture it in her mind. “I just strung together a lot of pretty words. I mean, anyone could have said Grace Kelly. It’s not really that precise of a theme. But the Palace of Fine Arts? Stroke of genius.”

  “Okay,” Rob says, pushing on the gas as the car ascends up a short hill. He feels like he is forever going up and down hills in this city. “Lesson number two, learn how to take a compliment. I only thought about the palace because of what you said, Nellie. You deserve to get credit for that!”

  “Oh stop it,” Nellie says immediately, waving a hand so he could stop. Their GPS (Rob could never drive anywhere without one) informs them that they have reached their destination and he pulls the car into a stop. Before Nellie could undo her seat belt though, Robert’s hand is on hers, making her pause. Again she finds herself looking into his eyes as they burn into hers, her cheeks getting hot.

  “I mean it, Nellie,” he says, his voice gentle but his grip firm on her. “You’re special. What are you going to do once Jason sees that in you?”

  “I’m twenty-four and I’m still someone’s assistant,” she tells him plainly, the sparkle in her eyes fading. “I’m not supposed to be special.”

  They both jump back when Charlotte’s bright red hair appears beside Nellie, and Charlotte knocks on the window. Nellie dutifully lowers the w
indow on her side, noticing that Charlotte has quite a lot of freckles too.

  “They want something supernatural related, on top of the Monaco theme,” she says to them, sounding a bit desperate. “We better think of something quick. I am not having a wedding with Daleks or storm troopers in attendance!”

  It takes Nellie a moment to realize that Charlotte actually meant to say sci-fi instead of supernatural.

  “Right,” Rob says, wondering if his mother even knows what a Dalek is. “Supernatural . . . well . . . The palace kind of looks like Naboo . . . maybe we could just say that?”

  “I don’t speak geek, bébé,” she says a bit irritably. “You talk to the congressman about your Star Trek planet. Nellie, come with me and let’s see what this palace is all about.”

  **

  “Choosing a location is one of the biggest decisions you have to make in any event,” Charlotte says calmly into the camera. They’ve filmed her interview with the palace in the background, as if to emphasize her point. “You want to make sure that it fits your theme, and figure out the logistics. Once you have your location, everything else can follow around it.”

  **

  “Oh,” Renée sighs. Rob had intentionally parked on Baker Street, so that the first thing they see is the burgundy-and-beige Greek-style structures of the Palace over the quiet neighborhood. The pergola stands in its place of honor in the center, the intricately designed beige columns spanning backward into the theatre. The palace seems endless, spanning around the lakeside like something out of a movie. The swans are having a morning swim with the ducks in the lake that overlooked the structure, and gulls swooped down quickly and snapped up breakfast. The Palace of Fine Arts was originally made for an exhibition in 1915, preserved for tourists until now. It looks like something out of a fairytale, and the perfect spot for a Monaco affair.

  “Looks kind of like Naboo, doesn’t it?” Rob casually comments to the congressman. “Like where Anakin and Padme got married at the end of Attack of the Clones.”

  “Hm,” Ewan says, tilting his head slightly like he is trying to picture it in his mind. “It kind of does.”

  **

  Charlotte is captured later shaking her head at the cameras. “Hard to believe that a man of forty-four getting married for the second time still wants bloody Darth Vader to administer the ceremony. But thank God that’s over, and we can all just move on.”

  **

  “We can have the ceremony inside the pergola,” Charlotte says, holding her hand up and pointing to the large dome. Now that they are here, she can see the place’s potential. All sides of the structure are open air, and in the morning light, it looks like it is glowing.

  **

  “We’ve arranged weddings for this venue, of course, but not in this sort of time frame,” Nellie points out for the audiences to home. “I’ve noticed that Charlotte stands straight when she talks, a fire lit under her as the vision comes together in her mind. Well, a bride can probably say that she wants to arrive at the wedding on a moose and Charlotte can still make it work,” she chuckles at her own joke. “In a lot of ways, everything that Charlotte told me in her office the other day is true. I do want to wear heels, I want to look good, I want to be seen and remembered and thought of. I just don’t know why I would deserve any of that.”

  **

  “We only have two weeks, so any flowers we can commission out of Amy Merrick will have to go straight to the reception. But the location is beautiful enough that we can set up some banquet chairs inside, maybe a simple chuppah facing the lake there?”

  Nellie casts a glance at Renée, who is squinting in the sunlight. There is a furrow in her brow, a pout on her lips.

  **

  “I’ve been my mother’s son for the last twenty-seven years, and I know what an upcoming bitch fit looks like,” Rob says to the cameras as the congressman is telling his aide about how the palace really did resemble the Amidala lake house in Naboo. “Trust me when I say that Renée Winters is really good at throwing a bitch fit.”

  **

  “It’s a bit too conventional for me,” Renée says, pouting her lips and shaking her head. “I’m marrying a congressman, for crying out loud. This is a tourist spot! And what is a chuppah? Neither of us are Jewish. Nellie, what do you think?”

  **

  “What?” Charlotte says to the cameraman. “We don’t have time for his! She wants to be a princess, she wants to be bloody Grace Kelly and she’s expecting me to pull out a secret, never-before-used location from my arse and give her a wedding in two weeks! And bloody sci-fi. Mon Dieu!”

  **

  Nellie’s knees actually buckle slightly at the seemingly simple question. She looks over at Rob, who casts a glance at his mother and gives her an encouraging nod. Nellie looks terrified, but swallows it down.

  “It . . . sounds nice,” she starts, wanting to hide her face in her cardigan and run away. She was going to get fired for this. Charlotte had certainly fired people for less. “But I think we can hold the ceremony right here, across the lake? That way the palace is a backdrop, instead of the main attraction.” She says this slowly and hesitantly, and she can swear Charlotte is turning a shade as red as her hair. “We can get yellow dahlias and pale green berzelia at the San Francisco Flower Mart in bulk. Amy doesn’t have to arrange them, we can just place them along the aisle like they’re part of the garden, and maybe she can just put together something bigger for the back of the aisle.”

  Nellie steps backward, looking around to see what else she could add to her vision. “We have to use ghost chairs, the clear plastic ones so we don’t distract too much from the palace in the backdrop. “We can have a string quartet there.” She pointed to a small grove of trees next to the lake. “And have the wedding early in the morning so we don’t get a lot of people in the neighborhood. We can have security closed off at the end of each road for when you make your entrance.”

  “Like Kate Middleton,” Renée breathes, a little more relaxed this time.

  “Why yellow?” Ewan asks curiously, coming to join his bride-to-be.

  “It was the color of Grace Kelly’s bridesmaids’ dresses,” Charlotte adds suddenly, making Nellie turn to her in surprise. Boss and assistant exchange smiles.

  **

  “I’m a bit upset that Nellie didn’t back me up,” Charlotte speaks plainly to the camera, shaking her head in disappointment. “But if the client is happy . . . then I’ll just have to keep my feelings to myself until I write up the evaluation.”

  **

  The cameras show a small but cozy restaurant in a corner of Hyde Street, at the heart of Russian Hill. It’s a wine-and-tapas place called Zarzuela, and Rob and Nellie are currently being led inside by a waiter. “What did I tell you?” Rob says to Nellie as they enter the restaurant. “You were amazing!”

  **

  “We were just in a meeting with Ann Walker Catering, the best in the business,” Nellie says to the cameras. “I thought we were going to have to beg, plead, and sell my first unborn child to get them to agree to do the wedding, but thank God they had an opening for us. Charlotte, Renée, and Ewan are there for the tasting we set up. Rob and I also have to discuss my sister’s wedding.”

  **

  “Sure,” Nellie finally says, fighting off the blush on her cheeks. Rob was singing her praises all the way to the restaurant, and she had been perfectly dismissive the entire time. Some lessons were apparently harder to absorb than others.

  They are seated at a semiprivate spot in the restaurant, in a room tucked away in the back. Nellie, who loved this place (as noted on March 9, February 11, and April 12), ordered warm goat cheese in bubbling marinara sauce to spread on bread. Then she ordered a small plate of deep-black paella negra, sprinkled with black squid ink and fresh seafood.

  “It makes your teeth all black but I swear, it’s perfect,” Nellie says, putting down the menu. Rob shrugs, trusting her with the order and pouring her a glass of sangria from the carafe they o
rdered.

  “A rose for the lovely couple,” a waiter says, placing a small arrangement of red roses on the table, smiling at them expectantly.

  “Oh, we—we’re not together,” Nellie stammered quickly, panicking slightly. “Not a couple.”

  “Thank you,” Rob says politely, placing an arm around Nellie and smiling graciously at the waiter. He turns to her and gives her a grin. “Don’t you like flowers, petit chou?”

  When the waiter walks away, he puts his hand back down to a neutral place, and Nellie wonders briefly why she felt so disoriented, shaking her head to snap herself out of it.

  “So,” Rob says, as he takes a sip of the fruity wine. He looks over at Nellie with those bright blue eyes again. The back area is lit dim, and she wonders why they couldn’t have just gone to In-N-Out or something. Is she really in the middle of work? This felt too much like a date, and it made her uncomfortable. Not that it is Rob’s fault. “Should we talk about Ellie’s wedding?”

  “Yes,” Nellie says, nodding emphatically, reaching forward to slather goat cheese and marinara sauce on a piece of bread. She needed work to distract herself from him. He was supposed to help her for Jason, for crying out loud. “Do you have all the details? The wedding’s a couple of days away.”

  “It’s at city hall,” Rob says, scooping the marinara sauce out of the pan with his bread. “You’re going to love it, Nellie, it looks like something out of time. Victorian columns, a grand staircase . . . artsy, elegant, and romantic enough for your mum, that’s for sure. Plus it’s not fussy because that’s where they’re going to have to go anyway. The paperwork’s complete, your sister’s assistant was sobbing with joy when she finally finished. As for the reception, one of your aunts wanted to do the catering, so all I have to do is make sure the DJ shows up and that the lights are turned on. Ellie wanted no fuss, so she and Basti agreed, no decorations other than the ones on the table. It should be good, because the place is really quite beautiful.”

  “Good. Did Ellie tell you which colors she wanted for the reception?”

  “She used a word I didn’t understand, and I am too scared to ask again,” Rob confesses, watching her a bit too closely. His eyes seemed more focused on the way Nellie lifts her glass to her lips than on her. “It’s that Pantone color, kind of burgundy red, but much darker—”