I open the fridge and take out a can of beer, then crack it open. For the first time, I’m not excited about leaving home to go explore some new part of the world. I spot a sippy cup under my coffee table and smile to myself as I pick it up. My one-year-old niece Clara was here this afternoon for a few hours. I babysat her while Libby and Harrison were busy with a staff meeting. Man, she’s adorable. The way she runs everywhere, her little diaper-clad bottom swinging from side-to-side. Her little giggle. The way she holds her arms up to me and says, “Up.” I’m going to miss that little tyke for the next however-many weeks or months that I’m gone. But it’ll all be worth it.
I hope.
3
Nasty Nonagenarians in Turquoise Track Suits
Arabella
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.” I smile as I stare into the crinkly faces of the eight remaining members of the Nonagenarian Mall Walkers Club. They’ve been invited to the palace for a special tour to celebrate one hundred miles of mall walking this year—a vitally important milestone that only a senior-ranking royal can properly acknowledge (or so I’m told). As much as I wish I cared, I have bigger fish to fry today.
Last week, I submitted a proposal to the senior staff, and my father, to become an ambassador for the United Nations Equal Everywhere campaign—an organization aimed at making girls and women equal to boys and men everywhere on the planet. Important work that would allow me to travel the globe, making it a more fair and just place. (I can almost feel my cape flapping in the wind behind me as I hurry down the halls of injustice).
Anyway, in exactly ninety minutes, a meeting will be held to discuss it, and I am desperate to be in that room. Not because I actually think they’ll listen to me, but because the chances my father will say no are far greater when he doesn’t have to risk seeing the disappointment on my face. I've also requested permission to wear a red minidress to the Davenport wedding this weekend, which is purely strategic on my part. There’s no way in hell they’ll allow me to wear red to anything—especially not a formal event with tons of press. According to royal protocol, red and jewel tones are not for ladies. They’re for ladies of the night. Princesses must choose muted pastels. Think cupcakes, a table set for Easter dinner, or better yet, Easter cupcakes, and you’ll have it spot on.
I’m currently dressed in a skirt suit in passionless peach, and for tonight’s Annual Avonian Medical Association Gala, I’ll be dressed in a mind-numbing mint chiffon gown. But I digress, because I was talking about the meeting. The purpose of asking to wear something I know they’ll never allow is to increase the probability of a yes for the thing I really want (to be a UN Ambassador).
I glance at my watch, then look at the group, confident in their ability to traverse the width of the palace in under an hour. They may be a little older, but they’re also elite athletes. They’re even dressed in matching turquoise track suits with red piping, and turquoise jackets that bear the words ‘Ninety is nifty!’ in bold letters on the front. The back reads ‘Nonagenarian Mall Walkers. Get Walkin’ or Start Dyin.’
They must be a peppy bunch, no?
Hmmm. None of them are smiling back at me. I wonder if I'm talking too quietly. “For those who don't know me, I am Princess Arabella, and I'm delighted to welcome you today to the palace on behalf of the entire Langdon family.”
A tall thin lady with a tight, grey bun holds up one hand. “There's no need to shout, dear. We’re not the Nearly Deaf Mall Walkers.”
A short, plump woman with blue hair jabs the tall one in the ribs. “We’re the Nearly Dead Walkers.”
A few of them break into laughter, while a lady toward the back says, “Could you speak up, please, miss? We can't hear you.”
Blue Hair rolls her eyes and sighs loudly.
“I'm sorry,” I say, gesturing for her to come closer. “Would you like to come to the front?”
“Oh yes, that would be lovely.” She inches her way toward me while I wait. Crap, this is taking her quite a while.
“Shall we get started?” I say.
“Pardon me?” the one man in the group asks, turning his head so his right ear is facing me.
“She asked if we should get started,” Blue Hair shouts at him.
“Where’s the king? I was hoping we could meet him this time,” Tall Thin Lady asks.
“Yes, why isn’t he doing the tour?” the man says. “Or at least Prince Arthur? We had a woman last time, too.”
“Last time we had his pretty wife, Princess Tessa,” Blue Hair tells me.
“Yes, the people’s princess,” a curly-hair woman with the thickest glasses I’ve ever seen adds. “Where is she today?”
I pause, then force a smile. “She’s probably around here somewhere.”
“Oh, I hope we’ll come across her! She’s lovely.”
“Princess Arabella is lovely, too!” Tall Thin Lady, who is quickly becoming my favourite, says. “She looks exactly like her mum.”
Oh. Great.
“Queen Cecily,” Blue Hair says, clutching her saggy bosom. “I do miss her so. Such grace.” Turning to me she adds, “You would have loved her.”
Well, since she was my mother, I suppose that makes sense. “Yes, I’m sure I would have.”
“I wish she were giving our tour.”
“As do I,” I say, nodding serenely.
“Oh! What about that buff manny for the twins! Maybe he could show us around?”
So, in other words, they’d prefer anyone but me.
“What’s his name again?”
“Arnold.”
“No, it’s not Arnold. It starts with a Y, doesn’t it?”
“Xavier,” I say.
“No, that’s not it,” Blue Hair says. “It’s something very manly, like Jack.”
“His name is Xavier,” I say. “Trust me, I know him personally.”
“How personally?” Tall Thin Lady asks, raising and lowering her eyebrows.
I feel my face heating up and I shake my head quickly. “Not that personally! Shall we get started?”
“I think she’s lying. Look how pink her face has gotten at the mention of him!”
“I’m not …”
“Now, don’t be ashamed! He’s irresistible. All that muscle and he loves children. A girl could do a lot worse.”
“Yes, but we’re not—”
“Why ever not? Don’t tell me he’s not good enough for you!”
Holding up one hand, I say, “No, I never said—”
“At your age, love, you should really find a man already.”
At my age? Is she kidding me? “I’m only twenty-nine. Anyway, should we get—”
“Twenty-nine? And you’re still single?! Ridiculous. By the time I was your age, I had already had four children,” Tight White Curls says.
“Ask her how many of them come to visit her,” Tall Thin Lady whispers to me.
Blue hair pipes up with, “Oh, yes, you’re getting a bit old to stay on the shelf, Your Highness.”
“It’s true. Don’t put it off. Finding a man after you turn thirty is an absolute nightmare,” Tight White Curls says. “My granddaughter—lovely thing, but far too picky. She had all these crazy notions about getting her Ph.D. first. Well, now she’s a forty-two-year-old Doctor of Music, whatever that means. She’s fat as a house and lives alone with her six cats.”
“Her sex cats?” the man shouts.
“SIX!” Tall Thin Lady yells at him. “One, two, three, four, five, six. Helen’s fat granddaughter has six cats!”
“You don’t want to end up like that,” Blue Hair adds.
“It’s true,” Tight White Curls says. “Men don’t want you once you’re over thirty. Your eggs are getting too old, so your currency drops exponentially.”
My eggs? Oh, this is awful. I have a strong notion to abandon the group and sprint off to my apartment. There’s clearly no way they could catch me. Instead, I speak louder than is probably necessary, even with this group. “Today, we’ll be visiting
the west wing of the palace which includes the library, the gold drawing room, the throne room, the grand ballroom, as well as the main dining hall.”
One of them raises her hand, but I ignore her and continue. Pointing to the ceiling, I say, “These are the murals painted by Giovanni Canaletto in the sixteenth century. Few people know this, but back in the 1980s, a fire broke out in the kitchen and we almost lost these beautiful works of art to smoke damage. After that, the entire palace was fitted with sprinklers and sliding fire doors were added to each side of the Grande Hall.”
“How much did that cost the taxpayers?” one of them quips.
“Shut up. You’re being rude.”
“What did you say?” the man asks me. “I can’t hear you at all.” He turns to a woman with bright red lipstick, some of it smeared on her straight, white teeth. “Is she speaking English?”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” I say, raising my voice and moving closer to him.
“Don't bother.” Blue Hair shakes her head. Turning to him, she shouts, “She said these paintings are almost as old as you.”
This earns her a laugh from the rest of the group. I take a few steps, then turn back to them, my heart sinking when I see the snail’s pace at which we’re about to embark on our tour. There is literally no way we’ll finish in under an hour. I’d be shocked if we were done by teatime. Double damn. “So, we’re celebrating one hundred miles of mall walking,” I say, smiling and nodding in a way that says, ‘please be much faster than this.’
“That's right, Your Highness,” a woman with a short fringe says. “And not one single mile with the use of aids.”
“Not so much as a cane,” Tall Thin Lady adds.
“Canes are for candy asses,” one of the ladies at the back says.
“And walkers are for wimps!” one of them adds.
Grinning, I say, “My goodness, I hope I have your strong constitutions when I'm your age.”
“I doubt it,” Blue Hair says, wrinkling her face up even more than it already was. “You seem pretty soft. No offense.”
“She always means to offend,” the woman with red lipstick adds.
Blue Hair glares at Red Lipstick. “Oh, don't mind her, she's just sore because the rest of us don't want her here. She's not a real nonagenarian.”
“Let it go already, Betty. I'll be ninety next week!” Red Lipstick says. “It's not my fault the rest of the octogenarian walkers died!”
Tight White Curls leans in and gives her a steely glare. “That's not what I heard.”
“Hey, leave her alone, you bunch of old hags,” the man says.
Oh, dear. That’s not going to go over well.
“Of course you would defend her. You men! Always chasing around the young tarts!”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Just let it go, woman.”
Tight White Curls scowls at him. “You don’t actually think those are real, do you?”
I find myself glancing at her boobs, even though part of me is screaming that it’s a bad idea. They’re pretty much what I’d expect eighty-nine-year-old breasts to look like—two oranges in a pair of socks.
“Pathetic,” Blue Hair says, shaking her head. “Those are dentures if I’ve ever seen them!”
Oh, her teeth are fake.
Tall Thin Lady shuffles closer to me and cups her hand over the side of her mouth. “Don't mind them. His wife died two months ago, so the race is on to snag him before it’s too late.”
“Okkaayy, shall we continue?” I ask. I pick up my pace a little, hoping they can match it. Without looking back, I make my way across the Grande Hall, distancing myself from the scent of BENGAY. When I reach the entrance to the west wing, I turn and see them all shuffling toward me, some of them furiously pumping with their arms, although it doesn't seem to propel their wobbly legs any faster.
“What's the rush? Have you got a hot date after this?” Tight White Curls asks.
“Get off her back,” Blue Hair says firmly. “She's just new at this.”
“You're right, she's a goddamn nuisance,” Single Guy says.
* * *
It is now 10:34. On the other side of the palace, the meeting has just started, and we've only gotten as far as the library, which is the second room on our tour. Three of the nonagenarians are now napping in armchairs while Red Lipstick makes time with Mr. Popular. Huh, those really must be dentures. They’re unnaturally white.
I stand near the door and tap my foot on the plush carpet, not even caring if I seem impatient at this point. I have got to get out of this, now. I pull my phone out of my pocket and text Tessa as discreetly as possible. You wouldn't happen to have an hour free to finish a tour with some delightful athletic senior citizens, would you?
Tessa: You’re not referring to the Nonagenarian Mall Walkers, are you?
Me: Yes, I am! :-)
Tessa: I got stuck doing that tour last year. If memory serves, it took over four hours and by the time we were done, my ego had been shredded. Nastiest people on the planet. Don't show any signs of weakness.
Me: So, that’s a no, then?
Tessa: It’s a hard no, but please don’t think I don’t love you. I just don’t have time for the PTSD therapy this year.
Bugger. I slide my mobile back into my pocket and stare around at them. “Who wants to see the throne room?”
* * *
By the time the shuttle bus is loaded and all the turquoise track suits are gone, it’s half past noon. I’ve missed the entire meeting, having instead spent the morning being reminded of my aging eggs by a bunch of women who haven’t dropped any since The Beatles were still together. My stomach growls as I make my way to my office, and when I get there, I see that Mrs. Chapman, my assistant, has gone for lunch.
I’m glad, to be honest. She's extremely formal, extremely experienced, and extremely cold. Think Prof. McGonagall from Harry Potter, except without the pointy hat, the ability to perform magic, or any type of soft spot for anyone. Ever. Mrs. Chapman has been my assistant/taskmaster since I was seventeen and I still don't even know her first name.
I open the tall wooden door to my tastefully decorated office, then slump my shoulders as I walk to my two-hundred-year-old white French provincial desk. I kick off my heels and plunk myself into my muted olive velvet chair and stare at the vase overflowing with hydrangeas. They’ve gone with pink hydrangeas this week. Normally, this would make me smile, as would a glance out the large windows to the view of the sun-drenched gardens behind the palace.
But not today. Today, it feels like the walls are slowly sliding toward me. I open the bottom drawer and pull out a bag of Jelly Babies, a treat Tessa got me hooked on. Popping one into my mouth, I spot a note on my desk in Mrs. Chapman’s perfect, tight handwriting.
Princess Arabella,
I’ve gone for a quick bite of lunch. It’s a no to the red dress, obviously, and to the equal rights thing. Your father and the advisers thought it too emotional a cause for you. Also, it will interfere with your ability to meet a man, since you’d be working with women all day. They thought perhaps instead you might like to become the patron of The Avonian Bankers Association. Plenty of eligible men there.
Mrs. C
P.S. Be ready to leave by one o’clock for the fundraiser for hamster wheelchairs.
P.S.S. I’ve ordered you a salad - it’s in the bar fridge. Maybe eat that instead of having another meal of Jelly Babies.
4
Red Bull Strikes Again…
Will Banks
Valcourt, Avonia
“I really have to be out of here in under an hour,” I say to Dwight as we hurry down the hall of the Avonian Broadcast Network building to the conference room. “Emma said if I’m not freshly shaved and at her future in-laws’ for cocktails by six, she’ll kill me, cut me up, and use my limbs to beat you until you’re dead.”
“Delightful,” Dwight says. “She’s right about the beard though. I can't even believe you would allow that to grow so close to where you eat. Have you no
t heard of beard ringworm?”
“First of all, gross. Second, no, I haven't.”
“Google it. It's a thing.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to Google that.”
Dwight is a bit of a germaphobe. Well, I could be understating the case. He shaves his head completely bald even though he has a full head of thick brown hair. He says hair hides all sorts of fungus, and he prefers to keep his scalp clean enough to perform an appendectomy on. When one would ever do that, I don’t know, but his scalp is surgery-ready. He also keeps a fanny pack hidden under his slightly oversized jacket, containing everything from his Tums to his disinfectant wipes to his tea tree oil spray in case someone sneezes one town over.
We reach the conference room door and he waits for me to open it so he can avoid what he calls ‘handle germs.’ As soon as I open it, I hear a whirring sound, indicating he’s getting out his hand sanitizer which he keeps clipped to himself at all times on a retractable leash. “Hands,” he says, opening the bottle.
There’s no use arguing so I hold my palms up while he squirts them, then he squirts his own. The two of us avoid eye contact while we silently rub the cool, slippery substance into our skin in front of the slightly ajar wooden door.
When we walk in, I see we are the last people to arrive. The two executives that head up the unscripted division—Victor Petty and Kira Taylor—are already here, along with their interns. Victor and Kira could be their own reality show called ‘People Who Think No One Knows They’re Sleeping Together.’ What remains of my crew, Toshiro Fukuhara (or Tosh, as we call him) and Callum MacKenzie (who hails from Scotland and goes by Mac), are standing at the back of the room near the snack table. I start toward them but am interrupted by a middle-aged woman holding a can of Red Bull.
Royally Crushed: A Crazy Royal Love, Book 1 Page 3
