by Paul Rudnick
When I was with Callum, I felt lucky and chosen, and also that people assumed I was his frantic personal assistant. I’d worked on banishing my insecurity and imagining that we were just two people in love, a delusion that lasted until I saw the expressions on strangers’ faces as they calculated, “What’s that one doing with that one?” I’m not some hideous troll, and attraction isn’t just about looks, but Callum had fulfilled one of my most deeply shallow fantasies: what if I was with a guy like that?
Of course, I’d found out that Callum had been busily fulfilling that fantasy for half the Eastern seaboard and several foreign countries, especially when he was on a job. I’d been terribly hurt by this and furious at myself for ignoring obvious clues, but whenever I’d almost worked up the nerve to ask Callum a question about, say, the increasingly thirsty texts from his personal trainer, Callum would gaze at me the way he was doing right now, as if we were already having sex. I can’t say that Callum is a great actor, but he loves acting romantic; he’s like a Hallmark Christmas movie hunk who doesn’t just kiss.
“I’ve been thinking about us so much. And how I hurt you. I don’t know why I did that, and I’m so sorry. Man, am I sorry.”
Callum is one of the only guys I’ve ever met who can make bro-speak—using words like “man,” “dude” and “bud”—sound erotic. Maybe it’s part of his lifeguard-in-a-porn-video appeal. But I wasn’t going to listen. I wasn’t his bro.
“I know, I shouldn’t make this about me, my shrink says that I never deserved you, why am I such a fuckup?”
The top four snaps on his worn denim shirt were open, and he was rubbing his tan, rock-hard chest while looking right at me, and he could actually get away with the wristload of knotted rawhide bracelet, vintage Rolex and red kabbalah string. He could get away with anything, and he was great in bed and surprisingly generous. Right now he was aiming for an Oscar, or at least a Daytime Emmy nomination, in turning me on, and it was working. God damn him.
“I know you can’t forgive me, and I would never ask you to. All I want is, I don’t know, just a chance. To prove myself. Maybe start with a weekend—my agent has this amazing house in Quogue, right on the ocean, and he says it’s all ours. We could hang out, no pressure. Just see what happens. Man, I can’t stop looking at you.”
I should never have come here. But I’d had all those depressing dates and coffees and bad sex in studio apartments with bicycles hanging over the bed, and I was starting to CGI myself into Callum’s Porsche ad, sitting beside him as he steered along an Italian cliffside at dusk, wearing shades and perforated kidskin racing gloves as a saxophone wailed, which was when I noticed that Callum’s gaze encompassed not just me but, for a split second, the yoga-honed ass of a nearby waiter, who was acting as if he was mildly annoyed while scribbling his cell number on our bill. Which was when my phone went off and a full-color photo of Buckingham Palace filled the screen.
“Who is that?” asked Callum, his spell broken as I held up my phone so he could see the red-uniformed guards, with their tall bearskin hats, stationed outside the wrought iron palace gates.
“Um, I think it’s Prince Edgar.”
CHAPTER 6
It wasn’t Prince Edgar, not exactly, but James, his indispensable minder, and he informed me that he’d tracked down my contact information through Eventfully Yours and that His Royal Highness would like to have dinner with me the next evening at an exclusive downtown restaurant that I could never afford; James relayed this request in a tone that was both commanding and woefully disappointed, as if he was acting against his better judgment.
“Um, sure,” I said, which brings me to tonight, when I’m presenting my hair and my outfit and my chin zit to Louise and Adam for a pre-date inspection.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Louise. “It’s like going out with a statue of Queen Victoria, and I bet he’s not going to tip. You’re buying into the last remnants of an imperialist power structure that thinks it still matters. On the other hand, after tonight you can probably sell your intimate story to a tabloid or TMZ and make a bundle.”
“I told you this was going to happen!” crowed Adam. “This is the beginning of an incredible love story, like Pretty Woman if you were a beautiful sex worker or When Harry Met Sally if Harry had a private jet. And I think you look great, although if I were you, I would shape my eyebrows just a touch.”
“No!” I barked, because I’d once allowed Adam to practice threading and plucking on me, and I’d ended up like a Sharpie sketch of a frightened 1930s Hollywood starlet. Luckily, my brows had grown back; men who mess with their eyebrows are like men with bad nose jobs or beret-like hairpieces, since these alterations become all anyone can focus on.
“Carter,” said Louise, taking me by the shoulders just before I left, “I want you to remember that you always have options. You can scream ‘Kill the Royal Puppet People’ and throw red paint on Edgar.”
“Or,” said Adam, “you can have the most fabulous time, end up eloping and turn slightly away from any cameras so that the totally unnoticeable teeny-tiny blemish on your chin will stay in shadow.”
“Adam!” scolded Louise. “Carter is nervous enough as it is. And it’s not a blemish, it’s obviously his twin brother who never fully developed in the womb.”
“I love you both so much,” I said, “and I’m going to beg Edgar for a donation to get you the help you need.”
“Just have fun,” said Louise, meaning it. “And don’t let the evil of a justifiably fallen empire intimidate you. You’re the best.”
“In your honor,” Adam said, “tonight DuShawn and I are going to picture you as Cinderella in either of the last two Broadway revivals or as Sweeney Todd, who I know is a mass murderer, but he’s still the star.”
* * *
On the subway I experienced a first-date panic attack ultrasized by the royalty aspect. On one hand, Prince Edgar had remembered my name and asked James to locate me, but once Edgar took a closer look he’d instantly recall fifteen previous royal engagements—and why had it taken him two weeks to ask me out? I must be sufficiently hot stuff to attract a prince, which meant that my new tricep routine at the gym was paying off, but my abs were still nowhere near as ripped as they should be, and why was I basing my entire concept of self-esteem on Instagram photos of impossibly fit guys? But maybe English people weren’t as buff, so on a sliding international scale I was a catch, or maybe this whole thing was part of a scavenger hunt where Edgar had been required to find a hopeless American dweeb, or maybe I should just text him that I was flu-ish and had to cancel and then throw myself on the subway tracks so I’d be enshrined in Edgar’s memory as his lost, perfect love.
Or maybe I should do something sensible, like imagining Ruth Ginsburg slapping me and saying, “You’ve got a date with a prince! Stop being you! And just be yourself!”
Once I’d reached the enormous plate glass doors of the five-star Tribeca restaurant Edgar had chosen, a place that had managed to remain on-trend for an unthinkable ten years, I tried to examine my reflection, but just as I was squinching my features into a sad variation on one of Callum’s rugged cologne ads, the one where he’d smelled like “the savage mystery of the Sierras,” the doors swung open, I leapt backward and James appeared.
“You’re late—why am I not surprised? His Highness is waiting, and I’m assuming that all of your decent clothing has been stolen. Follow me.”
As I struggled to keep up, James led me past a dining room filled with well-dressed, gossiping diners, all glancing up from their phones to see if I was anyone worth noticing and then jerking their heads away to make sure I knew that I wasn’t. But they were also snubbing the tiny squibs of artisanal, farm-to-table delicacies on their huge white plates, so I was in good company.
“You will address His Highness solely as Your Highness, you will wait for His Highness to sit and speak first, you will ask no personal questions, your
replies to whatever His Highness may ask must remain brief and modest and you must not entertain the slightest notion of becoming anything beyond an ill-advised footnote in His Highness’s daily calendar. Am I understood?”
“Okay . . .”
“Okay?” James repeated, as if I’d spat on his lapel.
“Yes, sir.”
James stared at me, and every part of me shrank many inches. Then, and I can’t be sure of exactly how but James did something with his face that was his version of a smile, and it occurred to me that James wasn’t just the most clinically English person of all time—he was gay. “Darling,” he said, “don’t worry. You’re doomed.”
Then he opened a door flanked by two security guards and ushered me into a private dining room, a hushed chamber with lustrous mahogany wainscoting, jewel-toned Venetian brocade wall coverings and a brass chandelier I’d once seen on 1stDibs, valued at twice my yearly salary.
Prince Edgar, the ultimate luxury object, was standing beside a table draped in at least three layers of fabric and set with a warehouse’s worth of china and crystal. I felt like James Bond about to be offered an assignment, or maybe a handful of uncut diamonds.
“Mr. Ogden,” said James, motioning me forward.
“So good to see you again,” said Prince Edgar, offering his hand.
“Your Highness,” I said, suppressing my instinct to kneel and be knighted.
“Edgar, please, or Ed.”
James did that thing of rolling his eyes without my catching him doing it.
“Edgar,” I decided, because I’m sorry, he just wasn’t an Ed. Ed shows up to fix your air-conditioning; Edgar has more than one home. More than ten homes.
“Thank you, James, I think we can manage from here.”
“As you wish. If you need me I’ll be just outside or reachable by text. Should Mr. Ogden exhibit symptoms of violent derangement, what will you do?”
“Applaud.”
“As you wish.”
As James backed gracefully out of the room, Edgar gestured to the gilded chair opposite him, where I hovered, waiting for him to be seated first. He sat. I sat.
“First off, please ignore whatever nonsense James has told you. And secondly, I’m so sorry it took me such an inexcusable amount of time to locate you, but I was attending a refugee summit in Dubrovnik and then visiting an agricultural school in Somalia, and then an Australian scientist was gracious enough to demonstrate a new economically feasible desalinization system, which turned out to be quite promising but required three days in Melbourne.”
“Same,” I said and Edgar smiled, not his full-on heartbreaker, but a satisfying preview.
“But James worked his magic and now here we are. And don’t you look handsome.”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit across from this great-looking, well-mannered prince, this person in total command of his role in the world, and hold a conversation as if we were two guys who’d liked each other’s decently accurate photos, had texted a bit, and decided to risk it, with roommates and Netflix as a backup. This wasn’t normal. I felt like there was a whole other person squirming around inside my skin, so after opening and closing my mouth three times like a guppy I finally let loose:
“How? How does this work? How do I talk to you as if you’re a person? Like, a person person?”
Edgar smiled, at almost full wattage but not quite, although even at, say, 8.2 on the Regal Smile Continuum, his slightly crooked grin made me levitate—I’m not kidding, I could swear that I was floating an inch or so off my chair.
“I understand. And I find that in these situations, it’s best for both of us to wipe the slate clean, to eliminate any and all preconceptions and to behave simply as two human beings getting to know one another.”
“Thank you. Totally.” Totally? Did I have an armload of scrunchies and a troll doll sticker on my phone?
“So,” Edgar began.
“So,” I said. “What do you do?”
“I work for my family and we rule England.”
“Okay, this isn’t fair, because like everyone else in the world, I already know way too much about you. I mean, America is obsessed. And even though I was a kid, and so were you, when your parents passed away . . .”
Edgar’s smile vanished, and I knew I’d destroyed everything. He spoke in a cordial but icy tone, very this-is-my-polite-way-of-saying-fuck-off.
“It was heartbreaking and awful and yes, even though James tried to hide them, I did see the photos of the plane crash, and equally terrible and far worse things have happened to many other people, but thank you very much for your concern.”
Why? Why did I do that? Why did I bring up the greatest tragedy of Edgar’s life within the first five minutes? All of my paranoia had been completely justified—I wasn’t just an interloper and a commoner and a douchebag, I was light-years out of my league.
“I’m so sorry, I’m an idiot and I’ve already put my foot, no, both my feet and my arms, all the way down my throat, so I’ll just go . . .”
As I stood up and my linen napkin fell to the floor, I thought about grabbing it so I could thumbtack it to my bedroom wall as a reminder of how badly, and how quickly, I’d fucked up. And now Edgar was standing as well.
“Stop, please. You must stay. This is entirely my problem. Because you’re right, people do know a good deal about me, and they make assumptions, which makes me back away, and I end up feeling self-righteous and snobbish and alone.”
We looked at each other, more directly.
“I get it. It must be so strange, being you. And dealing with the rest of us. You’re like—Beyoncé.”
“Only . . . ?”
“Much prettier.”
“Thank you.”
As we sat back down, a formally dressed waiter appeared, announcing, “I am Louis-Pierre Roget and I shall be your initial waitperson, for the chilled appetizer, bread selection and preliminary first course options. Any decisions?”
“Carter?”
I hadn’t even glanced at the menu, which was bound in burgundy leather, with calligraphy in a variety of languages, none of which I could read or speak. I’d been to fancy-ish restaurants, but nothing at this level, and even with my background in event planning, I was feeling overwhelmed.
“Okay, this place is stunning and I know that the food is five-star, and thank you so much for arranging all of this, but I’m from New Jersey, so this isn’t really my sort of thing. Can I make a suggestion?”
CHAPTER 7
I knew it was a risk, but within minutes Edgar’s driver was parked outside the International House of Pancakes on 14th Street, with garish photos of pancake-centric meals filling the front windows. Ever since I was a kid, IHOP hasn’t been just my favorite restaurant, but one of my dream destinations. It’s my home.
“And what precisely is this establishment?” Edgar asked, once we’d been led to a rear booth, with Edgar wearing a baseball cap and keeping his head down. This celebrity camouflage was futile, since we were surrounded by five members of Edgar’s security team, as well as James, seated at adjacent tables.
“I can’t believe you don’t have IHOPs in England, because the ‘I’ stands for International. People say music is the universal language, but I think it’s a short stack of buttermilk silver dollar pancakes.”
“Go on.”
“I grew up in the suburbs and we didn’t have much money, so for special occasions my parents would take my sister and me to IHOP and let us order specialties, like the Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity, where they use cherries and a pat of butter to make a face on the pancakes. And see, now they have something called Cupcake Pancakes, with frosting and rainbow sprinkles on top. IHOP is either the best or the worst of America, depending on how snooty and how hungry you are.”
Edgar was inspecting his enormous, laminated menu like an archaeologist c
oming upon the Rosetta stone.
“They’re offering something called the Harvest Grain Medley, which involves pecans, almonds, whole wheat and whipped cream. They’ve described it as a heart-healthy alternative, yet the calorie count is astronomical.”
“Which is exactly how America deals with organic eating. Go to any Whole Foods and the shelves are bursting with cookies and candy bars, but because the packaging is boring and they use phrases like ‘raw Venezuelan cane sugar,’ we pretend it’s good for you. Americans will give up their guns before they give up sugar, and that’s really saying something.”
“But that’s madness.”
Callum had sworn he was not merely vegan, but that he’d only eat fruits or vegetables that had fallen to the ground naturally, of their own volition, avoiding what he’d called “orchard trauma.” But he’d stash those Halloween packets of Reese’s Pieces in his carry-on and claim that if he ate my Dunkin’ Donuts French Cruller, it didn’t count, because he was saving me from myself. Vegans, like alcoholics, are accomplished liars. As far as I was concerned, the only reason to go to the gym was so I could mainline Ruffles potato chips afterward (the ones where the jumbo bag highlights “Sea Salted,” which is another one of those ways Americans deceive themselves while scarfing delicious crap).
“I think,” said Edgar, as I readied myself for a lecture on kale and toxins and what Callum had called Blood Twinkies, contending they were baked by child laborers, “I think this may well be the finest restaurant in the history of food. Or food-like products.”
I almost passed out, but I gripped the table, because I wanted to remember this milestone, when I’d introduced His Royal Highness to IHOP. If I did nothing else with my life, this wasn’t the worst legacy.
The rest of the evening went shockingly well as Edgar asked me one charming, genuinely interested question after another, about my job and my education and my family. On one hand, as a professional prince, he’d been trained to be socially adept and to make less titled people bask in his conversation. But there was something isolated and curious about him, which I’ve noticed in people who’ve been homeschooled. They have an innocence to them, because they’ve never experienced the schoolyard bullying and classroom competition of the real world. Edgar had been raised around prime ministers and oligarchs and visiting movie stars, but not around other kids, so his hunger for everyday information was heartfelt.