by Paul Rudnick
After maybe five minutes of fitful napping it was seven a.m. and time for Edgar’s speech. I could refuse to watch it, which seemed cowardly. If nothing else, his abdication would truly end things; it would be a lasting emblem of the damage I’d done and why, despite James’s and the queen’s best efforts, Edgar and I would never see each other again.
Louise, Adam and DuShawn were up, stumbling toward the couch with their coffee. I fell onto them for one of those occasions when a group of friends becomes a single lump of support under one frayed, fairly disgusting blanket.
The cable news networks and morning shows were all carrying the speech live, and CNN was as good a choice as any. The anchor intoned, “There’s been no announcement as to the content of Prince Edgar’s speech, and the Palace has refused to confirm or deny rumors of abdication.”
Edgar was seated behind a desk in his palace office. He was pale and doleful, in a dark suit, as if serving as his own somber attorney. He cleared his throat.
“He looks thin,” said Adam.
“Thanks, Great-Aunt Miriam,” I told him.
“He looks like his dog just died,” said Louise.
“And his eyes are red,” said DuShawn. “He’s either been crying or doing cocaine.”
The rest of us stared at DuShawn, who said, “Because he’s sad.”
I wanted to either hug the flat screen or throw it out the window, as if that would block Edgar from proceeding.
“Hello,” Edgar began, at first in a whisper, then speaking up. “Hello. I apologise for bursting in like this, and I’d like to thank the media for the airtime. I . . . I . . . I’m sorry, let me just collect myself.”
He stood up, with the camera jerking to follow him. After a second of indecision, he shook himself, waggling his head and rotating back and forth as if twirling an invisible hula hoop. The way I’d taught him to, all those months ago, at the United Nations.
“What’s he doing?” asked Adam.
“Is he having a stroke?” wondered Louise.
“He’s—loosening up,” I explained.
Edgar sat back down, his hair now a bit less dutiful, his face flushed.
“There. All right. For the first time in my life, I’m not sure what I’m going to say next. And I’m a prince, so I’m supposed to know.”
“He looks better now,” said Adam.
“Is he drunk?” asked DuShawn.
We all stared at DuShawn, who said, “Because sometimes it helps.”
Edgar barely drank, and he wasn’t drunk now. But he was ignoring any prepared remarks on the teleprompter.
“After my parents passed away,” Edgar was saying, “and I’d begun the earliest twinges of acceptance, I only desired two things: to be safe, and for life to make sense. And that was fine, that was enough, more than enough, for many years, until—I met someone. The most unlikely, infuriating person.”
Uh-oh.
“And because I’m me, I pressured him. I badgered him. And I made him surmise that in order to please me, and this country, he’d be required to change in every respect. To alter so much about himself that I adored. I’m an idiot. As probably everyone but me already knows, if you love someone, you don’t try to change them. You honor them. You listen to them. You believe them. You hate them and you love them and if you’re very lucky, they change you. And beyond all else, you trust them. I have what are called trust issues, as the result of past betrayals. But that was no reason for me to lash out at a man who’d only been honest. A man who’d never given me the slightest cause to doubt him. A man who’d had no difficulty admitting he was from New Jersey and introducing me to his altogether splendid family, especially his marvelous sister, Abby. When I accused this man of lying to me, I should’ve reconsidered immediately, because Abby’s brother would never lie.”
My phone was blowing up with texts and emails and a photo of Abby screaming with happiness, taken exactly one second ago.
“So if Carter Ogden is watching this,” Edgar continued, “on his couch with his friends . . .”
“How does he know that?” asked Adam.
“Does the royal family use drones?” whispered DuShawn, peering out the window.
“Where else would Carter be?” Louise said, sensibly.
Oh my God. Oh my God. Edgar was looking right into the camera. Right at me. He was making sure I was paying attention. It was like he had me by my shoulders.
“Carter, if you’re out there,” Edgar said, “I’d like you to know that I’m truly sorry for the way I’ve behaved, or misbehaved. And that I trust you and treasure you and would like nothing more than to spend the rest of my life battling with you about whether IHOP’s maple-flavored syrup is actually tastier than real maple syrup. Because I love you.”
“That fucker,” said Louise, with tears in her eyes. “It’s so not fair. When someone says ‘I love you,’ you should be given twenty-four hours to consult with your union representative.”
Adam and DuShawn were holding hands and singing “Seasons of Love” from Rent.
“And finally, Carter,” Edgar said, “I’d like to ask you one simple question. A question that everyone, everywhere can understand.”
He smiled. Full-on, abashed, heartfelt and my downfall. Edgar’s smile was already a proposal, but he went on. He looked into the camera and asked, “Carter Ogden, will you marry me?”
By the time I started breathing again, after Edgar had signed off and all the news teams were jabbering about what they were calling “His Highness’s surprise proposal, to say the least,” Louise was dangling my backpack, Adam had my passport and DuShawn was handing me the framed photo of Ruth. Within seconds, I heard Abby’s car screeching up to the curb downstairs.
CHAPTER 31
James was standing beside the car outside Heathrow, holding a cardboard sign reading “Peasant.”
“That’s me.”
“Get in.”
The flight attendants on the plane had been delirious, slipping me extra chocolate chip cookies and mini-pillows: “What are you going to tell him?” “Are you going to do a prenup?” “We took a vote and think you should honeymoon in Turks and Caicos,” “You have to post a picture of the ring,” and “Prince Edgar made me cry! I smacked my boyfriend and told him, ‘Why can’t you be like that?’”
When I let myself think about any of it, I ricocheted between inwardly jumping up and down, superstitiously repeating Miriam’s mantra of pretending to spit on the floor while saying “Poo poo poo” and drafting what I was going to say to Edgar. I didn’t want to sound rehearsed, so I kept wiping my brain clean and only skimming Abby’s barrage of texts about matching tuxes versus Edgar in his Royal Marine uniform and me in a rainbow sequined cape.
“Thank you, James,” I said in the car. “Your video was heartbreaking and incredible and everything Edgar and I needed to hear.”
“I’m a saint. Remember that when I ask His Highness for a pay rise.”
Marc, Alison and the rest of the staff were lined up, waiting for me in the great hall just beyond the palace entryway.
“We were all shocked,” said Marc. “But mostly in a good way.”
“Have you any notion of your response?” asked Alison. “Because I’ve prepared a range of press releases.”
“I’ll let you know. But thank you.”
The security team joined us.
“Aren’t you glad we let you have sex with His Highness?” said Ian.
“Did you bring us anything from America?” asked Lucky.
I quickly distributed the mini bags of chips, peanuts and Oreos I’d pocketed from the plane, and the guards cheered.
I was about to ask for Edgar’s location, but I knew where he’d be.
I bounded up many carpeted staircases, only slipping twice, just to make everyone gasp and speculate, “What if on his way to give His Highness an an
swer, Carter suffered a concussion?”
I reached the top floor. I adjusted my clothes, to appear dignified and worthy of a milestone occasion, but I settled for being slightly less creased from the flight. I strode down the hall to the nursery, the place where Edgar was most himself.
I knocked, and Edgar’s voice answered, “Yes?”, as if he was in a meeting and didn’t want to be disturbed.
Inside, all of the furniture had been uncovered. The room had been thoroughly dusted and polished, the woodwork gleaming, the air smelling of lemon and pine. All the curtains had been opened, with sunlight streaming through. This was no longer a haunted retreat, but a welcoming, comfortable aerie, alive with history and the promise of hanging out, snacking and wearing sweats. Edgar wasn’t forgetting the past but building on it.
Edgar was standing near a window. He wasn’t smiling, not yet. He was torturing me.
“Your Highness?” I said.
“Can I help you?”
“That was so incredibly embarrassing. Proposing to me in front of the entire world.”
“That’s why I did it.”
“I thought—I thought you were going to abdicate.”
“I considered it.”
“What stopped you?”
“James’s story was extremely powerful. And I weighed the loss of never having my face imprinted on a ten-pound note. And then I thought about you.”
“Okay, but before we go any further, I need to say something, about Callum—”
“I get it. He’s very attractive. In a cheap surfer dude sun god sort of way.”
“And I was so scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Of everything. Of doing that interview. Of your grandmother. Of letting you down.”
I’d never admitted this, to myself or anyone else: I’d gone to see Callum deliberately, in a spasm of self-sabotage. I’d wanted to prove that I wasn’t cut out for happiness and that I’d always fuck things up. I was daring the universe to contradict me. And when Callum kissed me, of course it was a mistake but I’d allowed it, and maybe even encouraged him, because that’s what I did: I was Carter Ogden, misery magnet.
“You were scared,” said Edgar, “so you snogged your ex.”
“Snogged?”
“It means kissing,” he explained. “Just kissing.”
“But I shouldn’t have done it and I’m ashamed of myself, and I’ll never do it again. And if it’s any consolation, you’re a much better kisser.”
“Now you’re just flattering me.”
He was smiling, just a little. A vicious tease.
“But I’m warning you,” I said, “if you and I, if we decide to do—what you were talking about on TV, I’m going to be a total disaster. Your worst nightmare. Your country’s worst nightmare.”
I was still doing it. Throwing up roadblocks. Promoting handy bullet points of all the reasons for Edgar not to love me.
“And I will continue to be a tight-ass,” he countered. “And a control freak. And a huge royal pain.”
“With great hair.”
“There’s that.”
Three-quarters of a smile. A hint of the full fireworks. The trailer for the main attraction.
“But Carter, I think that, as always, you underestimate yourself. Because this job, being a royal—you’re a perfect fit.”
We were still a few yards apart. What was he babbling about? What ridiculous theory was he concocting? What easily refuted nice try?
“How am I a perfect fit?”
“Our life together, our public life, would be a series of events. Events that I’d like to see become more imaginative, more entertaining and more human.”
“Are we talking about more vomiting? Because I can do that.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I have some ideas,” I said, without meaning to. “About rebranding the royals. Apps. Collaborations with recording artists and designers. Maybe a video game. Playing The Palace.”
“But in this game, the king would always win, correct?”
“Dream on.”
What was happening here? Was Edgar making sense? Was he converting me to, God forbid, not just the feasibility of the two of us moving forward together, but of me—becoming a functioning, almost sane, valuable human being?
“But all of it,” he said, “the crowns and other people’s opinions and the protocol, we can figure that out. Because those things don’t really matter. But if they ever start to matter, if they threaten to overwhelm us, I pledge, from my soul—that I will always choose you. I will choose us.”
Don’t cry. Not yet. Queer up.
It was no use. I was crumbling. He was winning. He was forcing me, through charm and logic and something that might even be called—gulp—the truth, to not just love him more than I’d even thought possible, but to love myself and some absurd, why-the-hell-not dream of our future. He was making it sound doable and enticing and real.
“So I suppose you’d like some sort of answer,” I said, still clinging to wisecracking insecurity, “to your big question. But if I say yes, which I’m not saying I am, would I get some sort of title?”
“First you’d become the Duke of Somewhere. Perhaps the Duke of Piscataway. And while I pray that my grandmother will be with us for many more centuries, we will someday mourn her loss. And then, following a coronation, I would become King Edgar and you would become the Royal Consort, Prince Carter.”
“Which sounds like a rap star’s baby.”
“Your answer?”
“Not yet,” I said, because Edgar had just provided a legitimate hindrance. “Because there’s one more royal rule, isn’t there?”
“What rule?”
CHAPTER 32
The walls of the Throne Room are covered in red silk damask, and it’s carpeted in red, with the red upholstered throne placed on a raised platform at one end. This is exactly what I’d always wanted my childhood bedroom to look like.
Queen Catherine was seated on the throne, wearing a hot pink dress of stiff linen. Just to make sure I got the point, there was a larger-than-life-size oil portrait of her, in royal regalia, including one of her most stupendously jeweled crowns, a sword and an ermine cloak, in a gilded frame on an easel beside her. On a certain gaudy level, Buckingham Palace is a prime high roller’s suite in Vegas.
Edgar and I stood a few feet away. There weren’t any chairs for us. On purpose.
“Nana? Mr. Ogden has a question.”
“What now?”
“Your Majesty,” I said, “no one in the royal family is allowed to be married without your approval, isn’t that right?”
“Quite true. And if I had my way, no one in the world would ever be married without my approval. I could save people so much time and trouble.”
“So,” I said, now standing next to Edgar, “what do you think?”
The queen sighed deeply, monumentally annoyed, as if deciding between breakfast and an execution.
“I think that you are two men from different countries, with extremely different temperaments. And the world will be watching you, at every moment, for any signs of distress or impropriety.”
“Or personality,” I added.
“Or outrageousness,” said Edgar.
“Or fun,” I said, looking Her Majesty right in the eye.
“Or trifle,” she shot back.
“Nana?”
“You are both causing me such—Mr. Ogden, what was that word your great-aunt Miriam used? Tsuris?”
“It means headaches, in Yiddish.”
“Precisely. Miriam is a learned and accomplished woman. This morning she FedExed me a pound cake. But the two of you have given me tsuris, and this will only increase.”
Hearing Queen Catherine’s version of Yiddish—which became weirdly Irish—was making my d
ay even better, if that was possible.
“And all you’re doing,” she continued, “is waiting with barely concealed, glint-eyed greed for me to expire, so that Edgar may succeed me, with Mr. Ogden as your scampering playmate, installing flat screen televisions in every room of the palace, and hot tubs.”
“Nana, that isn’t true. I’ve told you repeatedly, I forbid you to die. It simply can’t happen. Not on my watch.”
“Although,” I mentioned, “I’m loving the hot tub idea.”
“And to have the two of you on the throne,” said the queen, “or in Mr. Ogden’s case, on a cushion nearby, will be either a gargantuan fiasco, unequalled in modern times, and the end of the monarchy, or . . .”
“Or?”
“Or?”
“Or perhaps—a step forward.”
She raised an eyebrow. Which felt like a symphonic crescendo.
“So,” I asked, “do we have your blessing? And your permission?”
“Edgar? Do you love this small, inappropriate, fidgeting person?”
“Yes. So very much.”
“And Mr. Ogden? Do you love my grandson?”
I’d never said it before, not to Edgar. He hadn’t let me. Saying “I love you” can be too easy, the way some overly exuberant people use it as a greeting. If it gets too earnest, it can feel like you’re pushing and working to convince yourself. Stop overthinking this, I told myself. Stop having a panic attack. Stop being you. Thanks to Edgar, you’re not that same neurotic, pessimistic, occasionally deranged person. Progress happens. Love happens. You and Edgar are happening. You can do this. Say it.
“Yes,” I said. “No matter how hard I fight it, and no matter what happens. And I hope the palace has insurance. But I love him.”
I turned to Edgar.
“I love you. Deal with it.”
Edgar smiled. Full-on. The sun coming up. Roman candles over the skyline. Every fountain in the world gushing toward heaven. Every voice raised in jubilant harmony. Every bell pealing. Edgar’s smile.
“Oh, get on with it,” said James, standing by a far-off door, but his perfect diction and the room’s acoustics lent clarity. “Your Majesty, I’m sorry you have to see this, but it’s necessary. It’s how these things work.”