Of course, she had handled things badly. She always thought that any publicity was good publicity. Little did she realize that once someone had defined you to the media, then it didn’t matter how many charities you gave to or how many advanced degrees you had, you would always be the evil stepmother, the wicked witch, or worse, the aging malignant crone.
At least she had avoided that last category—for now, anyway. She felt it hovering around her, like the flying monkeys from the stupid Hollywood version of the Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West. Now that was a misunderstood woman.
“Mellie?”
She turned. The man behind her was exceptionally attractive. He also left a trail of wet footprints heading west. He was a selkie whose real name she did not (of course) know. He carried his pelt over his right arm and this time he wore human clothing.
He had actually stopped their first protest earlier this year by pulling off his pelt and having nothing suitable on underneath it. (Although she could see why the human storytellers had felt threatened by these creatures from the sea; not only were they preternaturally good-looking, they were also very well endowed.)
“As people show up, will you hand out signs?” she asked. “I need to figure out where we’ll stage our protest.”
She shoved the last pile of signs at him, not giving him a chance to say anything, and then she hurried along the parking lot.
Midway there, she realized she was trying to catch that ever-so-elegant man and she slowed her steps.
She had sworn off men decades ago.
She wasn’t about to let one distract her now.
***
The coffee was bitter and only the inedible coconut-covered donuts were left. He should have arrived earlier. Still he poured himself a cup, grabbed one of the few remaining paper plates, and found a maple bar crammed against the back of the donut box. Then he settled into a chair at the back of the room.
The panel was already talking about social media and whether or not it meant the death of the book, a topic that always broke his heart. He understood the importance of stories—he’d been raised on stories. Bards had come to his father’s court before Charming could even read. But the best stories were the ones he accessed privately—and a screen never really felt private to him.
Still, he listened politely, getting more and more discouraged, until he finished his maple bar and fled the room.
The doors to the main exhibition hall were locked, with guards standing out front. The guards didn’t look that formidable—two fat security guards in uniform, and several bookish types with their arms crossed, trying to look tough.
He sighed and decided to explore. He knew from his convention packet that there were side rooms, meeting rooms, conference rooms, and the all-important media room where the famous people, from the writers to the politicians/actors/musicians who loaned their names to books gave interviews about whatever seemed important at the time.
The hallways were unbelievably wide so that they could accommodate crowds and wheelchairs, and yet he was the only person in them, except for the occasional publishing house salesman scrambling to put the finishing touches on a booth. From a distance, he caught the scent of cafeteria food, and remembered that they would all be able to buy lunch here if they were so inclined.
He was inclined, especially after that maple bar. There were no restaurants close, and he didn’t want to lose his parking space.
The media wasn’t a room; it was an entire wing, with smaller rooms designated as green rooms, and larger rooms with actual mini studios, all set up to record certain kinds of programming. Surprisingly, these rooms were unlocked, but they were filled with young attractive people who all looked important and busy.
He peered in one, only to feel someone against his back.
He turned. The attractive woman from the parking lot stood there. She was tall and thin and exceedingly familiar. Her eyes were filled with intelligence, accented by her very good bone structure. This was a woman who had been a pretty young girl and had become striking in middle age. She would be lovely even into old age, so long as she didn’t let that mouth of hers remain twisted like that.
“Charming, right?” she said. “The question is which one?”
He leaned against the door jam, feeling startled. Not just that she had recognized him, but that she knew there was more than one Prince Charming.
Which meant she wasn’t a native of the Greater World. She came from one of the Kingdoms. But again, the question was which one.
“My name is Dave,” he said as dismissively as he could.
“Yeah, I see that.” She grabbed his prized purple badge, looked at it, and then dropped it against his shirt. “Dave Encanto. You’re not fooling anyone, ‘Dave.’ Why are you here? To shut me down?”
He frowned at her. Clearly they’d met but he couldn’t remember when and he certainly didn’t understand her comment. He didn’t have the power to shut down anyone. Not in the Greater World, anyway.
“Listen,” he said, “I know everyone has a right to their opinion, but I do think tossing paint on little old ladies going into the opera takes things a bit too far. When I said I would shut you all down, it was only because I was angry, and it was, after all, my mother’s fur coat that you ruined—”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” the woman said.
“No-oo,” he said. “Just that you’re with that animal rights group.”
“Clearly we need a new acronym,” she said more to herself than to him. Then she sighed. “P. E. T. A. which stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Archetypes, not animals. We had the acronym long before those animal people stole it from us. They were just better at getting press coverage. Like everyone else on the planet, including you, ‘Dave.’ You know everyone wants to find their Prince Charming. Everyone—women, gay guys. Even real men, they want what Prince Charming has. You don’t need a publicist. You just need to bask in your princely charmingness.”
He studied her, too stunned to say much. He was always stunned in the face of bitterness, although these days he was beginning to understand it. Bitterness and the feeling that no one else knew exactly what you were going through.
He could have given her his litany—the paunch that wouldn’t go away no matter how much he exercised, the increasing irrelevance, the fact that he hadn’t seen his girls in nearly a year—but he didn’t. Instead, he frowned.
“You’re not one of the fairy godmothers,” he said. “They were always unbelievably happy for no apparent reason. Disney got that right at least. Bippity Boppity Boo and all that.”
She tilted her head at him, obviously intrigued.
“You can’t be one of the old crones either, because they do look like the witches in MacBeth—Shakespeare had clearly been to one of the Kingdoms, maybe more than once.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“And you’re beautiful, more beautiful now than you probably ever were as a girl.” He wasn’t coming on to her; it just wasn’t in his nature. He was stating a fact. “So you’re probably one of the stepmothers. I would guess Snow White’s. Which means we met at a party, gosh, a century or two ago, when someone decided we should clear up the Charming mess and the stepmothers gossip and see if we could take care of those Brothers Grimm.”
“I thought,” she said. “It wasn’t someone. It was me. I hosted that party.”
He nodded, remembering now. It was one of the first large scale events ever held in the Greater World. There had been too many arguments about which kingdom would host so someone—this woman maybe?—decided to rent a castle in Germany of all places, that white one with the towers along the Rhine that Disney later used in one of its films—for the three-day catered affair.
Nothing had gotten settled, and in fact, he could point to the entire event as the beginning of the end of his marriage. Ella met the wives of the other Charmings, and they started talking about their marriages, and things got said. The other Charmings apparently treated
their wives like princesses. Not that he hadn’t. But he also expected her to think for herself, and do something other than spend the King’s gold.
He’d said that more than once, and he’d made the mistake of saying it in front of his father, who then harped on it forever. Apparently—at least according to Charming’s ex-wife, the other Charmings never said anything bad about their wives.
Charming thought that was just one-upsmanship. People—charming or not—said things they regretted. Maybe the other wives just hadn’t been as sensitive to slights as Ella had been. Either way, Ella had been dissatisfied with the relationship ever since.
Charming looked at the attractive woman, who continued to stare at him. She really was beautiful. He remembered noticing that in Germany all those years ago. He had noticed and thought she had gotten a bad rep, considering everything. All she and the other stepmothers wanted was a little respect.
“You never answered me,” he said. “Are you Snow White’s stepmother?”
“Are you Sleeping Beauty’s Prince Charming?” she asked, apparently not willing to show him hers until he showed her his. But in asking the question, he got his answer. She was Snow White’s stepmother.
“I married Ella,” he said. “The fairy tales still call her CinderElla, which really isn’t fair. She never was covered in dirt, not even when I first met her.”
“Thin and shapely and beautiful and oh, so, young.” That bitterness again. “Why is it that men like you always go for women like her?”
“I was a boy,” he said. “And she was a girl, not a woman. We weren’t really old enough to commit to anything.”
The woman let out a small “huh” of surprise. “So all three Charmings have divorced now.”
That news made him grunt with surprise. He hadn’t known that. He thought the other Charmings lived in perpetual wedded bliss. Happily ever after and all that.
The woman didn’t seem to notice his surprise. She was saying, “Isn’t that just the way of things? I suppose you blame the women’s movement as well?”
The other Princes Charming had blamed the Greater World’s women’s movement? Seriously?
He knew where the fault in his marriage was, and it wasn’t with some amorphous movement in another world.
“Ella and I weren’t compatible from the beginning,” he said. “She’s very into the social whirl, the dresses, the dancing, and me, well…”
He grabbed his badge. He was going to shake it ruefully. Instead, his fingers closed protectively around it.
“I’m bookish,” he said. “Quiet. A bit of—what do they call it here in the Greater World?—a nerd.”
“A nerd,” the woman repeated, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
“And,” he said, mostly to cover the blush he could feel warming his cheeks, “I’m certain my father didn’t help any. He wanted sons, and he blamed Ella when we didn’t have any. There was no explaining genetics to him. X and Y chromosomes are beyond him. He’d been urging me to throw her off after our first daughter was born. But then, he also wanted me to use the old-fashioned King Henry the Eighth method.”
“Divorce,” the woman said.
“No,” Charming said, trying to be circumspect. He was conscious of the fact that the number of people around them was beginning to grow. “Henry’s other method of disposing of his wives.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “He really is the tyrant, isn’t he?”
Charming nodded, a bit uncomfortably. He tried not to look at his father’s deeds—or misdeeds. Not that they were illegal. Whatever the King did was legal; that was the law of the land. But he didn’t have to like it.
“I prefer it here,” he said. “In the Greater World.”
With books, books and more books being created all the time. Not to mention movies and television and games. He was even beginning to like Twitter novels, even though that panel this morning had shaken him more than he wanted to admit. He didn’t want the book to die. He wanted it to live, in its lovely hand-held form, for the rest of his (exceptionally long) life.
“Of course you prefer it here,” she said. “The Greater World loves you. You’re an ideal. Everyone wants to be you or have you or marry you. You’re not considered a bitter, witchy woman past her sell-by-date who’s jealous of younger women and can’t come to terms with her lost potential.”
Well, they had the bitterness spot on, he thought, but didn’t say. Still, he really didn’t care about charming her. She had made up her mind about him on very little evidence—mostly on what other people thought—so he knew better than to try to change her mind.
Although, he couldn’t prevent himself from saying, “Aren’t you jealous, though? I mean, really?”
Her eyes widened. Had no one spoken to her like this before?
“Look,” he said, holding out his hands. “You’re the one who made the comment about me marrying a girl who was ‘thin, shapely, and oh so young.’ That’s sounds a little bitter and jealous to me.”
“Of course it would to you,” she snapped. “I suppose you think I tried to kill Snow White, like the fairy tales say.”
“No, I don’t,” he said. If she had tried, she would have been imprisoned when Snow White married the other Charming. Imprisoned or beheaded.
“People like you believe in the fairy tales. Why shouldn’t you? You live one.” Her tone got even more strident.
He sighed. He didn’t think divorce was part of the fairy tale, but he couldn’t get a word in. She hadn’t stopped talking.
“People like you don’t understand people like me. You have everything in life, and you don’t understand people who have to fight for every scrap—”
“You’re right,” he said flatly.
She stopped, as if she was surprised at his words. Apparently, she didn’t expect him to admit anything.
But he wasn’t going to say what he really thought. He hated it when conversations veered in this direction. He was in a damned if he did and damned if he didn’t situation. If he said he understood, he’d have to prove it, with life experience that she might or might not believe. And if he said he didn’t understand, then she’d try to convince him. So he gave her his standard answer.
“I don’t understand people who like to fight,” he said. “I never have. So have a good book fair, and I’ll see you around.”
He slipped past her into the hallway, feeling unsettled and somewhat disappointed. He had liked her at first, anyway, and it wasn’t often that he found a woman attractive any more. Most women his age had given up or had snared the right man and weren’t interested in meeting anyone new.
Technically, he should marry a younger woman and give his father the heir that his father was clamoring for, but he’d already married a young woman, and that hadn’t gotten him anywhere. And besides, he had children. Two lovely, intelligent daughters whom he didn’t see enough.
And who was to say that a girl couldn’t inherit? If his father died before Charming did, he’d make a decree that his daughters could take over.
It was the least he could do.
The doors to the main exhibition hall were opening as he walked past, and his heart took a small leap. He was still unsettled—he really hadn’t expected to find someone from the kingdoms here—but he was getting past that. And considering how big this place was, he probably wouldn’t see her again.
Which bothered him a little bit more than he was willing to admit.
***
Okay, so she had been unfair. She launched into her rant without thinking about who she was talking to.
Not that she could convince a Charming that Archetypes needed protecting. His archetype—handsome, heroic, perfect—was desirable.
Hers wasn’t.
Still, she leaned against the door to the main media screening room, hoping her heart would stop pounding. She hadn’t meant to yell at him. She’d learned over the years that no one responded well to the whole “you don’t understand” thing, even if they d
idn’t understand.
But she had years—no, decades—of unfairness trapped inside her, and it wanted to flood out. And she wasn’t about to go into therapy. That would just be buying into another version of the stereotype.
It took her a moment to gather herself. She always said things she regretted later. No amount of living or practical experience could change that about her.
And she did regret yelling at him.
Maybe if she saw him later in the weekend, she would apologize.
Maybe.
But first, she had a group of protesters to organize.
This hallway was big enough, and it wasn’t roped off. It was perfect. It would give her all the media attention she needed. She might even be able to stage an interruption on one of the panels being held in the studios.
She ran her hands over her hair (still naturally black, except for a Cruella de Vil white streak that she had to color so that she wouldn’t look like her properly infamous cousin), and headed back down the hallway.
Time to gather the troops.
She had a book unfair to interrupt—
And she was going to do it with style.
***
He was beginning to understand the thinking behind parking close. He had already made four heavily laden trips back to the car, and it wasn’t even noon yet. The day promised to be one of the hottest of the year so far, and if he didn’t get some Gatorade, he might just perish—long life or no long life.
He carefully avoided the van, even though he saw no one around it. During one of his trips, he’d seen a motley gathering of people—some looking a little less human than others. He was pretty convinced he saw Rumplestiltskin there. The canny old dwarf had convinced most people he could spin straw into gold, but really his major skill was turning nothing into something—which wasn’t that far from Charming’s skill.
Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs Page 2