It just went on like that. Over and over about everything to do with Chloe. Like some penny rolling around a sink, his mind just kept coming back to how cute and clever and pretty she was. I don’t want to embarrass the guy, but I definitely heard the phrase “cutie patootie” under his breath more than once.
It was all too obvious by the time he found Chloe — and the sparklers above her made her eyes shine — that the penny of Giacomo’s mind had rolled around and around and finally fallen, fallen forever down the sinkhole. And what was that sinkhole? That sinkhole was lunacy.
Anyway, at the same time, Prince Kaiser was about to unveil his grand plan: “—.”
Okay fine, the sinkhole was also love. Are you happy? It’s not like we didn’t know that already. Their stars almost knocked the earth off its axis. Time-space had to reboot itself around the enchanted moment. They had so much chemistry, the pH balance of the ocean flipped, and all the leftover dinosaurs started feeling headachy. Let’s just move on.
The Prince Kaiser had taken them all hostage for one reason: he wanted them to make something so beautiful that it would give life to the lifeless. Essentially, the rich little snot was trying to put me out of work.
The idea was that if something, anything in this world — say, a painting, or a poem, or a really fancy egg holder — was actually more beautiful than any other place I could take you, well, it would uproot the whole soular system.
After all, everybody wants a far, far better place to go. What the prince wanted was something so mind-boggling marvelous, so unimaginably stunning, so good, so very good, that it would be the greatest place — only to be in front of it. Just gawking at it would mean glorious release from all suffering. Your soul would demand that you stay, instead of shuffling off to the great beyond.
You starting to get the picture? He wanted a towel set that could replace the hope of an afterlife. He wanted embroidered napkins that could become as gods! Bum, bum, BUM!
IT WAS A common misconception in Old Timey Europe, where smooches were all you needed to jump out of your grave, that I was kind of a chump. Laughable, I know, but it’s true.
Everybody assumed I was some ninety-pound wuss who’d get punked any time an old crone cooked up some chicken feet. Or a fisherman caught a talking trout. Or genies crossed their arms. People, please . . . who do you think smacked them upside the head and shoved them in a lamp in the first place?
For having more bodies to my credit than communism, you’d think I’d have more street cred. Right now I feel like all I get is sixth-graders drawing my name on their Trapper Keepers so their divorcing parents freak out and pay them some attention.
That’s not respect. That’s not even bad poetry. And another thing, rappers, you gotta stop calling yourselves “Killa MC.” You’re not fooling anybody when your manager’s looking for endorsement deals on soft-serve ice cream. If you’re on a major record label, the closest you come to killing people is the slow painful demise of your publicity team’s self-respect.
But me? I put down the Monkey King and Mickey Rooney’s sunny disposition. I dropped Atlantis, and I had mono at the time. I even got Rasputin, eventually. If that’s not gangsta, you haven’t been paying attention. You ever see a long-tailed antarctica hamster? You ever hear Pachelbel’s harmonica suite? You ever take the bullet train out of Newark, New Jersey? No, you haven’t. Extinct. Forgotten. Lost in appropriations committee. That’s me, baby. How do you like me now? I’d say, “If you don’t know, you better ask somebody,” but you’d need Stargate technology and a burning bush just to get high-enough clearance.
And yet somehow, somehow, princelings like Dimple Pimple used to walk around Old Timey Europe thinking they could publicly fire me. I think it’s because I like to wear khakis, I really do. But I’ll tell you something: I have a dream, a dream that someday a man will be judged by the number of galaxies he’s snuffed out of existence, rather than the number of holiday costumes he’s made for his bunny.
That’s what I was stewing on, as I zipped back and forth to the fair. (A hurricane in the Indian Ocean, a marriage in Russia, a really annoying phoenix that just couldn’t make up its mind.) As the prince wrapped up his speech, he unveiled the name of the life-giving creation, whatever form it might take. I forget what exactly, but he said something to the effect of: “And it shall be totally Most High, for it shall be called the Objet d’Awesome!” (Exclamation mandatory.) Sadly enough, I think it kinda made sense. If it ever got made, it would be certifiably awesome. Maybe even “Awesome!”
As soon as he said the name “Objet d’Awesome!” a dozen drums hammered on the exclamation point, the sparkling stars overhead converged into a climactic glow, and everyone gasped at the biggest surprise of the night.
Let me explain. The stage management had been orchestrated to cast the most dynamic light on Dimple Pimple. So the darkest shadows were directly behind the stage wall. That’s why Brutessa could stand behind him onstage, using the residual shine from the prince’s spotlight to make shadow puppets on the stage wall, and not be noticed by the crowd. She had two cudgels for hands, so all she could make was the moon falling on a baby octopus.
It’s also why Giacomo and Chloe snuck behind the wall to have their conversation.
A lot of people wouldn’t call it a conversation per se. There was some miming, some sign language, a little “me Jane, you Tarzan,” a lot of unnecessary touching of the other one’s arm, that sort of thing.
Giacomo presented the one orange gerber daisy he’d found. Chloe touched her heart with one hand as she took it. Then she put it up to her nose, though she knew full well that daisies don’t smell like anything. Then she looked up with the flower still at her nose. You know what I’m talking about. That demure look girls do. Innocent and vampy at the same time. Posed and spontaneous. Not exactly a look that could kill, but it could definitely maim. It’s how Cortés conquistadored the Aztecs. He just sent his smoldering mistress into the jungle, doing that look from behind a folding fan. A whole civilization, teased, tamed, and twitterpated.
Giacomo barely survived the look. And after that, they mostly just stood together, with moony expressions, enjoying the company. In terms of nonverbal, they were chatting like squirrels in springtime. In terms of verbal, they just said each other’s name in baby talk over and over. Chloe started it, by calling Giacomo “Co-Co,” which, coming from those puckered lips, with that little French accent as if she was flicking the words with the tip of her tongue, and the freckles right on the pucker’s edge . . .
Too much.
Giacomo responded with his own pet name, “Clo-Clo.” He actually said that. Clo-Clo. This before they exchanged a single coherent sentence. Chloe crept up and nuzzled under Co-Co’s chin. And Co-Co ran his finger down Clo-Clo’s nape. And they both shivered together and said “Co-Co” and “Clo-Clo” a hundred more times.
They were tooth-achingly cute. Like those pictures of kittens exploring an empty carton of French fries. I once took a shot of Mr. Bunnersworth licking a lettuce magnet on my fridge. I had to delete it. It was so sweet, I almost got adult-onset diabetes.
You probably know what was coming. The two lovers stood behind the stage wall snuggling. Brutessa had discovered she could also make a shadow puppet of a cheese wheel rolling up a staircase.
Then the prince christened his ambition the Objet d’Awesome! And the logical thing would have been for everyone to cut up laughing at the absurd name. But instead the drums roared, like a knell for all things good and holy. The dwarves lowered the star lamps and lit up the entire glade. The prince had his arms out and his head back, as he basked in the radiant overflow. Except now after the stage had been backlit, everybody could see Co-Co and Clo-Clo back there touching their noses together.
The prince expected adulation. Instead, he got a synchronized “Baroo?” He blinked, then looked up. The crowd stared past him, so he whipped around to see Brutessa two knuckles deep after a booger. But even more interesting was a ten-foot-tall pro
jection of a young couple, casting its shadow on the backdrop of the stage. He was holding her in his arms. She was looking up and nuzzling into his neck. A picture of love that stole the show.
Pierre and Babbo immediately recognized the silhouettes and shouted in unison, “Ah jeez, that’s exactly what I told you NOT to do!”
THIS IS THE part where things got crazy. The prince was so angry at being upstaged that he started shrieking a bunch of stuff in German. The land pirates didn’t understand German, but they knew shrieking really well, so they charged into the crowd, beating everybody up. People scattered. The Hand-Painting Society couldn’t decide whether to run into the woods or stay with their custom T-shirts and tablecloths. They ended up sprinting circles around their booth, making gobbling sounds, with shirts flapping behind them like tail feathers.
The pirates pillaged every peck of pickled peppers at the fair. Clouds of cotton candy, handmade paper, and loose straw stuffing billowed into the night air as the dwarves pounded everything in sight. At first they employed an overhand smash technique with their clubs, then they ran around for a while biting and spitting, and after that they grabbed the wooden beams of the booths and lifted them into the air like a caber toss. By that point they were just breaking stuff for all the funny sounds it makes. Only Babbo and Pierre were spared from the indiscriminate drubbings. Even land pirates decorate the mantels in their hovels — they loved fake flower marble vases as much as anybody.
Meanwhile, Brutessa tore through the stage wall and grabbed Giacomo by his belt loop and Chloe by her skirt strap. You could tell Brutessa was in a state she didn’t recognize, the way she kept turning in circles, wheeling the two around her, looking for something in the chaotic scene to give her a clue. It was rejection or, more specifically, the ipecac feeling of being rejected by her first crush, Giacomo. Brutessa would have slobber-knocked any pirate who said so, but she was experiencing her second emotion. She didn’t like it. After all, her thoroughly silted-over heart had to make room for a jilted part.
Poor Chloe got the worst of it. She was getting yanked around like a Beanie Baby on a metronome. But before Brutessa could fight off the befuddling feeling of feeling and get her bearings enough to break Chloe’s femur, she fell off the stage and began pummeling the first thing that got in her way. It was a booth of potpourri sachets. She slammed into it and thrashed around so wildly that a miasma of fragrant dust flew into the air. Suddenly, the already-hysterical craftsmen all stopped and screamed in pain, “Agh, my eyes! I might never collage again!” The frenzied pirates didn’t know what to do, other than try to punch the pain out of their own heads. Pulverized anise, orange peel, and lavender may sound nice, but they kick the crud out of your sinuses.
After that, everyone needed to sit down for a while. Prince Kaiser took the opportunity to pull a knife on Chloe and Giacomo. He brandished the short ivory dagger at both of them and motioned them to walk backstage, into the Black Forest.
When they reached a safe distance away from the fairgrounds and entered the royal hazelnut orchard outside the castle, Chloe ventured a question. “Did you really kill an entire elephant for that letter opener?”
The prince responded in French and said it was hippo. Baby hippo, actually. Said the ivory is whiter before they spend all that time in swamp water. (I end up feeding the little guys wheatgrass smoothies from a straw.)
Giacomo said, “I don’t know what you just said, but is that real ivory? Really? Is that necessary?”
The prince said it was, in Italian this time, and followed up by threatening to have both of them executed on his castle lawn if they ever upstaged him again. Giacomo and Chloe stopped walking at the same time and said in their own languages, “Wait a minute. You speak Italian?” “. . . French?”
The prince nodded sí and oui.
Then the two together again: “Can you tell her I think she’s the cutie-patootiest?” “. . . he’s the bubby-wubbiest?”
The prince’s dimples filled with displeasure. He knew he was hopelessly outmatched by a force of unimaginably destructive power: puppy wuv.
He had no choice but to stand there, while they sent each other butterfly kisses, translating their sweet nothings. “Okay, now tell her I love the way she does her hair.”
Strawberry blond and dazzling, in case you were wondering.
When he finally got fed up with it, the prince prodded them on, and they walked again, through the brambles of the Black Forest, to the castle of the Bavarian royal family. It seemed to settle on everyone involved that a life-altering event had happened. The prince was on the path of an international hostage crisis and a coup to give him power over mortality. In its course, many innocent human beings with a lifelong passion for scrapbooking could have been murdered. Giacomo and Chloe both knew their fathers were somewhere back at the fairgrounds. They themselves were also prisoners, but their young love made them feel invincible.
As they walked under the portcullis, into the grand entryway, Chloe said, “Why don’t you just hire Vlad the Regaler? I’ve seen him dance a breathtaking ballet. Maybe he could perform it in reverse.”
The prince gave her the news — what happened to Vlad, the once most beautiful legs in all the world. When Chloe took that fall from the balcony, Vlad, like all of us that night, was struck with horror. But for Vlad, it became a crippling obsession.
Deep down, he knew that the chandelier had been meant for him. He knew I was there to get his autograph. And where anyone else would have been relieved to be passed up, Vlad was overburdened with the injustice that someone as innocent as Chloe had taken his place.
Vlad quit the Saint Petersburg Dance Company mid-tour and hired a carriage to Moscow. He refused to come out at the inns along the way but suffered alone in his little cage for months. The racking guilt broke him slowly over the course of the trip. At first his confidence, his performative energy, the desire to please, all dissipated into nothing. Then gradually his hamstrings began to atrophy, his elegant posture drooped, and his taut stomach became a belly from compulsive overeating. Every once in a while, I’d visit and take a few things. It felt like I was robbing the same house over and over.
By the time the carriage arrived in Moscow, the world’s premier dancer emerged an ugly, ill-kempt slob. No one knew this but the royals of Europe, who required an excuse as to why Vlad would not be dancing at their courts. Everyone else was told the dancer was on vacation, indefinitely, and that all physical trainers with strong backs and minimal gag reflex should inquire for employment.
Chloe wept when she heard this, and Giacomo held her as she did. Then he looked over her shoulder at the prince and whispered, “I heard a lot of Vlad’s name in your talking. You gonna hire him or what?”
THE NEXT DAY opened on a grim reality. Prisoners were paired with a collaborative partner and housed in lavish rooms all throughout the castle. A full English breakfast was served to them as they lay in their four-post beds. Slices of cantaloupe were provided, as well as granola yogurt parfaits, for any captives who preferred lighter fare. A page boy was assigned to every room, and dry-cleaning services were available upon request. In the evening, hostages would endure turndown service, which came with chocolates, optional tuck-in, and a few chapters of their favorite storybook.
Oh yeah, it was a real Día de los Cuervos.
The problems arose if you decided to leave your room — a dwarf would yank your head backward until it touched your ankles. Or if you tried to go on a hunger strike — a dwarf would pretzel you like before and feed you scones like a mother eagle. Or, worst of all, if you decided not to do your art — a dwarf would inspire you, which involved a pile of how-to art books, a two-ton wench, and a size-zero French maid outfit. Don’t ask. Just feel bad. Those how-tos are brutal. Aside from the disemboweling and all. Even back then, those who could did, and those who couldn’t sold short cuts.
Speaking of which, three things happened at this time that not only set the stage, but escalated the tension, for the climax t
hat would follow. Then the dénouement. Me. The first thing was that Babbo and Pierre were partnered together in the north tower. Their fates were entwined from then on. Either the two geniuses would work together or they’d become unfortunate founding fathers in the sport of BASE jumping. And if everyone was facing facts, they’d admit that these two were the prince’s only hope for an Objet worthy of d’Awesome!
Could anyone realistically expect the team-up of the doily twins and the funnel-cake guy to come up with something prettier than heaven? Really? The découpage gal took a fatal dose of glue when she found out her life was in the hands of an urban renewal artist. And frankly, I thanked her. Saved me time later on.
An old widower came close with a pipe-cleaner exhibit that incorporated his roommate’s balloon animals, but even that fell just short of eternity’s holy light. Close, though. I shook the man’s hand after Dimple Pimple fed him bleach and fast-tracked the paperwork to see his wife.
The rest of the craftsmen were playing against the clock. They had to stall their executions by pretending their work wasn’t finished and wait for Pierre and Babbo to bail them all out.
Obviously, that plan didn’t work out for a lot of folks. The prince was arrogant, but he wasn’t an idiot. He was a vain, irreverent, entitled puke stain on human history, with an upper-class sleaziness that no amount of hot tubs or sponge baths could wash off. He had that frat-kid, lad-mag, guy-guy misogyny about him. He thought he could dance. I hated his penmanship, I really did. And his red leather pants. He used to say he loved women, like, all women, womankind, the female form, and there was nothing wrong with that. He thought that was intelligent discourse. (It isn’t, and there is something wrong with that, you chlamydia-ridden mule.)
Okay I’ve lost my place.
. . . But he wasn’t a complete idiot. Stalling didn’t work for the imprisoned artists. Each morning he and Brutessa took the horse-drawn cart through the massive halls of the castle, evaluating progress. The complex was so gargantuan that it took most of the day. The castle was as large as a city. The halls were more like indoor highways, four lanes, sidewalk, and billboards that told you which exit to take for the southwest stables. If you were traveling by foot between kitchens, it was best to pack salt tablets to stave off dehydration.
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