“So I’m a tall poppy?”
“You’re a sequoia. A space needle. A moon landing. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“Oh no …”
“And you’ve plunked yourself down at the brutally frigid heart of the only country where that’s a hanging offense. And yes, there are, through the sheer law of averages, good-looking English people.”
“Princess Alicia was gorgeous!”
“And she was loved and hated. The English remained deeply and lastingly suspicious. Only her death made her truly acceptable.”
“But how can I fix this? How can I make all of the English people decide that I’m ugly?”
“Seven months and twenty-eight days, Rebecca. Or is it Becky?”
“Open it,” said Rocher. We were back in my suite, and Rocher was holding out a heavy cream-colored envelope, imprinted with the royal crest.
“What do you think it is?” I asked, weighing the envelope in my hand. “Do you think it’s a note from Prince Gregory, calling the whole thing off? Telling Rebecca to get lost?”
“No!” Rocher crowed. “I already opened it! It’s good news! The best! You’re saved! ’Cause you’ve been invited to Ladies’ Day, at Ascot!”
“To what?”
“It’s huge. And it’s exactly how you’re going to publicly apologize for the whole museum shit show, and make everybody love you. Especially Prince Gregory.”
“How?”
Ascot, Rocher taught me, was a racetrack just outside of London and once a year, the Royal Family invited a few hundred guests to join them for five days of racing. Ladies’ Day was the third and most anticipated occasion, when the Queen attended, and all of the female guests were expected to look their very best. For research Rocher had bought a DVD of My Fair Lady, which was a movie musical where Audrey Hepburn plays a guttersnipe, a cockney girl who’s been selling flowers on a street corner until a professor named Henry Higgins takes her in and trains her to speak and behave as an upper-crust lady of quality.
“See, you’re sort of like Audrey,” said Rocher as we watched the movie, “because you’re this normal person who gets turned into this total knockout and Tom Kelly is sort of like Henry Higgins, ’cause he’s a real prick.”
We fast-forwarded to the Ascot scene, which was amazing. Ascot, at least in the movie, didn’t look like any racetrack I’d ever been to, because it wasn’t carpeted with empty plastic cups of beer and thrown-away, losing tickets and half of the people weren’t drunk out of their minds, having just blown their kids’ college funds after betting on a long shot. Ascot was a Victorian gingerbread gazebo and everyone in the Royal Enclosure was wearing only black and white. Audrey Hepburn was gowned in spun-sugar lace with a sinuous coil of black-and-white-striped ribbon, with a feathered hat the size of the Super Bowl. “Okay, you’re still the Most Beautiful,” Rocher commented. “But Audrey is right up there.”
As a crowd of snobby, impossibly refined royal friends and relatives watched the race, no one cheered or perspired or got wasted. But then Audrey forgot everything Professor Higgins had been teaching her and she stuck her fingers in her mouth, whistled and yowled at a horse to “Move your bloomin’ arse!”
“That’s the danger right there,” said Rocher. “That’s what you have to watch out for. You have to prove to everybody that even after you pretty much had sex with Prince Gregory at the museum, you’re really a proper young lady. And you know how you’re gonna do that?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna call up Prince Gregory’s secretary and get an extra ticket. Because I’m coming with you. To make sure you don’t fuck it all up.”
Prince Gregory’s secretary was incredibly nice about granting me a guest pass for Rocher and on the day of the race Tom Kelly came to my suite with dresses for both of us.
“Today is critical,” Tom said, as Rocher and I stood in our underwear while Mrs. Chen and her staff unpacked, ironed and steamed our outfits. “Because not only will there be press and photographers but you may very well be introduced to Prince Gregory’s grandmother.”
“The Queen of England,” Rocher whispered to me.
“I got that,” I whispered back.
“But beyond all that,” Tom continued, “you’re going to meet someone else. Someone who will do everything she can to annihilate you.”
“Oh my God,” said Rocher. “He’s totally right.”
“Who?” I asked.
Together, Rocher and Tom uttered a name with reverence and dread, because speaking the name aloud could attract heat lightning, a plague of ravenous locusts or any number of other deeply ominous special effects.
“Lady Jessalyn Clane-Taslington,” said Rocher and Tom Kelly.
“Wasn’t she Prince Gregory’s girlfriend?” I asked.
“Until you came along,” said Rocher. “All of the magazines claim that Lady Jessalyn and the prince are pre-engaged. I mean, she’s the total right choice. First of all, she’s royal and she’s his cousin, only far enough removed so that they won’t have two-headed babies with webbed feet. And she’s never made a wrong move.”
“Even when she was a child,” said Tom, “she’d always make sure that she was photographed near him but not too close, so it wouldn’t look pushy. And she’d always be wearing white frilly dresses and little white lace gloves, with Alice in Wonderland blond hair spilling down her back.”
“She’s a killer,” said Rocher. “When she was at college she majored in something like History of Art or Sonnet Structure, so everyone would know that she didn’t want a career. And after she graduated she got jobs like assistant-teaching part-time at a preschool, so everyone would know that she’d be a perfect mother to all of Prince Gregory’s kids.”
“And she never gives interviews,” said Tom, “but her friends do and they’ve all been coached to say that ‘Lady Jessalyn is deeply fond of His Royal Highness and treasures their intimate friendship.’”
“And in all of the betting pools,” concluded Rocher, “she’s the number one, odds-on favorite for a royal marriage.”
“But it gets worse,” said Tom. “So much worse. Because Lady Jessalyn isn’t merely your competition. She is evil incarnate, and she’ll do whatever it takes to achieve her fiendish ends. Because she is the greatest natural enemy of the Most Beautiful Woman Who Ever Lived.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she is the Pretty Girl,” said Tom and even Mrs. Chen and her assistants paused to acknowledge the truth of Tom’s insight and Lady Jessalyn’s potent threat.
“The Pretty Girl?” I said.
“Most women, most normal-looking women, as, for example, Rocher —” Tom began.
“Right here,” said Rocher.
“When these women see Rebecca, if they’re smart, they think to themselves, aha, got it, and they immediately give up. White flag. Broken sword. At your feet.”
“I mean, look at you,” said Rocher. “What am I gonna do?”
“But then we have someone like Lady Jessalyn,” Tom went on. “Who has perfect, tiny little features and perfect posture and perfect spokesmodel-white, diligently bleached and bonded teeth and perfectly shiny blond, naturally straight, expensively and frequently colored hair. And all of her life, since birth, everyone has chorused, ‘My, isn’t she pretty!’ and ‘What a pretty little thing!’ and ‘She’s so pretty, she’s going to break hearts!’ And Lady Jessalyn, especially growing up in England, where the playing field is somewhat sparse, she believed everything everyone said and she developed a certain bulldozer-like assurance and even though she was always religiously careful to behave modestly and sweetly, and to pat all of the orphans on the head, she’s always known, with unswerving certainty, that she was the Pretty Girl. Daddy’s favorite. The head cheerleader. The prom queen. The dream.”
“Shanice Morain,” said Rocher.
“And she is in fact, very pretty. Until …”
“Until what?” I asked.
“Until she s
tands next to you. And then it all comes crashing down. Because when a pretty girl is compared to a beautiful woman, she will always lose. All of a sudden she’s a tad ordinary. A bit small-town. Even a touch piggy. Because there are so many pretty girls, every yearbook and local modeling school and divorce court overflows with them. The pretty girl stars on a sitcom, but the beautiful woman appears in films that set international box-office records. The pretty girl dates and even marries the surgeon or the investment banker or the tenured professor, and then, while they’re making love, he murmurs the beautiful woman’s name. The pretty girl is horrified when she unearths a photo of the beautiful woman, tucked beneath the tube socks in her teenage son’s underwear drawer. And the pretty girl burns inside because until the beautiful woman showed up, things had been going so well. She’d been so popular. Unrivaled. Unquestioned. And Lady Jessalyn is the very prettiest of the pretty girls but in her steaming black heart, she knows that there are a lot of Lady Jessalyns. But there’s only one Rebecca.”
“Oh my God …”
“So when she sees you,” said Rocher, “she is gonna unzip her head and the nastiest alien lizard you’ve ever seen is gonna pop out and it’s gonna be pissed.”
“Spitting fire,” said Tom, “and torching the countryside.”
“So what should 1 do?”
“First of all,” said Rocher, “you’re gonna have me there to protect you and to make sure you behave.”
“And you will behave perfectly,” said Tom. “You will be sweet and simple and demure. You will be the very shortest poppy in the meadow. A dandelion. A sprig. You will disarm everyone, even Lady Jessalyn. And do you know why?”
“Because you’re gonna out-princess her,” said Rocher.
Tom and Rocher were both so informed while I was still catching up. As fast as I could, I tried to mentally input everything they’d told me, about England and royalty and beauty. My brain was bursting and I had to ask, “Are you guys really sure I can pull this off?”
“Of course you can,” said Tom. “Look at what you’re wearing.”
After a final adjustment to my left sleeve, Mrs. Chen made a small, satisfied noise and stepped aside so I could inspect myself in the full-length mirror. Because I’d gotten so accustomed to smoldering red, this alternate direction took my breath away.
While my dress wasn’t a floor-length, hourglass snowflake like Audrey Hepburn’s, it was every bit as lovingly fragile. Tom was moving toward my white dress, because I was wearing a wisp of ivory-toned satin printed with the most delicate pale pink roses, nurtured not from seeds but from passionate late-afternoon whispers, from a Victorian ghost’s valentines and from the first bouquet that Adam had plucked for Eve, to let her know he was serious. The dress had a narrow, matching belt and Mrs. Chen floated a sheer chiffon wrap, in the same print, around my shoulders. If my earlier dresses had been hot-blooded foreplay, this was a sunlit embrace.
Tom had done equally well by Rocher. Her dress sported a pale blue silk bodice and a pink satin skirt, both outlined in a suggestion of navy blue satin piping. It took me a second to realize that, while Rocher’s dress was formal and flattering, it was also an upscale rethinking of her Halloween princess costume and Tom had added a small conical hat with a flutter of pink net sprinkled with rhinestones. All Rocher needed was a wand and a cuddly pink baby dragon perched on her shoulder, curling its spiked tail around her neck.
“Yeah,” said Rocher, admiring her reflection, “I get it. Maybe I’m not going to be a princess, so maybe I’m a chick wizard, or, no, I know just what I am. I love it. I’m a lady-in-waiting.”
She faced Tom, with gratitude. No one had ever made anything just for her.
“Thank you,” Rocher told Tom. “You’re really good.”
There was a knock at the door and Archie the perfumer’s nose entered, followed a full minute later by the rest of Archie. “Good afternoon,” he said as he handed Tom a small Lucite box. Tom opened it and removed a crystal column filled with a clear liquid. He shook the bottle sharply and held it up to the light: The liquid was no longer transparent but seemed to contain a miniature ecosystem. There were billowing scarlet storm clouds, roiling over crashing mini waves of merlot, and then a teeny neon lightning bolt halved the bottled sea, and something burst forth. There was now a glowing red creature, a frantic, flamelike imp, hurling itself against the sides of the bottle, eager for barbaric freedom.
“What is that?” I asked with trepidation.
“It’s my very latest fragrance,” said Tom. “Archie has been working on it for years.”
“It’s been a challenge,” said Archie. “I’ve combined spice extracts with half notes of musk, elderberries and the pheromone released by cobras, just before they strike.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
“You look lovely,” Tom told me. “Innocent and fresh. But let’s keep in mind, while you’ll be defeating Lady Jessalyn you’ll also be seeing Prince Gregory. And we need to keep him captivated.”
“Helpless,” said Archie.
“Horny,” said Rocher.
Tom slid the crystal stopper from the bottle and I could swear that the fire-imp leaped into the air, fiendishly excited, and then vanished, bonding invisibly to the nearest molecules of oxygen. I sniffed the air near the bottle. “Whoa,” I said. “I can smell the spices, and the berries, and maybe the cobra, but there’s something else, it’s not really a smell at all but it’s definitely there. What is that?”
“Archie?” asked Tom.
“Vodka,” said Archie, and I could swear that his nose blushed. “Just a hint.”
“Oh my God,” said Rocher, who was now examining the perfume’s Lucite box. “Look at the name.” She showed me the silvery label, which read, Intoxicated by Tom Kelly.
“Only a drop,” Tom cautioned as he dabbed the stopper along my wrist. “Because it’s very, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Powerful? Stimulating? Convulsive?”
He smiled with a dark satisfaction because he was cranky from having forced himself to design two such virginal dresses.
“Effective,” said Archie.
By the time Rocher and I arrived at Ascot and had muscled our way through the many layers of security, I was a nervous wreck, positive that I was about to do something fatal, that I’d say something careless or shoot something out of my nose, disgrace myself and lose Prince Gregory once and for all. To bolster my Rebeccatude I did two things. First, I thought about Selina, and all of the other people I could help as a royal. Then I stole a quick glance at an oval mirror hanging on a post outside the Royal Enclosure, for everyone’s final style checks. I’d waited in a line of fellow invitees as they’d nudged food particles from their gum lines and then used the resulting spit to smooth their hair.
As I took my turn at the looking glass, Rocher snuck up behind me, clutching the vial of Intoxicated which she’d smuggled from the car.
“Just one more drop,” she murmured into my ear.
“Are you sure? Tom said I should be careful.”
“If this would work for me I would drink it.”
Just as I was holding up my hair so Rocher could lightly dab the stopper along the back of my neck, someone bumped her and she spilled the full bottle all over me. Because I was Rebecca, the liquid disappeared instantly, without a splatter or stain and the scent didn’t seem overpoweringly present.
“I’m sorry!” said Rocher. “Somebody nudged me, some jerk, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s fine. No harm done. As far as I can tell.”
Trumpets blared the first three notes of my mom’s ringtone, for the opening of Ladies’ Day. So far, the ringtone had signaled when something supernatural was about to happen; my mom was sending me a heads-up.
The Royal Enclosure was a pavilion elevated along one side of the racetrack and bounded by whitewashed fencing, with iron posts topped by rippling white silk banners, and there were bars and seating areas shielded by canvas awnings. Several hundred people were s
ipping cocktails, gossiping leisurely and pretending to occasionally glance at the racetrack while they were really peering over and around one another, hoping to spot a high-ranking royal and, in the best of all possible scenarios, catch the royal’s eye and receive a wink, a nod, or, if God was truly smiling, a waved invitation to come closer for a chat.
The men were all dressed in what Tom Kelly had called morning attire, which meant high-waisted trousers, striped vests, tailcoats and top hats and the women were a summery, tossed fruit salad, in their Pepto-Bismol pinks, their electric mouthwash aquas and their blinding margarine yellows, with coordinated gloves, handbags and oh my God, the hats.
Rocher had told me that Ladies’ Day was all about the hats and here they were; there was a whole other party going on atop every woman’s head. There was a hat the size and shape of a spare truck tire slathered in peppermint stripes, there was a stack of eight graduated gift boxes, each in lime green, the shades growing more intense until the tiny uppermost gift box sprouted a silk-and-wire palm tree. There was a safety-cone-orange derby with a cobalt-and-mocha checkerboard brim, anchoring a spray of peacock feathers. There were bows as wide and stiff as skate-boards, and Himalayas of smushed taffeta, and an oval, sloping gingham platter supporting a wicker cornucopia spilling a full-sized velvet pineapple, some hand-carved wooden apples, clusters of hand-blown purple glass grapes and a few green sequined zucchinis.
I’d been pounded and bruised by the English press but these hats were an England I could love. The hats refused to behave themselves; they were exuberant and outrageous, expressing the most taboo thoughts squirreled deep within the skulls of the women wearing them. I could picture these women after they’d returned home, stroking and quieting their hats and then lowering them gently into gargantuan hatboxes to rest after a big day out.
“Here you are,” said Prince Gregory, making his way through the crowd to greet us. He paused and said, “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something quite different about you, from the last time we were together, what could it be….”
Gorgeous Page 14