Gorgeous

by Rudnick, Paul

  Was this my ultra-dose of Intoxicated taking effect?

  “I know!” said the prince happily. “You’re a national disgrace!”

  “And do you know what else is interesting,” I replied. “In America, Prince is a dog’s name.”

  “You look suspiciously winsome,” the prince observed, taking in my outfit.

  “I’m working undercover.”

  “Has all of this been dreadful for you? All of the press and the yapping and the accusations?”

  “I can handle it. Now that I’m having your baby.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Haven’t you read the Daily Herald?”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said and I knew that he wanted to kiss me, which made me dizzy, from either my Intoxicated or the fact that I couldn’t wait.

  “And this must be the legendary Rocher,” the prince said as he and I tried not to look at each other because we were determined to control ourselves as long as we were in public, where we might be photographed, and condemned.

  “Your Most Royal Highness of All … Highnesses,” said Rocher, dropping into a deep curtsy. She’d been rehearsing this move for days, adapted from her stint as a waitress/serving wench at a Medieval Merriment theme restaurant, where she’d been hired to wear a low-cut peasant blouse and serve tankards of mouth-watering mead, which had really been watered-down root beer, and to squeal when pinched by either the drooling village idiot or the humpbacked court jester.

  “Thank you so much,” said the prince, “but that really isn’t necessary.”

  “You’re a prince,” insisted Rocher, going for an even deeper curtsy and tipping alarmingly to one side. “Get over it.”

  “You are the most cheering and well-dressed people for miles,” said the prince. “Welcome to Ascot.”

  “Your Highness?” said a woman, lightly tapping the prince’s elbow.

  “Jessalyn!” said the prince. “You must meet two of the most brilliant people, Rebecca Randle and Rocher Bargemueller. Ladies, may I present Lady Jessalyn Clane-Taslington.”

  “At last,” said Lady Jessalyn with surprising good humor. “But shouldn’t we have pistols? Or nunchucks?”

  I’d stopped reading the papers but Rocher had shown me editorial cartoons of Rebecca and Lady Jessalyn with boxing gloves or machine guns or chain saws, cursing each other as they battled and grunted over the prince. Everyone had been siding with Lady Jessalyn, calling her the Real Royal Choice, the Anti-Rebecca and Gregory’s Girl. I was shocked that Lady Jessalyn had immediately brought this up and it made me like her.

  “I think I have my Taser,” I said, opening my purse.

  “Stop it, both of you,” said the prince. “And because you are both gifted, impressive and accomplished young women, I will offer you only my deepest respect and insist on some form of mud wrestling.” As Lady Jessalyn and I exchanged a nod and each went for one of the prince’s arms, to wrench them off, the prince caught sight of his secretary beckoning urgently to him. “Right back,” the prince told us. “Please don’t begin scratching and biting until I return.”

  As Prince Gregory left us, Lady Jessalyn said, “You really are unbearably attractive. I’d so hoped it was all about lighting.”

  “It’s a hoax,” I said. “There’s a strange teenage girl from Missouri hiding inside me, pulling my strings and replacing my batteries. I’m just a sort of parade float.”

  “And I just can’t stand that you’re both being so normal and grown-up about all this,” said Rocher, not bothering to conceal her disappointment. “It’s gross. It’s boring.”

  “It is,” agreed Lady Jessalyn. “But you know, I think we both have Prince Gregory’s best interests at heart. And I’m delighted that he’s found someone like you, to push him toward more good works, with the burn unit and the museum. And he’s said that you’ve come up with a massive list of additional causes and countries and organizations.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said, genuinely grateful. I was ashamed of myself for having listened to Rocher and Tom Kelly and I became huffy and political. How come everyone, especially other women, are so eager for a cat fight? Maybe I’d also misjudged Shanice Morain, maybe she was every bit as good-hearted as Lady Jessalyn, and we could’ve been friends.

  From a few yards beyond Jessalyn’s head, Prince Gregory waved to me. Tom Kelly had said that I might be meeting the prince’s grandmother and I glimpsed a sliver of her in the distance, standing in a roped-off area. I recognized her profile, capped with stiffly curled silver hair and a hat like a magenta brocade carburetor, clustered with burgundy silk roses and sheaves of golden sequined wheat.

  “Oh my God,” hissed Rocher right in my ear. “That’s her. The Queen. Of all England. And he wants you to meet her. That’s really good.”

  As I steeled myself for an introduction to my possible future grandmother-in-law, I caught a few words of ongoing chatter between Lady Jessalyn and Rocher.

  “So you went out with him for all those years,” Rocher was saying. “And now you’re like totally okay with giving him up?”

  “Oh, my dear — what was your name again? Roquefort? Crochet?”

  My face twitched, because the morning was taking a screeching turn.

  “Rocher. It’s a French chocolate. A premium chocolate.”

  “Of course. Isn’t that fascinating. Do you have siblings? Perhaps Snickers and Baby Ruth?”

  “Excuse me, Lady Jessalyn, and Rocher …,” I began, with my attention split between their bickering and the prince’s increasingly demanding wave.

  “Ladies,” said Lady Jessalyn, “I don’t believe you quite understand. I’m not giving up anyone.”

  “And I don’t think you’ve been paying attention,” said Rocher, “but Prince Gregory is all about Rebecca. I mean, he’s going to marry her.”

  “Rocher?” I said, frantically shaking my head no!

  “Your friend,” said Lady Jessalyn to Rocher, but indicating me, “is indeed very beautiful. But no one seems to know anything about her. She’s appeared out of thin air, with no family and no real accomplishments. I mean, really — who is she?”

  That knocked the wind out of me, because everything Lady Jessalyn had just said was true.

  “Rebecca’s my friend,” said Rocher, “that’s who she is. And she’s gonna be on the cover of Vogue and she’s in the new Renn Hightower movie.”

  “Playing a prostitute, I believe,” said Lady Jessalyn. “Possibly from experience.”

  “What did you say?”

  Rocher was now yanking off her borrowed garnet earrings, which wasn’t a good sign. I couldn’t understand why she and Lady Jessalyn had moved to their battle stations so fully and so quickly. Then I saw that they were both taking deep breaths and snorting and heaving. They were inhaling my full bottle of Intoxicated and the scent was making them cocky and aggressive, like rival gang members staking out an urban schoolyard, spoiling for a bloodbath.

  “I said that if your friend thinks that Prince Gregory will respond to some overdone, overblown, almost actress,” said Lady Jessalyn, “then I hope she’s booked a flight home.”

  “My friend is staying right here,” said Rocher, kicking off her shoes. “Because she’s going to be a princess!”

  “A princess?” said Lady Jessalyn. “On what godforsaken, polluted planet? I mean, look at her hat!”

  Lady Jessalyn was right. Tom Kelly hadn’t been able to bring himself to create something appropriately gaudy — he was too strict. So I was wearing a prim, tasteful, minimal pillbox, covered in the same print as my dress. My hat was chic and stylish but I couldn’t compete with Lady Jessalyn. She was wearing a nubby ice blue bouclé suit with a short skirt emphasizing her toned thighs and sleek calves, but her hat was her trump card: It was an ice blue bouclé pirate ship in full sail, with a crew of white crepe de chine orchids, and rigging made from ropes of seed pearls. There was a wood-grained crewelwork ship’s wheel and a pyramid of adorable butterscotch corduroy b
arrels of whiskey on deck, while an elaborately hand-beaded Jolly Roger flew from a bamboo mast and a brave, yellow silk daffodil walked a burlap plank.

  “Rebecca’s hat is just fine,” Rocher insisted to Lady Jessalyn. “But what happened to you? You look like a family of Smurfs jumped on your head and started having sex with a roll of toilet paper.”

  “Please,” I said. “Please stop, both of you!”

  “Stop what?” asked Rocher. “Do you want me to stop standing up to this total slut?”

  “Or would you like me to stop speaking my mind,” asked Lady Jessalyn, “to this tattered storybook gnome?”

  “No,” I told both of them. “Please stop breathing!”

  A menacing circle of party guests was forming around us, and everyone was taking in deep draughts of my perfume and reeling and knocking belligerently into whoever was standing behind them. Titled, elderly gentlemen were unbuttoning their high starched collars, balling up their waistcoats and dropping them onto the ground, while their distinguished, frail and ordinarily teetotaling wives were guzzling champagne from the bottle and groping the waiters.

  “Rebecca Randle will never marry Prince Gregory,” Lady Jessalyn decreed, her hands on her hips, thrusting out her chest, which made her triple strand of pearls bounce. “And not just because she’s nothing and nobody. It is a legal impossibility, because Rebecca Randle is …”

  The crowd was pumping its collective fists in the air and chanting, “WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!” like rowdy frat boys at a kegger. A duke had stripped to his boxers and three Swedish countesses were soaking one another’s dresses with pitchers of water.

  “What is she, Lady J?” hooted a Lord Somebody, who was wavering atop the shoulders of a Lebanese billionaire, who’d knotted someone’s discarded pantyhose around his forehead, the legs flapping like the ears of a soused bunny.

  “She can’t marry the prince,” said Lady Jessalyn, holding both fists high over her head in triumph, “because she’s an American!”

  “OOOO …,” said the crowd before lurching toward Rocher for her rebuttal.

  “And what have you got to say about that?” demanded a woman who, while still in her wheelchair, had removed her skirt and was using it to fan her vibrantly floral panties.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rocher, in a tight, calm, precise tone, “but I’ve Googled this issue and while it might be an obstacle if Rebecca were, say, divorced or a convicted felon, England has no legal objection to an American marrying into the Royal Family. But Lady Jessalyn can never possibly marry Prince Gregory and become his princess, because of a single, insurmountable, moral and ethical barrier.”

  I’d never heard Rocher use any of these words before; my Intoxicated had twisted her into a crusading District Attorney on one of her favorite TV crime shows, making her dramatic closing remarks to a riveted jury.

  “Why not?” asked Lady Jessalyn, outraged and teetering, her eyes unnaturally wide and blazing. “Why can’t I marry Prince Gregory?”

  “Because, and I am sorry to mention this,” said Rocher. “And I do wish you only the very best. But, and let me phrase this in layman’s terms …”

  Layman’s terms? Rocher?

  “Lady Jessalyn, you will never become a princess, because you are such an unbelievable fucking CUNT!!!”

  As Rocher reached for Lady Jessalyn’s hat, Lady Jessalyn grabbed a fistful of Rocher’s hair. As they tumbled to the ground, clawing and cursing, the crowd detonated, chanting, “GO! GO! GO!” as everyone began placing bets, rooting for their favorite and shoving one another merrily. As the security staff waded into the fray, attempting to remove Rocher’s teeth from Lady Jessalyn’s ankle, and Lady Jessalyn’s fingers from around Rocher’s throat, I caught sight of Prince Gregory’s head, and his grandmother’s, as they were being swiftly spirited away, along with my future.

  At the hotel, I gave Rocher a tray of cupcakes along with five sleeping pills and sent her off to her room, because I needed to be alone and because she wouldn’t stop apologizing and offering to slice off various body parts as a show of remorse.

  Soon my Ascot dress lay heaped on the floor while the rest of me huddled under the covers with all of the curtains and blackout drapes drawn. I’d turned off my phone and I’d asked the front desk to screen any ticking packages, Molotov cocktails or irate English people waving machetes. So when someone began pounding on my door I assumed it was Rocher until a gruff voice barked, “Scotland Yard, Miss Randle! Please allow entrance!”

  Oh my God — I was going to be arrested. I was going to be held justifiably responsible for the Ascot riot and if I was lucky I’d only get cuffed and deported, or if the Royal Family was choosing to press charges, I’d do time. I fleetingly wondered if English jails looked more like the boarding schools in English movies, where there might be rackety plumbing but at least everyone would wear those jaunty striped scarves. As the knocking grew more insistent, I thought about knotting sheets together and shimmying down the side of the building but people only do that in cheeseball American movies, so I grabbed a red silk kimono and took a quick scan in the mirror of the squashed and creased Becky, knowing it would be a calm and exquisite Rebecca facing the officers. And I prayed that her beauty might hypnotize them, but since the police would be English, I knew that Rebecca’s tall-poppy splendor would only triple her jail time. Finally, I just accepted my fate and opened the door.

  “If you’ll please come with us at once,” said one of eight uniformed men; given the Ascot triage, they’d probably been anticipating a struggle.

  “Can I put some clothes on?”

  “As quickly as possible.”

  I tried to find an appropriately somber and law-abiding outfit but all I had was a closetful of Tom Kellys, so I opted to be booked and fingerprinted in style, in my original red dress, because at least I’d take the world’s most fabulous mug shot. The officers marched me to the elevator, which surprisingly rose, because there was undoubtedly a police helicopter waiting to chopper me out to some barren island hellhole where the thieves and murderers would alternate between knifing me and grilling me about Jate Mallow.

  The elevator opened onto a midnight picnic. The roof’s industrial air-conditioning units, ductwork and chimneys were draped with white twinkle lights and there were brass planters with rose bushes and tall, swaying ferns. Someone was standing a few yards off. He swiveled and I saw that it was Prince Gregory, in jeans and a white dinner jacket. He told the police, “Thank you so much, gentlemen. If you could please guard the exits and see that we’re not disturbed, I’d be so grateful.”

  I was beyond confused. Why had the prince commandeered the rooftop and what was the deal with the dinner jacket and why, now that I noticed, were there silver candelabra with tall, flickering white candles standing on the tar paper beside the flowering planters?

  “I’m so sorry we couldn’t spend more time together at the races today,” said the prince. “But sadly, and I’m not certain if you’re aware of this, but a pair of crude American interlopers caused a hellish mess and were forcibly ejected.”

  “I had no idea,” I replied, tentatively playing along. “I hope they didn’t annoy Lady Jessalyn.”

  “I believe she’s resting comfortably.”

  The prince led me to a round table draped with a heavy white linen cloth and set with an assortment of crystal stemware and china bearing his royal crest. He offered me a gilded bamboo chair and sat opposite me.

  “I hope you don’t mind but I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a light supper for the two of us.”

  “Thank you, that’s great. But I’ve just got one question and I hope you won’t be offended.”

  “Yes?”

  “What are we doing?”

  As the prince signaled for a nearby waiter to pour the champagne, he said, “Well, we really didn’t get a chance to chat this afternoon.”

  “Because my best friend got into a fistfight with your girlfriend and it turned into an all-out drunken war.”

&nb
sp; “Which I must confess, I enjoyed immeasurably. So many stellar hats utterly destroyed. And do you know, until today, I’d never seen my great-aunt Estelle in just a bra and a smile, running out onto the track and dragging a jockey from the saddle, while joyously shouting, ‘I’d like to ride you, you adorable little red-hot pepper!’”

  Because the afternoon had been so upsetting, I was determined not to laugh as the prince continued: “And then Great-Aunt Estelle covered that poor squirming jockey with those great, slurpy open-mouthed kisses.”

  I nodded and as my mouth began to twitch from not laughing, the prince asked, “Oh wait, I’m not certain — do you recall the last thing she said?”

  I shook my head no, whipping my skull back and forth.

  “Are you sure? Please, I’m desperate; you must help me remember it.”

  “I think,” I said, taking a deep breath to retain my composure, “I think she said something like, ‘I’m going to munch on one of your tiny little legs.’”

  The prince agreed, and then, after a few more seconds of mutual, polite nodding, we both totally lost it and began pounding the table with helpless, sobbing laughter as the silent waiter struggled not to join in. Each time the prince and I tried to stop laughing and to behave decently by holding our breath and clamping our eyes shut, there’d be a second of silence and then we’d both lose control until we were panting and crawling on the ground.

  “Did you see the Duke of Gloucester” — the prince gasped — “exposing himself to his mother and pointing to his penis and yelling, ‘You made this! Was this the best you could do?’”

  Finally, we laughed ourselves out because our stomachs were hurting and we couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling myself back up onto my chair. “I’m really, really sorry about all of it.”

  “No you’re not,” said the prince, which set us both off again until the only way we could stop laughing was to put our heads down on the table and not look at each other.