“Rebecca?” said Prince Gregory, nudging me with his elbow as I’d begun to hold up the line.
“Ma’am?” asked Cal. “Are you okay?”
As I struggled to answer that question, a blast shook the tent, jarring the ground, and for the next few seconds, from beneath and around every flap of canvas, huge choking gusts of sand began to billow in. There were sounds of whistling mortars and machine-gun stutters, which made everyone dive for cover and lunge for their weapons, except for the people who’d already been hit and who’d crashed against the tables, clutching suddenly blood-drenched limbs.
A team of insurgents, I later learned, had highjacked a military van, loaded it with bombs and used a suicide volunteer to drive the van into the base’s main gate, blowing it to bits. At least twelve heavily armed Taliban had followed this blast onto the base, to exactly where they knew the prince would be. Which was how I found myself standing at the center of what had once been a busy mess hall and was now just tottering metal supports and splintering wooden poles, some of them on fire, attached to charred bits of canvas. Through the smoke and the gunfire and the shouting in several languages, I could see that Prince Gregory was sprawled on the ground beside me, barely conscious and bleeding from a chest wound. As I knelt, an insurgent wearing fatigues with his head and face shrouded in fabric came running toward me, taking aim with his automatic weapon.
Three elements took simultaneous control of my mind and body. First, the stunt training, which I had practiced on High Profile, swung into gear, as if we were reshooting a more dangerous and action-heavy climax to the movie. This was coupled with my fierce protectiveness toward Prince Gregory, and not just because he was a wounded, moaning fellow human being; I became furiously English and superhumanly proud of the crown, which I would never surrender or allow to be tarnished by some terrorist lunatic. And most critically, Tom Kelly’s formfitting and ridiculous camouflage jumpsuit had come to very active and invaluable life as the clashingly colorful fabric began gripping and guiding my arms and legs and making me, if not invincible, then at the very least, dressed to kill.
The strangest thing of all was this: I’d never felt so much like myself. I felt like I’d begun to assemble everything I’d been learning, and that Tom Kelly and I had become a team. I knew exactly what I had to do and, with the help of my jumpsuit and my newly acquired fearlessness, I might just be able to do it. It was as if Rebecca had told me, “You’re ready,” and given me a thumbs-up and stepped back.
I grabbed what was left of a wooden tent pole, yanking it from its base of poured concrete. As the terrorist came at me, he howled something and I knew that he was insulting me because I was a useless woman and a godless American and because even though I was fairly covered up, he could still see my face, along with the American flag earrings composed of pavé diamonds, sapphires and rubies, which Tom had insisted on “for a polished look.”
As in any Billy Seth Bellowitch–helmed climactic on-screen battle sequence, time slowed and an invisible yet suspense-pounding digital clock appeared in the lower right-hand corner of my life, complete with a deafeningly rhythmic Euro-electro-pop soundtrack, based on my mom’s ringtone. I saw the shrouded head of the terrorist bearing down on me, now yelling soundlessly. As an imaginary handheld cameraman circled me, I swung the jagged length of tent pole, first back around for momentum and then right into the side of the terrorist’s head, connecting with an unbelievably satisfying, augmented crack, as if I were slamming a baseball bat into a melon with a microphone inside and hitting the whole thing out high over the bleachers and into the parking lot.
While the terrorist’s head remained sort of attached, his neck snapped and hinged, and as his scarf fell away, his face betrayed surprise and his thought-bubble read, “But she’s only a girl, in a really out-there jumpsuit! I didn’t see that coming!” Then, as his features torqued into a final mask of hate, he slumped to the ground. As I took a breath, the fallen terrorist, like any freshly whacked monster, rose back up onto his unsteady feet, with his head wagging across his chest, and he pulled a revolver from his worn leather belt and pointed it at me. As he began, in one final, vengeful spasm, to squeeze the trigger, I spun three hundred and sixty degrees and kicked the gun out of his grasp, sending it arcing yards away, where it landed inside the tin pot of mashed potatoes that was now rolling in the dirt.
Then, just as I thought he’d run out of weapons, the terrorist reached into his sweat-soaked shirt and revealed a grenade. As he began pulling the pin using the teeth from his pendulum-like head, my sleeve wrenched my arm toward my thigh, where my hand came to rest against my Tom Kelly signature bayonet, tucked snugly within its designated pocket. My fingers closed around the handle, the jumpsuit raised my arm and the bayonet flew into the terrorist’s palm and he dropped the grenade, with the pin remaining in place. Then the terrorist gave up and as he was dragged away, all I could think was, I guess I’m not in Missouri anymore. And I can take care of myself. And I can take care of Prince Gregory.
“Whoa …,” said Cal, peering out from behind the chaos of tables and chairs where he’d been flung by the initial blast. As he wobbled to his feet and watched as I cradled the gasping prince, Cal murmured, “Man, you are incredible.” And to this day I’m not sure if I just thought it or if I said it out loud but I sent Cal the message, “Tell Shanice.”
Even before the base had been fully resecured and the prince had been moved under heavy guard to a hospital unit, the video of my face-off with the terrorist, mostly from Cal’s cell phone and also available in a remixed rap version, had been viewed and downloaded all around the world and I had become, depending on which tabloid you read, or which BBC or CNN anchor was reporting, “Princess Rambo,” “The Gorgeous Guerilla” or throughout England, “Our Rebecca.” I was being hailed as a selfless civilian hero, as Prince Gregory’s ideal bride and as a role model for young girls everywhere. As the coverage and congratulations washed over me, I asked myself, would the reaction have been the same if, say, Cal had saved the prince? Sure, he would’ve been gushed over and invited for brief segments on every morning show, where he would’ve insisted that he was just doing his job and he’d have been offered a ghostwritten book deal and maybe the chance to appear, after a grooming makeover, as the centerpiece of a dating show, but he would’ve become a footnote, a wartime anecdote, the kid who rescued the king. But I became something greater: the world’s most charismatic, heroic female pinup since Saint Joan and the best-dressed warrior since Wonder Woman. Everywhere I turned, a little girl or her mother or a patriotic stripper was wearing a knockoff of my Tom Kelly red camouflage-print jumpsuit, which gave Tom enormous satisfaction even as he groused, “And I’m not making a dime.”
I was flown back to London with Prince Gregory on a jet outfitted with enough medical equipment and personnel to service a midsized city. A bullet had passed through Prince Gregory’s shoulder and while his injuries weren’t life threatening, he was being kept immobilized and sedated. As I held his hand he looked up into my eyes and asked, “Darling, why did you shoot me?”
“You know why.”
“From what I’ve been told, after I was knocked unconscious, you seem to have disabled several thousand bloodthirsty infidels.”
“They were trying to cut in line, for the chili.”
“All right, what I’m going to say next will become quite sloppy, so let’s both look in opposite directions, shall we?”
“Ready.”
“You’ve saved my life. And there are no words. And I think that you really are the most wonderful girl.”
“Because I saved your life?”
“What is it that you Americans always say — hello? Yes, I think you’re wonderful because you saved me, but even before that I suspected something about you. Something quite strange.”
“What? Why?”
“I suspected that you weren’t just improbably beautiful. From that first moment at the children’s hospital, you seemed obstinate. It was as if
you were wrestling with your beauty and wary of it. You were demanding that I treat you as, oh, what’s that awful expression, a human being. A very difficult sort of human being.”
“And?”
“And I found that so annoying. And exciting. And then, as I’ve watched you, as you’ve dealt with so much, with the museum and the press and your friend Rocher, you’ve been so impressive. But beyond that, mysterious. And deeply private. And I keep thinking that I wouldn’t mind spending the rest of my life trying to figure out just who you are. Because I love you.”
I had two reactions. First, I couldn’t speak. Maybe not for the rest of my life. I’d become determined to marry Prince Gregory so I could help people, but now he loved me. And he was brave enough, or drugged and delirious enough, to tell me. I knew that my mom had loved me and I knew that Rocher did and they meant everything to me, but I’d never let myself believe that someday, someone else, someone who wasn’t a friend or a relative, but a guy, would love me. I didn’t think I was important enough or interesting enough, or, okay, fine, pretty enough, for a guy to even notice me.
But my second thought crashed into the first: Who did Prince Gregory love? Becky or Rebecca? He’d picked up on a split and it intrigued him. But what would happen if he ever found out the truth? Would he even believe it? Would he feel foolish and disgusted and betrayed? Would he hate me if I hadn’t always been beautiful? Would it matter? And how much?
“Darling?” said the prince, trying to vainly raise his injured arm and snap his fingers to grab my attention. He’d just said something else, which had zipped right past me because I’d been too lost in my own demented inner Q&A session.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m sure that you’d like time to think it over and you might not even be at all interested and who could blame you? But could you at least offer, perhaps, a hint? A crumb? You could blink once for ‘yes,’ twice for ‘absolutely not, you asshole,’ and three times for ‘I wish I hadn’t saved you.’ But please: Will you at least consider marrying me?”
Oh my God. The prince had proposed to me and I’d missed it. It was like I’d stepped out to get some Raisinets and a medium Diet Coke during the movie’s climax, and there’d been an incredibly long line at the snack bar.
I was about to do the right thing, to warn Prince Gregory, to see if I could even begin diagramming the situation, to say, “I want to marry you more than anything but here’s why I can’t, there are these three dresses, right …,” but I stopped. Because he was looking at me with such helpless, impossible, only mildly sedated love, and I couldn’t bear to hurt him and all I wanted was for him to keep looking at me that way forever or even for just a few more seconds. Because maybe Rebecca was used to having so many men, and especially Prince Gregory, look at her like that, but no one had ever looked at Becky with that kind of love.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” I said.
“Because you love me?”
“Because I really want to upset Lady Jessalyn.”
“We were meant to be together. Because you’re a terrible person.”
I wanted to say, “You have no idea,” but the prince had managed to prop himself up onto his good elbow and he had shut his eyes and was leaning toward me. I leaned forward and just as our lips were about to meet, he paused.
“But, darling?” he said. “Before the announcement and the ceremony and all of that hideousness, there’s only one obstacle. You’ve got to do me the most enormous favor. And I’m sure that everything will go swimmingly, it’s mostly a formality, but it is necessary for, you know, the future of the commonwealth.”
“No, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to help you pee. Call a nurse.”
“No, no, it’s not that, although you are shockingly selfish. But before we can marry, you must meet my grandmother and ask for her blessing.”
“Your grandmother?”
He sighed. “You know, the Queen.”
Okay, now pay attention, because this is really important,” said Rocher once I was back in my hotel suite. Rocher had been so thrilled by Prince Gregory’s marriage proposal that she’d completely forgotten her role in my earlier downfall and she was back on board as my foremost advisor on all things royal. “I’ve done all sorts of research but I can’t totally get her. She’s been Queen for, like, sixty years, since she was fourteen, and as far as I can tell she’s always looked exactly the same. She wears really bright colors and carries these huge pocketbooks, which are coordinated with her outfits; they look like she’s got a cinder block in them, in case she needs to take a swing at someone. Her husband is dead, Princess Alicia is gone and Gregory’s her heir to the throne. Some people love her because she’s like all old-school and dignified and frumpy and other people think she’s scary, like they forgot to put a cushion on her throne so her butt’s been aching for sixty years and she’s never gonna smile at anyone except her seventy-two dogs.”
“She does not have seventy-two dogs!”
“Almost! They’re her favorite things! Some people say that she loves those dogs more than her family or even the whole country! So when you go to see her, that’s gonna be the biggest deal of all, if you want to get her okay to marry Prince Gregory. If you want to become a princess you’ve got to be really nice to the fucking dogs.”
“She’s right,” said Tom Kelly in my suite the next day as he and Mrs. Chen fiddled with my presentation outfit. “The dogs are key. I was thinking of sewing bits of liver into the hem of this dress.”
“What?”
“Or mixing you a fragrance called In Heat by Tom Kelly. But here’s what I’ve come up with. Most girls, when they’re meeting their in-laws, they tend to dress down to seem modest and conservative and they end up looking like they’re making a court appearance, after they’ve been arrested for getting drunk and plowing their minivan into a busload of schoolchildren.”
“Okay …,” I said, because after the success of the camouflage jumpsuit, I wasn’t about to question Tom’s logic or finesse.
“But I think the Queen would see right through that. I think you need to make a statement.”
My dress was made of heavy, stiff white duchesse satin, splattered with the most extreme abstract print I’d ever seen. It was as if Tom had backed me against a wall, shut his eyes and used a wide housepainter’s brush to fling screaming red enamel across my torso and then used a stick to add wild, jagged slashes of jet black. There was a short, matching collarless jacket with sleeves that stopped and flared in the middle of my forearms to display armloads of chunky red-lacquered bracelets and I was issued one glossy red satin high heel and its mate in black suede. My purse was a circular vinyl box covered in a mammoth red-and-black houndstooth check and my hat was a black comb with three long, savage red feathers arcing over my head, like a fountain of nail polish. Mrs. Chen’s final addition was a pair of short white satin gloves with the fingers dipped in more wet-look red, as if I’d just been called away from performing open-heart surgery.
“It’s defiant,” said Tom, “and I think she might go for it. God knows she loves color and this is a dress that says, ‘Baby, we both know that when you die, I’m gonna be the Queen.’”
Drake drove me to Buckingham Palace for an afternoon tea that Prince Gregory wasn’t allowed to attend. “She wants one-on-one,” the prince had told me, “and remember, they have a metal detector.”
While I wasn’t carrying any contraband, I did worry that my outfit might set off, at the very least, the palace’s sprinkler system.
Drake had been instructed to leave me at the elaborate iron-work front gates, where the Beefeaters stood guard in their brass-buttoned red coats and those tall hats that look like mutant pinecones. These sentries allowed me to pass and then I had to walk across the wide, reddish gravel forecourt all by myself. The palace loomed ahead, with three intimidating stories of limestone and fluted columns and row after row of high, paned windows; I felt like I was being marched into the police headquarters of some commun
ist regime for waterboarding and interrogation. I caught a flicker of movement at one of the darkened, draped windows, as if someone was either checking me out or taking aim through the sight of a high-powered weapon.
Once inside the palace I was greeted by a woman who introduced herself as “Lady Veronica Arnstelt-Bowen, Ranking Secretary to Her Majesty.” Lady Veronica was wearing a fuzzy woolen suit that wasn’t gray or pink or cream, yet included all of these colors, as if a few dozen kittens and a visiting Easter chick had crawled all over her and settled in for a mass nap. And while Lady Veronica’s smile was steady I knew that I’d been instantly judged and that whatever Lady Veronica’s assessment might be, it had been copyedited, fact-checked and filed in a small cement room lit by bare bulbs in the subbasement of her brain. Lady Veronica was most likely in her fifties and she hadn’t undergone any cosmetic procedures except for a hint of almost medicinal beige lipstick and two barely blended circles of rouge, like inflamed mosquito bites. Her face was rigid with diligence and dignity, which are English Botox.
Lady Veronica took me through a mile of high-ceilinged corridors, all lined with many sizes of ancestral portraits of people who looked as if they’d never approved of being alive. We passed rooms overstuffed with chintz-slipcovered sofas and wing chairs, all with deep, sighing indentations, and there were acres of mahogany paneling and threadbare oriental carpets. So far the palace wasn’t some sort of feudal castle in a horror movie, with crusty suits of armor guarding stone walls. It felt more like God’s country house, if God were an Englishman with plenty of housekeepers, a harpsichord or three and a fondness for crackled ceramic dog figurines. One room was filled by a gallery of dog portraits, with Labradors and Dobermans and rottweilers standing alert beside fences, snoozing across hearths or decked out in lace ruffs, powdered wigs and plumed velvet hats, using their paws to raise delicate handkerchiefs to their wet noses.
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