Gorgeous

by Rudnick, Paul

  Whenever the idea had surfaced, the remote notion that Tom Kelly might be my father, I’d shut down every last brain cell and banished any ounce of curiosity. Because while, sure, the time-line made sense, I couldn’t believe it was possible. I refused to believe it. Because if Tom had been involved with my mother, why had he left her and never tried to contact her? Had she told him she was pregnant? Was that why he’d cut her off? With a child, had she no longer been an asset to the Tom Kelly brand? And were all men like Tom Kelly? Were they all faithless and ice-hearted and never to be trusted? Did they all secretly long to be rich, successful bastards who didn’t care about anything but the survival of their empires, no matter who was trampled in the process?

  “Your answer? If you discovered that our darling Gregory was unfaithful?”

  “I would wait until he was sound asleep and then I would grab a rusty hunting knife and I would carve out his heart and serve it to him for breakfast, with hash browns and real maple syrup. And then I’d put on a clown suit with big shoes and one of those cardboard party hats with the elastic under the chin and then I would sing the national anthem and eat an entire box of Mallomars while I tap-danced on his grave.”

  There was a pause as the Queen looked to her corgis, and vice versa. There was instantaneous and positive agreement.

  “Welcome to the family!” said the Queen, who stood and opened her arms, as the corgis ran to me and jumped on my legs, begging to be kissed and cuddled. While the Queen and I were embracing I thought, I’m hugging the Queen of England. I didn’t have to remind myself to take notes, because I was pretty sure I’d remember everything.

  Prince Gregory was waiting for me outside the palace gates, leaning against a low-slung, battered convertible: a forest green MG two-seater with chrome detailing, a burnished rosewood dashboard and the top down.

  “Get in, and don’t ask any questions.”

  As the prince drove in silence, I could tell that he was deep into a Renn Hightower, international-man-of-mystery fantasy and that he especially loved manfully cranking the stick shift, as if we were being pursued in a high-speed chase by any number of speeding black cars with ninjas hanging out the windows and blasting us with bazookas. We pulled into a private lot just outside the Tower of London, where the parking spaces were marked with stenciled crowns.

  “Come on,” said the prince as he hoisted himself out of the car, a Hightower move which would’ve worked if the prince hadn’t caught his heel on the door handle and fallen headlong, cursing, to the pavement.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I meant to do that. Ordinarily I’m extremely suave. I hate you.”

  “I know,” I said soothingly.

  The prince took my hand and led me through a back entrance and into the Tower, using keys and touch pads to open a series of doors. He took me up a stairway, climbing five flights and passing a final security desk, where a uniformed guard opened a last heavy, brushed steel door that had one of those complicated, oversized locking mechanisms involving a wheel and a lever, which I’d only seen in photos of impenetrable Swiss vaults.

  “You first,” said the prince, propelling me into a large, darkened chamber with only glints of light bouncing off glass cases.

  “Can we turn on the lights?”

  “Not yet. I have something to tell you and for right now, I like that I can’t see you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re so — distracting. You must’ve noticed it all your life. People have enormous trouble speaking to you directly, because they’re so caught up in your eyes and your mouth and your hair. Just sitting and smiling you’re still — overpowering.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not complaining, I’m just — trying to cope with it. Every time we meet, I want to close my eyes so we can simply talk to each other and laugh and carry on. So I can just enjoy being with you.”

  “And so I can forget you’re a prince.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Could you maybe use a different accent?”

  “Shut up, I’m being serious, at least for me. Because this is rather nice, isn’t it? All this darkness?”

  I couldn’t tell where the prince was standing. He was nearby but if I held out my hand I wasn’t sure I’d reach him. I felt as if we were cat burglars in black turtlenecks keeping our voices down, or two kids daring each other to step inside the haunted mansion.

  “I do love you,” said the prince’s voice.

  “Wait — are you talking to me?”

  “Stop it. What I wanted to say was that I love, I suppose, all of you. And not just the bits that get photographed eighty million times a day. Although, of course, those bits are perfectly acceptable.”

  “Can I ask you something? When the lights come on, are you going to be wearing just a rubber apron and a goalie mask?”

  “You are revolting.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Now I need a different mask.”

  “A goalie is fine.”

  “I’ve brought you here because from all reports, my grandmother now adores you, and the corgis agree, except for Sheila, who hates everyone. But you’ve cleared the final hurdle. And now there’s something I’d like to show you.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good. Because I’ve told you that I love you. And most important, I’ve told you in the dark. And now it’s time for you to make your selection.”

  “My selection? Of what?”

  The prince activated some hidden control panel, and very gradually, throughout the room, small, deliberate spotlights began to glow and I saw that I was surrounded by glass cases containing crowns, tiaras, swords, scepters and an assortment of crosses, medallions and royal orders, all studded with precious gems and displayed against velvet. It was a moment from a pirate movie where the toothless brigands enter a cave and whoop and kill each other over a legendary stolen fortune, made up primarily of coins, goblets and Egyptian statues of cats, all spilling from treasure chests and spray-painted bright gold. Even Madame Ponelle would be speechless.

  “The Crown Jewels,” said the prince, “and I don’t know why, but every time I say that I feel I should be unzipping my fly.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Of course, all the best stuff was melted down in 1649 by Oliver Cromwell, who wasn’t fond of the monarchy. These pieces are all practically brand-new, it’s really more of a yard sale.”

  “Do you sort of technically, own all of this?”

  “Legally it belongs to both my family and the nation but we’re allowed to borrow whatever we like, for coronations and jubilees and, of course, drunken nude jogs through Kensington Park.”

  “But why did you bring me here?”

  “Because you require a wedding ring.”

  I stood perfectly still. When the prince had proposed to me and when he’d sent me to meet the Queen, that had all been a major deal. But this was serious and I grabbed the corner of a display case to steady myself. I remembered the small velvet box in my mom’s trailer holding the scrap of envelope scrawled with Tom Kelly’s phone number; that box had been designed to hold a ring. I could feel my mother smiling as what must’ve been her deathbed scheme neared completion. I also remembered how Rocher would drag me into the Dreamaire Precious-4-Less jewelry store at our strip mall, where she’d rate all the rings. “See, that one’s barely a chip, so the guy would be either broke or a cheap jerk and this one’s sort of medium-sized, like it’s a decent starter ring, for a first marriage. But look at that rock — that’s what Shanice Morain has her eye on. But she’ll probably end up with a cubic zirconia and she’ll tell everyone it’s real, until she goes swimming and it melts.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked the prince. “Am I supposed to pick something out? Do you want me to, I don’t know, browse?”

  “Yes. You can take your pick. I considered selecting something myself but I want this to be your choice.”

  I was torn bet
ween asking for a shopping bag, pointing to every case and saying, “I’ll take that one and that one, and oh, that one over there, with the platinum setting, as a backup,” and wanting to throw up my hands and say, “I can’t,” and running back down the stairs. Even for Rebecca, cruising the Crown Jewels was a leap. But then I heard those familiar few notes of music from Under the Tree, as if they were being played on a shepherd’s flute on a distant mountaintop, drawing me toward a smaller case in a corner.

  “Okay, you don’t have to do this, because this is all too much and it’s ridiculous, but right there, that is a very beautiful ring.”

  The ring was a simple gold band with a heart-shaped sapphire flanked by pearls. It wasn’t the largest ring or the showiest and the heart shape was corny, but that was why I liked it. It was the prize in a maharajah’s box of Cracker Jacks and it reminded me of my mom.

  “That was my mother’s ring. An excellent choice.”

  For a second, I wondered if the prince was going to unlock the case, but I knew that wouldn’t be necessary because when the time came, the ring would fit and I pictured my mom and Alicia high-fiving each other, as if they’d been guiding my life together from some otherworldly war room.

  “And I’ve also been thinking about something else,” said the prince, “because our life together is always going to be fairly insane. There will always be so many other people surrounding us and so many demands on our time and so much to do. So I want there to be something that’s only for us. A sort of secret code. And so I’ve been wondering if, whenever we’re alone, if I might call you Becky.”

  I fainted. No, I didn’t, but I almost did. I wasn’t just going to marry Prince Gregory and I wasn’t just going to wear his mother’s ring. He’d gone a step further. And so I did something equally or even more dangerous, something I had no business doing, something strictly forbidden, but I did it anyway. I dared to think, he must really love me.

  And when the prince leaned toward me for a kiss, I shut my eyes and we were once again swallowed by all of that impossibly romantic, priceless royal darkness.

  Six months later, my Vogue cover began to sell out on newsstands worldwide. The issue went through fifty additional printings, the most in the magazine’s history, as the twelve pages of the soon-to-be Princess Rebecca were devoured and dissected and defaced at every hairstylist’s salon, dentist’s office and book-chain espresso bar, and there were videos of cardio rooms where every woman, on every treadmill, stationary bicycle and stairstepper were all reading my Vogue. Women clamored for everything I wore but Tom Kelly refused to manufacture a duplicate of my original red dress. Although, of course, the dress had already been knocked off in a range of cheaper fabrics, which only made Tom giggle as he watched a newscast of sweet sixteens and bat mitzvahs and quinceañeras in Bali and Kiev and East Orange, New Jersey, where so many females, at every age and social level, were primped out in some approximation of Tom’s work.

  “Look at that,” Tom crowed. “Every girl on earth wants to be you.”

  Two weeks before my wedding, the studio rushed the release of High Profile into thousands of theaters with shows around the clock. The London premiere became, thanks to Prince Gregory, a benefit for Selina’s burn unit and we auctioned the international rights to the most desirable photo, which was a shot of me standing in between the prince and Jate Mallow.

  Tom Kelly told me that he hated designing red-carpet gowns. “Have you ever watched those award shows? Those women look like a dessert cart stacked with rotting parfaits.” But for the premiere he forced himself to create a strapless, second-skin, Tom Kelly sensation, with one opera glove beaded with the Union Jack and the other with the Stars and Stripes; I was a one-woman international peacekeeping mission.

  After the red-carpet apocalypse and the screening and the gala and the more elite after-party and the scarily exclusive after-after-party, I was alone in the back of my limo with Jate, as Drake kept the tinted windows sealed for our return to the hotel.

  “You’re a star, baby,” Jate declared, waving an invisible cigar and speaking in a gravelly, leering drone.

  “But, Jate,” I asked, because it was 4:00 A.M. and we were like war buddies, sharing one last beer at a local hangout, “I was there with Gregory. Doesn’t it ever get to you, that you can’t go to these things, that you can’t go anywhere, with your boyfriend?” I wasn’t positive that Jate had a boyfriend because even with me, he was cagey about his private life. I understood the need for any scrap of privacy at Jate’s level of fame because, just like me, he was compartmentalized.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” he said, “sure, it would be nice to bring someone along for the ride. And once in a while, although I have to be excruciatingly careful, I do find a guy who can … go with the flow. But all of this, this stuff, the fame stuff, the everything stuff, it hit me when I was so young, even younger than you. And I let it happen, because I’d wanted it so badly. And I didn’t want anything, including my sex life, to get in the way. And I know that’s selfish and horrible and maybe someday I’ll meet someone and I’ll wake up and I’ll become a great role model for gay kids everywhere, who’ll think I’m some creepy old dude, because by then I’ll be thirty-one.”

  “I think that would be great! You should do it!”

  “But, Rebecca, and you must already know this. Or you will very soon. When you want the sort of things, the sort of life, and the degree of fame, that we want, and you go for it, and you get it, for as long as it lasts — there’s always a price.”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s a trade-off. A sacrifice. The world says, here you go, on a platter, you’re rich and you’re famous, and if you ever get bummed out, or psychotic, or even just a little antsy, here’s what you do: You open the window of your Tokyo hotel suite and you just bathe in it, in the shrieking and the sobbing and the ‘I love you so much!’ from all of those thousands of wonderful fifteen-year-old Japanese girls, holding the life-sized cardboard cutouts of you over their heads. And in exchange for that, and, of course, for the opportunity to make great, meaningful art with the world’s most creative minds …”

  Now he was grinning.

  “You make a deal. You surrender something. You say, fine, here, take my private life. Or my family. Or my sanity. And so, Rebecca?”

  He was looking right at me with the same puzzled, scientific curiosity of Dr. Barry and Seeley Burckhardt, the people who’d gotten a little too close and had maybe caught a flicker of Becky peering out from somewhere deep within Rebecca’s wide-set, emerald, too-flawless eyes.

  “Be ready.”

  I turned away and noticed that along the back of Drake’s neck and reaching onto his jaw, there was an almost invisible white scar, which must have been a remnant of the vicious beating he’d received, the price he’d paid, after he’d fallen in love.

  “Okay. Okay. Okay.” Rocher and I were standing in a side room at Westminster Abbey minutes before my wedding, and Rocher kept repeating “okay” to calm herself down as she treasured her reflection in a wall of mirrors installed for the occasion. All of the room’s oak paneling and gothic plasterwork had been hidden beneath twelve-foot-high mirrored panels, so we were inside a diamond or an impromptu dance studio or a carnival fun house, surrounded by stacks of worn-out hymnals and a few broken lecterns.

  For the past two weeks, London had shut down, or burst, as every shop window had been crammed with images of Gregory and me and every streetlamp had fluttered with a banner announcing our approaching nuptials and every souvenir kiosk had bristled with Gregory-and-Rebecca commemorative miniature porcelain tea sets, hand-painted key chains and plastic dinner plates featuring our heads shoved close together, our foreheads touching as Princess Alicia blessed us from above, riding a heavenly cloud. There were also cheap, yellow-fringed satin pillow shams silk-screened with one of the many official portraits of the two of us standing side by side, with the prince wearing a kilt in his family tartan; there were snow globes in which tiny plastic fi
gures of Gregory and me waltzed on a jerkily spinning disk while a music box microchip played “God Save the Queen”; there were cardboard fans with my profile on one side and Gregory’s on the reverse, stuck atop a wooden tongue depressor; and there were vinyl change purses, bottle openers, toffee tins, bamboo backscratchers and poured resin paperweights, all with portraits and the date of the upcoming ceremony. There was also an infinite selection of oversized T-shirts ranging from a pastel fantasy of the two of us kissing politely, in which we both looked Asian, to a pornographic variation, in which the two of us had sex in many explicit positions, with the overall caption “50 Ways To Screw England.”

  Rocher had stockpiled multiples of every item she could find. “You’ll thank me later,” she’d say, whirling an acetate scarf — printed in Sri Lanka — with a collage of The Prince and The Pretty, as we’d been dubbed, on horseback, strolling through a rose garden, seated on matching thrones and swimming hand in hand deep underwater, with matching mermaid and merman tails.

  Rocher and I had traveled to Westminster in a gilded coach drawn by a team of eight white stallions, cantering proudly beneath headdresses of high white plumes. Rocher, who was my sole bridesmaid, had sat opposite me. I wasn’t yet wearing my wedding dress, which was too cumbersome to be stuffed into the coach. As we were trotted through the streets, all of which had been closed off for the day, we waved to the cheering, ruddy-cheeked crowds, filled with elderly folks seated on aluminum folding stools and the smallest children whistling and clapping from atop their parents’ shoulders. I locked eyes with one particular toddler who was at most three years old. He was staring at me and waving in that wan, unsure way children have and I could tell he was disappointed that I wasn’t a baby panda or a monkey, wearing a tasseled ceremonial hat.