A Princess for Christmas

by Jenny Holiday

  She laughed. Because that was funny, but also because she was free. For just a little bit, but that wasn’t nothing. It was a sunny winter day in New York City, and she was going to have lunch with a grumpy-nice man. How normal. How unremarkable. How wonderful.

  “Are we going in the right direction for the sandwich place?” she asked. “Do we have time to walk there? I’m sure they’re standing there watching me, and I’d really rather preserve my triumphant exit.”

  Leo chuckled. “We’re going the right way, but you’re not dressed warmly enough. It’s a good four blocks.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He took off his hat, which was a black, knit toque with Islanders embroidered on it in white.

  “No, no, I can’t take your hat. I assure you—”

  He jammed it on her head.

  “I’m from the Alps!” She tried one more protest. “I’m hearty.”

  “I’m from the Bronx,” he countered. “I’m heartier.”

  She had no argument for that. He was definitely . . . heartier than she was. So when he held out his arm and said, “Your pastrami on rye awaits, Your Honorable Ladyness,” all she could do was take it.

  “So what’s the verdict?”

  He should probably have let her take more than a bite before he started pressing her. Or at least given her a chance to properly chew and swallow her first bite. But Leo found himself wanting the princess to approve of his deli. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d been thrown for a loop to find her on the verge of tears outside that last shop. He’d wanted to cheer her up.

  It was worth remembering, though, that cheering up princesses wasn’t in his job description. They would finish up here, and he would take her back to the hotel and head up to Gabby’s play.

  When she’d conquered her bite, Marie set the sandwich down and looked at it skeptically. “It’s very good, but it’s so big. You Americans always put so much meat on everything.”

  So big. So much meat. He chuckled. He couldn’t help it. As much as he’d had to grow up in recent years, he still had an inner thirteen-year-old.

  “What is amusing?”

  Leo shook his head. “You are.” Marie was such a strange mix of competent and innocent. Smart and oblivious. Some of it was probably due to the fact that English wasn’t her first language—though she spoke it perfectly—but some of it, he suspected, was just her.

  She frowned. So, not wanting her to feel self-conscious, Leo said, “So what happened at the last store? Do I need to go back there and kick someone’s ass?”

  Marie’s forehead smoothed as she smiled. Mission accomplished. “No. I was merely upset because I found out we’re losing some more business.”

  He had achieved his goal to make her smile. And he didn’t really give a fuck about the Eldovian watch industry, so he had no idea why he opened his mouth again and said, “You want to tell me about it?”

  It turned out she did.

  The luxury watch industry, he learned as they ate, was facing some trouble. Production runs, as she’d mentioned before, relied on preorders. That made sense to him. You weren’t going to want to manufacture really expensive products unless you knew there was a market for them. The rest? Not so much.

  “So why not make a smart watch?” he asked. “Something classier than the Apple Watch. Every idiot has one of those these days.”

  “My father thinks it’s a fad that will pass. He sees it as sullying the brand. Morneau watches have been made entirely in our country via traditional methods for more than two hundred years. He takes pride in that.”

  Leo could see it, and oh how he wished Apple everything was a fad. New York was full of zombies too lazy to take their phones out of their pockets, marching through the city staring at their wrists. But . . . “I don’t think smart watches are going anywhere. But anyway, do you have to make them? Can you license the Morneau name? Like, you know the Fitbit?”

  She nodded. “It never really took off in our country—I feel as though when you have the Alps, you don’t need a device to tell you how much to walk—but I know it.”

  “My mom had one of the early models. She thought it was ugly, though. But there were these Kate Spade band things. Like a container you wrapped around the actual Fitbit. She thought one of those would class it up. But they were expensive.” Well, they were expensive to the Riccis. For all he knew, Kate Spade was actually a ghetto brand when you were a royal. But his point stood, so he pressed on. “My dad kept telling her to go ahead and buy one, but she said she couldn’t justify it. She told us to go in on it for a Christmas present for her. But then—”

  Ah, shit.

  This was why he avoided talking about his parents. He could force himself to keep his shit together to do it with Gabby because he knew it was important for her to be able to talk about them. But on his own? No. He just didn’t go there.

  Because it made his throat close up.

  Her hand was on his, suddenly. She was wearing nail polish. He hadn’t noticed that before. It was super pale pink—almost beige. It was an ugly color, actually.

  A princess with ugly nails. The thought anchored him. Stopped the drowning.

  She was going to say something. Something kind, probably. He didn’t want that, so he rushed to finish the story. “One day—just a normal day; it wasn’t a special occasion—my dad came home with one for her.”

  “Oh, that’s so—”

  “The point is”—he hated to interrupt her, but he couldn’t let her get all moony over his parents, or he’d embarrass himself by joining her—“the addition of the Kate Spade part made all the difference. I don’t know if it was the brand—the idea of it—or if it made an actual aesthetic difference to her. But she wore that thing every day until she . . .”

  “Until she died?”

  Leo was too tired, suddenly, to fight Marie’s quiet empathy, so he nodded. “I almost had her buried in it, actually. But then I thought maybe Gabby might want it. But then I thought . . .”

  Gah. Shut up. Why was he babbling like this?

  “Then you thought what?” she prodded gently. She was looking at him like she genuinely cared about the answer.

  “Well, I don’t know. She was only nine. Who puts a Fitbit on a nine-year-old? They’re supposed to run and play because they like it, right? Not because they need something to remind them to get up and move their bodies. So I thought I’d save it for later, but . . .” Well, fuck it, he’d come this far. “She’s older now, but the last two years have been kind of a crash course in parenting a girl in the modern world. I see all this . . . shit she tries to live up to. Already! Like, she wants to wear all this makeup. For what? So she can look like she’s twenty-five? We had a major blowout this past Halloween because she wanted to be an angel and I stupidly agreed, not realizing that what she actually wanted to be was a Victoria’s Secret angel. She’s eleven! Where is that coming from?”

  “The patriarchy.”

  He barked a surprised laugh but she was right. He wouldn’t have said it like that, but watching—watching closely—as Gabby grew up had opened his eyes to a lot of shit he had not seen when he was just her semiabsent big brother. “So anyway, with the Fitbit, I thought no way am I giving her anything that’s so . . . prescriptive, you know? That tells her to be a certain way or to do things a certain way?” God. He needed to stop talking. “Listen to me. I’m—”

  “A good brother. A good surrogate father.”

  The ugly-nailed hand was back on top of his, squeezing this time.

  He’d been going to say “an idiot,” but hell, he’d take her assessment, even if she was incorrect. He was trying to be those things. Did that count?

  Leo cleared his throat and pulled his hand back. “Anyway. We were supposed to be talking about your watches. Maybe you should consider making a smart watch.”

  Marie nodded. “And selling our products online. Or at least letting retailers do so. That was another thing Marx was upset about.”

  “
You don’t sell your watches online?” That was hard to believe.

  “Most luxury brands don’t.”

  “Is that some kind of weird exclusivity thing? Because no offense, that’s just dumb. I’m the last guy to climb on board any tech trend. I still read the physical newspaper and listen to records—and not in a hipster-ironic way. But I’m not your market. How much do your watches cost?”

  “They start at around ten thousand US.”

  He snorted. “And where do they end?”

  “The top model right now retails for four hundred thousand US.”

  He blinked. This was where the term sticker shock came from, he supposed. He had an idea that there was a category of watches—like Rolexes—that were really expensive, but he’d had no idea. “Well, to my mind, not selling your stuff online is stupid. Stubborn-mindedly ignoring a huge market. It’s like . . .” He cast around for a metaphor. “I don’t know, it’s like the Islanders not selling Islanders merchandise.” He pointed at his hat, which was lying on the table next to her.

  She burst out laughing. He laughed along with her. It felt good.

  He simply wasn’t capable of wrapping his mind around spending so much for a watch, even if you had that kind of money to burn. “No offense, Your Exalted Loftiness, but in my opinion, this is all a load of shit.” He reached for her hand. He’d noticed earlier today that she was wearing the same big watch as yesterday. It was a good-looking watch, silver—platinum?—with a few small diamonds on the face, but not worth anywhere near what it no doubt retailed for. “This is a watch, not the cure for cancer. You can’t just—oh, shit. How did it get so late? I have to go.”

  Goddammit. It was nearly quarter to one. He had to get up to Gabby’s school. He was cutting it close, but if he left right now, he’d be fine. Probably. Thankfully, Dani was on Toto chauffeur duty today, so he didn’t have to stop home first.

  “Of course.” Marie pushed back from the table. Leo felt bad that she’d barely made a dent in her sandwich, so he hustled to the counter for a take-out container and boxed it up for her. Outside, he paused, trying to think what the most efficient way was to get her back to the hotel. Uber there, drop her, and then go back for his car? Or go to his car first?

  His indecision must have betrayed his anxiousness, because she said, “I’ll get a cab from here.”

  “No, you won’t.” It wasn’t her fault he’d gotten carried away rambling about Fitbits and age-inappropriate Halloween costumes. “Come on. The car’s on our way. I can drop you and probably still make it.”

  “Probably?” she echoed. “No, thank you. You can’t miss this play.”

  Her bossy tone was sweet but also a little irritating. “I won’t. Come on.”

  Marie dug her heels in as Leo tried to take her arm to get them moving.

  So much for sweet. In fact, she was back to radiating that entitled snootiness she’d been wrapped in when she first got into his cab. He rolled his eyes. “Listen, Princess McRolex, unless you want to attend an extremely amateur production of The Wizard of Oz in which all the actors are Munchkins, do me a favor and—”

  “I do.”

  Huh? “You do what?”

  “I do want to attend an extremely amateur production of The Wizard of Oz in which all the actors are Munchkins.”

  He hadn’t actually been inviting her. She must have realized that.

  “I have no competing engagements, and it sounds like a delightfully normal way to spend the afternoon.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but closed it. Fuck it. It was easier to just take her. Faster. Plus Gabby would love it.

  “Well, then.” He held out his arm and she took it. “We’re off to see the wizard.”

  Chapter Five

  They pulled up in front of the school with five minutes to spare. His phone rang—again—as he parked haphazardly.

  “Hi,” he said, picking up Dani’s call as he held the passenger-side door for the princess. Dani had been calling for the past twenty minutes, but without a Bluetooth system in the rental, he hadn’t been able to pick up while driving. “I’m here, I’m here.”

  “Okay, good. I was starting to fear you weren’t going to make it.”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “I’ve saved you a seat. On the left about halfway back.”

  He glanced at Marie, who was looking around like she was a tourist in Times Square instead of on an unremarkable street in the Bronx. “I need two seats.” He was met by silence, so he added, “I, uh, brought a guest.”

  “Oh my god, you brought the princess of Eldovia, didn’t you?”

  “I did not,” he said as he grabbed the very same princess and started towing her toward the entrance.

  “Oh my god!” Dani went on. “I can’t believe—”

  He hung up, turned to Marie, and said, “Remember when you were running for the boat?”

  She nodded.

  “This is my version of running for the boat.”

  And bless her, she nodded again, more vehemently this time, and took off ahead of him toward the door.

  Inside, Leo spotted Dani right away. She was standing near the back—she must have moved from her original spot—guarding three chairs. The silver lining of their late arrival was that he didn’t have to do more than quickly introduce the two women before the lights went out. And even that he didn’t really have to do because after he’d said, “This is my friend, Daniela Martinez,” Marie preemptively stuck out her hand and said, “Marie Accola.”

  The lights went out, and after some scrambling and whispering from backstage, some high-powered fans started imposing a “tornado” on Kansas.

  The show was pretty great, and not just kid-great. The school was a technology magnet, so Leo hadn’t had high hopes, but whatever the play lacked in terms of show-biz skills of its actors, it made up for in production values. Beside him, Marie gasped audibly when Dorothy woke up and a cool trick of light and engineering saw the black-and-white sets of Kansas replaced by the splendor of Oz.

  He was acutely aware of Marie’s reactions to everything, even though most of them were more subtle than that gasp. She clapped and laughed, and when he sneaked a glance at her, she was rapt. He would have thought she’d be accustomed to . . . he didn’t even know. Opera? Ballet? Whatever it was rich people did when they wanted to be entertained. But it seemed that this modest, homespun production truly delighted her.

  And then the Lollipop Guild—not League—appeared along with the rest of the Munchkins. And there she was, his Gabby. It was probably all the mucking about he’d done the last two days in memories best left undisturbed, but something turned over in Leo’s chest. He was so fucking proud of her. Which was dumb, because it wasn’t like this was an actual achievement. She was just on the side of the pack, dressed in neon colors holding an oversized piece of cardboard made to look like a lollipop.

  She was just standing there.

  But, she was standing there. Alive and thriving—mostly. Smiling through the nerves that were clearly visible—to him, anyway—on her face. Growing up so fast.

  The one thing he hadn’t been prepared for when it came to his role as a pseudodad was the wrenching contradictions that came with the gig. He wanted her to grow up, yet he didn’t. She was a child, yet not a child. She’d had her first period, yet there she was, part of a crowd of Munchkins, looking younger than her years.

  As the Lullaby League wrapped up their welcome to Dorothy, that Aidan punk stepped up. Leo leaned forward in his seat. There was a pause.

  Say it. Say it.

  “We represent the Lollipop Guild.”

  Leo expelled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Then Gabby, smooth as anything, handed Dorothy her lollipop and said, “And on behalf of the Lollipop Guild, we welcome you to Munchkin Land.”

  His hands shot up into the air. He wasn’t sure if he meant to clap them over his head or to pump his fists in victory, but of course neither was appropriate for this context.
This wasn’t an Islanders game. The show had moved on and there were people behind him, people who were probably just as excited about their own kids’ theatrical triumphs.

  So he lowered his arms, trying to be smooth. And failing, judging by the fact that both Dani and Marie were looking at him with amusement. Dani actually snorted.

  The rest of the play was boring. What could he say? Other people’s kids were boring.

  But at the end, even though the play had been a nonmusical version, everyone came out and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Gabby was back, smiling and singing and waving the cardboard lollipop she must have gotten back from Dorothy.

  When Leo leapt to his feet along with the rest of the crowd in a standing ovation, he had never meant anything more.

  As the applause died down, Marie leaned over and whispered to Leo, “Can we keep the princess thing quiet?”

  He turned to her but didn’t answer. His eyes raked over her body in a way that made her feel . . . funny. “We can try,” he finally said.

  Was she not dressed appropriately? She’d tried to dress more businesslike than princesslike this morning, but it seemed that coat dresses were not quite the thing in America.

  “I don’t want to upstage your sister, or any of the other children,” she whispered, and it was true—or part of the truth. The rest of it was that she was having so much fun. The students’ enthusiasm for the play, the parents’ pride—it was all contagious. And, goodness: Leo. He could be such a grump, but he was practically oozing love for his sister.

  “Yeah, well, my sister is the one likely to bust your cover. She hasn’t had the easiest time socially since she started middle school, and having an honest-to-God princess come see her play is probably the best thing that’s happened to her all year.”

  Daniela handed Leo a bouquet of flowers. “We’re supposed to meet them in the lunchroom.”

  “Thank you for this,” Leo said, his tone fervent. “I should have thought of this.”

  “That’s why you have me.” Daniela must be Leo’s girlfriend. Marie had been so fixated on the fact that Leo was Gabby’s brother and not father, but of course why would a handsome man like him not have a girlfriend?