Not very flattering. Still, I say, “I need to ask my mother.” The standard line I used to give as a kid, when I didn’t want to do something. Blame Mom.
She nods. “I knew you were a good boy. You need time to consider whezzer to help a poor girl to reunite her family and save her from ze clutches of an evil prince. So I will give you one day. Zen we will meet.”
“Meet? How?”
She produces a fire engine red Jimmy Choo sandal from under her chair cushion. While I’m watching, she pulls on the strap hard enough to snap it. She gazes at it, despondent.
“My favorite shoe—it is broken.” She sighs. “When you are ready to speak to me again, you will deliver it to my guard to let me know you are up to ze quest.”
“What if I say no?”
She ignores that. “When you do, I will open ze door to my suite on zat night at two o’clock. Bruno will be sleeping, and you may come in to me and get ze magical objects.”
Magical objects? “Magical objects? You mean, like a wand? Or a cursed necklace I can give to my enemies?”
She laughs. “You do not believe me. You think me a stupid, silly girl.”
Yes. “No! You’re totally sane. I mean, smart . . . I mean . . .”
“I see you, you know, working every night in your leetle shop, and I see you also, always looking around, looking for something exciting, anything, to get your life out of your mind. Zat is why you work so late, to see me.”
“To see you? No. I work late because I have shoes to repair, lots of shoes.”
“Zat many shoes? I think no. I think business is not so good.”
I realize she’s smarter than I gave her credit for, even if she is crazy.
I sigh. “I’ll think about it.”
“While you are thinking, think also of zis.” She stands and pulls me hard toward her. Then, she kisses me, running her hands through my hair, reaching down to rumple Ryan’s Hollister shirt. Below us, the ocean is pounding like my heart, and my heart is pounding like the drums in a hip-hop song. The gulls are screaming. Finally, she pulls away. “Be my hero, Johnny.”
Her lipstick is smudged. I bet it’s all over my face too. I realize she wanted it to be, to make her guards believe we’re engaged in a make-out session, not discussing my help on a crazy Zalkenbourgian curse. She’s using me. And I like it.
When I can finally speak again, I say, “Uh . . . I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t forget zis.” She holds up the money, then shoves it into my pocket. I shiver at her hand on my leg.
“What if I don’t do it?” I say, though I can feel her kiss on my mouth, the wad of bills in my pocket, her touch, still sending reverberations through my body. She’s right. I want to do it, no matter how crazy she is. It would solve everything, all my problems. If only there were really a frog prince.
Which there isn’t.
“You will do it,” she says. “But you may keep ze money in either case, for your secrecy.”
Then, she pulls me in for another kiss, longer than the first. I feel her hands on me, on my chest, my shoulders.
Then, other hands.
Big hands.
“Enough! How dare you touch ze princess?”
Bruno. He rips me away from Victoriana and shoves me to the other side of the balcony.
Victoriana lets out an indignant cry, then recovers with a laugh. “Oh, Bruno, you must allow me my fun. I am a princess, am I not?”
He says something in French, and an angry conversation ensues. Bruno turns toward me and gestures to the door. “Shoo, shoe boy!”
“Not until I say,” Victoriana says. She pulls me toward her for what I figure will be another passionate kiss, a dangerous kiss, with Bruno watching. But, instead of my lips, she finds my ear. She whispers, “I know you will help me, please.”
Bruno manhandles me out the door of the suite, then to the elevator. He presses the button, shoves me in, and waits until the door closes. All the way down, I feel the shoe in one hand, the bills in my pocket.
When I reach the lobby, I duck into the men’s room stall to count the money.
I almost hurt myself when I total it up.
Ten thousand dollars.
Chapter 9
I make sure Ryan sees my lipsticked face when I return his shirt.
“Liar,” he says. “You put it on yourself.”
“Zis is her color,” I say, laughing.
I spend the rest of the afternoon in a daze, not really listening to the sad tale of some guy’s busted loafer because I’m too busy thinking about how I have ten grand in my pocket and I just kissed one of People magazine’s most beautiful people. After work, I rush home, despite the heat, and show Mom the money.
Once she examines the bills under the light and uses her counterfeit-detecting pen on them, she says, “Did you steal it?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not. I know you don’t steal. But where . . . ?”
I explain the whole story, concluding that I’ve decided not to do it.
When I finish, she doesn’t respond for a long time, fanning herself with a magazine. I’m about to tell her to forget about it. We’ll talk later. But then, she says, “I think you should.”
“What?” I was sure she’d agree with me that I couldn’t take advantage of Victoriana like that. Like me, she has scruples. Why is it that only people with no money have scruples? Do we have no money because we have scruples? “You actually think I should take the money when I know I’m not going to find the prince?”
Victoriana’s shoe is in my backpack, still on my shoulders, and I feel its heel digging into my back.
“No,” Mom says. “I think you should take the money and look for the prince.”
“There’s a difference? She thinks her brother’s been turned into a frog. She’s nuts.”
“Maybe she’s not that nuts. Maybe she has faith. Maybe she must believe in something even when all hope is gone.”
So I know what this is about: Dad. Mom really thinks he’ll come back someday.
“The girl has her hopes.” Mom glances at the wedding photo on the table. “Who says there’s no magic?”
“Who says? Again, we’re talking frog princes, like the fairy tale.” But even as I argue, the fact is I want to do it, not only for the money—though ten grand would solve a lot of problems. With ten grand, I’d be sitting in air-conditioned comfort right now. We could get a lot of creditors off our back and maybe even agree on a payment plan with the others. But more, there’s the adventure, the getting out of the bowels of the hotel for once and doing something fun. I want to be one of those crazy people who believes in ghosts or the Loch Ness Monster. They have more fun than sane people. Once, I repaired some hiking shoes for a guy who claimed he was looking for a Sasquatch loose in Florida. Sounds more fun than my summer. And Victoriana said I could keep the money even if I don’t find the prince.
But what if I get in trouble for it? I don’t know much about Aloria, other than that they have a really hot princess. What if they still believe in torture there? I remember reading once about some kid who visited a foreign country and got publicly beaten with a stick for some minor crime. Maybe they’d behead you for stealing from the princess.