Happily Ever After, Ltd. - 6. The Dragon

Burnham returned to Dorothy’s office carrying Dave. Dave was unconscious, his head lolling back and a strand of saliva sliding down his chin. On his throat, the dart had left a raised mark.

Dorothy stood up. “Here, put him in my chair. Thank you so much.” Burnham placed Dave carefully into the chair. “How much longer will he be out?” she asked.

“I’d say another ten minutes or so.”

“He’s going to be difficult when he wakes up,” Dorothy said. “The tranquiliser always makes people so irritable.”

“If only they could all rise as peacefully as Sleeping Beauty.”

Maria knocked on the door. She blinked at the unconscious man in Dorothy’s chair and immediately disregarded him. After all, she’d seen much stranger sights in Dorothy’s office. Once there’d been a dwarf handcuffed to the desk. Another time, Maria had walked in to find three pig-human hybrids on the floor, squealing and thrashing around under a wire net. It took a lot to surprise Maria, especially in moments like these, when there were much more important things to worry about.

“Sorry for interrupting again,” Maria said, “but we’ve got another problem.”

*

The same message was again flashing on Liam’s computer screen.

ERROR

ERROR

ERROR

“Prince Charming was being reinstalled,” Liam said, “but now something’s blocking him. The installation has been frozen for the last three minutes.”

“Meaning?” Dorothy said.

“Meaning that until I can figure out what’s blocking the installation,” Liam said, “our temporary replacement may need to be permanent.”

“That’s not possible,” Dorothy said. “A replacement has never been used for longer than thirty minutes. Can’t you make another Prince Charming?”

“Yeah, I can definitely do that,” Liam said. “There are templates I can work from in our archives. But that’s going to take a lot more time. It won’t be ready for this cycle.”

“There must be another option.”

“Yes – to remove the replacement.”

“No!” Dorothy said. “We can’t let Cinderella cry into the fireplace for twenty pages! That is not an option.”

“But if we keep the replacement in there, he’ll be completely lost,” Maria said. “He won’t know what he’s doing. Who’s to say he’ll even fall in love with her?”

“All he has to do is follow the story,” Dorothy said. “Everyone knows how it goes – and even if he doesn’t know how it goes, the other characters basically take the Prince everywhere he needs to go, don’t they?”

“Even if he does everything perfectly,” Liam said, “there’s no protocol for this – using a replacement for an entire cycle.”

Dorothy knew what she had to do. She had been dreading it ever since Prince Charming had vanished, but now she realised it had been inevitable from the start. She was going to have to go to the Dragon.

“Leave him in for now,” Dorothy said. “Maria, find out as much as you can about the replacement. Start a proper file – anything and everything, no detail is too small. If Ryan is staying in the story, we need to know everything about him. And Liam, get the new Prince ready – he has to be ready by the end of this cycle. And while you’re at it, it would be good to know what the hell happened to our Prince Charming in the first place.”

*

Dorothy stepped into the elevator as though she was stepping into her own coffin. She pressed 19, for the highest floor. The elevator shot straight upwards, the doors opening directly into an office. This office occupied the entire nineteenth floor and looked more like a penthouse suite featured in an interior design magazine, than a publisher’s office. There were floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides, with views that stretched out to the sea on one side and to the distant mountains on the other. There was a tall bookcase in one corner of the room and a large mahogany desk, but otherwise there was no sign that this was someone’s place of work.

Dorothy could hear voices on the other side of the room. She walked around the elevators, to the other side of the office. Against the back wall, there was a large flat-screen television, on which daytime soap actors recited corny dialogue.

“Diana,” said a tanned man in a suit, “I can’t keep fighting this. I’m in love with you and I always have been.”

“Please, stop saying that,” said a blonde dye-job. “Every time you say that, I feel like my life is ending.”

“Or,” said the tanned man, “do you feel like your life is beginning for the first time?”

On a sofa in front of the television was Patricia Le Quant, the Chief Executive Officer of Happily Ever After, Ltd. Patricia swept her waist-length brown hair out of her face and turned to look at Dorothy.

Patricia Le Quant was a large woman of indeterminate age. Her round face was smooth, almost shiny, and she had little dark eyes that were impossible to read. Patricia Le Quant was either a young strange-looking woman, or she was significantly older and had undergone cosmetic surgery. None of Patricia’s subordinates knew for sure, but they all had an opinion about her. Some claimed she was a transgender woman, others insisted she was a dominatrix, and some even believed she was a fundamentalist Christian. But as wide-ranging as the rumours were, everybody agreed on one thing: Patricia Le Quant was an intimidating woman.

Even if you had walked in on her watching a soap opera in the middle of the day, with a half-eaten block of chocolate next to her, Patricia still had a commanding presence.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Dorothy said, “but I need to speak to you. It’s a reasonably urgent matter.”

“You haven’t made another mistake, have you?” Patricia said. She had the condescending singsong voice of a kindergarten teacher.

“I’m sorry?”

“You work too hard, my dear,” Patricia said. “That’s your problem. That which you think makes you an asset to our company in reality makes you a liability. You work too hard and you do miss things.”

“I wasn’t aware that I had missed anything,” Dorothy said.

Patricia laughed cruelly. “The Gingerbread incident. The bus stop incident. The shoe incident ...”

“None of those incidents resulted from my negligence.”

“Ah, but this one did, didn’t it? Prince Charming’s disappearance.”

Dorothy could’ve kicked herself for thinking she could ever hide anything from Patricia. She had seen it happen. She saw everything from up in her lair.

“I know exactly what’s been going on,” Patricia said. “I knew it long before you came in. Your negligence has resulted in Prince Charming completely vanishing from the pages of Cinderella.” Patricia snapped off another square of chocolate. “Do we know how he vanished yet?”

“Our head technician is looking into it as we speak,” Dorothy said. “I’m sorry for not bringing it to your attention sooner. I was sure it could be resolved quickly. I followed the protocol and used a human replacement, intended only for a short period – less than thirty minutes.”

“But ...?”

“The reinstallation of Prince Charming failed. We’re not sure why yet, and we’ve already started rebuilding a new Prince from scratch. But he won’t be ready for the Ball.”

“I see.”

“We’ve never used a human replacement for an entire cycle before,” Dorothy said, “but if we remove him now, Cinderella is alone, and there’s no hope of a happy ending for the next three days. But if he remains—”

“The boy remains,” Patricia said.

This was the last thing Dorothy had expected.

“The boy remains,” said Patricia again. “It’s the only option. It’s a gamble, of course, but the alternative is a dead-end. So he must remain.”

“But what if—”

“He remains. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll get his exit paperwork sorted with Legal,” Patricia said. “You’ve clearly got your hands full.”

“Thank you.”

“Mrs Weaver,” Patricia said.

“Yes?” Dorothy said.

“Oh, nothing. I was thinking aloud. Weaver is your married name, isn’t it?”

“That’s correct.”

“And yet I see that you’re not wearing your wedding ring anymore. I take it that you won’t be Mrs Weaver for much longer.”

Dorothy swallowed. “Yes – but I don’t see—”

“What did I tell you? You work too hard. If it’d been me married to that gorgeous husband of yours, I would’ve done things very differently. I wouldn’t have buried myself in work whenever we had problems. I wouldn’t have prioritised some silly job over the man of my dreams.”

“I – I didn’t—”

“I wouldn’t have even kept working after we’d gotten married – at least not full-time. I would’ve spent so much more time at home – cleaning the house, doing laundry, making the garden nice. And of course, I would’ve had children straight away. And when he came home from work every night, there’d be dinner waiting for him and I’d be there for him to talk about his long hard day. That’s what I would’ve done.”

“And – and that would have been your choice,” Dorothy said, “but he and I both agreed—” Dorothy broke off, not knowing why she was trying to defend her private life to Patricia Le Quant.

“It looks bad when our employees get divorced. Especially from each other. That was your other mistake, marrying into the workplace. I think you knew that, too, didn’t you? I think you knew that was a mistake from the beginning.”

For a minute, Patricia looked at Dorothy thoughtfully, while Dorothy reeled with the shock of what Patricia had said. Eventually, Patricia said, “Well. I suppose we both have a fair bit of work to get back to.”

Dorothy made her way back to the elevator, badly shaken. Patricia often managed to reduce Dorothy to a quivering mess. The first time they’d met had been the day after the Gingerbread incident. Although everyone else had praised Dorothy’s actions, Patricia’s carefully chosen words made Dorothy feel as though she had somehow been at fault. Patricia had said things like “Wait, you weren’t at the monitor when it happened? Why not?” and “The Witch never physically attacks anyone. Did you say something to provoke her?”

Still, today’s encounter had been a whole new level of humiliation. Nobody had ever spoken to Dorothy so frankly about her personal life before, not even Burnham himself. Patricia had no right, Dorothy said to herself as the elevator took her back down to the twelfth floor, the numb shock of the meeting turning slowly into anger. Patricia didn’t know the first thing about Dorothy, much less her marriage. Dorothy had only spoken to Patricia a handful of times and only ever about work – and as far as Dorothy knew, Patricia had never even met Burnham.

What Dorothy was angriest about, however, was that, on one point at least, Patricia had been absolutely correct.

*

Before the Gingerbread incident, Dorothy was referred to by her colleagues as “that mousy new girl in Hansel” or “you know, the one who doesn’t talk to anybody”. Immediately after the incident, however, Dorothy became an office celebrity. Wherever she went, there were people pointing her out, stealing sideways glances and whispering loudly.

“That’s her. She’s the one.”

“Really? Her? Looking at her you wouldn’t think it.”

“I know, right?”

“I heard she’s still a virgin.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. She hardly even talks to anyone, unless it’s about work.”

The attention was greatly unnerving to Dorothy, who kept playing the Gingerbread incident over in her mind, worrying that she had overlooked something, that she had somehow been at fault. But what unnerved Dorothy the most was the attention she was getting from the security officer. Burnham had started checking on her a few times every day, offering to bring her coffee, blueberry muffins, bottled water, or more coffee. It irritated Dorothy to think that Burnham saw her as fragile and helpless, suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress. She never imagined that he had more personal motives.

After nearly a month, Burnham decided on a more direct approach.

“Nothing, thanks,” Dorothy said, when Burnham appeared in the doorway of the Hansel control room. She’d barely even looked up at him, so absorbed was she with the task at hand: testing gingerbread brittleness with a chisel she had borrowed from maintenance.

Burnham cleared his throat. “No, actually, I was ... uh ... I wanted to ask you something else.”

Dorothy looked up sharply. “Is something wrong?”

“No! Not at all. It’s, uh ...”

Dorothy’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Burnham had never had this much trouble getting words out before. He towered in the doorway and yet he felt about three inches tall under her stare.

“I wanted to ask you to have dinner with me,” he said.

“Dinner?” she repeated, as if she had never heard the word.

“Or a drink after work. Or a coffee. Or ...”

“Is something wrong?” Dorothy asked again.

“No.” Burnham laughed nervously. “I’m asking you ... uh ... you know. Out.”

It took a long moment for Dorothy to understand. She had never been “asked out” before, at least not directly. At university, a few boys had tried passing her notes during university lectures, but she ignored these. One time, Dorothy had been using the photocopier at the library when a boy had sent his friend over to her to ask her out on his behalf. Dorothy rejected the offer without even looking at the suitor, who was hovering by the reference section, and went back to her photocopying.

Dorothy now realised that Burnham’s thrice-daily visits were not part of a post-incident management plan. He wasn’t being forced to see her every day, and he wasn’t doing it out of pity. He liked her. And he was handsome. She had noticed that immediately after the Gingerbread incident. Big, but handsome. Still, it didn’t matter what she thought of him. She was not going to go down this path, not with him.

It was a rule she had set for herself during her first summer as an intern, a rule inspired by the trials and tribulations of Tiffany Harvey. Tiffany, a fellow intern, wore short skirts and low-cut tops every day, and was completely incompetent at the job. She arrived late every morning, took hour-long breaks to get her nails done, and smoked in the stairwell. On the rare occasions that her mind did turn to work, she risked putting the company in jeopardy. On one occasion, she installed a tanning bed in Snow White’s bedroom, reasoning that Snow “totally needs a bit of colour.” On another occasion, she fell asleep at her desk, and didn’t notice someone sneaking up on Grumpy and swinging a pick-axe into his head. Tiffany needed to be fired but, when that day finally arrived, she burst into tears and claimed that she’d been sexually harassed. It turned out that she had slept with nearly every man in the Snow White division. The company had to get lawyers involved and, from that day on, staff romances were strongly discouraged. However, they continued to occur, and whenever they did, gossip and anxiety spread through the company.

So Dorothy told Burnham, “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?” Burnham asked.

“I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. You know how word gets out. It’s a rule I have.”

Burnham thought about this for a moment. “So, if I wasn’t working at Happily, you’d say yes?”

Dorothy reddened. “Well, that’s irrelevant, because you do work here.”

“What if I swore to secrecy?”

“I’m sure every piece of office gossip starts out with the parties swearing to secrecy.”

Burnham thought some more. “What if we did something work-related together? That would be okay, then, wouldn’t it?”

“But we work in different departments.”

“You’re the Work Safety rep for Hansel, right? If anyone slams their finger in a door or finds a loose cable, they have to report it to you?”

“So what?” Dorothy said.

“Well, I’ve got a lot of Work Safety concerns.”

“You do not.”

Burnham grinned. “Sure I do. I’m really safety-conscious. We need to have a meeting to go over all my concerns. I’m free right now. Are you?”

Dorothy opened her mouth to give a cutting reply, to shoot him down, to say something witty and scathing – the way she responded to any man who had ever tried to flirt with her. (There hadn’t been many.) But she surprised both Burnham and herself by answering, “Fine.”

As soon as she had said it, she knew it was not a good idea. A rumour would spread. Somebody would say something to management. It would get back to Patricia Le Quant. People would talk. And it wasn’t only against her own rules, it was against her own instincts.

Many years later, when Dorothy lay awake wondering how everything had gone so wrong, she wondered about that first moment, and wondered whether she had actually experienced a premonition of how it would end.

“I’ll meet you in the interview room in five minutes,” Dorothy said. “I’ll bring the Work Safety manual and all the forms that we’ll need to fill out.”

“And I’ll bring you a latte,” Burnham said.

Dorothy’s brisk businesslike manner didn’t bother him one bit. After all, he’d succeeded in getting her alone in a room with him. That was a good start.

*

Ryan was glad the tailors had gone but, unfortunately, the tortures continued.

The royal barber came in, with an enormous pair of scissors. He was an overweight man with hairy knuckles. Like the tailors, he cornered Ryan, and pushed him down into a chair.

“Just a trim, Monsieur,” he said.

“No thanks, really, I’m fine,” Ryan said. He tried to stand up but the barber held him in place with a concrete grip. As the blades swished right over Ryan’s head, he closed his eyes and prayed. Itchy bits of hair kept falling down his neck and onto his nose but he was too frightened to brush them away.

“All done, Monsieur,” he said.

“Thank God.”

But as soon as Ryan opened his eyes, he saw the barber had only been referring to the haircut.

“Now for your shave, Monsieur.”

The barber put down the scissors and picked up an even larger, sharper-looking blade. Before Ryan could protest, the barber forced his head backwards, exposing his neck. The edge of the blade pressed right up against Ryan’s throat. The barber dragged it slowly, up along Ryan’s chin, to his mouth. Then he ran it along the sides of Ryan’s face.

“This really isn’t necessary,” Ryan said, moving his lips as little as possible, in case the movement caused the barber to slip. “Doug made me shave this morning.”

Eventually, the barber released his iron-grip.

“All done, Monsieur,” he said again, and this time he meant it.

Straight away, Ryan put as much distance as possible between himself and his latest torturer, clutching one of the bedposts. “What’s next?” Ryan demanded. “Thumb-screws? The rack?”

“You’re most welcome, Monsieur,” he said and left without another word.

Ryan wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.

*

Back on the nineteenth floor, both the soap opera and the chocolate were finished.

Patricia picked up her well-thumbed copy of Cinderella. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she had identified with the story. Patricia had grown up with a stepmother who, although not as outwardly cruel as Cinderella’s, had never been a warm or loving figure. Patricia had also acquired a set of spoilt step-siblings, all of whom had despised Patricia almost as much as she despised them. And like Cinderella, Patricia was never allowed to go to parties and was never invited to dances, and she had grown up without many nice clothes.

Unlike Cinderella, Patricia was neither pretty, blonde nor slim, and she’d never had a Fairy Godmother appear out of nowhere, to transform rags to riches. Patricia had learned that if you wanted happy endings, you couldn’t rely on anyone else. You had to work hard – very hard – and that’s exactly what Patricia had done. Years of late nights, studying and reading until her head ached, always holding down some kind of job, no matter how menial, and learning how to play the workplace game – learning who she needed to please, learning the right things to say. She’d worked hard and was now satisfied with all aspects of her life, but especially her work. Even now, in the middle of a crisis, she was happy and in control. She was also finding it entertaining.

Patricia opened the book and, as she read the first lines, she cackled, like the wicked witch of the west.