Happily Ever After, Ltd. - 15. Honesty

The King’s lecture on “bedroom duties” dragged on for nearly an hour. By the end of it, Ryan felt that he knew even less about women, but he told the King it’d been a most informative session.

“Well, I don’t know about you,” the King said, “but all that talk has really worked up my appetite. You must be hungry, too.”

“Not in the least,” Ryan said.

Nonetheless, he followed the King into the castle for dinner. It wasn’t as if Ryan had anything better to do. The royal dining table was the length of a bowling alley, with the King and Queen sitting at either end, and Ryan in the middle.

“Where’s Cinderella?” he asked.

“Oh, she won’t be joining us,” the Queen said. “We can’t risk having her bloated for the big day! Besides, she’s been starved all her life. Missing one more meal won’t hurt!”

Servants entered with an enormous cooked bird, loaves of bread, and flasks of red wine. Even though Ryan still wasn’t feeling hungry, the sight of it all made his mouth water. However, as Ryan’s plate was set down in front of him, he knew he would again be disappointed. Sure enough, the meat tasted like soap and the wine was flavourless and pulpy.

Up one end of the table, the King was neglecting his utensils and instead had his face down in his plate like a pig in a trough. Down the other end, the Queen was staring into space, nibbling on polystyrene bread. Even if the three of them did have anything to say to each other, conversation was impossible at such a distance.

Not, Ryan realised, that this dinner was any worse than the recent Sunday nights with his actual parents. A month earlier, Ryan’s father had decided to take up cooking on Sunday evenings as a hobby. In Mr Hooper’s opinion, cooking was for ladies. He always made a joke out of putting on Mrs Hooper’s frilliest apron and mincing around the kitchen. Mr Hooper’s meals had all been disastrous. The first time, he had miscalculated the amount of time that roast pork would take and Ryan ended up almost falling asleep over his plate at a quarter to midnight. Another time, Mr Hooper had grossly overestimated how many prawns he would need for a seafood paella, and they all became quite unwell.

For the latest Sunday dinner – which seemed like years ago to Ryan, not days – Ryan had arrived to find black smoke billowing out the front door. He found his parents standing in the back garden coughing into their handkerchiefs. They ended up going to Gus’s for dinner. Gus’s was the restaurant at the end of their street that had plastic furniture and an unimaginative menu. It was owned by an elderly couple, Gus himself and his wife Francine. Mrs Hooper felt sorry for them, which had resulted in the Hoopers going there at least once a month for the last fifteen years.

“Hi Gus,” Mrs Hooper said brightly when they arrived. “Table for three?”

“If it isn’t our favourite customers!” Gus said, kissing Mrs Hooper on the cheek and shaking Mr Hooper’s hand. “I think we can fit you in. It’s a quiet Sunday! How nice to see you again Master Ryan. How’s the world of law?”

“It’s okay.”

Gus laughed heartily for some reason. “Still as sharp as a tack, Master Ryan! Here, I’ll put you three in this nice little nook at the window where nobody will bother you.”

Except, of course, for Gus himself. He spent the entire evening hovering over the Hoopers, even while they tried to eat. There was no sign of old Francine, who was probably doing all the actual work in the kitchen. Ryan usually didn’t mind Gus hanging around like a bad smell because he often left Ryan alone and kept his parents distracted. That night, however, Ryan was out of luck. Gus was talking about his granddaughter, Michelle, who was Ryan’s age. Ryan didn’t realise that Gus was trying to get him interested in her until it was too late.

“So what do you think, Master Ryan? Wouldn’t you take her out sometime?”

Ryan was picking fish bones out of his mouth.

Mrs Hooper gave a high-pitched, unnatural laugh. “Well, the lamb is excellent tonight, Gus!” she said.

“Michelle needs a nice stable young man like yourself,” said Gus. “Someone who’d treat her right, not one of those boys who drives too fast and wears no belt.”

“I don’t have my driver’s licence,” Ryan said. “But I do wear a belt.”

Gus clapped his hands together. “So it’s settled! You’ll take out my Michelle sometime?”

Mr Hooper refilled his wine glass to the brim and took a large sip.

“Oh, Gus!” Mrs Hooper’s laughter became even more forced. “You’re incorrigible!”

“What’s the harm? Putting a strapping gentleman like Master Ryan here in touch with a lovely young lady and we’ll leave the rest up to Cupid! What do you say?”

Ryan was about to say that he’d meet Gus’s granddaughter if it was that important to him, to shut him up, but fortunately he didn’t need to. There was a deafening crash from the kitchen and Gus scurried away. The three Hoopers sat there like strangers. None of them knew how to push the conversation past Gus’s faux pas.

Mr Hooper’s eyes were back on his food, while Mrs Hooper desperately searched the room for inspiration.

“Poor Gus,” Mrs Hooper said after what seemed like an age. “The place still hasn’t picked up. I don’t know how they’ve stayed open all these years.”

“Restaurants are a hard business,” Mr Hooper grunted.

They had had this exact conversation hundreds of times.

“Maybe it’s not a real restaurant,” Ryan said. “Maybe it’s a front for a meth lab.”

Mrs Hooper smiled politely and Mr Hooper looked confused. They didn’t know what meth was. Sometimes it seemed to Ryan like they didn’t know what anything was. They had grown up in a world where everyone went to church on Sundays whether you were religious or not, and where everyone went to libraries for answers, not their phones. They lived in a world where their friends had lived within a four-block radius. A world filled with married straight couples trying to pretend that their kids were doing well. They were light years away from how things were. They were light years away from their son.

Had there ever been two more out-of-touch parents? A week ago, Ryan would have doubted it, but suddenly he missed them. The way his father always insisted on telling anecdotes in such tedious detail. The way his mother always became distracted by something behind him whenever he tried to tell her anything interesting. They weren’t bad old beans – and after two days with the King and Queen, Ryan’s real parents didn’t seem so clueless after all.

*

After dinner, Ryan wandered through the corridors by himself, hoping that spending some time alone would bring some clarity. However, with each step, he became increasingly unsure of anything. It should have been easy to bluff his way through the story, to smile at the right moments and say the right things, but it hadn’t been easy at all. He had less romantic feeling towards Cinderella than he would’ve had to a box of combs, and he hadn’t been able to fake it.

Ryan eventually decided that there was only one person who could help him figure out what to do. It wasn’t the King or the Queen, and it most definitely wasn’t Bjorn. He stopped a passing servant to ask for directions to Cinderella’s room and was led to a completely new wing of the castle, where the corridors were wider, with large pots of flowers at every corner.

Cinderella’s door was opened by a glassy-eyed chambermaid.

“Hi,” Ryan said, “I’m the prince. I was wondering if I could talk to Cinderella. In private.”

“It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” the chambermaid said, “and it’s a moral violation to leave an unmarried man and woman alone in a room together. You’ll have to speak with her tomorrow during your wedding vows.”

“But I need to speak to her now. Please.”

“Apologies,” she said, going to close the door.

“But I’m in love!” Ryan blurted out. She froze, and blinked at him through the crack in the door. “I – I’m in love with Cinderella,” he said, “so, so much. And I really want to see her face – for, you know, love reasons.”

The chambermaid’s eyes came into focus and she smiled. “You two will live happily ever after,” she said, and opened the door.

Ryan smiled. He was finally learning how to manipulate the characters. He could probably make the characters do anything he wanted, as long as he told them it was in the name of love.

Cinderella’s bedroom was much more extravagant than the prince’s. There were bouquets of pink roses exploding from marble pots, tapestries over the walls, chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, and maids darting across the floor like mice. In the centre, Cinderella was standing on a stool, her hair pinned off her face. She was wearing a simple white dress, covered in pins.

As soon as the chambermaids saw the prince had entered, they began to file out of the room, through a door at the side.

“Hey there,” Ryan said. “That’s a great dress.”

“What, this?” Cinderella frowned. “No, this is my under-dress. That is to be my wedding dress. Over there.”

In the corner of the room, suspended from the ceiling, was an enormous gown that looked more like an ice-cream sundae than a wedding dress. There was a veil hanging over it, which trailed around the entire perimeter of the room.

“Oh, well. That’s nice too,” Ryan lied.

“Thank you.”

Then, before he could stop himself, words were coming out of his mouth. “Look, I wanted to say that I know we haven’t really had a chance to talk. On the night of the Ball, everything was so crazy and we didn’t have much time, then today, with the shoe and your stepsister, we never really got a chance to let the dust settle and just talk, you know?”

Cinderella nodded vacantly.

“So … um … do you like your new room?” Ryan asked.

“Yes, very much, thank you.”

“Good, that’s great. And if there’s anything you need to get from the manor, I’m sure we can arrange for someone to go down and get it for you.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “Anything I could ever dream of is here.”

“Well, that’s good too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’re going to live here, then I want you to be happy about it.”

“Thank you.”

“Please don’t keep thanking me,” Ryan said. “I’m saying that I want you to be happy. I mean, that’s what this is all about, right? You, living happily ever after.”

“And you, too, Your Highness,” she said.

“Well, yeah, exactly. We’re both meant to live happily ever after, so I just want to make sure you are happy.”

Cinderella frowned. “I want to get married more than anything.”

“Right, but do you want to marry me?”

“I ... It ... It has always been my dream to marry a prince.”

“But me, specifically? Is it your dream to marry me?”

Cinderella rubbed her forehead as if she had a sudden ice-cream headache. “I feel so strange.”

“So do I, but the stories always say that the best thing to do is speak from your heart.”

“Well, I do want to get married,” Cinderella said in a rush, “and I want to have a beautiful wedding. I’ve always dreamed that a wedding would make me happy. But ... I always dreamed that my prince would see me from across a crowded ballroom, and everyone would part, and he would come up and ask me to dance ... and that everything would be … easier than this.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. But maybe it doesn’t always happen like that.”

“Yes, maybe it’ll become that way,” Cinderella said. “Maybe we’ll grow to love each other in time.”

“Maybe we will.”

There was an awkward pause. Ryan tried to smile. It felt like a grimace.

“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” he said eventually. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said. “See you then.”

Ryan turned and walked away with the sinking feeling that he had just ruined everything.

*

Dorothy watched in horror at the scene playing out on the Core Book.

The Prince asked her if she was truly in love with him.

Cinderella was, for a moment, speechless.

She eventually told the Prince that perhaps she would grow to love him with time.

“Bjorn must have gotten into his head,” she said.

“It could be worse,” Maria said.

“How?” asked Dorothy. “How could this possibly be worse?”

“Well, at least they’re having an open dialogue,” Maria said. “They’re being honest, right? Honesty is important in a marriage.”

“But Ryan can’t be honest!” Dorothy cried. “Not him. What if he comes out of the closet to her? Nobody is going to buy our fairytales – not with actual fairies in them!”

*

Ryan got himself completely lost trying to find his own bedroom. He took a wrong turn and went down a narrow staircase. He ended up in a long dark corridor, with water dripping from the ceiling. Ryan’s shoes were soaked in ankle-deep puddles. He hoped he’d run into a servant who could escort him back to his bedroom, but there was nobody down there. Eventually, Ryan found a creaky uneven staircase, which led up to a small room filled with bags of flour. Through that room was the kitchen, where a pink-faced woman was pounding out dough over a bench.

“Excuse me?” Ryan said nervously.

She looked up. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m really lost. Could you point me back to my bedroom?”

She heaved a sigh and wiped her hands on her white apron. “Follow me, then.”

The impatient woman led Ryan back through the same corridors and staircases.

When she dropped him off at his bedroom, Ryan was not surprised to see Bjorn there, reaffixing the door to its frame.

“Good,” Ryan said. “I can finally have a bit of privacy.”

Bjorn looked up and smiled. “Is it true?” he said. “Did you really go and tell Cinderella that you’re not in love with her? Cold feet and all?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Ryan said. “I should’ve gritted my teeth and got on with it.”

“Yes, I can see the ending now,” Bjorn said. “They gritted their teeth and lived happily ever after.”

“I should’ve done a better job of pretending from the start. And tomorrow, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to marry her. I can pretend. And even if I can’t, at least I didn’t end up with a crazy stepsister.”

“But a crazy stepsister could be a great happy ending,” Bjorn said. “At least Lucille goes for what she wants. Not like the useless fairytale heroines making everyone else do all the work.”

“Cinderella isn’t useless.”

“Sure she is. Think about it. She sits around moping, wishing she could go to the Ball. They have to send in a Fairy Godmother to make her look nicer, and even then she doesn’t know what to do, so the Godmother has to make her a carriage as well. Then after the Ball, Cinderella goes back into obscurity, making the Prince knock on hundreds of doors looking for her.”

“But Cinderella’s … nice,” Ryan said.

“What does nice even mean?” Bjorn asked. “It means polite, agreeable, but she never actually does anything. We’d all be nice if we never did anything, if we sat around like a pocket full of mashed potato.”

“Well, nothing is exactly what I should’ve done,” Ryan said. “I should’ve just shut up and married her. But that’s what’s going to happen from here on out. I’m going to bed and, when I wake up, I’m going to marry Cinderella, like I said I was going to do from the start.”

“But you know you’re not in love with her. And she’s not in love with you. So even if you do marry her, there won’t be a happily ever after. The only way to get a happily ever after in this story is to do anything but marry her.”

Ryan closed the newly-attached door in Bjorn’s face.

“You know I’m right,” Bjorn said from the other side.

Ryan knew no such thing.

In bed, he tossed and turned for hours. He couldn’t switch his brain off. By the time he fell asleep, the only conclusion he’d reached was that no matter what he decided to do in the morning, there’d be an unhappy ending.

*

Dave had spent most of the day anxiously page-turning. By nightfall, he was so sick of his own company that he was actually happy to see Burnham. Burnham came in with a large pizza and two ice-cold beers.

“What flavour?” Dave asked.

“Barbeque chicken I think,” Burnham said. “And the beers are on the down low, alright? Two Christmas parties ago, there was so much sexual harassment that we’ve now got a company-wide ban. Even Friday nights at the pub are discouraged. But I figured we could both use a drink.”

“God yes.” Burnham popped the caps off the beers. Dave took a long swallow and belched. “So, did you read what just happened?”

“Yeah.”

“Does Ryan have a death wish? Why isn’t he just playing along?”

Burnham shrugged. “It’s a strange world. I think it’d mess with you if you were in there. You might forget it’s not real.”

“But he’ll still marry her tomorrow, right?” Dave said, as he started making short work of the pizza. “He’s got to. I mean, he’s come this far without messing it up.”

Burnham shrugged. “We’re all hoping he’ll keep his head down and marry the girl, but who knows. The whole thing’s hanging by a thread as it is.”

“What a place to work.”

“Yeah, never a dull moment.”

“Who else have you held prisoner?” Dave asked.

“Two dwarves, three pigs, and a genie,” Burnham said. “But you’re my first human.”

“Oh, shucks,” Dave said. “You should’ve bought me flowers.”

Burnham laughed. “So you’re comfortable enough in here?”

“It’s alright, as far as prisons go,” Dave said, half-ingested chicken rolling around his mouth. “The high ceiling is good. You know, most prisons have low ceilings. That’s the biggest problem with prisons from a rehabilitative point of view. Low ceilings are like being in a shoebox. If you’re going to lock someone up, they need to be under high ceilings. They’re far less likely to go insane with high ceilings.”

“They taught you that at architecture school?” Burnham asked.

“Sure did.”

“Must be nice going to university.”

“Didn’t you?” Dave asked.

“Nah. Got a building apprenticeship first year out of high school, did that for most of my twenties, then did two years as a prison guard, which depressed the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, all those low ceilings,” Dave said.

Burnham laughed. “Exactly. So I got into security. And here I am.”

“Here you are.”

For a few minutes, the only sound was the two men chewing and drinking.

“For what it’s worth,” Burnham said, “I’m sorry about shooting you.”

“Twice.”

“Yes,” Burnham said. “Twice.”

“I still think you’re a Neanderthal.”

“Fair enough,” said Burnham. “Well, I guess that’s it. Have you got everything you need?”

“Besides my liberty? Yeah, I guess I’m pretty much set.”

Burnham shut and locked the door. Dave finished the pizza, brushed his teeth, then urinated in Dorothy’s basin.