The Charming Way (2 page)

The attractive woman had pulled out the
last sign. He saw the initials—PETA—and felt a surge of disappointment.
He’d seen what those animal rights lovers had done to his mother’s favorite fur
coat the one and only time he had taken her to the Metropolitan Opera in
Manhattan. His mother had been horribly traumatized, although not so badly that
she didn’t implore him to bring the entire cast of the Met to the Third Kingdom
at the end of every opera season.

He walked around the woman, and headed
toward the pavilion, ready for coffee, donuts, and some insight into this
season’s bestsellers.

***

Mellie watched the well dressed man walk
the length of the parking lot. He wore what was known as business
casual—a long-sleeved shirt and dark pants (no suit coat, no tie) but he
still looked elegant. Some of that was the clothing itself; there was nothing
casual about it. It was tailored to fit—and fit it did, over a
well-muscled back, broad shoulders, and a nice tight—

She shook her head and looked away. If
she really thought about it, she had to acknowledge that men were the source of
her troubles. From her know-it-all first husband who had left her a young widow
with two extremely young daughters to her beloved second husband who stupidly
introduced her as a fait accompli to his own daughter starting a resentment
that continued to this day, men had been the root cause of her dilemmas from
the moment she hit the public eye.

Of course, she had handled things badly.
She always thought that any publicity was good publicity. Little did she
realize that once someone had defined you to the media, then it didn’t matter
how many charities you gave to or how many advanced degrees you had, you would
always be the evil stepmother, the wicked witch, or worse, the aging malignant
crone.

At least she had avoided that last
category—for now, anyway. She felt it hovering around her, like the
flying monkeys from the stupid Hollywood version of the
Wizard of Oz
. The Wicked Witch of the West. Now
that
was a misunderstood woman.

“Mellie?”

She turned. The man behind her was
exceptionally attractive. He also left a trail of wet footprints heading west. He
was a selkie whose real name she did not (of course) know. He carried his pelt
over his right arm and this time he wore human clothing.

He had actually stopped their first
protest earlier this year by pulling off his pelt and having nothing suitable
on underneath it. (Although she could see why the human storytellers had felt
threatened by these creatures from the sea; not only were they preternaturally
good-looking, they were also very well endowed.)

“As people show up, will you hand out
signs?” she asked. “I need to figure out where we’ll stage our protest.”

She shoved the last pile of signs at him,
not giving him a chance to say anything, and then she hurried along the parking
lot.

Midway there, she realized she was trying
to catch that ever-so-elegant man and she slowed her steps.

She had sworn off men decades ago.

She wasn’t about to let one distract her
now.

***

The coffee was bitter and only the
inedible coconut-covered donuts were left. He should have arrived earlier. Still
he poured himself a cup, grabbed one of the few remaining paper plates, and
found a maple bar crammed against the back of the donut box. Then he settled
into a chair at the back of the room.

The panel was already talking about
social media and whether or not it meant the death of the book, a topic that
always broke his heart. He understood the importance of stories—he’d been
raised on stories. Bards had come to his father’s court before Charming could
even read. But the best stories were the ones he accessed privately—and a
screen never really felt private to him.

Still, he listened politely, getting more
and more discouraged, until he finished his maple bar and fled the room.

The doors to the main exhibition hall
were locked, with guards standing out front. The guards didn’t look that
formidable—two fat security guards in uniform, and several bookish types
with their arms crossed, trying to look tough.

He sighed and decided to explore. He knew
from his convention packet that there were side rooms, meeting rooms, conference
rooms, and the all-important media room where the famous people, from the
writers to the politicians/actors/musicians who loaned their names to books
gave interviews about whatever seemed important at the time.

The hallways were unbelievably wide so
that they could accommodate crowds and wheelchairs, and yet he was the only
person in them, except for the occasional publishing house salesman scrambling
to put the finishing touches on a booth. From a distance, he caught the scent
of cafeteria food, and remembered that they would all be able to buy lunch here
if they were so inclined.

He was inclined, especially after that
maple bar. There were no restaurants close, and he didn’t want to lose his
parking space.

The media wasn’t a room; it was an entire
wing, with smaller rooms designated as green rooms, and larger rooms with
actual mini studios, all set up to record certain kinds of programming. Surprisingly,
these rooms were unlocked, but they were filled with young attractive people
who all looked important and busy.

He peered in one, only to feel someone
against his back.

He turned. The attractive woman from the
parking lot stood there. She was tall and thin and exceedingly familiar. Her
eyes were filled with intelligence, accented by her very good bone structure. This
was a woman who had been a pretty young girl and had become striking in middle
age. She would be lovely even into old age, so long as she didn’t let that
mouth of hers remain twisted like that.

“Charming, right?” she said. “The
question is which one?”

He leaned against the door jam, feeling
startled. Not just that she had recognized him, but that she knew there was
more than one Prince Charming.

Which meant she wasn’t a native of the
Greater World. She came from one of the Kingdoms. But again, the question was
which one.

“My name is Dave,” he said as
dismissively as he could.

“Yeah, I see that.” She grabbed his
prized purple badge, looked at it, and then dropped it against his shirt. “Dave
Encanto. You’re not fooling anyone, ‘Dave.’ Why are you here? To shut me down?”

He frowned at her. Clearly they’d met but
he couldn’t remember when and he certainly didn’t understand her comment. He
didn’t have the power to shut down anyone. Not in the Greater World, anyway.

“Listen,” he said, “I know everyone has a
right to their opinion, but I do think tossing paint on little old ladies going
into the opera takes things a bit too far. When I said I would shut you all
down, it was only because I was angry, and it was, after all, my mother’s fur
coat that you ruined—”

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” the
woman said.

“No-oo,” he said. “Just that you’re with
that animal rights group.”

“Clearly we need a new acronym,” she said
more to herself than to him. Then she sighed. “P. E. T. A. which stands for
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Archetypes
, not animals. We had the acronym long before those animal people
stole it from us. They were just better at getting press coverage. Like
everyone else on the planet, including you, ‘Dave.’ You know everyone wants to
find their Prince Charming. Everyone—women, gay guys. Even real men, they
want what Prince Charming has. You don’t need a publicist. You just need to
bask in your princely charmingness.”

He studied her, too stunned to say much. He
was always stunned in the face of bitterness, although these days he was
beginning to understand it. Bitterness and the feeling that no one else knew
exactly what you were going through.

He could have given her his
litany—the paunch that wouldn’t go away no matter how much he exercised,
the increasing irrelevance, the fact that he hadn’t seen his girls in nearly a
year—but he didn’t. Instead, he frowned.

“You’re not one of the fairy godmothers,”
he said. “They were always unbelievably happy for no apparent reason. Disney
got that right at least. Bippity Boppity Boo and all that.”

She tilted her head at him, obviously
intrigued.

“You can’t be one of the old crones
either, because they do look like the witches in MacBeth—Shakespeare had
clearly been to one of the Kingdoms, maybe more than once.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“And you’re beautiful, more beautiful now
than you probably ever were as a girl.” He wasn’t coming on to her; it just
wasn’t in his nature. He was stating a fact. “So you’re probably one of the
stepmothers. I would guess Snow White’s. Which means we met at a party, gosh, a
century or two ago, when someone decided we should clear up the Charming mess
and the stepmothers gossip and see if we could take care of those Brothers
Grimm.”

“
I
thought,” she said. “It wasn’t someone. It was me. I hosted that party.”

He nodded, remembering now. It was one of
the first large scale events ever held in the Greater World. There had been too
many arguments about which kingdom would host so someone—this woman
maybe?—decided to rent a castle in Germany of all places, that white one
with the towers along the Rhine that Disney later used in one of its
films—for the three-day catered affair.

Nothing had gotten settled, and in fact,
he could point to the entire event as the beginning of the end of his marriage.
Ella met the wives of the other Charmings, and they started talking about their
marriages, and things got said. The other Charmings apparently treated their
wives like princesses. Not that he hadn’t. But he also expected her to think
for herself, and do something other than spend the King’s gold.

He’d said that more than once, and he’d
made the mistake of saying it in front of his father, who then harped on it
forever. Apparently—at least according to Charming’s ex-wife, the other
Charmings never said anything bad about their wives.

Charming thought that was just
one-upsmanship. People—charming or not—said things they regretted. Maybe
the other wives just hadn’t been as sensitive to slights as Ella had been. Either
way, Ella had been dissatisfied with the relationship ever since.

Charming looked at the attractive woman,
who continued to stare at him. She really was beautiful. He remembered noticing
that in Germany all those years ago. He had noticed and thought she had gotten
a bad rep, considering everything. All she and the other stepmothers wanted was
a little respect.

“You never answered me,” he said. “Are
you Snow White’s stepmother?”

“Are you Sleeping Beauty’s Prince
Charming?” she asked, apparently not willing to show him hers until he showed
her his. But in asking the question, he got his answer. She was Snow White’s
stepmother.

“I married Ella,” he said. “The fairy
tales still call her CinderElla, which really isn’t fair. She never was covered
in dirt, not even when I first met her.”

“Thin and shapely and beautiful and oh,
so, young.” That bitterness again. “Why is it that men like you always go for
women like her?”

“I was a boy,” he said. “And she was a
girl, not a woman. We weren’t really old enough to commit to anything.”

The woman let out a small “huh” of
surprise. “So all three Charmings have divorced now.”

That news made him grunt with surprise. He
hadn’t known that. He thought the other Charmings lived in perpetual wedded
bliss. Happily ever after and all that.

The woman didn’t seem to notice his
surprise. She was saying, “Isn’t that just the way of things? I suppose you
blame the women’s movement as well?”

The other Princes Charming had blamed the
Greater World’s women’s movement? Seriously?

He knew where the fault in his marriage
was, and it wasn’t with some amorphous movement in another world.

“Ella and I weren’t compatible from the
beginning,” he said. “She’s very into the social whirl, the dresses, the
dancing, and me, well…”

He grabbed his badge. He was going to
shake it ruefully. Instead, his fingers closed protectively around it.

“I’m bookish,” he said. “Quiet. A bit
of—what do they call it here in the Greater World?—a nerd.”

“A nerd,” the woman repeated, as if she
couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

“And,” he said, mostly to cover the blush
he could feel warming his cheeks, “I’m certain my father didn’t help any. He
wanted sons, and he blamed Ella when we didn’t have any. There was no
explaining genetics to him. X and Y chromosomes are beyond him.
 
He’d been urging me to throw her off
after our first daughter was born. But then, he also wanted me to use the
old-fashioned King Henry the Eighth method.”

“Divorce,” the woman said.

“No,” Charming said, trying to be
circumspect. He was conscious of the fact that the number of people around them
was beginning to grow. “Henry’s other method of disposing of his wives.”