10. Mystery Surgeon
10
Mystery Surgeon
JACOB
“You’re giving me a make-over,” I say, when we’ve leafed through the binders for more than an hour. “What is this? Fieldnotes of a Teen Queen ?”
“You know it?” Delight washes over her face before she assumes a more businesslike tone. “We have to bring your exterior presentation into visual alignment with your new job title.” Her hands weave through the air, eventually forming a straight line.
I cross my arms and stand squarely in front of her. “It’s a make-over.”
“It’s no different than giving you a hard hat to operate a forklift,” she insists, chin lifting in an obstinate angle. “It’s necessary for the job.”
“Are you pleased with your blue-collar analogy?”
Her eyes sparkle. “A little.”
I look away. This is dangerous. It was fine when the princess was trapped behind a dense thicket of royal manners but now the thicket is thinning. Narrow paths open up, rabbit trails that may lead anywhere. What would I do with a princess if I caught her?
Alma has been banging on about diplomacy for days, and some of it must be sinking in because I keep telling myself that having the future Hereditary Grand Duchess of Himmelstein as a friend will be good for Vorburg. A friend.
The thought of friendship sours my mood.
“If Vorburg needs me to be their crown prince so badly, they should take me as I am. No one’s going to buy this,” I say, waving a hand up and down my heavy frame, “as crown prince material, no matter what you put on my back. I’ll always look like a bear, and nothing in these binders will convince me otherwise.”
She closes the distance between us. “All right Jacob, I give up.”
She’s too close, and every inch she claims, the more I struggle to think straight. “You’re saying I get to keep this suit?” I don’t even want the suit.
Her cheek tucks. “Oh, no. We’ll burn that suit.”
“Burning synthetics? What will your fiancé say about the smoke cloud?” I drag her impossible-to-remember engagement between us, waving it like the hugest red flag in all the land.
The smile disappears and she swallows. “Let’s leave the binders and drive around Handsel. Maybe I can get you to accept the benefits of cohesive visual messaging.”
Alma sounds like she’s delivering a presentation on third quarter earnings, but the possibility of getting out of the palace wakes me up like my grandpa’s retired hunting dog when he jangles the keys.
“Can I change?” I ask.
“Be my guest.”
I charge up to my room, tearing off my tie and loosening the top button on my shirt like a superhero racing off to an elevated train disaster. Reaching for a pair of jeans, a soft-worn t-shirt, and my leather coat is automatic, and it’s only when I’m lacing the boots that my mind wanders back to New Year’s Eve. This is what I was wearing.
I tug the laces tight and return to the Great Hall, jogging down the stairs. Alma emerges from the admin wing with a trench coat slung over one arm looking, as she often does, buttoned up and hot.
Taking the coat, I hold it out while she tucks herself inside, scoops her ponytail from the collar, and belts it neatly around her waist. I step back, giving her a whistle.
“You have to stop whistling,” she corrects with a slight shake of her head. “Pretend you don’t even know how.”
“I look like I’m hunting for Handsel’s best biker bar, and you look like you’re on your way to an economic forum.”
“You don’t whistle at people going to economic forums.” She glances at me, but her gaze bounces away. “I’m driving you around until you start understanding the secret language of people’s clothes.”
I understand hers. In order to silence it, I cast my eyes to the ceiling, flinching away from the faces looking down. The palace is like a jump-scare. In Blackberry, art is a single landscape print over a sofa, a thrifted seascape in the half-bath, or a culturally insensitive buffalo painted on velvet. It doesn’t loom and intrude.
“Ready?” she asks.
“After you.”
I fall in line, following her through the back corridors of the palace, watching the swing of her hair. When we come to a side door, she fishes keys off a hook and pushes through it. The January sun is blinding, and the wet pavement steams under its steady glare.
“This one.” She steers me toward a silver Mercedes sedan. A nondescript blue Fiio occupies the space next to it with a bright orange Mini Cooper in the stall beyond.
“All the money in the world and you didn’t spring for a red sports car?” I ask, getting the door for her. She maneuvers into her seat, and I catch a scent of flowers before I close the door with a firm click. I take a deep, bracing breath before I walk around the car and slide in next to her.
“Being famous is a fulltime job,” she says as the car adjusts itself to her seat and mirror settings. I swear I hear her mutter ‘Ella’ before firing up the engine and backing out. “In a few months, you’ll see the point of being incognito when you can.”
We pause at the security gate while she answers a series of questions determining whether she needs a security detail. They land on ‘not’ and in a quarter of an hour, we enter the forecourt of a hospital, slotting between a battered BMW and a bank of electric bikes.
“Welcome to St Leofdag’s, where we’re going to play a game called Mystery Surgeon.” She grips the steering wheel and leans forward, light touching the soft lines of her face. “We’re going to pretend you have an inflamed gallbladder and you have to choose someone to operate based strictly on appearances.”
Her. I choose her. Alma looks like she’s been turning in the extra credit since kindergarten.
Without warning, heat tips through my veins and I shift with the restless need to exit the car, slap my coat to the ground, and get some air. I thought this energy I’ve been bottling up since I met her was an ordinary, if unusually strong, male reaction to an attractive woman. It’s not personal. Nearly every male is gifted with these kinds of reactions about the time he gets his first skull hoodie and a graphing calculator. It’s juvenile. It’s nothing.
I scratch my neck. This isn’t nothing. I always liked the smartest girls in class with the straightest braids and the neatest pencil cases. Alma is my type.
Chol nia .
I have a thing for a princess from the wrong country. She has a fiancé, and it’s her mission to change everything about me. Awesome. Brilliant life choices, Jacob.
“Jacob,” she prompts.
What am I supposed to do now? I do the only thing a man can do when he’s being thrown around an emotional mosh pit. I adapt the strategy of those Greeks who could stand uncomplainingly in the face of a hailstorm of arrows and certain death. I stare through the windscreen.
“That guy,” I say, pointing to a pair of people mounting the front steps. “The shorter one.”
“Why not the other? Tell me quickly. Don’t think too hard.”
To run away from my thoughts, I start making observations. “He looks like a zeklen —” I cough. “Sorry, like he’s full of himself.”
“Why? Give me details.”
“That hair, for one. He doesn’t have one person in his life telling him how stupid he looks. He’s doing a lot of finger stabbing.”
“Good. Anything else?”
“The suit is shiny, and the stripes are…” I don’t know. I only know I hate it. “I don’t trust that guy.”
“What about the other one?”
“He’s got fun socks and there’s a strap around his leg, so we know he rode his bike in,” I say, warming to my subject. “He thinks about the planet, and he’s got a family.”
Alma leans over, resting her hand on my door. Her ponytail brushes my neck as she tries to get a better view, and I stare hard at the ring on her finger until she shifts back.
“How do you know?”
I swallow. “No one wears that tie unless it’s a gift from a child. If there are people who put their lives in his hands, I guess I can. He’s the one that’ll get a crack at the gallbladder.”
What the hell? I like this game.
“What did we learn, Jacob?”
“Nothing about how they would actually handle gallbladders.”
My reward is a smile, half-hidden, but it’s enough to keep me hard at work for the better part of an hour. When the light begins to change, she drives us to the wharf, scoring a prime spot next to the promenade. A bitterly cold wind blows off the ocean, bringing low clouds, and scattering all but the most hardy tourists. A statue of Horst the Invader dominates the harbor.
“Your ancestor looks…” How to put this in the most diplomatic way? “Like he’s on the cover of one of those sexy books from the 80s,” I say, pointing at the choppy seas slapping up his muscled calves. “The ones they leave at the laundromat in a basket.”
Alma chokes on a giggle. “Thanks to a few surviving accounts, we know that’s what he actually wore—fitted trousers and a leather tunic. Horst was a lover and a fighter.” She winks. “Either way, he came to slay.”
I shake my head to keep the grin from completely taking over. “I’m embarrassed for you right now. Your ancestors are cringing. Is there a sponsor I can call? Maybe the royal family of Motovia could stage an intervention.”
She elbows me, and I grunt.
“I like his braids,” I allow, holding a lock of my hair between us. “Mine is almost long enough. Could my makeover—”
She reaches to the back of my head and grabs a fistful of hair, tugging it, lifting my chin. A gust of wind shakes the car. “We’re here to people-watch.”
Our glances catch and hold. In the second before self-consciousness breaks through, before we can remember that we don’t fit or that a mountain of ‘shoulds’ and ‘supposed-tos’ divide us, my mind plays out a million different ways to love her.
I imagine pulling her into my arms, the sound of the ocean muffled against the glass of the windows. I see myself checking my phone after a session in my workshop, earmuffs perched up on my forehead while I scroll for her text. I can see myself stretching out on the grass and pressing a kiss against her neck in some park back in Djolny.
Alma blinks, and the moment is gone. Her hand works out of my hair, and she retreats into another hemisphere, maybe the one where her fiancé is.
“Sorry.” The word is hardly audible. “This game is called Captain of the Guard. You’re going to pick one.” She takes several slow breaths and looks out the window like she’s waiting for her own hailstorm of arrows.
I scan the harbor and pause on a group of students taking selfies, each using the magic of forced perspective to look like they’re picking Horst up by his head.
“Quickly,” Alma urges, herding me away from introspection. “It’s cheating if you wait for someone to break out in tae kwon do.”
“The girl in the heavy pea coat. She’s the only one prepared for the weather,” I explain, ticking off my observations. “She’s got heavy boots and one of those cross-body bags to keep her hands free for the martial arts.”
“Her friend is bigger,” Alma pushes back, pointing to the student balancing along the sea wall.
I snort. “He’s wearing canvas shoes without socks. In Sondmark. In January. If I take him on a black-ops mission, he’ll probably fall over and shoot me in the back.”
“Black ops?” she laughs. “What kind of crown prince do you expect to be?” Her smile disappears too fast.
By early afternoon, the slow plink of rain turns into a downpour, chasing the last tourists into the safety of cafes and hotels. We turn back to the palace, winding through the quiet streets of Handsel, when a string of lights blurs the raindrops on the windscreen.
“Stop,” I say, pointing to the small bistro with a black and white striped awning and a sign with gold letters. La Baiser Chaleureux. Against swishing wiper blades, the small-paned windows glow with light. “There was a line around the block when I came here last, and I couldn’t spare the time. Hungry?”
“Not really.” Alma shakes her head. She’s lying.
“Breakfast was hours ago. What did you eat?”
“Jacob,” she reproves, as though it could ever be a punishment to hear my name on her lips. “I told you not to ask personal questions.”
I shake my head. The line on when I’m supposed to treat Alma formally has been shifting with the tide. “Hot gluten, Alma. Hot.” I lean against the dashboard, peering into the gloom. “The place is deserted. You can lecture me on comportment the entire time.”
She plucks her lip with her teeth and cuts the engine. We run through the rain, and I hold the door for her, shaking out the umbrella.
“Stop being impressed at basic manners,” I whisper, catching the look on her face as she passes.
“ Weelkomme ,” a voice calls.
An old man with a crisp white hat is situated behind the counter. As soon as he sees the princess, he stumbles off his stool and doffs his cap, performing a deep bow. Alma doesn’t wave him off or protest. She simply moves forward with a smile as warm as the air fogging up the glass.
“What a lovely establishment you have,” she says. “Everything looks delicious.”
She flicks me a glance. Taking notes?
“What do you recommend?” she asks, leaning over the colorful display case. The owner, delirious with pride, takes her on a tour, and Alma holds my elbow, willing me to relax. We make our choices, but the proprietor fills a box with assorted pastries and Alma promises to share them with her sisters.
“May I offer you something to drink?” he asks.
“Espresso,” she answers.
He turns to me. “Hot chocolate.”
Alma swallows a smile.
“Let a man have his hot chocolate,” I say, commandeering a booth. I may not have enjoyed being hauled off to Europe when I was a kid, but it has its points. Here, you can get thick bittersweet chocolate served in an atmosphere of marble and glass, brass fixtures, and rich wallpaper. It’s almost a religious experience.
I inhale the aroma before taking a sip. “All right, Alma. You win.”
Alma’s brow lifts, and I raise the porcelain cup, full of thick chocolate and topped with a dollop of whipped cream. “Appearances matter.” I grin into my cup. “If I ordered hot chocolate in Blackberry, the waitress would bring me a mug of hot water and a packet she smacked twice on the counter to get the powder to settle.”
Alma resists the urge to gloat, instead tearing off a piece of croissant and popping it into her mouth. “You don’t look like a hot chocolate man.”
I lean back in the booth and lift my shoulder. “I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover.”