Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The next day, we started the Queening of Lulu Malone.
She and Dex showed up early Wednesday morning, followed closely by Simon and Alex.
It was another day of Backyard Ren Faire.
Mitch did what he could, clomping into the kitchen with the wheeled cooler, and I helped him fill it with bottles of water from the pantry.
Once I got him settled on the back deck with the boys, Lulu and I headed for my room, the Queen costume under my arm.
It mostly fit. Lulu was closer to my height than Emily and Stacey, and the skirt that had been too long on them both now hovered a couple inches off the ground.
I flipped up the hem and breathed a sigh of relief—there was plenty of fabric to let it down.
The rest of the costume fit fine; Lulu was curvier than Emily, so she wasn’t swimming in the outfit, but not as curvy as Stacey, so the lacings weren’t uncomfortably tight.
I got a box of pins and a seam ripper from the guest room closet, where Mom kept her sewing things, and it took a good half hour, a lot of patience, and about a hundred thousand pins, but I got the hem adjusted to where it needed to be.
While I worked, I gave her a quick rundown of the Queen’s daily schedule.
“It’s really easy,” I said. “You just give a quick speech at opening gate, then do some meet-and-greet-type stuff during the first hour or so. Then we go over to the chess field, and you preside over the chess match. We wrote all the moves down on a cheat sheet last weekend, so we’ll make sure you have that.
” I scooted around the floor to a new section of dress, focusing on my work as I talked.
“Then the first joust, you have a short little speech there too. And the handfasting, of course. Can’t forget that. ”
“Oh, no,” Lulu echoed faintly. “Can’t forget that.”
She sounded like she was about to barf. I glanced up sharply. “You okay?”
“Sure.” But the word was full of forced cheer. “It’s just…the Queen’s got a lot to do, doesn’t she?”
“Well, that’s the Queen,” I said with a shrug. “She’s the main figure, the symbol of the whole Faire.” I was sounding like the vendor at the leather booth, and I wasn’t gonna lie, I was thinking about her a lot as I prepped Lulu. We needed confidence in this role, going into the future.
Thinking about the future made my mind wander.
Chris’s photo was still used on all the advertising, her cheerful smile and queenly wave…
they were going to have to do a new photo shoot at some point.
But with who as the Queen? I could see Simon talking Emily into it, and she’d go along.
But she looked like a kid playing dress-up in this outfit; they’d have to have her wear something else.
Where did you even buy a new Queen ensemble?
I forced my brain back on task. “Anyway, then it’s mostly more meet and greets, and the afternoon is a lot like the morning.
Second chess match, which is a little different from the first, so make sure you use the right cheat sheet.
Second joust, also a little different with a different speech.
And of course, in between all these we drop in on some of the shows, make appearances at the taverns, stuff like that.
” I scooted around a little more; I was almost back to where I’d started. Finally. This skirt went on for days.
Lulu looked a little green as she changed back into her sundress.
“Careful of the pins,” she said as she handed me the bundle of heavy brocade. I was busy not getting stabbed by the dress, but I still noticed that her voice was fainter than it had been all morning.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Sure.” But I knew bravado when I heard it. “There really are cheat sheets?”
“Oh, definitely. I’ll pull together the speeches and stuff and email them to you tonight so you can start looking them over. It’s really easy, I promise.”
“Spoken like someone who’s been doing this for years.”
“Me? No.” I shook my head. “I’ve never been Queen.”
“Queen-adjacent, then. You’re really going to be with me the whole time?” She chewed on her bottom lip. Yeah. She was nervous. And who could blame her? Lulu wasn’t a performer. We were throwing her in the deep end, with just me as a lifeline. Maybe that wasn’t fair to her.
“Every step,” I promised. “I’m your lady-in-waiting, and Toby is your Captain of the Guard. You won’t be anywhere without the both of us, and we’ll lead you every place you need to be. You just need to smile and wave and be…” I trailed off here as I ran out of steam. “I don’t know. Queenly?”
Her laugh was thin, but it was there. “Queenly. Got it.” She took a deep breath and her nervousness sighed out with it. “I can do this,” she said, more to herself than to me.
“Of course you can.” The more confident I sounded, maybe the more confident she would feel.
As Lulu headed for the back deck where the others were, I pressed the new hem, making sure everything was even before sewing.
I could have gotten out Mom’s sewing machine, but something held me back.
Using the machine felt too permanent, and even though Lulu had agreed to be Queen, I didn’t want to commit the dress to her measurements.
I thought about my own pink dress, where a ruffle had been added to the bottom to cover the telltale signs of the hem being raised and lowered for different performers through the years.
The Queen couldn’t wear a ruffle on the bottom of her dress.
Instead I got out Mom’s sewing box, and while everyone was outside doing whatever the hell they were doing, I stayed in the air-conditioning like a sane person.
There was a Chopped marathon on, and I had yards and yards of blue brocade to hem by hand.
I had work tomorrow afternoon, so I wanted to get this done today if I could.
It took most of the afternoon, even doing an easy whipstitch around the hem.
I nuked my leftover lasagna while the chefs on the television made dishes with okra and Froot Loops.
Being alone with my thoughts was nice, I told myself.
I was thinking way too much about the Faire and its future, and not enough about my own.
I didn’t need to be out back with the chaos and laughter.
I didn’t need to be distracted by Alex and his crop top, watching him do his slutty little kip-ups.
Best to leave the ren faire stuff to the people who were actually doing the ren faire on an ongoing basis. I was temporary.
—
Lulu swore that she studied, but I didn’t believe her.
Thursday morning she stood in the middle of the living room, one hand on her heart, the other stretched out toward me.
Put a skull in her hand and she would have been ready for a Hamlet monologue.
“Good people!” She was a little too loud for the living room, but that was okay, she needed to practice projection. “It does my heart good to see you—”
“Nope.” I stopped her before she could get any further. “Does my heart a world of good.”
“Okay.” Lulu cleared her throat and started over. “Good people! It does my heart a world of good to see you—”
“To greet you.”
“Dammit! It does my heart a world of good to greet you on this day, here at the site of our yearly…” She trailed off, lost. “Fuck,” she said quietly.
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “You’re getting there.”
Lulu flipped her braid over her shoulder and sank to the couch. “I used to do opening arguments, depositions. I used to cross-examine heads of corporations. You’d think I could memorize a stupid speech.”
“And you can,” I reassured her. “I’m just making it look easy because I have it written down.” I held up my phone, where I was checking her accuracy with my Notes app.
“You sure I can’t just read it? Like a proclamation?”
“What, like you’re a town crier?”
Lulu must have seen the uncertainty on my face and sighed in agreement. “I guess that’s not very regal.”
I had to agree. “Let’s take a little break and we can go again.”
“Yes, please.” Lulu all but sprang up from the couch, heading for the kitchen before I could change my mind. When had I become a scary, Simon-esque taskmaster that people wanted to flee from?
I stuck my phone in my pocket and followed her out to the back deck.
Fight rehearsal was taking a day off, but there was still action at the Backyard Ren Faire: Alex and Dex sat facing each other, perched on the edges of the Adirondack chairs, dueling guitars resting on their knees.
“How’s it going out here?” I fished in the cooler for some cold water, handing a bottle to Dex, then to Alex, before keeping one for myself. It was before noon, but it was already another muggy August day.
“Thanks, Cait.” Dex twisted off the cap and took a long swig before nodding in Alex’s direction. “He’s not a half-bad composer.”
“Oh, I really am.” Alex rolled the plastic bottle across his forehead instead of taking a drink right away. “More than half bad. I come up with something and Dex immediately knows how to make it better.”
“Eh.” Dex shrugged at the praise, even though a smile tugged at his mouth through his short beard. “I’ve just been doing it longer than you. A lot longer.”
“Hey,” Alex protested. “I’ve been doing this a while too. Almost ten years now.”
“Wow,” Dex said, deadpan. “Ten whole years.” He rolled his eyes in Lulu’s direction, and her lips quirked up.
I bristled involuntarily, the way I always did when adults who were more adult than I was tried to make me feel like a kid.
Alex was older than me, but they were still treating him like he was little more than a teen. They must consider me an infant.
But I had my revenge before long. “How’s the Queen thing going?” Dex reached out for Lulu, squeezing her hand.
She sighed dramatically as she sank down to sit on the arm of Dex’s chair. “Working on it,” she said, her voice defeated. “The speech is tripping me up. I’m a lawyer, you know. I used to do—”