A duchy in dissent

Twenty-one hours to Singapore via Seoul. No in-flight entertainment. I would’ve downloaded a few episodes of the drama I’ve been watching. But Ben was ready to go by the time I finally got up.

“Hey hon,” he called out from the hallway. “Wait for you downstairs.” Ben, he’s amazing. He felt bad about having to go on a work trip barely a month after the wedding. So I offered to join him. I was in-between jobs anyway. The alternative was wasting away on the couch.

I peeled my body off the sheets. I have a bad habit of snoozing my alarm. What actually is the ‘snooze’ option for? If I needed to get up at 8:50, I wouldn’t have set my alarm for 8:20. I stuffed underwear, T-shirts, and denim shorts into my American Tourister, grabbed my skin care, and lugged myself down the stairs.

“Shit, my passport!”

“I got it,” Ben said. “Your phone charger too.” Like I said, he’s just amazing.

At the airport, we passed by a bookstore. I got myself a book from the New York Times best sellers section. I wish I was more of a reader. Like Ben was. At the start of the year, I set a goal to read two books by the summer. Five months later, I’ve only made it through one chapter of Michelle Obama’s autobiography.

The book was a sappy romance novel called ‘Prince Doryan’. I fixed on the cover while the guy at the register ran my credit card. The cover art was the stuff of daydreams. An infinite cerulean sky graded to a vast viridian vineyard. A coppice of cypresses mapped the horizon. In the distance, the dreamy impression of an Elysian keep. At the fore, an aristocratic lord with an elfin face straddles a chivalrous steed too burly for his frame. I guess that’s him, Prince Doryan. As far as Medieval-style Disney fantasies go, this one looks absolutely cheesy.

“Everyone at the office’s been talking about that one,” Ben said as he handed me the buckle of my seat belt. “We’re about to take off.”

“You might have to wait a few months,” I said, smirking.

“Hey Dani,” Ben said with a sudden sincerity. “Thanks for coming on this trip with me.”

I bowed my head at Ben, like a half-ass curtsy, then dove into the novel.

The duchy, as the book cover had portrayed it, is a place of chivalry, courtship, and scandal. The Grand Duke, beloved by the folk, is disgraced by a most unbefitting demise. Not on a Lavendeered battlefield as the knights of the duchy did, but on the crapper, clenching his lion heart. His son, the elf-faced prince, is to be Duke.

“But do I absolutely have to?” Prince Doryan protests as he fingers two swatches of silk, one in each hand. “I’m quite occupied these days.”

“I’m afraid it is your duty, Your Grace,” Benvolio, his father’s magistrate admonishes. “Nay, your very raison d’etre...”

“Then, Honorable Seneschal, I shall consider it!” Doryan decrees as he flings the silk swatches and thrusts his hands to his sides, straddling his pygmy waist. “Now, Benviolio, to the grand seamster!”

“But Your Grace! The Duke... the court… they’re - ”

“Yes, yes, right you are, Benvolio!”

The old man lets out a sigh of relief at his ward’s unexpected cognizance of his father-the-duke’s corpse on the honey bucket and his illustrious court waiting to be addressed in the grand hall.

“How could I be such an asshat?” the Prince reproaches his hastiness. “This is surely a job for the Marquess d’Aubry’s costumier!”

My suspicions were confirmed. ‘Prince Doryan’ is the tacky story of a ducal douchebag. I put the book down to go to the bathroom. We were halfway over the Pacific. Ben was fast asleep. His head, quiet as cabbage, was held upright by a travel pillow. I carefully squashed through the small space between sleeping beauty and the seat in front of him, almost mounting his thighs. His nose, delicate as daikon, almost caressing mine. Then, all at once, I broke free and strutted to the lavatories.

I met Ben on a trip much like this one. Seven years ago. Okay, maybe not as long-haul or far-flung as this one. A two-hour flight from New Jersey to Chicago. I was going to see my sister, who’s just had my niece. Ben was going somewhere more intriguing, a by-invite-only art exhibit at Hyde Park. I don’t remember much about our first encounter, just that Ben had looked dangerous in that leather jacket, and that he had me stewing in tropical tenderness for most of the flight.

Ben was awake when I got back to our seats. He unbuckled and got up to let me pass.

“What ever happened to that leather jacket you used to wear?” I asked.

“Oh, that?” he said as he rummaged frantically for the buckle of his seat belt. “I retired it.”

“That’s a shame. You looked fearless in that thing.”

Ben shrugged, closed his eyes, and then he was asleep again. My gaze lingered on his face. He was as threatening as a turnip. I picked Prince Doryan up. Back to my in-flight entertainment…

The duchy is in dissent. The beloved Prince is exiled by the treasonous aristocracy, and on the ducal throne sits a timid, impotent puppet.

“Benvolio is not much more than a jester, and a miserly dressed one at that,” exclaims the banished prince. “Surely, the people deserve better!”

“Aye, and to think that the traitorous buffoon be permitted to hump your step-mum, the duchess,” bemoans the unnamed drunkard as he joins the duke at the pissoir. “Surely, the exquisite whore deserves better!”

“When I’m through with that vegetable and his duplicitous sponsors, he will regret ever parenting me in my father’s absence.”

“Right, he will, Your Grace! Right, he will.”

Doryan draws his rapier, waves it about as he jerks the residual piss from his peter. A formidable declaration of war if there was one.

“I could do with some room service, a warm bath,” called Ben out from the toilet as he flushed and zipped up.

“When did you start peeing sitting down?” I asked, annoyed. “And close the door when you do that, will you?”

“Come on, I only do it when I know it’s gonna be a long pee.”

I rolled my eyes, and tried to get back to reading.

“So, how about that hot bath?” Ben persisted.

I found the prospect off-putting, like salty cabbage soup for supper. I could hear Ben plugging the tub and opening the faucets. Steam started to belch out of the toilet, moistening the mirrors in the stuffy hotel room.

Despite the choking humidity, I felt dry, dehydrated, like I had been blanched and all my juices had drained out of my skin.

I was about to tell Ben to go ahead without me when his phone rang. He spilled out of the bathroom onto the corner of the bed, half naked, socks wet, his flaccidness squishing about in his tighty-whities.

“Just got to the hotel,” Ben murmured, his face damp as a kitchen rag. “Okay sure, give me fifteen.”

“Tom?” I asked as he put the phone down and started to rummage through his luggage.

“Yeah, I gotta go,” he said sheepishly, stuffing his dress shirt into his briefs. “Tom wants to go over the presentation.”

Ben just stood there, waiting for me to say something. I shrugged, looking back down at the book on my lap. Actually, on second thought, I could do with some room service and a warm bath.

Doryan’s army of drunk ravishers bursts through the doors of the keep, sabres brandishing, teeth gnashing.

“It’s over, Benvolio,” exclaims the valiant prince. “You flaccid cucumber!”

“You’re a lot of things, Doryan but you’re no duke,” Benvolio screeches back from the other end of the hall.

Prince Doryan, clad in iron, leather, and the crusted blood of his enemies, struts to the throne where Benvolio cowers, fishy as a galley rag. The prince is beautiful, majestic, dangerous. He unsheaths his rapier.

“Wait!” Benvolio squeals. “I can… I… I can explain!”

The prince wedges his blade against Benvolio’s neck. It’s difficult to find his throat, having been reduced to a soggy heap.

“So explain!” the prince commands.

“Come on,” Benvolio whines. “I only do it when I know it’s going to be a long pee.”

Doryan shrugs, tightens his grip on his blade as Benvolio rummages frantically for the buckle of his seat belt.

“Tom wants to go over the pres-!!!”

I felt my eyelids part. The orange sun streamed into the blacks of my eyes. My body was a puddle that had pooled into the shallow depression on the hotel bed. I could feel a dream slipping from me, being sucked up the back of my brain, to the part that controls my most base instincts. Then, I felt something else slipping from me, not the dream, something else, something I’ve held on for years. Unlike the dream, this other thing wasn’t being soaked up inside of me. It was seeping out of me, gushing out from the tiny holes in my skin, drenching the bathrobe, wetting the bed, dripping onto the floor.

My phone lit up and trembled somewhere in the room. Without moving any other part of my body, I swung one of my arms behind me. I reached for the phone, then dragged it back towards my face.

“See you here for dinner?” read Ben’s message. He sent me a link, the location of a restaurant with an Italian name.

“In an hour,” it said, an hour ago. I scraped my body off the bed. ““Hon?” the latest message read.

I squeezed into a pair of shorts, and threw a T-shirt on. It was one of those statement tees. This one says, “IT IS WHAT IT IS”.

Prince Doryan charges into the duchess’s chamber.

“Step-Mother, I’ve come to ransom you!” the prince announces as he picks her up from the bed.

“Oh Doryan, I prayed you would come to liberate me,” the Duchess cries delicately as she presses Doryan’s face to her half-bared breasts.

“Did that monster harm you, Duchess?”

“Benvolio? Harm me?” she says, laughing hysterically. “No, no, nothing like that!”

“Did he neglect you? Was he unfair to you? Hasn’t he been just the perfect husband?”

“No, nothing like that,” she says, looking down at her plate of limp summer produce in extra virgin olive oil.

“For God’s sake, then what is it?” he asks, exasperated.

“We used to be…” I begin to say. “You used to be-”

“I used to be what?” he cut me off, now hysterical. “God, Dani! You’re doing this now? Here??”

“...”

“Remember, that leather jacket you used to wear?”

“The jacket?” he screeches. “What are you talking about, Dani?”

I shrug. I eye the book on the table. An infinite cerulean sky graded to a vast viridian vineyard. A coppice of cypresses mapped the horizon. In the distance, the dreamy impression of an Elysian keep.