Royal Bachelor (4 page)

Alice laughed. “Why would I take revenge over something nice? But don’t say I owe you either. If it wasn’t for that bar man, I would have high-tailed it back home. I had some close calls.”

“I bet. Did you keep count? I can’t believe you didn’t kiss him.”

“Please, I have some self-respect.” Though the thought had crossed her mind.

“Where’s Elmera anyway? Did you say off the coast of Italy? I know Italian. Or does Elmera have its own language?”

“Spanish-derived,” Alice said, thinking back to the unfamiliar language. Some of it was like the Italian her grandfather spoke.

“He talked to you in Elmeran? You didn’t tell me that!”

“When we said goodbye. I didn’t really understand it.
Crazon
could have been
corazon
, which is heart in Spanish, but
peligro
…? I know
pellegrino
means pilgrim in Italian. But peligro is danger in Spanish.” Now Alice was just confusing herself.

“Listen to you. We are going to see him again, aren’t we?”

“I have to give James his name first.”

Rebecca pulled out her phone and pressed speed dial. “Hey, Marsha. Yeah, she’s back. I’m in her house right now. She hit jackpot, I think. Luke Neville. Yeah, that’s why we called! We’ll dish everything tomorrow. Yeah, poor Clay! I bet he’ll drag himself in just to hear it firsthand from Alice. Love you too, mommy-bear.” She hung up. “There. Done. We’ll have answers by tomorrow.”

“Will we?”

Because the question wasn’t so much as Luke’s clean record, but whether or not he was part of Alice’s string of bad luck or not.

*

At work the next morning, Alice got her arm slapped by Marsha. First, Rebecca pulling her hair, now Marsha slapping her wrist. What would Clay do to her? Should she have to wear a helmet and metal guards?

“Why didn’t you tell him your name?
Alice Strand
! I’m very cross with you, Alessia Luisa Martelli!”

Alice winced. Her family and Marsha were the only ones who called her Alessia. And only when they were disapproving, giving the name a screech audible only to Alice. “Are you telling me we should give our names to strangers, Mother Bear?”

“There are strangers. And there are
strangers
.” Marsha waggled an eyebrow. “James didn’t find anything on him. There’s a listing for an Alfred Neville in Lower East Side. So that checks out. He didn’t lie to you.”

“I thought I was going to tell you everything today. Did you and Rebecca sleep at all?”

“We only talked for an hour. Sounding out
Alice Neville
. Honestly, Luke Martelli sounds better, you’ll have to convince him.”

Alice laughed. They were being ridiculous. But then her bunch really had few chances to be ridiculous in their line of work. They loved the stacks and the books in them and they also loved the bookworms who wandered in a dreamy daze through the store. But the life of a reader is usually one spent inside the mind.

“So when are you going over? I have the address right here.”

“Keep it. I’ll let you know if I want it this weekend.”

“I also have a phone number.”

“I’ll take it!” Rebecca said, appearing in front of them, just arrived for her noon to closing shift.

Thankfully, Marsha didn’t give any scrap of paper to Rebecca.

“Look, I hardly know him. Maybe he only flirted with me and it would be one of those experiences you always end up telling when you and your friends are drunk—”

“Are we getting drunk tonight? Kitten’s tummy isn’t ready for that yet,” Clay groaned.

“Clay! Listen to this!” And Marsha rattled everything off while Clay stashed his bag under Marsha’s drawer. Marsha finished it all with, “Are you sure you can work today?”

But Clay ignored that question and proceeded to shake Alice so hard her loose ponytail died and bloomed back into her usual mass of hair. “You are going to find him and you will take me with you.”

“Not if you continue manhandling me.”

Clay turned his shaking into a hug, squealing into Alice’s ear. He pulled back and wiped genuine tears in his eyes. They all laughed.

“Gosh, I’m such a sucker for these things,” Clay said. “When was the last time you fell in love?”

“Only crushes and then the sort of rueful affection you feel for men you slept with who remained your friends. Love, never,” Alice answered. She thought she heard a nearby customer gasp in tragic pathos.

“Really, honey?” Marsha asked solemnly. Rather too solemnly. Alice resisted an eye-roll. Love wouldn’t entail fireworks and sparks, but it certainly wouldn’t be mediocre, would it? She hadn’t felt that yet.

“There was this one time when this guy started an elaborate courtship,” said Rebecca. “Visited her at her house and called her all the time. He mailed you a necklace and flowers, didn’t he?”

“It was supposed to be the necklace from—“Alice began but Rebecca cut her off.

“Anyway, he was all poetry and bookish stuff and called her his muse. But the asshole suddenly switched to this
former friend
of ours.”

Clay and Marsha grimaced in unison.

“Yeah,” Rebecca continued. “Justin.” Rebecca spat the name like it was an epithet.

Clay sputtered. “That worthless, snot-faced, sniveling—”

“We still talk to each other from time to time online. I think he and April are still together,” Alice cut in. She wasn’t as angry with Justin as Rebecca was. “Maybe they were meant to be.”

Marsha gawked at Alice. “But he just
dumped
you?”

“Not really, no. There was no dumping. We weren’t together. We didn’t even sleep together,” Alice answered. “Maybe that was it. Others I’d slept with were the spontaneous-but-safe-and-friendly-falling-into-bed-stuff, in college of course. Justin was post-university. I waited it out with him because I thought we had something—”

“But were you in love with him?” Clay asked Alice.

“No,” Alice said. “The waiting it out? That was because he wasn’t really making an effort to win me.”

Marsha smiled. “The right man doesn’t have to make an effort at all. He just wins you from the get-go.”

“That’s the ‘love’ I imagine and want.” Alice put quotes on the word with her fingers.

“She’s intimidating,” Rebecca said. “Customers always ask about her but they fear she’d only laugh at them once they opened their mouths.”

“I would not!”

“Yeah, didn’t you tell Luke that you’d ask him to move away if he read Dan Brown?” Marsha said.

“Dan Brown!” said someone behind them. “That’s it. I have to get that book to impress my girlfriend. Can you guys help me?”

Clay cut in front of Alice to hide her withering gaze.

“This way, sir,” said Clay jovially.

“Alice, everyone is entitled to their own taste in books,” said Marsha.

“And,” Alice replied as soon as the customer was out of ear shot, “everyone deserves to be told if their taste is skewed.”

Rebecca and Marsha just smiled. There was a reason why Alice was kept hidden away from the popular fiction.

“You’re such a snob.” Rebecca shoved Alice lightly with a laugh.

All week, they tended their soft- and hard-backed children, eyeing with suspicion the people who went in and adopted the precious tomes. Alice tried to forget about Lucian, Luke, Neville. Somehow, those three names were disassociated with each other, never together, despite what James reported about an Alfred Neville being real and living in Lower East Side. She still saw the man’s face though. On Thursday morning, she almost fell down the stepladder when she saw a moving head of dirty blond hair moving just a few rows over. It wasn’t Luke/Lucian/Neville. All she got for her trouble was a stubbed toe and a stream of half-aborted curses.

Saturday was always busy. Tourists, working folk, high school and college students, families—they all seemed to reserve Saturday as their book buying day.

Alice had anticipated Marsha or Rebecca or Clay reminding her to take Luke’s number and call him, but all of them were busy and had hardly even managed to stand together and exchange a few words during a short working lunch. Luke hadn’t come up in conversation, and now Alice didn’t want to seem eager and impatient after all her rebuttals during the week. Despite her austere façade Alice enjoyed the attention and playful giggling when she and her co-workers conspired about Luke. She was too scared to let on that she really cared what this stranger thought about her and so she laughed him off and pretended it wasn’t a big deal. She hoped someone else would bring him up first; otherwise she would sound eager and girlish, not like her at all.

Finally she put her pride aside and convinced herself to march over to Marsha and get the phone number for the mysterious and sexy Elmeran. Only, she couldn’t get to Marsha. It was like a conspiracy. She and Rebecca had been accosted all day by fans of the recent bestseller asking if there were still free bookmarks and if there was a possibility of getting an autograph from the actor who’d play the lead in the movie. Rebecca had to pull Alice away from the last woman because her customer service was threatening to turn into attempted murder.

Rebecca had stowed Alice with the Children’s Books staff, telling her she had a ‘time out’ to think about her temper. When the Seussian expert wasn’t looking, Alice made a break for it.

As she rounded a corner to return to her haven amid the classics, a book tower toppled and the culprit ran away like he’d stolen something. She heard Clay let out a war cry and bolt after the presumed thief. Part of her wanted to see his karate skills in action, but she was drawn immediately toward the injured books. She knelt on the floor and gathered up the leather-bound Sherlock Holmes anthologies, feeling like a field medic in war.

“Man down!” she muttered to herself, examining the fragile binding.

A pair of legs appeared in front of her. With a smile, she offered up one book. “This one is cleared for duty!”

And then she gasped.

“You led me on a merry chase, didn’t you? I hope you forgive me, I did Google you. But none of the results matched. I had just given up but fate and fortune have conspired, have they not?”

“Is this her?”

“No.”

“This one?”

Luke only glared at Alfred, who laughed and closed the profile of an apparent drag queen, Alice with the Strand. Alfred was finding all this amusing, highly tickled that they couldn’t find Luke’s Alice Strand. Luke was chomping at the bit and frothing at the mouth and having kittens and all those clichés that pertained to anxiety and impatience.

It was already Friday night. Considered as the start of the weekend, wasn’t it? There was no joviality in Luke but, even with Alfred forbidden to contact the outside world the world managed to find him. Women. A constant barrage of non-Alice women asking for “Alfie”. Word had spread that he was in town, but thankfully no one was asking after Luke. Except for his blessed and long-suffering mother. For the first time in his coddled life, Luke hadn’t been comforted by his mother’s voice.

Lucilla had noticed. She’d asked if Luke was all right. Luke had said yes. And then he sighed and Lucilla simply
knew
.

“Oh, ma povrecariño!”
But she’d sounded delighted.

Fortunately, she hadn’t brought up the subject of... children. Unlike most other matriarchs with a crown and scepter, Lucilla was sensitive toward her son’s independence. But she did warn him that she’d be bringing it up after he turned twenty-eight. As such, he still had two years’ grace.

How old was Alice? He wondered. But it didn’t matter. She could be a magical creature for all he cared; a hundred years old with a withered portrait in her attic. It would change nothing.

“I met her in a bar,” Luke told his mother, trying to dampen her hopes for grandchildren.

“How American!” she cried happily.

“I only met her once, I don’t know anything about her—“

“She doesn’t matter that much,” Lucilla said abruptly, “the point is that you met
someone
, that you are blending and mixing! Was she anything like the Elmeran women at court?”

“No.” Luke smiled to himself.

“Exactly! Oh, your father will be so angry if he ever finds out.” He could hear his mother’s smile.

He closed Alfred’s laptop, ignoring his cousin’s colorful Elmeran swearing. He didn’t want Alice’s privacy poked. It would have been so easy to submit her name to an agency and let the agency do the work in less than a day or even less than an hour. Instead, he and Alfred had repeatedly resorted to Google. But though there were blogs and endless profiles answering to the same name, none of them were his Alice.

His Alice. He liked the sound of that. He sighed; he would have to give up the search for now.

“I can’t live with you like this!” Alfred burst suddenly. “If by Sunday, she still hasn’t turned up, you’ll have to let me—”