Mrs. Reichert, for her part, shivered, as she bestowed upon Daisy a look of absolute, abject terror. Taking as much care as possible, so as not to offend this strange woman, she extricated herself from Miss Sills's grasp, before hurriedly disappearing into the crowd.

For just a moment there, and in spite of that accent that was so preposterous that it just had to be real, Miss Sills had reminded Mrs. Reichert exactly of Daisy. The good doctor's wife had briefly recognized in her the person who had predated the act of forgery that Daisy's life had become, and just that smidgen of a glimpse was enough to wake her up to the fact that she should have reacted more appropriately with joy when that lovely Ms. McKenna had informed her that Daisy would no longer be coming to do her house.

No matter what Dr. Reichert had to say about it, the time had definitely come to wean herself off of that even lovelier Prozac.

And, as she burrowed deeper into the throng, screwing her way back into the woodwork, hoping to escape all Silvermans for all time, she found that she no longer minded so much the notion of occupying the lowest rung on the Garden Party ladder; no, not if that meant that she could finally rest, assured by the implicit knowledge that Daisy Silverman was safely off somewhere else, tormenting other people's minds on some other unsuspecting continent.

"Daisy," the Prince asked with evident amusement, "was that you I just heard speaking English to that sad-looking American woman?"

Daisy had been so preoccupied, what with observing the squirming retreat of Mrs. Reichert's surprisingly agile form-not to mention, wondering how things had managed to become so badly botched, when they had seemed to be going so well-that she had not heard the Prince come up behind her, bearing a cup of tepid tea. Startled, she whirled to face him.

"Veddy much so," she replied, her hands clasped firmly behind her back. She determined to continue-at least, for a time-in the manner in which she had begun. "I am considering going native."

But, in spite of her outward air of calm, her run-in with Mrs. Reichert had produced the undeniable effect of sobering up Miss Sills, nee Silverman. Considerably.

Daisy was back in the attack mode.

"You can't be serious," she was saying.

Charley had just informed her that being a Royal was pretty much like any other job.

"Oh, yes, very much so," he said. "We call it the Family Firm."

"I hardly think that it's the same thing as your average mom-and-pop business. And besides, when have you ever had to worry about money? After all, it's your mum's mug that's on the change in everyone else's pockets."

The Prince sighed for the very first time in her presence. Ever since schooling days, he had been quite regularly blamed for situations that he'd had no hand in creating. And it was particularly galling that such an accusatory tone should come now from this quarter, from the one place where he wanted so badly to impress.

He sought to explain. "It is all part of what is expected of one. Everything is tied up with some tradition or another."

"Everything that you do is dictated by tradition?" she asked, incredulously.

"Pretty much," he shrugged, not really seeing what she was getting so worked up about.

From where Daisy was standing, it seemed that tradition encompassed the things that people did because they always did them, and that, after a certain point, evolved into activities that people could explain using no other line of reasoning.

"Tradition should be something more than merely doing something the same way, just because it's always been done that way or because your father did it. I mean, what about that school that you were telling me about, the one that you hated so much?"

A part of her hoped that she wasn't beginning to sound too preachy, but she found that, once launched, she had difficulty maintaining much concern over that.

"Life isn't meant to be lived as a dress rehearsal for the first fifty-something years, Charley. This is it. And as for all of that tradition stuff that you're always going on about, well... If it's not good or satisfying or productive somehow, then it's just so much meaningless activity, like gerbils on those pointless wheels that people put in those cages, patting themselves on the backs that they've provided their pets with a full lifetime's entertainments. If there's no reason for something..."

She paused, trying to come up with a more straightforward manner in which to state her case.

"Put it this way: back home, ballplayers-on national television, mind you-play with their own balls all the time, just because they can and because they always have. You might say that that's an American tradition. But personally, that's one tradition where it would be just fine with me if the next generation were to put an end to it."

The Future King of England was thoroughly perplexed. His new friend might be attractive and more fun than polo, but she would come up with these notions that could strike one as being passing odd at times.

"But, Daisy, who else's balls should they be playing with, if not their own? Surely, you cannot be proposing that they should cop somebody else's. Why, one would think that such behavior would be considered theft or, at the very least, bad sportsmanship. No?"

For the first time Daisy was conscious of the gulf that separated their two worlds. And this sudden awareness of the yawning crevasse, just gaping right there at her feet, was making her feel as though she had to shout across it-at the top of her lungs-just to make him hear her. And the sensation of that was making her testy.

"So, that's it?" she asked. "Everything with you is just a job or tradition?"

He didn't know what to say to that.

"What about the role of a wife?" she pressed, not caring if she sounded irascible. "Is that just another job too?"

He should have seen the red warning lights flashing. A wiser man might have known enough to get the heck off of the tracks at this juncture, that there was a good chance that there was a freight train coming.

But, instead, the Prince gave a confused shrug and a slight nod. Even without having said anything, it was, clearly, the absolutely wrong thing to say.

"And I suppose you always get full satisfaction from your butcher?" she asked, icily.

The Prince startled her, by suddenly taking her hand in his and asking, "Daisy, why are you being like this?"

She put her other hand to her head, massaging her temple for all she was worth.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "I guess I'm just not myself today."

"Who are you, then?" he asked softly, bending down to receive her answer.

But, before she could give it to him, he suddenly straightened to full height.

"Oh, look," he said, eyeing the procession as it drew near. "I do believe that Mother is finally ready for you now."

Somehow, one kinda doubted that.

If Daisy was daunted by the prospect of meeting the Queen, if she was behaving in any way out of character, then she was perhaps deserving of personality amnesty. Sure, she had managed to remain blase about meeting Charley. But, really, when you think about it, anybody could handle that neat top hat trick if they only thought about it first.

But his mother?

Now, that was a horse of a more royally red color.

One must keep in mind that this woman had personally represented the apex of the greatest pyramid scam of all time for nearly fifty years, the absolute pinnacle of all royal Everests; that she had made enough money at it to take on God at the tables at Vegas, a Windsor Fats; that others who had previously been presented-among them other royalty, presidents, Elton John, and assorted power-brokers ad nauseum-had quaked in awe at the vastly superior wealth and power embodied by that one little woman in the hat with the mysterious handbag draped over her arm. (Yes, down to a Duke and Duchess, they had all invariably wondered about The Bag.) Why, it was enough to give a sultan an inferiority complex, make a sheik feel like a nomad.

Was it then surprising that one other little woman, herself a toilet bowl cleaner by trade from Danbury, Connecticut, should fall into line at the last? After all, and special as she was, even Daisy, after a full year of resisting the media onslaught of tragedy transformed into entertainment and inanity, had finally given in and watched the O.J. verdict along with everyone else in her frequently cuckoo country. Did you really believe that this heretofore insignificant individual was going to meet with and-oh, who knows? Topple? Tip? Let's just agree to say trample all over the Royal Family. One means to say, really, darling, who was Daisy at that point to buck against all of that tradition?

Generally considered to be something of a force majeure in her own right, the naturally indomitable Daisy caved.

Rejecting the technical edicts of her religion of birth, Daisy bowed her form before another mortal being, executing a perfect curtsey. Odd, the things-that one had found unimaginable before-that one found oneself doing when finally confronted with the end product of over nine hundred years of monarchic rule.

"Your Majesty..."

Shahs, Michael Jackson, other queens, all had fallen into line and had all acted and reacted in pretty much the same fashion. When you got right down to it, there really were only just so many possible variations on the theme of presentation, their range limited by the appropriate laws of protocol and human nature. One bowed and then, reminiscing afterwards, one might say that the Queen had been lovely. One might say that she had been as kind as one could want her to be. But, one did not go around saying that she seemed a trifle too full of herself. That was simply just not done. Restricted stimulus: circumscribed response latitude.

"Ma'am..."

Princess Margaret, listing at the Queen's side, cocked a scathingly sardonic brow at Daisy's genuflecting form. She was thinking that her sister would devour This One like just so many tiny kippers.

Oh, shut up, Daisy thought silently, testily, considering how all of her own life-until the advent of Bonita-she had longed for some form of female companionship. Be grateful that you even have a sister.

"Do you have any embarrassing eating disorders that we should be advised of at this juncture in time?" the Defender of the Faith was asking Daisy.

"No, Ma'am," came the stunned reply.

"And," continued the undisputed Talking Hat of the Commonwealth, "concerning the topic of frontal nudity: are you given to baring your breasts in public places in front of businessmen other than my son?"

"No, Ma'am," Daisy again demurred, by now thoroughly baffled. Perhaps it was true what they said about inbreeding.

"Then you'll probably do," the Queen said, taking the startled Daisy's hand and grasping it within one of her own gloved ones.

The Queen had decided that she liked Daisy.

Daisy, for her part, failed to attend to the Queen's mood, having become subdued by dawning horror when she had noticed that she had inadvertently transferred a chocolate stain from her own person onto the Queen's otherwise pristinely white glove.

Damn Charley! He'd missed a spot. Maybe if she held onto the Queen's hand a while longer, she could subtly rub that damned spot out with her own hand.

But, then, if the Queen twigged to what she was doing, might she not think that Daisy was coming on to her or, at best, just a tad bit too weird for her son?

Oh! Why were these things always happening to her? And where the heck was Charley, with that damned silk handkerchief of his, when you really needed him?

Sturgess had been too occupied with reading Daisy's lips to note the stain that she had left upon the glove. Standing off to one side behind the Prince, he had observed Daisy's performance with at first grudging, and then proud, approval. At least, she hadn't called the Queen 'Liz' to her face. And, clearly, the hours of drudgery spent in the butler's pantry at Holyrood, brushing up on their curtsies, had really paid off.

Bonita, on the other hand, frowned slightly upon the proceedings, having put in a side bet for 'Betsy.' But she, herself placing far more of a stress on Daisy's actions than upon her words, deemed that to be a relatively minor disappointment, outside of which it would appear that her charge had acquitted herself quite well. She particularly relished the notion of Daisy having left her mark upon the Queen, much in the same way as a cat-one who should have been fixed-spraying the corner of your house, and you not sniffing it out until later.

Bonita, unfortunately, had come upon the tableau just in time for the windup, and so she was a witness to the glory, but not the lack of guts.

Proving, once and for all, that you could fool all of the Royalty some of the time; some of the Americans all of the time; and Miss Chance, well, maybe just once.

As for Daisy, lost in all of her efforts to-for once-get things right, she had never even sniffed out the fact that the Queen smelled of neither Beef Wellington nor of tea roses, as one might expect, but, rather, she gave off absolutely no odor whatsoever.

Out of sight, out of mind, or something closely related to that.

It didn't take Daisy all that long, once the Queen's procession had passed beyond view, to heed her own most typical advice. She got over herself. She recovered from her traumatic meeting, and she commenced-in Daisy-like fashion-to think of the Queen in pretty much well the same way that she would anybody else, like Mrs. Reichert or one of the other Westport matrons. Why, before you knew it, she probably would be telling people that the Ruling Monarch had seemed a trifle too full of herself.

You know, Charley, about your mother... was how the words were beginning to formulate themselves within the confines of her busy little mind. But, seeing the happy look on her friend's famous countenance-as he strolled by her side back towards Holyrood in the damp, taking care to match his gait to her considerably shorter one-she realized that he was quite pleased with the way the afternoon was going. Getting into the spirit of things, she decided for once to give way to the better part of valor, and so, bit down hard on her frequent nuisance of a tongue.

Instead, while her mind was exercising itself on the sure-to-be-touchy subject of his mother, her demon tongue seized upon that golden opportunity to trip her up by leading her down yet another forked path with the ultimate destination being offense.

Absently, she enquired, "So, what do you folks do around here to celebrate the Fourth?"

Just more of the same-old, same-old for the average Englishman, Daisy was about to learn, much to her chagrin. One would think that nothing out of the way had occurred on that date in the history of the world.

"Actually," the Prince replied, "we do not usually make a habit of celebrating conflicts that our country is alleged to have lost."

Daisy backpedaled. "Oh, that!" she laughed nervously. "I wasn't referring to that old thing at all! No, what I meant was that that date just happens to be my birthday."

"Now, then," he looked down upon her with an open smile, completely devoid of the air of strained tolerance that one had every reason to expect. "Why does that not surprise me?"

6.

"His Highness is greatly changed," Sturgess conceded. "He seems so much less melancholy than he used to be."

"Mine's changed too. More like a Sills now."

Sturgess favored this cryptic remark by bestowing a confused smile upon the redoubtable Miss Chance. Perhaps she meant to imply that Charles had the pleasing effect of making Daisy become more herself than ever?

It was the night after the afternoon before, and the two were jointly pacing the Picture Gallery, holding their own postmortem. They were both relieved to find that, in fact, nobody had died.

"Never been so happy." Sturgess hurried along, the gleaming black tops of his leather shoes reflecting back up upon the man who moved with his hands clasped behind his back. This way of speaking, with its reliance on pure ideas and its refusal to accept the necessity for subjects in the world, was rather catching.

"Made for each other," Bonita responded in kind, as always finding that, in a world without subjects, meaning was clear if you knew what you meant. And if you didn't? Well, ambiguity could be comforting too, sort of like the intellectualized equivalent of Creole cooking.

Somewhere, in the United Kingdom, a dog conveniently chose that moment to howl at the moon.

Distracted by the sound, they each turned away from the other and, in turning simultaneously, caught sight of their side-by-side reflections in a pair of old looking glasses.

Bonita saw that the blurred quality of Sturgess's glass reflected an image of him that, while it also made him seem pudgier, had the happy effect of foreshortening his form until he was brought down to manageable size.

For Sturgess's part, he could plainly see that Miss Chance's glass had the equal and opposite fun-house effect. Why, he thought to himself, she looks practically like any normal person now.

Amazing how perfect everything can be once you distort reality, Bonita thought.

Or, maybe it was the real world that warped everything, transforming perfection into something less, was the spin that Sturgess gave to it.

Sturgess sniffed the air. And was that satay he was smelling? Why, of course it was. He'd know that scent anywhere! It was gingered beef satay over hot brown rice. Yummy.

Without taking the time to think first before speaking, they both uttered the exact same words at the exact same time: "Make an interesting couple."