"For goodness' sakes," Daisy objected, "don't do that. Most of you are already skinny enough as it is. Besides, when people watch those shows, they always end up feeling like they should change something, the only problem being that the things that they end up wanting to change are the wrong things. But you of all people should be able to appreciate how damaging it can be. A human being is not something to be molded like... like... oh!... like Jell-O and bananas!"

"Jell-O?" the Queen Mother asked, showing a sincerely caring interest. "What's that, dear?"

"Oh, Mother," her daughter-the Queen-cried, throwing up her arms in defeat. Circumstances had fast spun completely out of her control.

There was only one individual left in the room who had not as yet spoken. Approaching Daisy, he did so now.

Wearing an even more puzzled expression than his customary one, Charles, with the utmost of gentleness, took both of her hands into his own.

"Why, Daisy? Why did you lie about your name... your religion... your job? Why did you lie to me?"

She gave a tiny Max-like shrug of the shoulders-a gesture perfected from childhood years of watching the Grinch with her non-Jewish friends-and made an attempt at a winning half-smile.

"Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?" she wincingly responded, more as though she were asking than telling, really. "Besides, who could get a word in edgewise? I mean, I thought for sure that, with those ears and everything, you'd be a good listener. Turned out to be not much different than any other man. Given a wide enough opening, you just go on about yourselves forever. And I never really intended to lie; it was just that I coughed and you heard me wrong and by the time I went to fix it, it was too late. And you were the one who just automatically assumed that my father must have been some kind of homburg honcho, some kind of pharaoh of the fedoras or something. And I never lied about my religion, but the chain just got lost and besides, you never even asked. Sometimes, I honestly think that you people just think that everybody else thinks the way you do. And, as for my job... oh, yeah, right. Like I'm really going to go through life saying, 'Daisy Silverman, glad to know you. But, hey, don't shake the hand until I've told you where it's been.' I mean, come on! Give me some credit. And, anyway," she added, with a small sad sigh, finishing up on a listless note. Having peaked early, she'd plumb run out of steam. "Your life was always much more interesting than mine was."

"That does not answer the most important question!" The Queen was attempting to wrest the control of events back again. "WHAT DO YOU INTEND TO DO ABOUT THIS?"

Daisy nearly wilted under the unforgiving glare of the Queen.

"CHARLES?" the Queen insisted, making it clear by the focusing of her attentions, that she had no longer any interest in the world in hearing anything Daisy might have to say about anything. Ever. "There are traditions, protocol, procedures to be followed. Attention must be paid... Of course, everything can probably still be fixed up, provided, that is, that she is willing to remain in the background, with her legs crossed and her mouth shut. NOT like..."

Triumph and disaster were both now very real concepts for Daisy. Having seen how she dealt with the one, it was anyone's guess how she would deal with the other.

Daisy Silverman bestowed one last wistfully longing look upon the face of the man whom she had come to adore.

Then she bolted.

28.

Daisy was running through the palace again.

Only this time, she was fully conscious of the fact that she was running for her life.

How had she ever gotten herself into this mess in the first place?

If only she had been content to stay at home with her two hands wrapped safely around a good book, she thought to herself, instead of taking her chances with stupid lotto tickets. Herbert had always warned her that no good ever came from living off money that you didn't earn yourself. Unless, of course, your daddy gave it to you.

If only Charley really had been all ears, like he had promised. Okay, so maybe everybody wouldn't have lived happily ever after, with the first Archbishop/Rabbi ceremony for a Windsor ever taking place in Prague, but still, at least then everybody would have known where he or she had stood and could have acted like responsible adults accordingly. Yeah, right.

If only she had been genetically predisposed to be a seeing person, instead of a smelling person. If only the Queen had been possessed of any senses at all. If only...

Hey, wait a second here.

She pulled herself up short, looking at the thousands of images of Daisy through the doors of the Principal Corridor, as her reflection bounced back at her from out of the mirrors situated at the opposite ends of the hallway.

Was she beginning to go off on one of these co-dependent types of tangents, trying to pass herself off as a victim? Was she blaming any and all outside agents for her own circumstances? Was she, was her very life, becoming-heaven forfend-Oprah fodder?

She decided to take charge of her life and thus, began to run again. She sprinted towards the jasmine refuge of the Yellow Suite. She flew over the tiresome, tedious, infinite, endlessly ongoing red.

And as she flew, she found herself allowing for one last, teensy-tiny "if only" outward-agent responsibility type of question.

So, okay, even she knew all about her cruel stepsisters by now; how the press had exposed her; how Parliament had demanded her excisement, as though she were some sort of painful boil on the bum of the British Empire.

But who the heck was her cruel stepmother then? For it only stood to reason that there had to be one still lurking in there, somewhere in the woodpile. Who had tipped her hand, started the ball rolling, made it possible for the other two to really give it to her good?

Was it the nefarious Duke, him with all of his poisons? Or the Archbishop of Canterbury who, for God alone knew what reason, had failed to take to her in the way that others usually did? Could it be perhaps the Queen herself, Daisy wondered, her mind flashing on a memory of that gently uncompromising profile?

(It really was a good thing, that she didn't know about the Master of the Household's wife's little sis's burning need to rid herself of her virginity-again-back in August. Else, that might have set her off on a whole other string of "what ifs.") Well, no matter, she finally shrugged. Very soon, she would be outta here.

29.

Daisy had already begun packing, when Pacqui called.

"I told you so," were the very first words out of his mouth, after the palace switchboard had patched him through.

"Oh," she muttered in frustration, casting about for something equally searing to say. Somehow, "go put a sock in it" didn't seem sufficient to the occasion. And she really was at the end of her rope, otherwise she never would have spoken so witheringly to such a good friend, one who had really only ever held her best interests at heart.

"Why don't you just... ooh!... go to an embassy party or something!" she shouted. Then she slammed the phone into its cradle.

Bonita finally caught up with Daisy at Heathrow Airport.

"Lose something, dear?" she cried, tossing an object into the air, where it flew, shining over the heads of all of the others who were queuing to board the plane.

Daisy, dropping her carry-on and, relinquishing her place at the head of the line, leapt, snatching the luminously radiant thing out of the air just at the nick of time, right as the ephemerally shimmering object was about to make its exit, disappearing into the windy gap between the boarding tunnel and the terminal.

"What the heck...?" Daisy gazed, dumbfounded, at Rachel's Star of David, where it lay across her palm.

"Might need it later."

"Where did you...?"

"Where you're going."

"How did you...? You weren't even there today." Daisy's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh, my gosh... It was you! You turned me in. You snitched to the press. You sent the message in a box." Daisy stared at Bonita, her own eyes wide as double-latte saucers. When she spoke again, it was in a voice that was peculiarly reminiscent of Shecky Green. "You're my evil stepmother?"

"Only one you've got," said Bonita, who was ready to move on to another topic.

But Daisy was not yet ready to renounce her role as Inspector Javert. "You were the one who started them telling all of those lies about me-"

"No, Daisy, I was the one who finally told them the truth." Bonita was at long last throwing personal pronouns incautiously to the four winds.

"But why? I hadn't meant anybody any harm. And, besides, it wasn't as though I really did any of it on purpose."

To this, using the exact same words that had been passed down through the ages-from Eve to Medea to June Cleaver-coined for the all-purpose duty of verbally alibiing the compulsion to wipe baby's bottom or eat one's children or interfere with one's progeny's choice of prom date or otherwise engage in general meddling around in the growing child's affairs, Bonita responded, "Did it for your own good."

Daisy merely shook her head in childless mystification.

"Besides, somebody had to stop you. You'd gotten way out of control."

The public address system, overhead, announced last call for Daisy's flight.

Daisy looked at Bonita and thought about Charley.

Once upon a time, she had made a single pile of all of her winnings. Now the time had come for her to risk it all on one last game of pitch-and-toss. Now it was time to return to her beginnings.

Daisy kissed Bonita on the cheek.

Then she hopped on the plane.

30.

Meanwhile, back at the palace...

After years of dedicated service, Sturgess was finally giving his employer a piece of his mind. And, really, he only had his best interests at heart.

"Snap out of it, Sir. This is real life now, not a rehearsal! Ye canna sit on ye're thumbs for the rest of it, Sir, just a waitin' fer things ta happen ta ye. YE'RE NOT SOME BLOODY TWIG IN SOME BLOODY STREAM. Go after her, Charley!"

31.

For the first time in a very long time, Daisy found herself giving thanks for the meal she was about to eat. And what food! Creamed chicken, six peas, four julienned carrots, and a square of plastic cake with pretentious delusions of chocolate that should have been embarrassed to even call itself by that noble name.

Still, it was a meal whose effect, in terms of lack of flavorful input and lack of conspicuous output, could be predicted with unerring accuracy. It would be both tasteless and constipation-provoking. There was something comforting about being back in the world, where causes could be depended upon to produce the expected effect. And was there actually an aroma coming off of that chicken? She whiffed. No, probably not. But, in her nose's mind's eye, she could distinctly smell the unique perfume of Kennedy Airport in her future, and the malodorous scents were downright intoxicating. The Nose was definitely back full force.

Safely buckled into her seat, on the Virgin Airways transatlantic flight back to New York, Daisy found herself once again among her Russian forebears.

But this time, rather than Fyodor, it was the more verbose Leo whose hands she was trusting herself to.

As she hefted the tome-which she had picked up on Charing Cross Road for an irresistible song thinking that, if all else failed, it would make one heck of a doorstopper someday-she began to idly turn the pages. She wondered, as she ate her pretend meal, what force had impelled her to select this book of all books. After all, she had read this one before. It wasn't as though the relentless march of history could be altered, could it? In capable Leo's world-where the course of things took on an Aristotelian flow, such that each successive event was at once surprising and inevitable-it wasn't likely that the expected ending was going to change, was it? Anna perhaps not throw herself under the train this time?

Highly doubtful.

But, before she knew what was happening to her, Daisy found herself turning the pages at a rapid rate, felt herself being sucked back into the fairy-tale world, a world in which a delicate foot might peek out from the bottom of a flowing gown, tapping out its impatience, a world where one might conceivably still be moved to dance the mazurka.

If only someone else were perceptive enough to ask.

32.

Daisy was standing in the middle of Kennedy, hunting for an exit sign, when she felt the hand on her shoulder and heard the familiar voice.

"I doubt it, Daisy."

"What...?" She turned. "How did you...?"

"The Concorde, of course. But that is neither here nor there," Charles said, resisting the almost unconquerable urge to shoot his cuffs. Which was just as well, since he didn't really have a jacket to shoot them from. Following the advice of Sturgess, he was traveling incognito and thus, was clad in jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt-bearing the legend Go, Metsies!-and a backwards-turned baseball cap. It was rather cold without a jacket, but at least no one was bothering him.

He took her hands in both of his and, looking down, gazed fondly at her feet. Even among thousands of people, he'd have known those neon-pink-laced trainers anywhere.

"As I was saying," he said, "before I was so rudely interrupted, I highly doubt that my life was more interesting than yours; just different. This is, one would hope, an adequate response to a remark you passed earlier."

Then his playful smile vanished, his facial features assuming a more serious expression. He cocked The Ear in her direction. "I promise: I'll listen to your story now, Daisy."

"Ooh, I love this smell!" Daisy cried, her nose immersed in a bag of French fries.

They were sitting in the airport McDonald's a little while later.