7.

The Prince of Wales stood, studying his own image, in front of a mirror that was fit for a king. He was adjusting his own tie.

"Do you believe, Sturgeon, that every now and again, when I disappear from the center of things-as if I've fallen off the face of the earth, as it were..." He paused here, brooding over the exactly correct wording that would complete his thought. "Do you think that people forget all about me, as if I never really existed in the first place?"

Sturgess held open a stupendously well-tailored evening jacket, the sleeves gaping an invitation to the Royal arms. "Well, I certainly never do, Sir."

8.

As Pacqui held open the door of the black cab for Daisy, she noted that her escort was attired in a black suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie. The effect created might have been that of an Archie Bunker-inspired hit man, were it not for the pair of unnecessary dark sunglasses that pushed the whole outfit into the realm of Pakistani Blues Brother.

"Your coach awaits you!" he announced, sketching a bow in the air as he ushered her into the back.

Showtime, Daisy thought, grabbing onto his arm for assistance as she dragged the sock-clad swollen ankle into the cab behind her.

9.

Daisy always knew that she'd had too much to drink whenever she found herself engaging in philosophical debate with her own contemplated mirror image in a public bathroom.

"We could just hide out in here all night," Real Daisy suggested.

"We could go out there and mingle," Reflected Daisy replied. "How often do we get the chance to meet so many different people?"

"It's kind of cozy in here," the first suggested, wistfully, indicating the commodious expanse of the pink powder room and the generous offering of stalls in the Pakistani Embassy's Ladies' Room.

"Well, it is if we want to spend our entire life in the toilet." This time, Reflected Daisy didn't wait for a response. "I, for one, am heading on out."

"But what about Pacqui?" Real Daisy asked in distress, hand flying unconsciously to the Star of David at her throat. Her hand groped around for a moment, alarm beginning to seep in, until she felt the outline of the reassuring jewelry beneath her dress. She had forgotten that earlier in the evening, while putting on her new things, her tipsy focus had deemed the chain to look "somehow not-quite-right" with the perfection of The Dress and, rather than removing it entirely, had tucked it away safely inside.

"How in the world are we ever going to find Pacqui again among the crush out there?" she persisted. But even as she uttered the words, her focus expanded and she realized that, not only had Reflected Daisy deserted her, but that some of the other female partygoers, many of whom were now queuing to use the stalls in the loo, were all staring at her.

Oh, dear, she thought, flinging open the door and sallying forth under a pretense of self-confident hauteur. Did I really say all of those things out loud?

Unlike earlier in the day, when it had seemed as if everything was for once just her size, as she emerged now on the other side of the bathroom door, it was to be found that the world had grown large once again. The Embassy hall was jam-packed with everybody who aspired to be anybody. Why, a person couldn't swing a stick in there without hitting a marquis, an earl, or a sheik. And every single last one of them was taller than Daisy.

Like a squirrel lost in a redwood forest, she searched in vain for Pacqui, but he was nowhere to be seen. Having sought out liquid sustenance from champagne acquired at the open bar in the corner of the room, she was further diverted from the hunt for her companion by the whiff of sweets she caught off of a passing dessert cart. Bending over it, she studied the selection intently.

Cheesecake? Mousse? Profiteroles? Not exactly the kind of thing that she currently had a hankering for, but it would have to do for now, she thought, as she began loading up her plate.

Straightening up and backing away from the cart-figuring that, probably, it would be fair to give someone else a crack at it-her senses were confronted with the ephemeral, fleeting aroma of exactly what she had been looking for. It seemed to be passing right by her, and she wheeled suddenly, trying to catch onto it before it disappeared completely.

And so it transpired that, as she wheeled, she collided with the Prince who, on this occasion, had opted for making a beeline straight up the middle.

And, for the second time that day, Daisy Silverman went down for the count.

She came to gradually, revived by the scent that had captured her attention just prior to the collision. Dimly, she took in the sound of a vaguely familiar voice uttering an imperious command.

"Quick, Sturgeon! Fetch a glass of water!"

Eyes still closed, she inhaled a full measure of her all-time favorite combo: chocolate and peppermint. In this particular chocolate, she discerned the musky odor of a high-priced but fun-loving trollop, while the peppermint on offer extended the cleanly virginal promise that one's innocence might be regained. She felt her nostrils quivering involuntarily as the firmly supportive hand under her elbow assisted her to her feet.

Rising slowly, still feeling unsure of her footing, Daisy found herself brown-eye-to-flesh with the largest biological instrument for listening that she had ever encountered in her life. The whorls of the canal seemed to go on forever. It might have been the result of an optical illusion, brought about by such unusually close proximity, but she could have sworn that Dumbo had nothing on this specimen.

The Ear was the single most erotic organ that Daisy had ever seen.

Straightening to her fully extended, vertically challenged stature, Daisy found herself raptly gazing up at the face that was attached to The Ear. It was the face of...

"Oh, my God! Charley!"

"Sturgeon!" he called, unable to tear his own focus away from the sheer openness of the face that was looking up into his. "Haven't you managed to locate a single glass of water in this entire place yet?"

Sturgess, slightly miffed at being drafted into service as a common waiter, deemed it prudent to break the electrical current by drawing the still stunned Daisy off to one side.

"Miss," he began, trying to come across as gently forceful and magisterially suggestive at the same time. He endeavored to keep his voice down so as not to draw undue attention to what was fast becoming A Situation. "One cannot address the Prince of Wales as 'Charley.'"

"Why ever not?" Daisy asked dreamily, staring back at the place where her new acquaintance still stood. She smiled shyly and, lifting her hand, sketched a little wave by wiggling her fingers.

No one, to Sturgess's knowledge, had ever asked that question before. He drew himself up to his full height. "Because it simply is not something that one does." He could see already that lessons in protocol were not going to be easy with this one. "Upon first being presented to the Prince of Wales, one is to initially address him as 'Your Highness.'"

"But I wasn't presented to him," Daisy cheerfully protested. "I fell at his feet."

"Be that as it may," Sturgess pressed onward, clearing his throat. He refused to allow himself to become caught up in the details. "If, following the initial encounter, one is permitted to remain in the Royal presence long enough so that a second address becomes required, one may use the more simplified title of 'Sir.'"

"You must be out of your mind," Daisy laughed, returning to her democratic senses. "I mean, he may be special," she added, thinking of The Ear, "but let's not go overboard here."

The spell broken for the moment, she turned and faced Sturgess, really seeing him for the first time. "And how does one address you? Is your name really Sturgeon?"

"God, no," came the unguarded, and therefore unprecedented, reply.

Daisy looked first at the Prince, then back at Sturgess, and finally back to the Prince again. She was clearly confused. "But I could have sworn he said-"

"Sturgeon is merely the, er, nickname that His Highness chooses to address me by," he hurriedly supplied, backpedaling like mad.

"And if one wished to address you by the name that you were meant, and possibly prefer, to be called?"

Sincerely praying that his answer would in no way imply a dissatisfaction or a criticism of his betters, that worthy servant replied, "That would be Sturgess, Miss."

Sturgeon, Sturgeon, Sturgess? Daisy glimpsed an unfortunate pattern developing here and, deciding that it was high time that someone took it upon themselves to do something about it, called for an emergency nomination. She unanimously-if unilaterally-elected herself, and would have marched straight back to the patiently waiting Prince of Wales were it not for the fact that her twisted ankle rendered the straight march more of a listed hobble, her beeline a pathetic s-curve.

"I can't believe that you do that all the time," she accused, helping herself to a champagne glass that had ventured too close within her orbit.

"What?" the Prince enquired absently. Earlier his stomach had been growling. (Embassy parties were notorious for their meager pickings, and besides, who wanted to eat with all of those strangers staring at you, hoping to catch sight of a Royal with spinach stuck between his teeth or a milk mustache? "Got milk?" He thought not. Much better to wait until after.) But now he found his appetite had completely deserted him. He couldn't quite put his finger on what was so bewitching: The Girl or the ethereal-like quality of The Dress?

"I can't believe that you call him Sturgeon all of the time, when his real name is Sturgess."

"It is?"

"Don't you know how important a person's name can be to them, Charley?"

The moonish perplexity on the Prince's face made manifest that, clearly, he did not.

"Even if a person absolutely hates their name, it's still their own." And here, she could feel herself about to fly off on some tenuously related-at least, one could hope-tangent, but was powerless to stop herself.

"When my father named me Daisy, he doomed me to a life that would always be at least partially juvenile. Can you just hear what Daisy Thatcher would have sounded like? Kind of loses something, if you ask me. I doubt that anyone would have ever nicknamed me Old Iron Girdle, or whatever it was they used to call her."

Daisy noticed that a veritable paddock of horsy-looking women on the sidelines were all shooting daggers at her, but she chose to ignore them and barreled blithely on, pursuing instead what she was sure would be her winning point. "I mean, one can only presume that there's a good reason why you didn't name your own two sons Gaston and Alonzo. So, you see then, it would be okay if, for instance, I were to call him Sturgeon. Because then it would be to show that I liked him, not because I couldn't or wouldn't be bothered with remembering his proper name."

The Prince suddenly found himself in need of a glass of champagne after all. Badly.

He thought that he could glean just the dimmest outline of a point that he could respond to in there, somewhere. But then, he thought, looking at her, did it really matter?

Leaving Daisy and Sturgess to fight it out for supremacy of the satay tray, he flagged down a passing waiter and, helping himself to a glass, decided that it was time to respond to something. Anything would do, really. The important thing, at this juncture, was merely to get the point across that he was not a mute.

"I could try to change." He was surprised to hear the spoken words offered in his own voice, tentatively.

"Hah!" she returned with a mildly mocking laugh. "Almost no one ever can, even if they want to. It's only when you're not trying at all that those things seem to just happen to you." She gave the matter some further thought. "And often, it's a change for the worse."

"You know this whole name thing, which you have so kindly brought up, has called to mind a memory from my youth," the Prince confided, choosing to drive down a different street. "As a child, I always imagined that my real name was something more sturdy, like Richard Blake, and that I'd been switched with Charles Windsor at birth."

Daisy grabbed onto his sleeve, laughing. "And I always pretended mine was something more sophisticated, like Catherine Harkness!"

The Prince laughed along with her. "And is that your family name, Daisy? Harkness?"

The lights in the hall had dimmed and a quartet, set up in one corner, launched itself on a showcase of Billy Joel tunes. Daisy-uncertain if the nausea aroused in her stomach was the result of too much champagne or if it had been brought on by the cellist's overly zealous rendition of "Uptown Girl"-snagged a healthy slice of mille feuille off of the pastry trolley before answering. Unfortunately for her, she committed the tactical social error of trying to speak with food in her mouth.

"No, it's Daisy Sil-" And this was where she began to choke, one of the thousand layers of feuille having become as firmly lodged in her esophagus as it is possible for pastry to become lodged.

As her face turned blue, the Prince's blanched white with worry. "Sturgess!" he demanded. "Do you think that we could have a little Heimlich over here, please?"

As Sturgess administered the required first aid, Daisy tried valiantly to complete her sentence, but the only thing that she was able to come up with-immediately subsequent to the ejection of the offending pastry-was a single sibilant "S-"

"Ah, I see," said the Prince, putting one and two together, as he rubbed her back solicitously, the concern still evident on his face. "Daisy Sills is it, then? What a perfectly charming name." He was relieved to see that his patient was looking much better, and he gratefully accepted that single glass of water that Sturgess had finally managed to procure. Using the sky blue silk handkerchief from his breast pocket to daub at the stain on his lapel, he wondered idly if the palace dry cleaner would be able to remove saliva and pastry stains from wool. Well, no matter, really; there were, after all, a lot of other suits in the world, he concluded, passing the silk handkerchief along to Sturgess who, having momentarily disappeared again, had re-materialized with an amazing second glass of water for Daisy. "I believe that I used to know a Major Sills in Dorchester. But probably no relation, what?"

Daisy, who would have liked to have cleared up the mix-up concerning her family name, had just taken a big gulp from her own glass of water and, now reluctant to speak with any consumable at all in her mouth, felt the moment pass her by.

Meanwhile, the Prince was experiencing his own technical difficulties concerning the mechanics of polite conversation. Completely taken by the charms of Daisy-which were beginning to outweigh the opalescent splendor of The Dress-for once in his life, the King of Small Talk was at a dead loss as to what to say to a relatively strange woman at an embassy party. The old fertilizer standby probably wouldn't do here. And, the quartet having now embarked on the "Delilah" portion of their Tom Jones retrospective, well, there was clearly nothing neutrally inoffensive that one could say about that.

Casting about for a source of inspiration, the Royal glance chanced to fall upon Daisy's most original choice of formal footwear. Noticing the sock and neon-pink-laced sneaker for the first time, he commented brightly, "Oh! Aren't you clever to have worn your trainers? I wish I'd thought to do that. My feet do get so sore at these things. Sturgess, make a note."

What? shrieked the blatantly bewildered expression on Daisy's face.

Perceiving that, perhaps, his conversational gambit had not been received in quite the manner in which it was intended, he plunged ahead. "So, Daisy Sills, where do you hail from?"

A part of her still wanted to correct the whole name thing, but she found herself, curiously, just answering the question that had been asked. "I'm from Danbury; it's in Connecticut." She was about to explain where Connecticut was, when the Prince interjected robustly.

"Ah, yes!" he cried, glad to find himself in the comfortable midst of a topic of which he knew something. "Hat City! How your people must have despised President Kennedy."

Realizing that he must assume that "her people" owned Danbury, Daisy replied, "Well, it did devastate the industry, but somehow Daddy managed to survive with his fortunes intact." Daddy? Now where had that come from? Could Mumsy be so very far behind?

Which was kind of the truth, since Kennedy's refusal to wear a top hat to his inauguration really had had no discernible effect on Herbert Silverman's economic status as a septic man. Silverman's Septic had muddled through far worse.

"And the rest of the city?" persisted the Prince. "How have the rest of the citizenry managed to hold up?"

"Well," Daisy replied, tentatively, cognizant of the fact that the incident to which he referred had taken place nearly forty years ago. "I do believe, Charley, that most of them have managed to get on with their lives by now." Not wishing to pursue the idea of "her people" any longer-although, technically, she did have people, only not quite in the sense that he meant and, anyway, they were all dead-she decided that it was best to turn the conversational tables on him.

"And how about you? What was it like growing up in the palace, knowing that some day this would all be yours?" she asked, her gesture only wide enough to encompass the immediate vicinity, but intended to convey the vastness of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.

Regardless of the fact that the earnest query was a tad bit Oprah, the Prince found himself smiling inwardly at the refreshing display of candor. He knew that this was the question that piqued the curiosity of everyone who had ever met him, but that they were invariably too intimidated, or too intent on appearing blase, to ask. This reticence on the part of others had proven just as well-at least, in the past. For it had prevented him from having to disabuse people of their dearly cherished illusions.

The truth of the matter was that his existence, to date, had been neither as hedonistic nor as dreadful as most people suspected. Rather, it had mostly just been boring. Until now, at any rate.

Still, in spite of his previous reluctance to publicly delve into his own past, there was something about this upturned and open face that made him want to answer Daisy as honestly as possible.

"Well," he began slowly, with a self-effacing grimace, "it's actually a terribly long story. Are you certain that you would be up for it?"

"I've got all night," Daisy replied, not even thinking about what she might be letting herself in for. "And I'm all ears," she added hastily.

"Oh," the Prince responded, his lips parting to evince a smile, the unguarded radiance of which the world had hardly ever seen. The effect was dazzling. "You too?"

"Mother always said that she wanted a normal, ordinary life for her children."

What was she, nuts? was the very first thought that popped into Daisy's mind. But for the time being, Miss Sills-nee Silverman-was wisely keeping her own counsel.