The Frog Prince (16 page)

“But how do you get a tree to hold all this weight?” I say, walking to the opposite side of the kitchen island. I look over at the living room where a white love seat sits before an armoire, and into a dining room at an oval table with four skirted parson chairs. “When I was a kid my friend had a tree house, and it scared me to death to go in that thing. Every time there was a breeze it would sway around and all our games would slide around the floor. And the only furniture in it
was a cardboard box we used as a table.”

The aroma of brewing coffee wafts past my nose, and I can feel my body finally beginning to thaw out one degree at a time.

He takes a few steps back and leans against the counter, his arms crossed. I immediately become distracted by the attractive things this does to his deltoids. “People don’t realize that you can’t just nail a bunch of wood into a tree without fundamentally changing how it behaves,” he says. “Trees twist and bend and the branches bounce. There’s a lot of engineering and planning that goes into building these.”

Then he starts talking real construction and engineering details, and I get preoccupied with just watching his lips move. Every once in awhile I hear words like “lag bolts” and “natural structural frequency” and immediately return to my voyeuristic study already in progress. Roman really gets jazzed up talking about building tree houses, and since I am personally in favor of beautiful, sweaty men like him going without shirts to perform any kind of construction, I let him go on.

He has just started describing something called wind shoes or wind sheer (or something) when he cuts himself short to pour our coffee. I am relieved when he pulls a carton of faux creamer from the fridge and uncaps a glass jar of sugar. He pushes them towards me. “Cream and sugar?”

I take the spoon he offers, and get busy with pouring creamer, all the while watching him out the corner of my eye, hoping he's not watching
me
. Thankfully he bails on the kitchen and makes a beeline for the armoire in the living room. Just as I suspected, a TV lurks inside.

This is my chance. Before he can turn around, I practically upend the glass jar of sugar, and watch as a waterfall of white pushes the coffee to overflowing. I cap the sugar jar and hope he doesn't notice that I've used enough to put an average-sized adult into a diabetic coma.

I slurp the hot coffee quietly while Roman fumbles with various remotes. A newscast pops on, and Roman turns it down so it’s barely audible.

“Christine decorated your house,” I say, not because anyone told me this but because Christine loves doing this sort of thing, and no man I know is capable of this type of decor. I try to envision Roman looking around his new, empty house and thinking “what that corner needs is a crumbling marble column with a plant on top” or “instead of a coffee table, an early 20th century steamer trunk would work just as well.” No dice.

“She really couldn’t be stopped,” he says.

I laugh and nod my understanding. My cousin is an interior designer trapped in the ho-hum life of an airport administrator.

“Can you believe she got most of this stuff at garage sales?” He points at the white love seat, which looks like it just rolled out of a furniture showroom. “Fifty bucks.”

I nod, sipping my coffee and walking the perimeter to study Christine’s handiwork one area at a time. A grouping of framed, mostly black and white photographs arranged on the wall by the front door catches my eye and I get closer to look them over. At the apex is an old, slightly damaged formal wedding photo. The very young woman’s dark hair is pulled up under a white veil and a crown. A demure, Mona Lisa smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, reminding me instantly of Roman. The older man has a slicked sideways Hitler ‘do with a horrible moustache to match. He’s leering at his bride, a “wait ‘til I get my hands on you” grin on his face. This also reminds me of Roman.

“Who are they?” I ask, pointing to the photo.

Roman walks up behind me. “Karl the First, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary,” he says, pointing to the man. His finger moves to the right. “Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, Empress Consort and Archduchess Consort of Austria, Queen Consort of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia.”

He flashes his adorable crooked smile at me. “My great-grandfather and great-grandmother.”

“Good thing you don’t have to do
that
often,” I say. “You’d be six months into a relationship before you got done with the introductions.” I study the pictures closely, my eyes lingering on the crown. “Doesn’t it chap your ass that you don’t get a crown?”

“Oh, I have a crown,” says Roman casually, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.

My ears perk up. “You do?”

“Sure. I’m just not allowed to wear it. It’s in a museum in Austria.”

“Oh.” I return to the photos. “Don’t you ever think ‘what if?’”

Roman shrugs. “Not really. By this time the monarchy would have been completely ceremonial. I would have either spent my whole life doing ribbon cuttings at grocery stores, or blowing taxpayer dollars on drugs. That’s not how I want to live my life.”

He walks back to the living room, and drops onto the love seat while I opt for the nearby armchair. “Why don’t you have an Austrian accent?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you sound like the Terminator?”

I wait while Roman swallows his coffee. “My dad could speak, like, five languages. I can understand German, but I don’t speak it very well.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I say. “My parents both speak fluent jive, but me…not a word.”

Roman emits a wet snicker, probably a result of laughing and trying to swallow coffee at the same time. When he has regained control of his airway he says, “I was born in the States. My dad used to take me to Austria a lot when I was younger. After he died–especially as I got older–it just became a big hassle.”

“Hassle? Why?” I think bureaucratic red tape or passport snafus.

He smiles. “You didn’t see them? Christine thought they were hysterical and had them framed. I’d take them down, but every time she and Earl came over she’d convince me to re-hang them.”

He puts his mug on the steamer trunk that is the coffee table and walks a few steps to the dining room. Now he’s got his hands tucked into his pockets again. I set my mug on the dining room table and peek over his shoulder at what looks like a bunch of matted and framed newspaper articles and magazine covers.

I openly gape as I recognize an incredibly handsome Roman in his late teens or early twenties, always in the center of a throng of screaming teenaged girls and women. RÜCKKEHR DES KÖNIGS? screams the headline of the first,
Die Press
.

“What’s it say?” I ask.

“’Return of the King,’” he says, clearly embarrassed. He points at each of the other three in quick succession, translating the headlines as he goes. “Royal Roman Rendezvous,” he says of a picture of him attempting to enter what looks like a hotel. “When in Rome with Roman”–this as he is working his way through a frenzied crowd at an airport. “Prince Roman Rocks Local Club.”

He snorts in disgust. “Can you believe a member of Parliament introduces a bill every year trying to reestablish the monarchy?” he says. “Thank god it’s always voted down.”

“You’re the Frog Prince,” I blurt out.

“Frog prince?” he says. “What’s that?”

“The fairy tale.” I turn back to the wall to study the photos. “A girl befriends a frog at a well. He tells her that he’s really a prince, but he’s been turned into a frog by a wicked witch. He tells her that if she would just kiss him, the enchantment would be broken and he would turn back into a prince and make her a princess.” I steal a glance at him. “Guess there’s no chance that would work in this situation.”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

My brain immediately locks on this question. In less than a nanosecond, complex analyses have been run on his words in the language center of my brain, which then reports back to me that this is a rhetorical question and not meant to be answered.

Which would have been difficult to do anyway because by this time Roman has taken my face in both of his hands and brought his lips down on mine, and now he’s pushed me up against the tree growing through the living room, and his hands are in my hair, and it’s all I can do not to reenact moves I’ve seen in porno movies.

I push my fingers up the nape of his neck and into his hair, then let my hands fall to his shoulders. By now he’s gotten his hands under my sweater, and I can’t help but sigh when he touches my bare skin with his hands and moves his lips down to my neck.

After about five minutes of what basically amounts to vertical dry humping, it occurs to me that we aren’t, uh,
progressing
. And the reason is crystal clear even through the fog of my horniness: no bed, or any other soft, horizontal surface longer than five feet is immediately available, and Roman is unlikely to bend me over the marble column or potted plant on our first nude excursion.

I duck my face out of range of his lips and try for delicacy. “Um, where do you sleep?”

Roman smiles, and gives me a peck on the mouth before leading me to a door at the back of the house. I don’t recall seeing a second set of stairs outside, and I wonder if we’re just going to go at it in a broom closet or something when Roman yanks the doorknob and the cold night air rushes in. I lean forward and look through the door doubtfully. I see nothing but open air.

“We can use the walkway,” he says, his hand hovering over a row of light switches. He flips one, and something groans to life under our feet. In the faint light I see a retractable metal bridge rumbling away from us into the darkness. After twenty seconds or so I hear a
click
. There is another
whirring
sound, and handrails unfold on the platform of the walkway.

Roman flips another switch, turning on the exterior and interior lights of an identical chalet in the tree across from us. I notice the steel walkway slopes down slightly, and figure the doorway to the other house is a couple of feet lower than where we are standing now.

“Or," says Roman, “if you’re in a superhero mood...”

Now I’m uncomfortable. There are rules to first-time intimacy, namely that it must be horizontal and missionary, and it cannot involve capes or swinging from the ceiling, or whatever other superhero capers Roman has in mind.

Roman grabs my arms and wraps them around his neck. “Hug me tight,” he says, and without any other warning he reaches up, grabs a bar above our heads, and jumps off the deck in the general direction of the other house. I experience about five seconds of abject terror as we float soundlessly through the air before our forward motion gradually slows to a stop and Roman’s feet touch the deck of the second house.

“You can let go now,” he says in a gurgling voice. This is because I still have my arms around his neck in a stranglehold. He pries me off just as a hit of adrenaline jolts my system. Roman opens the door to the second house, and I just sort of fall in.

“Sorry,” he laughs. “I couldn't help myself.”

Still sprawled on my back on the threshold, I don’t answer.

“Come on,” he coaxes, “it wasn't that bad. At least we had the bridge underneath us.”

“As soon as I can move," I say between gasps for air, "I'm calling
Die Press
. To tell them what a reckless, irresponsible king you would make."

Roman steps over me and bends down to grab my arms. He drags me further into the room and kicks the door shut with his foot. Suddenly the lights overhead go out, and what seems like a hundred candles all over the room flare up simultaneously, creating a flickering shadow show on the wall.

“What the–” I say and sit up.

“Fake candles,” he says, squatting down by my side. “A house fire thirty feet off the ground in a tree isn’t really a good idea.”

Roman traces my cheekbone and jaw with his fingers, and before I lose my ability to speak I blurt out: “I didn’t get to see the room.” I can barely make out any of the furniture by the light of the faux candles.

He pulls me to my feet. His voice is low and lilting, and very close now. “You can see it in the morning.”

Chapter Fifteen

I awake the next morning in a warm nest, buffered by a thick down comforter on one side and Roman’s toasty body on the other.

Ironically, this warm nest is located in a tree.

I roll onto my back and hiss between my teeth at a tug on my scalp. I turn my head to the side to find Roman sleeping on some of my hair. Moving slowly, I gingerly pull the lock from under his shoulder. Reaching above my head with my hands, I find all the clumps of my hair that have spun off in the night like arms of an octopus, and pull them into one piece behind me.

I briefly consider getting out of bed to see the rest of this part of his house, but a quick check of the air temperature with my foot proves it to be colder than a well digger’s ass in Idaho. So I just roll to my side to see what I can see from the warmth of his bed.

The tallest wainscoting I’ve ever seen reaches halfway up the wall, which somehow works in here with the soaring, vaulted ceilings. The wainscoting is pale cream, but everything above– including the ceiling–is painted a rich, dark blue. The color would make the space feel a little cold if it weren’t for the king-sized sleigh bed, its wood the color of spiced cider.

Christine must have hit the mother-lode of steamer trunk sales, because another one–this one even bigger than the one in the living room–is pushed up against the window on the far wall, a mountain of books stacked on top.

I spend a little bit of time trying to figure out what the curtains are hanging from, and then smile when I see that they’re skis spray-painted silver. The curtains are nearly the same color blue as the walls. I tilt my head back, looking at the pictures above the bed, and realize there is a bit of a theme at work here: each contains a photograph of a single, crystalline snowflake, magnified hundreds of times under a microscope.