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Excerpts

Prologue

Looking back, I wonder about that day of the party at the Met. What article was I editing? What did I eat for lunch? I can't remember.

In the years since, I've tried to imagine what would have happened had I stayed home that night. Nothing, for a while. A few weeks, a month, maybe, before the inevitable occurred. It couldn't stay a secret forever.

But when I woke up that April morning in 1988, none of that mattered. I was twenty-six and my future was written in gold: I would marry Bucky Ross, my prom date, the love of my life. I wouldn't have a maid of honor like everyone else. I would have my own best man, Paul Romano, my closest friend. I would work at Jolie! magazine as an editor until I got pregnant and moved to a Tudor mansion in the suburbs, where I would write children's books in a studio over the garage and never miss a car pool. Bucky would grow more and more powerful at the agency. Paul would visit, and our kids would love him. He would take us to all the movies he produced, and when he won Oscars we would stay up late and cheer.

Actually, the day after Bucky proposed, I was so excited that I finally opened the green velvet book with gold leaf trim that he had given me to write my stories in. On the first fresh white page I wrote:

#1  A Classic Is Always in Style

by Sandra Berlin

The poor Prince! It felt as if he had been searching forever to find his bride. Where could she be? He had looked high and low in the Emerald City but couldn't find anyone who fit his glass slipper.

When he finally arrived at the very last house on the left along the Yellow Brick Road, he dutifully asked for the resident maiden, got down on his knee, and pulled out the slipper. But she, a veteran bookworm with incipient bunions, was too smart for such tricks.

"I don't wear glass," she sniffed, which surprised the Prince, who spent most of his time playing tennis and knew nothing about retail.

"But I thought this was the way to get a princess," he said, puzzled. "Isn't the glass slipper what everyone in the Emerald City talks about?"

"No, that's the ruby slippers," she corrected him.

He looked up at her, helpless. "Well, would you marry me if I brought some of those?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Ruby is out," she proclaimed. "What I would prefer are black peau de soie pumps. A classic is always in style. I will also require an unlimited clothing allowance for the premieres of Paul's movies, and, naturally, a car and driver."

"Certainly," the Prince promised, and he rushed back to the Royal Shoemaker, who made him the pumps, posthaste. The shoes fit like magic, so the Prince swept the maiden up onto his white horse while all the Munchkins waved and serenaded them. And the other fair maidens, who had cut off their toes to fit the glass slipper, glued them back on and raced out for some black peau de soie pumps of their own -- even Dorothy, because she knew that if she went back to Kansas wearing red shoes, Auntie Em would kick her behind right out of the house.

"My darling," the Prince said to his bride, "I bless the day I found you. Everyone follows your advice and lives happily ever after. I will love you and your pumps forever."

And he did.

The End

So, it wasn't exactly original. Even though I wanted it to be true.

This is the story of what happened instead.

Copyright © 2002 by Alex Witchel