illustration collage by Jameson Currier

Why Didn’t Someone Warn You About Prince Charming?

by Jameson Currier

You were never supposed to reach sixty. You survived a premature birth, the AIDS decades, the Y2K bug, 9/11, four hurricanes, three broken ribs, and two heart attacks. You don’t know whether to feel grateful or cursed. You are counting the days down to retirement, though according to your savings and investment accounts, those days are decades away. You are not greedy or needy. You only want one year of retirement and then Fate can snap the door shut. But even that diagnosis is grim. Your last heart attack left you with unresolved complications. Some days are fine. Others you are short of breath. Your heart is too large and works too slow. Every step is a concern.

But you refuse to let your lack of good health discourage you. You still believe happiness is around the corner, the check is in the mail, and the ship is about to dock. You still plan to learn a foreign language, take art classes, and walk on every continent. At sixty-three you have a list of places you have never visited. Every day you check the cost of flights to Tokyo or Dublin or Barcelona or Vienna. You search available hotel rooms on the internet: deluxe, luxury, superior, and platinum accommodations. Your email is flooded with travel deals from cruise lines, hotel chains, and tour operators because you subscribe to every offer of a coupon or discount that comes your way. Nothing, however, matches up with your budget and bank account. So you consider alternatives: a weekend in Vermont, an overnight in the Poconos, a day trip to Philadelphia. You think about asking someone to go with you to share some of the expenses and then you rethink that option. Everyone you know is too full of their own advice, critical of tiny details, and know a better way for you to live your life. After traveling for years with friends, boyfriends, lovers, siblings, and parents, you prefer to see the world solo. The journey is yours; the experience remains personal.

You have no regrets. You think you have always chosen the right path. Nostalgia only arrives at night when you are alone and on the second glass of wine. You sit in front of your laptop and Google the names of ex-boyfriends, ex-lovers, and ex-tricks, reading their posts on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, studying their profiles and relationship status. One ex is now a senior vice president at the Disney Channel; another is a landscape architect in Pennsylvania. One ex has a partner who sings in an all-gay male choir who posts videos that make you weep; another has a partner who deconstructs the current political climate in succinct tweets which elicit both praise and hate. You study likes and emojis and friends lists, looking for anyone you might share in common. This is how you discover Prince Charming is still alive. The man who broke your heart and then cashed the check.

You were twenty-eight and out of work when you answered an ad that had been handwritten on a notecard and tagged to the bulletin board at the entrance of a gay bar in Greenwich Village: a Greek financier was looking for a courier. Payment would be made in cash. Only a passport was required. You had friends who couriered for free trips abroad and this was something just like they were doing, only better because the end result was a trip and cash in your pocket. You called the number on the notecard and arranged to meet the financier at an Upper East Side apartment. He was forty-one and incredibly sleek and handsome, a cousin of the deposed Greek royal family. Prince Nicholas Kocolatus. You slept with him to get the job, though you would have slept with him even if there wasn’t a job. You had stars in your eyes. He was a ladder you could climb. You told all of your friends and ex-boyfriends you still spoke to that you had finally met your Prince Charming. Where was everyone’s advice when you needed it? Why didn’t someone warn you about Prince Charming?

You slept with the Prince for a week before he gave you your first assignment. He said he was negotiating a loan between international parties. He gave you a plane ticket to Geneva and an envelope to deliver to a bank. The bank would issue you cash upon receipt of the envelope and the cash would be for your salary, your overnight hotel room, and your return plane fare to New York.

Thirty-five years later you discover Prince Charming on Facebook. He now goes by the name Nick Koco. He is seventy-six years old and still has a full head of hair. He doesn’t admit to being of royalty, his work experience is not detailed, and there is no mention of where he now lives, but he has a partner in Palm Springs. Sergio Donnola admits to being thirtysomething though by the lighting in his photos he looks to be late sixties. His profile says that he has been in a relationship with Nick for forty-one years.

Forty-one years?

You stare at Sergio’s photographs. You save them to your hard drive and open them up with a software program that allows you to enlarge them. You stare some more at Sergio’s photos. You realize that you have met him before. His evil grin has been burned into your memory. Take away the jowls and the capped teeth and the skin bronzer and the hair implants and thirty-five years ago Sergio was the young man you handed the envelope to in the lobby of the bank in Geneva.  

Your first impression is astonishment. Your second is rage. Thirty-five years ago when you asked Sergio in the lobby of the bank in Geneva about the cash you were supposed to receive, he gave you that evil smirk and said, “There must be some mistake.”

There was no mistake. It was a set up. A sting. You couriered illegal funds and then had to pay the price of your own trip. Before he disappeared you threatened to report Sergio to the police. “And tell them what?” he said and laughed at you.

Thirty-five years later the anger and humiliation return. When you finally made it back to New York Prince Charming was nowhere to be found. The doorman who let you in and out of the Upper East Side building said the tenants had been abroad for more than a couple of years. He did not know of anyone who had been living in the apartment. There was no Kocolatus in the phone book. There were no census records of his existence. You vowed revenge on everyone, even if the form of it was sending out bad karma, muttering curses, and sticking pins in homemade Voodoo dolls. Then you vowed to never speak of it again and wipe it off of your history. Prince Charming was not even an anecdote.

You pour yourself another glass of wine. You Google their names. You search other browsers and other records. Sergio is an interior designer though you cannot find details on any designs or portfolios or clients. Prince Charming runs an online art gallery whose website is inaccessible. A blank canvas. How have you never discovered any of this before? On Facebook you see that they are headed next weekend to Las Vegas to “celebrate their fifth anniversary” of being married to each other. You think there should be a law in place to stop that. Scammers should not be allowed to marry scammers.

* * *

The flight to Vegas was quicker than the process through the airport security. Your hotel has a marble lobby with fountains and your room has a terrific view of the pool. There is a noisy casino, an early bird buffet, and monorails to other hotels and casinos. When you checked in you asked if Mr. Koco had arrived. The clerk said he did not see a reservation with that name. You wonder if they booked under Sergio’s last name or if they are scamming the hotel the same way they scammed you thirty-five years ago.

You unpack in your room and return to the lobby and wait, hoping to catch their arrival. With your cellphone you check their social media accounts but there are no updates. You don’t have a plan. You don’t know what you will say when you confront them. You don’t want to start drinking yet and tire yourself out in case you decide to spring into some kind of action. So you take a seat in an oversized chair and close your eyes and practice your yoga breathing. Soon you are asleep in the lobby.

Your snoring wakes you. You have been out for almost an hour. You realize you have drooled on your shirt. You look around the lobby and assess the scenario. You are invisible to everyone because of your age, weight, and lack of hairline.

You take the elevator to the spa, thinking you might have a massage. You change at a locker and sit in the men’s sauna. Everything is white marble and white tile and white clouds of steam. Slippers are recommended and are available in the locker room. Men wander in and out of the room where the hot tub is located. Behind you are showers, a door to the steam room and a door to the dry sauna. You remember your youth, the nights you roamed the baths on the Lower East Side with only a towel around your waist. Happiness was always right around the corner. You take a seat in the hot tub, even though you are aware that it may cause your heart to work too hard.

Here, you remain invisible. The security cameras in every corner of the room do not record you. Someone watching you is not really watching you. An overweight elderly balding man has no appeal to anyone.

In the hot tub you think about the cost of the plane ticket to Geneva and the hotel room thirty-five years ago. You add in compounded interest, penalties and fines, and more compounded interest. In an alternate world where you could collect what was due to you because justice was blind, you would now be a wealthy man.

You begin to feel dehydrated. Your skin is more wrinkled than usual. You hop out of the hot tub, leaving a trail of puddles on the white tiles of the floor. You rinse off in the shower and change back into your clothes at your locker. From the courtesy phone you call the front desk and ask if Mr. Donnola has checked in. The clerk says there is no one by that name with a reservation. You hang up and wonder if they decided on another hotel. Or if they canceled their trip.

You take the elevator to the buffet. You eat a lot. Then you eat more. Then you eat dessert. A waiter brings you another glass of wine. You think about how wonderful Las Vegas is. A few minutes later you are in your hotel room deep asleep.

* * *

The next morning you wake early, earlier than usual because of the time difference. On your cellphone you check the weather, your email, and Prince Charming’s social media accounts.

Nothing.

You take the elevator down to the gym where you walk on a slow pace on the treadmill until your head clears. Back in your room you shower and shave and dress in shorts and a T-shirt and a straw hat because you think you might float along the monorails after breakfast.

In the hotel dining room you sit at an empty table near the window and have breakfast. You are surprised when you see the scammers sitting at a nearby table. You are suddenly short of breath. You practice your yoga breathing, slow inhales and exhales of breaths. You would recognize Prince Charming anywhere, even at this old age. But if you hadn’t done your homework, you would never know who was seated opposite him.

You look harder to find their faults. Prince Charming stoops a little. His hair is dyed a solid helmet of black. You realize he is wearing a wig. His spotted hands shake as he reaches for a coffee cup. But he is dressed in an expensive elegant gray shirt and slacks.

Sergio has a scruffy beard that has been dyed an orange-brown. He has lots of bling on his wrists and fingers and around his neck. You place the two of them into context of this hotel in Las Vegas and the white marble and fountains and wonder if you misjudged them. Maybe they are not scammers. Maybe they are mafia. Don Corleone and Sancho Panza way-way-way-way off-Broadway.

You try to overhear their conversation. You make quick glances to see if you can read their lips. You use your cellphone camera to zoom in on them. They don’t seem to even be talking to each other. In fact, you find them dull and boring and realize that that is how they also feel about each other. They pay no notice to you. You remain invisible to them. Only your eyes would betray you so you keep them focused on your cellphone until they need to be focused elsewhere.

You follow them out of the restaurant and into the casino. Prince Charming settles in front of a slot machine with a plastic bucket of quarters. Sergio wanders through the aisles and settles at a blackjack table. You watch him lose a round. Then you buy a roll of quarters and sit near Prince Charming.

You lose your money quickly. You save some quarters for later, hiding them deep in your pockets in the hope that you will never find them so that you will not have to lose them in a slot machine. The noise in the casino is annoying. You look at Prince Charming and wish he had taken the bus to see the Hoover Dam because you could have pushed him off the ledge.

You imagine other ways of doing him in. Maybe you could topple a slot machine on him. Maybe you could kidnap him and shove him off the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Suddenly you are depressed. This is not who you are. This is not how you wish to be remembered. This is not your idea of a vacation in Vegas. You stand up and wonder if it is not too late to take the day trip into the desert. You rush out of the casino and are relieved to see that there is no line at the concierge’s desk.

* * *

It is late when you return to the hotel. You have missed the early bird buffet. A concert has already started. The trip to the desert was long and relaxing. You have a heavy bag of souvenirs. You have forgotten all about the amateur Don Corleone and Sancho Panza.

You take your souvenirs to your room and then take the elevator to the spa. You change out of your clothes at a locker and head to the hot tub with a towel and a pair of slippers.

You sit in the tub until you are dehydrated and wrinkled. You leave a puddle of water on the floor as you step into your slippers and walk to a nearby shower stall to rinse off.

Behind you, over the sound of the running water, you hear voices. There is some kind of an argument. You feel the ground shake with a thump thump thud. A man’s voice yells, “Nickie! Nickie!”

You turn off the shower. You listen for a millisecond. Or maybe a minute. Or maybe even longer. You hear heavy breaths and gasps and sobs.

You wrap a towel around your waist and step into your slippers and look around the corner of the shower stall.

You see Prince Charming sprawled on the floor beside the hot tub. His feet are bare. In fact, he is entirely nude. He must have slipped in the puddle of water you left. Sergio is also nude. He is sitting on the floor, cradling Prince Charming’s head in his lap.

Sergio looks up from the floor and meets your eyes. “Help,” he says. “Can you call for help?”

* * *

You complain to the hotel management. The marble tiles in the spa are too slick and slippery. A detective arrives to question you about the fatalities. Hotel security does not even have a record of you on the video of the incidents. He asks where you were at the time of the tragedy. After you tell him that the hotel should not even think about installing video cameras in shower stalls, you ask the detective why there are no rubber mats in the spa. No anti-slip tape. No hand rails. No staff on duty. Surely there must be regulations in place for a common space like this. He says he will follow up with hotel management.

A few minutes later you tell the hotel management that this is all too distressing. Your trip has been ruined. They offer you upgrades and discounts. You berate them for trying to take advantage of your depression and the fatal scenario you have witnessed and which is now burned into your memory.

You stay an extra day at the hotel, courtesy of the hotel. You dine at the early bird buffet, paid by the hotel. You take in a concert, gratis of the hotel. That evening, you return to your room and fall easily asleep.

The next morning before you check out of the hotel to take your free flight back to New York, you go to the casino. You find six quarters left in your pocket. You play the quarters in a slot machine. You win seven dollars’ worth of quarters. You play them all. On the last five quarters you make wishes, but you come up empty. You have lost it all. As you step away from the slot machine you slide your hands deeper into your pants and find one quarter in the pocket you did not check.

You return to the slot machine and slide your quarter into the slot. You win Big Time. All cash. Enough to retire early.

____________

“Why Didn’t Someone Warn You About Prince Charming?” first appeared in the author’s collection Why Didn’t Someone Warn You About Prince Charming? (Chelsea Station Editions, 2019).