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The fellow studied her and then Betsy. “Cool,” he said. “You two going to ride?”
“Yes,” Marisa said. “But there isn’t a line, so can I ask you a question?”
“If I say no, you will anyway.”
“Yeah. That’s true.”
“Ask.”
“Why do you have a crown on your arm?”
“Because my last name is Crown.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. I don’t make shit up.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
“Sorry, kid.”
“Can I ask you one more?”
Betsy thought that the carny would be exasperated, but he wasn’t. He was either very game or very patient. “Sure.”
“You didn’t believe me when I said my aunt is a princess. Why not?”
“Because you don’t look like the type.”
“She is, you know. I’m going to meet her in a few days. My aunt is the Princess of Las Vegas.”
He looked from Marisa to Betsy, wanting some sort of confirmation. Betsy had never called her sister that before. She’d never thought of her like that before. But Marisa was right. It wasn’t merely that Crissy re-created Diana Spencer: it was the way she lived her own life. She kept her distance from the other gig performers in the city as if she were royalty, and retreated during the day to her suite or her poolside cabana at the Buckingham Palace. So, Betsy gave a small shrug, and nodded.
“Well, that’s unexpected,” he said. “Vegas has a lot of crazy shit, but I didn’t know they had an official princess. Maybe she’ll knight you.”
“I’m a girl, so she can’t. Women are dames, not knights.”
“How in the world do you know that?” Betsy asked. Once more, she was a little shocked.
“The Internet. When I was googling your sister, I learned about knights and dames. At the Buckingham Palace, the men’s bathrooms are for knights and the women’s are for dames, which seems pretty stupid in this day and age, since lots of people aren’t knights or dames. The hotel either needs nonbinary bathrooms or just bathrooms that anyone can use.”
“How much have you been googling her?”
“Not tons. I wanted to get the scoop on the hotel and her act, and why she does what she does.”
“Did you figure that out?”
“Nope.”
The carny started twirling his finger in a circle and Betsy saw there were people starting to queue up behind them, and so she handed him tickets and they took their seats. Betsy looked at the hills that surrounded them, lush and green, with just a hint of scarlet as some of the first trees started to turn. She kept thinking about how Marisa had distilled what had been for their mother the great question of Crissy’s life: why did her older daughter do what she did? Why, of all the things she could have done as an actor, had she chosen to devote her life day after day to raising from the grave a woman who’d died when she herself was in elementary school?
And, of course, Betsy knew. Or suspected she knew. But she was never going to say a thing to their mother.
The closest thing I’d ever seen to the lights of Las Vegas were the county fairs in Vermont. And that’s like comparing a baby kitten whose eyes are still closed to a lion that’s about to eat you for lunch.
And, here’s the thing: I think Betsy felt the same way. She was totally (and I love this word because I’m from Vermont) cowed.
CHAPTER NINE
