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He rolled his eyes. “You trust me, right?”
“I do,” she said, though, in truth, she didn’t. Not completely. A part of their relationship was the way they used each other, though she still believed that she was using him more: he was underwriting her new life and offering her the sort of financial opportunity she had never expected in even her wildest dreams. She was making more in a single week here as an administrative assistant than she made in a month as a social worker in Vermont, and she had little in the way of expenses. She didn’t even pay rent. Plus, she was getting Futurium crypto. (Already she’d copied her seed phrase onto the underside of a bathroom drawer. She’d used a black Sharpie, writing meticulously on the particle board. Then she had ripped the piece of paper into shreds.)
“An hour looking like Miss Wholesome Nevada,” he said. “That’s the ask. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“You bet.”
“Sure,” she agreed. “Why not?”
“That’s my girl,” he told her, and he kissed her cheek.
The valet was waiting. “Let’s go in,” he said. “Let’s get us some oysters at Gordon Ramsey’s for lunch.”
Yeah, I learned a lot about Diana. I watched the movies.
I could see why people loved her and why they loved Crissy’s show.
One day we were at this water park—me and Betsy and her—and I stood on the steps into this pool with a bunch of runts half my age, and I watched the kids’ parents doing double takes when they saw Crissy. It was like they’d seen a ghost.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Crissy
Between forty and fifty million people visit Las Vegas every year. That’s a big number.
Ah, but would you like to hear a bigger one? Seven hundred and fifty million watched the wedding of Charles and Diana in July 1981. A lot of them are long gone, and many others have grown rather crumbly with age. But a lot are still here, thank goodness.
So, I never had any doubts that my cabaret would succeed.
And, yes, I was doing it before the Netflix series brought Diana into the fold and the Broadway musical opened and Kristen Stewart starred in Spencer. I was still doing it years after the series had run its course, the musical had closed, and the movie had come and gone.
I am a survivor. At least, at the time, that was how I viewed myself.
* * *
I didn’t loathe the water park, but the moment I arrived, I was reminded of how much I preferred the domiciliary keep of my cabana at the BP. I missed the shade, and I missed the reality that there was considerably less pee in the water at “my” pool than there was at this one. Also, the soundtrack here was designed as ambient noise for splashing and screeching, and while I enjoy a ripping good musical as much as the next person, there was a tad more Frozen on this playlist than any grown-up needs, especially when gaggles of tone-deaf preschoolers shriek “Let It Go” without having the pipes.
When Nigel and I arrived, Betsy and Marisa had already planted their flag in a spot with four chaise lounges that, at the moment, offered a sliver of shade. My sister, I was happy to observe, had her hair covered in part by a green ball cap, her eyes hidden by traditional black-rimmed sunglasses. She was wearing blue jeans and flip-flops, and other than the color of her hair, nothing about her screamed iconic dead princess. Marisa said hello to Nigel and me, and then stripped off her cutoff jeans and pulled a replica Raiders football jersey over her head, revealing the slinkiest black bikini a thirteen-year-old ever has worn. My eyes clearly were agog, because she said firmly, “I control my body.”
“Of course you do,” I agreed.
“Put on sunscreen, Marisa,” my sister said, handing her a tube.
The girl rolled her eyes, but rubbed lotion onto her belly and chest, the circles slow and provocative, and Nigel turned away so it was clear he wasn’t watching. Then Marisa allowed Betsy to slather sunscreen on her back and said, “So, what is this big meeting about? Betsy wouldn’t tell me in the car.”
“Because it’s none of your business,” said Betsy. “I did tell you that.”
“I think it is my business, since it affects my Saturday.”
“You have before you some of the best water slides in Las Vegas,” I said, and I motioned at the pool. “Not a bad way to spend your Saturday.”
“Oh, boy: me and a hundred seven-year-olds.”
“I see some older kids right over there,” my sister said. “By the slide that looks like a dragon’s mouth.”
“Do you know how creepy that is? When you come out of the tube, you look like something the dragon is puking up.” Then she turned to me, a light bulb having exploded behind her eyes. “Wow, Aunt Crissy, now I see why you had us meet here. That slide is right up your alley.”
