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After a moment or two, a nice-looking lady in yoga pants and a cowl neck sweater opened the door and said, “Yes?” expectantly.
It only took a second for her eyes to open very wide as she recognized me and then noticed the limo.
“Oh, my God,” she said, in an entirely different, much less welcoming tone. She’d evidently seen the OK! magazines with me on the cover, too.
“Hi,” I said, putting on my best smile and holding out my right hand. “Are you Catherine? You can call me Mia. I’m here to see your niece, Olivia. Is she at home? Or is she still at school?”
Catherine O’Toole didn’t reach out to shake my hand. Instead, she tried to slam the door in my face.
I, however, had learned a thing or two in my years working on Lilly’s cable access TV show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is (and also volunteering for various political campaigns, both here in the U.S. and back in Genovia), and that is that if you don’t want someone to slam a door on you, you should insert your foot between the jamb and the door they are attempting to swing shut. This makes it impossible for them to close it all the way.
What I had forgotten is that you should only do this if you are wearing combat boots with reinforced toes, not faux-suede platform Mary Janes.
“Ow!” I yelled as Catherine O’Toole slammed her door on my foot.
“Sorry,” Catherine O’Toole cried. “There’s no one here by the name Olivia!”
“Help,” I cried, certain many of my metatarsals were being broken or at least sprained. “Help, help!”
“Oh, my God,” I heard Catherine say again, probably because she’d gotten an eyeful of Lars, who was already hurling himself at us with a considerable amount of speed.
Lars can look intimidatingly large to people who’ve never seen him before, even when he’s a dozen yards away. He is well over six feet tall and weighs two hundred pounds (“most of it muscle,” as he is fond of saying). He can bench press my weight several times over (he claims. I’ve been spared the sight of him doing this, thank the Lord).
But hurtling toward you at close range, with his face contorted in rage, he’s an even more intimidating sight, sort of like a bull charging at an anthill.
The next thing I knew, Lars had crashed through the O’Tooles’ front door and pinned Olivia’s aunt Catherine to one of her living room walls.
“Princess was attacked, but suspect subdued,” I overheard Lars murmur into his headset. I had no idea who he was talking to. Probably Royal Genovian Guard headquarters back at the consulate. “Repeat, princess was attacked, but suspect has been subdued.”
“Lars,” I said, as I hopped around, holding my injured foot in one hand. “I was hardly attacked.”
I couldn’t help thinking, though, that if I’d actually been wearing diamond shoes, my foot would be hurting a lot less.
Meanwhile, Lilly was standing there with a large grin on her face, her camera phone up and on, having filmed the whole thing.
“Don’t worry,” she said, when she saw my disapproving
expression. “I’m not going to post it anywhere. This is for my personal collection.”
Oh, God.
“What’s going on?” Tina was crossing the lawn with Halim in tow, both of them looking bewildered. “Mia, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, even though my right foot was throbbing with pain. “There was just a little misunderstanding.”
“There was no misunderstanding,” Lars said firmly.
“No.” Lilly continued to film. “There was definitely no misunderstanding.”
“Please.” Catherine O’Toole’s voice was muffled. This was because Lars was still pressing her against the ornately plastered wall. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Olivia does live here. Please just tell this . . . man to let me go.”
I felt sorry for her, even though I was pretty sure she had broken or at least sprained my foot.
“Lars, this is ridiculous. Please release her.”
Lars released her, and Catherine O’Toole came away from the wall and adjusted the neckline of her fancy sweater, then one of her fake eyelashes that had come loose when her face had been pressed up against the Venetian plaster. Then she said, “Excuse me, Your Royal Highness, what I meant to say was, won’t you please come in? May I offer you and your friends some refreshment?”
“Yes,” I said. “That would be lovely.”
