Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales Read Free

happy ending would be impossible without you. And you’re the only mature figure in the piece. Everything else is either young love or youthful instability.”
    The King nodded, keeping his face noncommittal; but his eyes betrayed him. I knew that for the rest of the readthrough, he would be counting his lines, but I didn’t think that mattered: I thought we had him. Now it was the two princes who we had to fasten down—because without them, a youngest-son story loses most of its tension. I glanced down at my own pad and started to make a note: Slightly larger part for Ps 1 & 2? Poss. act 2-3 business—
    The door opened, and the second prince came back in, smiling slightly. “A year to find one dog?” he said. “I guess these people never heard of eBay.”
    The first Prince turned to glance at him. “Second thoughts?”
    “Can’t leave you to decide which of our parts has the best stuff in it,” said the second Prince, amiably enough; and I saw the director and producer flicked a glance at each other, neither one revealing. I could just imagine the Prince’s agent repeating over the phone, loudly, what his residuals package was going to look like on this project, assuming that it got made with him in it.
    “So,” said the producer. “Should I go on?”
    The first two Princes nodded; the third just smiled slightly.
    Sal cleared his throat again softly and started to read again. “But it’s about the youngest that we’re going to hear. He was young, and gay, and handsome—”
    The Standards and Practices guy glanced up. “We’re bucking for an ‘R’ rating here before anything’s even happened,” he said.
    The first two Princes smirked at each other. The King studied his nails. The youngest raised his eyebrows, and smiled slightly. “I’m not afraid of being stereotyped,” youngest Prince said. “Just don’t expect me to swish.”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” said the first Prince, still wearing some of the smirk that he had earned on Prince Number Two. “It can be fun to camp it up– “
    “Not that kind of gay,” said the producer. “The writer’s language is a little antiquated, that’s all. Anyway. He was young, and gay, and handsome, and knew everything that a prince ought to know—”
    “I just bet he did,” said the second Prince, grinning at the first.
    The King rolled his eyes again. “I have another meeting in an hour,” the King said. “Can we please—”
    The producer opened his mouth, and the door opened almost in synch with it. “Sorry I’m late,” said the Beautiful Princess, “but you wouldn’t believe the traffic on Santa Monica this morning. That next-top-model show is shooting on Rodeo, and everything from Beverly to Cañon is jammed with crew trucks and rubberneckers.” She pulled out a chair and slumped into it, her crown slightly askew. She tried to push it back into place. The attempt failed, and even if it had succeeded, the effect would still have been poor in combination with the bright pink cashmere Juicy Couture sweats. “Have I missed anything?” she said. “Where are we?”
    “PG-13 and rising,” said the S&P guy, glancing at her cleavage, for the zipper of those sweats was down a long way.
    The producer shot him a look. The Beautiful Princess’s eyebrows went up, but more with a pleased look than an annoyed one. “I can do adult,” she said, and looked at the three princes. “Who’s the lucky boy?”
    The first two princes looked away. The third Prince simply threw the Beautiful Princess a knowing look… and she caught it, and simpered. It’d been a long time since I’ve seen a good simper: and it boded well, because this was the Princess we needed.
    The producer caught my eye and signaled me with a glance. I pushed the spare reading copy of the script over the Princess. She picked it up, paged through it with a trained eye, and within a second had found the page where the others’ scripts lay open. “Okay,” she said, “let’s