Outer Banks Read Free Page A

thing is that he discuss it with his family and loved ones, even though his decision ultimately may be autocratic. I mean, in the end, it’s how you present these things that counts. I say this, Your Highness, because I know you are capable of great forgiveness. For instance, I once knew a priest who became a psychiatrist. Turned out he was happy as a priest, when a priest, and he was happy as a psychiatrist, too, when a psychiatrist, if you know what I mean. So you really never know. Take me, for instance. I may be nothing but a wine steward now, and I’m happy being one, believe me, but I know, if my P-factor is high enough, that I could be happy as, for instance, court chamberlain, say. That doesn’t mean I’m not happy as a wine steward, however. No, ma’am, not at all. That’s the important part of my notion, but the other part’s important, too, of course…
    5.
    Naomi Ruth wasn’t very interested in the wine steward’s observations. She was interested in his sexual organ.—What do you think is the meaning of life? she demanded.
    He shrugged helplessly, as if to say, What can a poor wine steward know?
    The queen wept bitter, angry tears. She pounded the pillows with her tiny fists.
    He kept shrugging helplessly, trying to look stupid. What a drag, he thought. A fucking drag.
    6.
    Finally, the queen got the wine steward’s rather large and fortunately erect cock loosened and into her, and she rode him like a log, whooping and slapping him loudly on his hairy, white thighs. For most of the afternoon, they bumped and shoved each other wildly about the room, knocking over furniture, tipping bottles of liquor and perfume, spilling the contents onto the thickly carpeted floor, and sliding with slick rumps across magazines, satin sheets, candy boxes shaped like hearts, velvet-covered love-seats, taffeta gowns, crinolines, silk underwear, a closet floor cobbled with dancing slippers, Turkish towels, talcum, facial greases, squirts of urine, bits of feces, scents, daubs and smears until, eventually, she passed out and he, exhausted and fearful, slipped out and quickly away to the servants’ quarters.
    7.
    Naomi Ruth felt no guilt. Anger. Only anger. Mainly at the king, but also at the Loon, whoever that one was. Some kind of freak, she thought. Some kind of sicko freak. Her heart aching with loathing and revulsion, she broke her thumbs with a small instrument of torture.
    â€” Ai-yee! she cried.
    8.
    What the hell’s going on down there? she wondered, meaning the court.
    â€”Today’s the big day! the king had informed her that morning at breakfast.
    Sensing a significance in the remark, she put her coffee cup onto the saucer noisily and said,—Big day for what? What’s going on? Why am I being left out of things all the time? I never find out about anything until after it’s happened or been decided. What’s going on today? What’s the occasion? Who’s coming? Why don’t you tell me what happens down there before it has already happened? Do you think that I’m stupid or something? A child? Do you think that all I can do is ask questions? Is that why you leave me out of the only life around here that’s worth living? Is it? Is it? she asked.
    He looked up from his newspaper and grinned.—What was the question? he asked.
    â€” Bastid! she hissed to no one in particular. That was when she asked him whether or not he had ever performed a sex act with a man, or a boy.
    9.
    â€”Maybe I should try writing a novel, she suggested. A love story, like Cinderella or The Song of Solomon.
    10.
    In a cold room in the tower above her chambers she wrote, facing an oval mirror on the wall. Whenever she stopped writing, she looked up and stared at her own face and long, white neck and smooth shoulders, her panther-black hair tumbling down in cascades, her delicate, plum-shaped breasts, her meticulous, ivory-skinned hands, the single lily in