Prince

Chapter 2 At The Paper Company

Lizzie and Charlie stroll up to the front of a modest two-storey office, warehouse, and factory mill housing the Le Fleur Paper Company. Always one to separate duty from passion, Lizzie pulls away from Charlie as they approach the front door. She marches in as if she owns he place, although Philip Castile actually does now. Even though Charlie intends to open the door for her, she storms in without giving him the chance, not even holding the door open for him. But Charlie does not mind at all.

As she walks to her father’s office on the second floor, people magnate to her with forms and contracts, clip boards and manila file folders, all beckoning “Ms. Le Fleur this,” and “Ms. Le Fleur that,” trying hard to conduct business as usual in order to avoid the obvious. Charlie lags behind.

When Lizzie nears her dad’s office, with Charlie faithfully behind like a Chinese bride, Philip Castile and Axel Le Fleur walk out of the office. Albino triplets flank Philip as his bodyguards. Mr. Le Fleur chatters to Philip who marches commandingly out of the door. He looks up and sees Lizzie approaching and his son behind her. Philip freezes, which causes everyone else to halt. It is a flash moment, a very still life like a Watteau portrait that indicates the motion previous and promises complementary actions to follow.

Philip resumes his victory lap with Mr. Le Fleur still in his ear. Philip has his eyes down and his hands in his pockets. Either Philip ignores him or listens intently with great concentration. He flashes a quick glance upward toward Lizzie as he passes her, and little further down she pats Charlie on the shoulder as he walks by him. He blurts a low, “Son” in salutation. The parade bottlenecks at the office door and Charlie starts to catch up to Lizzie.

“Long live the King,” says Charlie to Lizzie, who looks through her mercantile entourage and blows a kiss to Charlie and mouths to him, “I’m so happy!” As if all of Lizzie’s comotioners wear an electric shock dog collar that disallows travel beyond a certain point, each of them stay in the hall and fail to follow her into her father’s office, even though their business communications with her grow louder as they remain outside. Only Charlie comes in with her.

Her father’s office is spacious, but only because the entire back wall is a window divided in half, each segment of necessary length to see the floor of the warehouse and the paper mill. Along the top are various monitors that show closed-circuit feeds of specific places. There is one long metal desk, very old, and sundry file cabinets and shelves, all metal and old. Everything has unorganized piles of paper strewn on top of it. Lizzie closes the door and silence fills the room. The couple embraces and Lizzie sighs. She pulls away and stares Charlie in the eyes as she takes his shoulders.

“Charlie, I’m scared to death. I don’t know what’s about to happen.”

They embrace again, and Charlie reassures her, saying, “No matter what happens, I’ll be here for you.”

Mr. La Fleur enters with a flutter of woodpeckers about his head. He doesn’t notice Charlie, or at least he fails to acknowledge him. He rushes to his daughter and kisses her on the cheek. He leans his backside against the front of his desk with a mass of papers haphazardly gathered in his hands and scuttles through them in a quest for the secret of life.

“So, what’s gonna happen, daddy?”

Mr. Le Fleur glances at Charlie for the briefest of seconds with a ‘Can we speak in front of him?’ look, then says, “Everything is going to be alright.”

Lizzie rushes her father and hugs him tightly around the waist. In so doing she makes him drop about half of the papers though which he is shuffling. He vainly hides the frustration he feels with a shallow sigh and a low and twitching bow. Charlie picks up the papers and hands them to Mr. Le Fleur. He takes Lizzie by the elbow and pulls her from her embrace so that she might listen to him better.