Eliot Strange and the Prince of the People

28) Fun and Games

We are sitting at the kitchen table trying to get back to business, back to life in a chaotic world all gone to hell, but we are having too much fun. We are slurping the leftover, cold spaghetti between love pecks, and looking into each other's eyes, and laughing, and all the other silly things lovers do. Everything is funny. We laugh when I get the Peppa Pig bedsheet all tangled as I try to re-sling Torin's broken hand that is hurting like a son-of-a-bitch - his own words. Unlike me, he seldom cusses, so I know that broken hand with the tip of a finger missing is really hurting exactly like a son-of-a-bitch.

"Do you have any paracetamol?" Torin asks and before I can ask what the hell that is, he says, "Tylenol, or the Advil, aspirin? Forgot I was in America for just a minute."

I find him some Tylenol in my stash of medical supplies.

"Holy mother of Hippocrates, that is the largest bottle of medicine I have ever seen."

"Well, it's not full," I say shaking the 500 count bottle.

"You Americans and your drugs," Torin says.

"Ok, snobby, there are no drugs in England?"

"Not in industrial size bottles," Torin says as he takes two Tylenol.

"Well, in my opinion, based solely on my medical background," I say in my now more confident grown up voice, "You have over-extended yourself. Too much activity. You need to rest."

"Indeed, I agree with your prognosis." Torin pulls me too him with his one good hand. "Sadly, there is no rest for the weary." He kisses my face, pulls me back, and inspects it. "A black eye, my lady, sports a black eye."

We spend the next several minutes giggling and searching through my mom's make-up. Unlike most American girls my age, I don't own a lot of make-up, or girly things like heels. I'm a tomboy at heart, and I hate to dress up.

Torin digs through my mother's stash. "We need this concealer." He holds three choices up and says he is, "Matching them to my skin tone."

"You act like you know what you're doing. How do you know all this?" I am guessing he has done this before with old girlfriends, but he says:

"Years in front of the camera. Did you think I was a natural beauty?" He frames his face with his good hand and asks, "Did you think all this was genetics? Girlfriend, I know how to work the light and the shadows. I know which side is my most photogenic." He turns to show me his right side and says, "It's this one by the way."

I turn Torin's face to the left then the right. "They are all wrong. Any fool can see, the other side is the better side."

Torin looks in the hand mirror he holds, turns his head left and right. "My lady may be correct," he agrees. "The scandal. What will the fashion magazines possibly think? I have been posing in the wrong direction for eons."

"And still voted the sexiest man alive. Incredible," I say. I wouldn't know this at all if Steven hadn't told me a thousand times when it happened.

"Indeed. Who knew? If I had only turned in the opposite direction, I may have won two years in a row. Damn those publicists and hangers-on. And damn my entourage too. Too busy stroking my ego to tell me the truth."

"Indeed," I agree.

Torin rummages through my mother's nail polish. "Want me to paint your nails? Pick a color."

I quickly clench my fists to hide my chewed off nails.

"Might help with the nail biting, My sister tried it, said it works. Nail polish tastes revolting."