Cindy Ellal (standard:humor, 2475 words)
Author: Harold Lorin	Added: Jul 04 2004	Views/Reads: 3553/2220	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Alternate version of cinderella, updated and perhaps more accurate.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


“But darling,” said the stepmother, “she does nothing.” 

“But she gets all black from the ashes.” 

“Because she leaves the flue open. ” 

“A regular Cinderella,” the father said. 

“Not exactly,” said the Art History Professor who had her own views on
the growing Mannerist collection. 

The father offered his daughter dancing lessons and a beautiful horse
and membership in the local Polo club and a Masaratti on the day she 
was old enough to drive. But nothing improved the humor of the girt 
except luring a visiting polo player to her bedroom and calling, 
“rape.” The magistrate would have locked the  young man away until well 
past the end of the Polo season. But happily, he owed the accused’s 
father a good sum  because of expenses incurred in a relationship with 
a young lady who was, in that country, illegal. 

Finally, the Social Season opened. The Young Heir returned from New
York, the Grand Duke and Duchess returned from Tampa, and all the court 
threw itself into the consolations of Old World culture. There were to 
be balls and galas;  concerts performed by non-union musicians; and 
ballets performed by ballerinas who had been unsuccessful candidates 
for the finest companies in the world. 

The Palace was decorated with banners, the market place strewn with
lights and flowers, the First Ball was announced. 

“Oh, my God,” the stepmother said one morning at breakfast, looking at
an engraved elaborate card bearing the goat and zebra heraldry of the 
Reigning Family,  “The Academy Ball. What is it?” 

“Royalty’s night with the Herr Doctor Professors. Unavoidable, I’m
told,” said Cognitive Science resignedly. 

“Absolutely?” 

“You’re not serious,” sighed Animal Behavior. 

“A Ball,” Cindy trilled over her eggs, “how wonderful, when is it?” 

“Tuesday a week,” the stepmother said. 

“I’ll have to get to New York for a dress,” Cindy said. 

“But its not for you, lucky girl,” the stepmother said. 

There was an echoing clink of dropping fork as Cindy stared at the
woman, her eyes narrowed and ominous. Cindy turned to her father in 
frenzied appeal. 

“But why can’t she go?” the father asked in a voice that had intimidated
anti-spam reformers in the past. 

“But dear, the invitation  is for Academy members brain-dead at least 50
years. 

“Must be a way around that,” said the father. 

“Cindy might qualify on a technical point,” offered Animal Behavior. 

“Won’t all the Smart People be there?” Cindy asked. 

“No,” said Cognition, “the smart people will find a way not to go.” 

“But, oh, daddy, dancing and champagne and caviar.” 

“For this lot more likely punch and low fat foods,” said Animal
Behav­ior. 

“And the Prince,” Cindy said, turning again to her father. 

But father had lost interest and was surrounding a  kipper. Cindy
shrugged. She would have a dress and shoes made locally. Just in case. 
Something might well come up. 

II 

The big night came. The father sat in the study sipping Bourbon, wearing
a pre-nuptial red dinner jacket and paisley pants which had led his 
wife to remember her blessings and the difficulties of times before the 
marriage. She and her daughters had not prepared much for the event.  
The stepmother had seen a coiffeur who had advised what should be worn 
to the Academy Ball in a small but under-taxed and landlocked country. 

“ More Fifth Avenue than Soho,” summarized the mother to her daughters. 

Cindy was put to use. In a frenzy of last minute concern, student papers
and research put aside, the ladies asked her fashion advice, for the 
loan of  stockings, and for help with unwilling zippers. Although she 
was thanked profusely for each service and congratulated on being young 
and beautiful enough not to go the Academy Ball, she took the 
preparations very badly. She was in her foulest mood as the unwilling 
celebrants walked out the door. The Masaratti was in the shop. She had 
no way of going to the party or to places in town which, although 
watched carefully by the police, amused her. 

“Damn it,” she cried to the high ceiling and tapestry of the Great Hall
and ran, sobbing to her room. She lay on her bed dreaming of the Ball 
and of the Princeling, or of the general con­cept of Princelings. The 
opportunity was too great too miss. The gardener had a Volkswagen. The 
gardener was a negotiable man. Smiling, humming “Isn’t it Romantic?” 
she dressed and chose her spectacular hand made velvet (verre is 
velvet) shoes. 

“Left directional don’t work,” the gardener said, putting a 10,000
schill­ing note in his pocket. 

“Never use them,” Cindy said. 

“Must be back by midnight,” said the gardener. 

“Why?” 

“Restriction on the license at your age. Take it seriously in my car.” 

“Damn,” Cindy said again. 

When she arrived, the Academy was ablaze with light and ashake with
music. Limousines rolled to the entrance discharging gentlemen with 
white heads and large medals with ladies baggy, perhaps, but coutured 
to the limit. Cindy parked the Volkswagen down the block and walked to 
the Academy. She was not questioned at the door. The Footmen assumed, 
rightly except in this instance, that no one not obliged would be 
entering the Academy that night. She was in a ballroom complete with 
mirrors, crystal chandeliers, rosewood floors and on one end a raised 
platform for their Highnesses. Except for an odd smell of moth balls, 
it was a setting from a story ballet. It was just as she had dreamed 
it. She saw her step-sisters talking with a young man. He was golden 
haired, slender, tall and entirely without expression. Cindy’s young 
heart told her that this was the Princeling. 

“So you were in Delos,” said Animal Behavior to the Princeling. 

“Djes.” 

“Did you enjoy it?” 

“Too many old stones.” 

Both sisters winced. They both thought his uniform was a costume from a
Lehar operetta they had seen in New York. There was a silence while 
they  sought an alternate line of conversation with the Heir. One 
thought of something  personal, “what is that cologne?” The other 
thought of something sporty, along the lines of, “what is your favorite 
game?” 

The Princeling, smiling graciously and wisely, excused himself and
walked disinterestedly around the room. The two sisters looked to the 
ceil­ing and went to seek the comfort of the punch. Cindy tracked the 
Princeling with the precision of a reconnaissance satellite and set on 
a course that guaranteed an intersection. 

“Hello,” said the Princeling, interested in the appearance of a person
whose dress stopped about 6 centimeters above her belly button and 
whose eyes were shining and vacant. 

“Hello,” said Cindy, aware she was wearing the lowest cut gown ever in
the records of the Academy Ball. 

“Deadly party,” said the Princeling. 

“They made me come,” said Cindy. 

They danced together, speaking no more. They had already revealed  the
depths of their souls. Cindy and the Princeling were in each other’s 
arms, destiny about them, their passion pre-ordained, their pelvises in 
intermittent contact. They were of one heart and mind. Like Cindy, the 
Prince had had limited success with his academic career. There was a 
successful participation in a marijuana exper­iment at Princeton and a 
not bad session with Para-psychologists at Duke, but all the rest was 
not at all distinguished. 

The young couple floated enraptured, inscribing wider and wider cir­cles
until they had forced the tentative, older, weaker couples from the 
floor. These lined the sides, glad to be safe, and formed an audience 
to the first moments of true love. Cindy’s family did not recognize 
her. Her father, drunk and bored, was not watching closely. The charm 
of a young prince waltzing with a mystery beauty was not a collectable 
and consequently of no artistic importance. Her sisters had found a 
visiting Physicist from Bologna who was trying to explain to them about 
‘strings.’ The stepmother was having a truly good time chatting with an 
expert in Byzantine Art with a specialty in Bulgarian Ikons. 

The clock began to strike midnight. 

“Oh, oh,” Cindy muttered. She ran from the Princeling’s arms out of the
Academy and down the block to the car. 

“Stay,” the Princeling called after her, “you won’t turn into a
pump­kin.” 

Cindy did not hear these bon mots as she ran down the street, losing her
fashionable, expensive, and uncomfortable shoe. The Princeling came 
out. He took no notice of the old Volkswagen that coughed down the 
block, strip­ping its gears and not using its directional signal at the 
corner. But he saw the shoe in the street. He walked to it, picked it 
up and pressed it to his heart. Around him all nature seemed silently 
observing the gentle­ness of his heart. 

“I have found my own true love,” the Princeling said  next morning over
eggs. 

“Is she from a great family?” the wise Grand Duchess said to her son. 

The Duke listened carefully. He had long wondered why his passive
subjects, with this Heir in sight, did not stage a violent revolution 
and had considered raising taxes sharply to foment one, it being his 
view that all the revolutions he had ever heard about were ultimately 
about taxes, 

“I met her last night at the Academic Ball,” 

The Duchess misunderstood, but anyway did the right thing, 

“I only asked,” she said, “that you live out of the country.” 

The Duchy was searched high and low for the beauty who had lost her shoe
but won the Princeling’s heart. He went to a Council meeting with the 
shoe, put it on the table and gazed at it in rap­ture through the 
session. The Prime Minister was astonished at this unprecedented focus 
of attention. 

The Heir appeared on the Six O’clock News. He read a poem by Browning
from cue cards, held up the shoe and beseeched his lost love to call 
one  of three numbers that flashed upon the screen. Cindy called the 
first number. The Princel­ing, the Cabinet, and a good portion of a 
very bored diplomatic communi­ty arrived at Cindy’s home. The lovers 
were again in each others arms, fondling so affectionately that French 
Ambassador  blushed deeply. 

Cindy’s father, his attention now caught, was proud of his sweet
daughter. 

“I always knew you would turn up well in the end,” he said. 

“I denounce the throne for the woman I love,” announced the Princeling
from the balcony of the Palace. The applause and cheering of the 
populace, if ambiguous, was thunderous and the music and cannon 
exploded with apparent joy. 

The young couple lived happily in Monaco on an allowance of public funds
voted by the King’s Council, causing a modest raise in the taxes. The 
father invested most of his remaining funds in  Ottoman manuscripts 
that turned out, on his death, to be written on paper with recent 
watermarks. The Slavic paintings did  turn out to be worth something, 
but not quite as much as the cost of removing them from the castle. The 
stepmother returned to New York without them. Both daughters stayed, 
one marrying a Senior Professor of Philology, and the other a plumber 
specializing in renewing the plumbing of old castles. 

When the Duke died ,a Republic was established in a bloodless revolution
lasting about 90 minutes in which the Chief of Police hurt his toe. The 
first act of Parlement was to reduce taxes and revoke the allowance of 
Cindy and her Princeling. They were never heard from again.  But it is 
assumed, to the extent either was capable of an actual abstract 
emotion, and given the dividends from the super-market, that they lived 
happily ever after. 


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