Free Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts by Courtney Hamilton Page A

at 56.
    After four weeks, I finally stumbled into the room where the mailboxes were located. Well, to be honest, it took me three weeks to realize that I had a mailbox, and one week to find it.
    The mailboxes were situated in a large windowless room framed by three blank white walls and a solid black floor. The floor had been shined to such a gloss that it reflected the bank of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. No one was in the room when I found it. I found my mailbox, opened it, and sat on the floor to read the four weeks of mail that had accumulated for me.
    After about eight minutes of reading I realized that someone was standing over me. I waited for the person to leave. After about two minutes I realized that the person was still in the room.
    I looked up and saw a slightly overweight guy with short dark hair wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, jeans that were ripped at the knee, and sunglasses with mirror lenses. An art school
geek
, trying to look tough.
    Damn. Where were those cute gay guys from the theater school?
    From the ground, I judged him to be around five foot five. He was leaning against the mailboxes, full of art school pretension. I knew he was going for a look like Erik Estrada in
CHIPS
, one of those retro ’70s shows that sporadically appear on Nickelodeon. What he got was more like Barbra Streisand in
Yentl
.
    He appeared to be staring at me.
    I looked at him for ten seconds. He didn’t say anything. I continued reading my mail. About five minutes later, I realized that he hadn’t moved. I looked up.
    “May I help you?” I said.
    “Are
you
Courtney?” he said. I seriously wondered if I should answer this.
    “I guess so,” I said.
    “Hmm. You’re the new girl that everyone wants to screw,” he said.
    He walked out of the room.
    Six years later, right after I managed to keep a straight face as his fiancée told me that she wanted “Memories” from the Broadway musical
Cats
and The Pachelbel Canon played at their wedding, Ronald Goldstein paid me $100 not to tell her how he first introduced himself to me.
    “Look,” he said, “this girl has big tits and likes me. And her dad is loaded. So I don’t have to worry about selling my paintings, which even I think are crap, and I don’t have to worry about finding booty.”
    “But, Ronald,” I said, “you made such an impression.”
    Right after my mail room introduction to Ronald, I walked back to my dorm room and decided to cook every Velveeta recipe that I had ever eaten. Unfortunately, the cooking equipment I had, a hot plate and toaster oven, was rather limited. However, my repertoire, which included Velveeta junior pizza, Velveeta broccoli-Cheese Nips-casserole, Velveeta enchiladas, Velveeta soup, Velveeta condensed-milk mushroom soup chicken, and Velveeta melt on salmon, was fairly extensive.
    Bettina, after deciding that the Velveeta cook-off was not part of some feminist art performance piece about the capitalistic oppression of middle-class moms, was confused. She sat next as me as I thought about my next Velveeta concoction.
    “I’m not sure whether I should be repulsed or worried,” she said.
    “Why? Want some Velveeta?” I said as I cut off a four-by-two-inch cube.
    “Do you want to talk to someone?”
    “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
    Somewhere in the middle of making Velveeta cheese bread, the dean of the music school knocked on my dorm door.
    “Courtney,” he said. “Are you in there?”
    Apparently, my Velveeta bake-off had caused me to miss about ten days of classes. In a school with only nine violinists, this wasn’t going unnoticed.
    “Won’t you open the door so that we can talk?”
    “Listen, Dean Henderson,” I said. “I’m busy right now.”
    “So I’ve heard,” he said. “While we all love cheese creations…”
    “Not cheese. Velveeta.”
    “Right,” he said. “Velveeta. While we all love Velveeta, I was wondering if you were coming back to class any time soon.”
    “Well,