Free Blow by Daniel Nayeri Page A

filler. And that’s what you make, decorative packing peanuts!”
    The prince shouted “—!” The men didn’t notice.
    “You make forgeries of true beauty.”
    “You wouldn’t know beauty if it was on a dinner menu.”
    “See? You said that already. You’ve begun copying
yourself.
”
    “Your work looks like deer pellets.”
    “That’s good. I could spread the pellets in my garden and grow flowers for you to steal.”
    The prince had his trumpets blast the two men into silence. They looked irritated.
    “What?” said the two men.
    The prince asked if they were ever going to get to work. Pierre answered, “Of course not.”
    Babbo added, “I’d like brioche toast with my omelet tomorrow.”
    “That does sound nice. I’d like some, too,” said Pierre. Then he turned to Babbo and said, “What do you think, a sweet Italian sausage inside?”
    “Yes, with basil and
fleur de sel,
” added Babbo, “and cracked pepper on the side.”
    “Perfect,” said Pierre.
    The two legends of house decoratives looked at Prince Kaiser with “That will be all” eyebrows. Prince Kaiser Dimple Pimple considered shoving both of them out of the tower window. Then he considered the diplomatic unrest of killing two national treasures. And the expense alone of cleaning the memorial tribute that fans would build around his castle. All those stuffed bears and tacky painted signs. And gum, why do people think prayer walls need gum to be effective?
    The prince ground his heel into the stone as he turned. It scraped like a mortar and pestle. As he strutted out, he told them to keep an eye on the courtyard below their tower. The men didn’t ask why, but he answered, anyway. Because that’s where he’d execute Chloe and Giacomo.
    A few minutes later, Babbo and Pierre could make out the figures of their two children trudging across the courtyard with hoods over their heads.
    Babbo and Pierre were fear-stricken and held hands as they watched from the tower high above the scaffold. The two young lovers also held hands so that Chloe could support Giacomo in his wobbly half-conscious state. They ascended the stairs toward a portly middle-aged executioner in traditional costume (no shirt, black hood). He had a berserker sword twice the size of his body, used for breaking a cavalry or crushing a boulder. He leaned on it as though it didn’t weigh anything.
    Giacomo and Chloe looked up beseechingly at their fathers. One could just imagine their horrified expression under the black hoods they wore. Then they kneeled on the block, forsaken.
    Babbo chewed on his own mustache. The executioner sighed and raised his sword. Pierre pulled at the remnants of his hair and said, “Tell him we’ll do what he says. Tell him —” Babbo inflated his lungs to shout into the courtyard. “WAIT!”
    But it was too late. The executioner had made his swing. The massive sword lopped off both the prisoners’ heads. They bounced.
    Babbo beat his chest. Pierre’s heart shattered again along the same cracks as the first time. Chloe walked up behind them and leaned her chin on Pierre’s shoulder. “What’re you watching?” she said.
    Babbo and Pierre whipped around. They bellowed their joy, hugged Chloe, and wept some more. Chloe never got the answer to her question, which would have been something like, “An elaborate staged execution of you and your boyfriend.” When the prince looked up from the edge of the courtyard and didn’t see the faces of the two craftsmen dotting the window frame, he was again furious.
    The prince had dragged Vlad the Regaler from his loft in Moscow and even let him direct, as well as star, in the charade. Vlad had played the executioner, a silent yet emotionally complex role.
    The victims were actually cantaloupes inside the hoods. The two supporting actors ducked their heads into their collars and let the melons fall. I was there by sheer coincidence. A pigeon flying overhead got a bug in its throat, choked, and crashed