Free Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle by Beverly Bartlett

percent of them were reaching for Isabella’s hand rather than his, and his only reaction was to be sorry that
     he’d distracted the other 20 percent. At least that is the impression he always gave in public, and in my experience, it is
     the impression he gave in private, too. He was, simply, a team player and she was his team.
    This is not to suggest that they were just friendly coworkers. Far from it. Neither the prince nor the princess was raised
     to engage in mushy banter and sweet nothings, but oh, how they laughed and giggled and shared conspiratorial looks and phrases.
     (In the entire time that the royal couple lived at the castle, neither Secrest nor Vreeland could figure out the meaning of
     certain code words that Their Highnesses would exchange with each other, prompting gales of laughter.)
    In fact, if things had only turned out differently for Raphael, I am quite sure that his marriage to Isabella would have been
     remembered as one of the greatest love stories ever lived on a global stage. And that is saying quite a bit for what was,
     after all, the relatively sensible pairing of two well-positioned people. Usually, great love stories must have great suffering.
     There must be valiant struggles and cruel ironies and tremendous sacrifices. They can’t just be cavorting about European resort
     towns in a souped-up Bisba, making a splash by going through drive-throughs while wearing tuxes and diamonds.
    (“Those stuffy royal banquets always leave me wanting,” Isabella reportedly said to a Bisbanian White Castle employee one
     late night, as she pulled up to order twenty burgers to go. The employee—dubbed Burger Boy by the low-rent tabloid that bought
     his story and published it under the headline WHITE CASTLE PRINCESS —claimed this comment was awfully suggestive, given that it was uttered in a breathy voice, while Rafie, who was in the passenger
     seat, moved his hand along Isabella’s thigh and stared at her in a slightly drunk, leering way. Her tiara, Burger Boy said,
     was slipping off the side of her head. Most commentators, including Ethelbald Candeloro, did not believe Burger Boy. I was
     never brave enough to ask either Isabella or Rafie, so I don’t know for sure. But I must say it sounds just like them to me.)
    The true story of Isabella and Rafie’s love actually does have cruel ironies and great sacrifices and valiant struggles. But
     no one knows that story. The story that the world believes it knows, with Raphael’s sudden death and Isabella’s long exile,
     is just too short. You’d think the decades during which the widowed princess wore her somber brown and roamed American streets
     would have permanently etched the Isabella-Raphael love story on the world’s romantic psyche. But it somehow just made people
     forget Rafie altogether.
    Nevertheless, I’m getting ahead of myself again. First I must finish explaining Isabella’s glorious recovery.
    The improvement noted by Ethelbald Candeloro had, as I already stated, started right after Isabella read Geoffrey’s first
     letter. That first occasion was not at all like the last one. When Isabella read the letter the final time before destroying
     it, she wept. For the letter had come to mean a great deal to her. But when she read it the first time, she laughed bitterly.
    She had not known exactly what she was hoping for. The letter was in fact much like what she should have expected. Geoffrey’s
     simple, uncomplicated observations were, after all, what she had always liked about him. But she had somehow entertained the
     notion that her life and the strange turn it had taken would have merited more than a paragraph, especially a paragraph that
     suggested she listen to the Boss.
    Isabella appreciated the works of Springsteen as much as any European princess could. She rather enjoyed the CDs Geoffrey
     had loaned her while she was at Yale, and she had even downloaded some more. She had listened to songs about the romance of