Princess in Waiting (The Princess Diaries 4)

Monday, January 19,

Martin Luther King Day, the loft, at last

I am so happy I feel like I could burst, just like that eggplant I once dropped out of Lilly’s sixteenth-floor bedroom window.

I’m home!!!!!!! I’m finally home!!!!!!

I cannot tell you how good it felt to look out the window of the airplane and see the bright lights of Manhattan below me. It brought tears to my eyes, knowing I was once again in the air space over my beloved city. Below me, I knew, cab drivers were running down little old ladies (unfortunately not Grandmère), deli owners were shortchanging their customers, investment bankers were not cleaning up after their dogs, and people all over town were having their dreams of becoming singers, actors, musicians, novelists, or dancers completely crushed by soulless producers, directors, agents, editors, and choreographers.

Yes, I was back in my beautiful New York. I was back home at last.

I especially knew it when I stepped off the plane, and there was Lars waiting for me, ready to take over bodyguarding duty from François, the guy who had looked after me in Genovia and who had taught me all the French swear words. Lars looked especially menacing on account of being all darkly tanned from his month off. He had spent his winter break with Tina Hakim Baba’s bodyguard, Wahim, snorkeling and hunting wild boar in Belize. He gave me a piece of ivory tusk as a memento of his trip, even though of course I don’t approve of killing animals recreationally, even wild boars, who really can’t help being so ugly and mean.

Then, after a delay of sixty-five minutes, thanks to a pileup on the Belt Parkway, I was home.

It was so good to see my mom!!!!! Her belly is starting to show now. I didn’t want to say anything, because even though my mom says she does not believe in the Western standard of idealized beauty and that there is nothing wrong with a woman who is bigger than a size eight, I’m pretty sure though that if I had said anything like, “Mom, you’re huge,” even in a complimentary fashion, she would start to cry. After all, she still has quite a few months left to go.

So instead I just went, “That baby has to be a boy. Or if it’s not, it’s a girl who is going to be as tall as me.”

“Oh, I hope so,” my mom said, as she brushed tears of joy from her face—or maybe she was crying because Fat Louie was biting her ankles so hard in his effort to get near me. “I could use another you for when you aren’t around. I missed you so much! There was no one to berate me for ordering roast pork and wonton soup from Number One Noodle Son.”

“I tried,” Mr. Gianini assured me.

Mr. G looks great, too. He is growing a goatee. I pretended I liked it.

Then I bent down and picked up Fat Louie, who was yowling to get my attention, and gave him a great big hug. I may be wrong, but I think he lost weight while I was away. I do not want to accuse anyone of purposefully starving him, but I noticed his dry food bowl was not completely full. In fact, it was perilously close to being only half full. I always keep Fat Louie’s bowl filled to the brim, because you never know when there might be a sudden plague, killing everyone in Manhattan but cats. Fat Louie can’t pour out his own food, having no thumbs, so he needs a little extra just in case we all die and there is no one around to open the bag for him.

But the loft looks so great!!!!!!!! Mr. Gianini did a lot to it while I was gone. He got rid of the Christmas tree—the first time in the history of the Thermopolis household that the Christmas tree was out of the loft by Easter—and had the place wired for DSL. So now you can e-mail or go on the Internet anytime you want, without tying up the phone.

It is like a Christmas miracle.

And that’s not all. Mr. G also fully redid the darkroom, leftover from when my mom was going through her Ansel Adams stage. He pulled the boards off the windows and got rid of all the noxious chemicals that have been sitting around since forever because my mom and I were too afraid to touch them. Now the darkroom is going to be the baby’s room! It is so sunny and nice in there. Or at least it was , until my mom started painting the walls (in egg tempera, of course, so as not to jeopardize the welfare of her unborn child!) with scenes of important historical significance, such as the trial of Winona Ryder and the engagement of J.Lo and Ben Affleck, so that, she says, the baby will have an understanding of all the problems facing our nation (Mr. G assured me privately that he is going to have the whole thing painted over as soon as my mom gets admitted to the maternity ward. She will never know the difference once the endorphins kick in. All I can say is thank God Mom picked a man with so much common sense with whom to reproduce this time around).

But the best thing of all was what was waiting for me on the answering machine. My mom played it for me proudly almost the minute I walked through the door.

IT WAS A MESSAGE FROM MICHAEL!!!! MY FIRST RECORDED MESSAGE FROM MICHAEL SINCE I BECAME HIS GIRLFRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which of course means it worked. The my-not calling-him thing, I mean.

The message goes like this:

“Uh, hi, Mia? Yeah, it’s Michael. I was just wondering if you could, uh, call me when you get this message. ’Cause I haven’t heard from you in a while. And I just want to know if you’re, uh, okay. And make sure you got home all right. And that there’s nothing wrong. Okay. That’s all. Well. Bye. This is Michael, by the way. Or maybe I said that. I can’t remember. Hi, Mrs. Thermopolis. Hi, Mr. G. Okay. Well. Call me, Mia. Bye.”

I took the tape out of the message machine and am keeping it in the drawer of my nightstand along with

A. some grains of rice from the bag Michael and I sat on at the Cultural Diversity Dance, in memory of the first time we ever slow danced together;

B. a dried-out piece of toast from the Rocky Horror Show, which is where Michael and I went on our first date, though it wasn’t really a date because Kenny came, too; and

C. a cut-out snowflake from the Nondenominational Winter Dance, in memory of the first time Michael and I kissed.

It was the best Christmas present I could ever have gotten, that message. Even better than DSL.

So then I came into my room and unpacked and played the message over about fifty times on my tape player, and my mom kept coming in to give me more hugs and asking me if I wanted to listen to her new Liz Phair CD and wanting to show me her stretch marks. Then about the thirtieth time she came in, I was playing Michael’s message again, and she was all, “Haven’t you called him back yet, honey?” and I went, “No,” and she went, “Well, why not?” and I went, “Because I am trying to be like Jane Eyre.”

And then my mom got all squinty-eyed like she does whenever they are debating funding for the arts on C-SPAN.

“Jane Eyre?” she echoed. “You mean the book?”