Worst. Person. Ever(64)

Neal stared at me goggle-eyed.

“I’ll explain it to you: you live in a cardboard Samsung box in a West London alley and yet you really want to get it on with some rich titled piece. Except you can’t—you live in a cardboard fucking box—so instead you bang every restaurant hostess from Heathrow to Shepherd’s Bush who takes pity on you. But it’s not the same. Is it? Is it, Neal?”

Neal, of course, was now bawling. “You’re right, Ray. It’s not. I don’t want to fuck non-royals. Not in my heart.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No. I want to fuck the people’s princess. Except she’s gone. It’s like since 1997 I’ve been adrift on an asteroid, being bombarded by non-royal pussy at every turn, and it’s driving me mad! Mad, I say.”

“Excellent.” I rubbed my hands. “We’re making progress here.”

Right then Sarah walked in. Christ, just what I needed: Sarah to see Neal all vulnerable and needy in precisely the way women find irresistible.

“Neal, how’s your ankle?”

“Oh, hi, Sarah,” said Neal from within his silk sheets, looking nauseatingly like a puppy. “I’m getting by, I suppose.”

Sarah glanced at me, her expression saying, Is there something I need to know?

I shrugged. “Neal here is mourning Princess Diana.”

“Oh, Neal,” Sarah gently remonstrated. “That was so long ago. She needs peace now. She really does. And we all need to move on … individually and as a society.”

“You think so?”

“I know so, Neal.”

Neal wore a face of profound sadness. “You’re American, Sarah, so you’ll never know what it was like to have Diana as your princess … your very own princess.”

“But I do read magazines—at least, I used to, before the Internet. And if Di’s wedge-cut hairdo didn’t change the way the women in my hometown looked at both themselves and at royalty, then nothing did. She was a force of nature.”

“Seriously? In the United States, too? Her hair was her trademark, you know.”

“Oh, I know. People think Americans are morbidly obese Wal-Mart shoppers who willfully undereducate their young people just so they can save a few extra dollars to pay for their five-ton recreational vehicles, but Americans are more than that, Neal.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Americans are …”

I swear that if real life could ever break into a song and dance number, that would have been the moment.

“Americans are …”

Neal was staring at Sarah wide-eyed, as if waiting for her to confirm whether fairies were real.

“Americans are … basically Englishmen with the English part removed.”

“Yes?” Neal sat up on the bed, clearly still in suspense. “What else?”

Sarah paused to think. “Americans are …”

Needy glances were exchanged in all directions.

Her face brightened. “Americans are the people who watch the TV show we are currently producing on this very island! Isn’t that something?”

Silence. Neal slumped back on his pillows.

Sarah looked crushed by her failure—and touchingly demure. “I don’t know what to say about Americans, Neal. They’ll do anything for no reason whatsoever and go down in flames smiling at the TV camera while doing it. It’s kind of awesome, but it worked much better when there were only a few million of us instead of 350 million. There’s not much left to consume. In fifteen years, we turn into India. We’re a catastrophe in the making.”

Neal looked unutterably sad—and sympathetic. Sarah looked like she was melting. Ho. Ly. Fuck. Neal and Sarah were having a moment of real connection. This was intolerable.

“Neal, about my Cure T-shirt …”

“What about it, Ray?”

“May I please have it?”

“I don’t have your shirt, Ray.”

“Now, now, don’t be coy. Just tell me where it is, and I’ll fetch it and pretend you never brazenly lied to me like you just did.”

“I didn’t take your shirt, Ray. You gave it to Sarah, remember?”

“Oh. Right. I did.” Fuck.

“And I gave it to Fiona,” said Sarah. “I hope that’s okay. She looked so sad, having to jet back to do the recasting. I thought the shirt would be a nice pick-me-up, although I had to Google the Cure to find out who they were.”

“I—” I was livid, but couldn’t let on.

“Fiona’s back,” said Neal. “She’ll probably be resting up in the tent city.”

“You should go visit her, Raymond. I know she still has strong feelings for you,” Sarah said.