Spare

I hugged many of them on my way out of the stadium, and on the plane to the next stop I donned their crown proudly. It was the size of an Easter basket and my staff dissolved into fits of hysterical laughter.

You look a perfect idiot, sir.

That may be. But I’m going to wear it at the next stop.

Oh, sir, no, sir, please!

I still don’t know how they talked me out of it.

I went to Jamaica, bonded with the prime minister, ran a footrace with Usain Bolt. (I won, but cheated.) I danced with a woman to Bob Marley’s “One Love.”

Let’s get together to fight this holy Armagiddyon (one love)

At every stop, it seemed, I planted a tree, or several. Royal tradition—though I added a twist. Normally, when you arrive at a tree planting, the tree is already in the ground, and you just throw a ceremonial bit of soil into the hole. I insisted on actually planting the tree, covering the roots, giving it some water. People seemed shocked by this break with protocol. They treated it as radical.

I told them: I just want to make sure the tree will live.

47.

When I got home, the reviews were raves. I’d represented the Crown well, according to courtiers. I reported back to Granny, told her about the tour.

Marvelous. Well done, she said.

I wanted to celebrate, felt I deserved to celebrate. Also, with war in the offing, it was celebrate now or maybe never.

Parties, clubs, pubs, I went out a lot that spring, and tried not to care that, no matter where I went, two paps were always present. Two sorry-looking, extremely terrible paps: Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.

For much of my adult life there had been paps waiting for me outside public places. Sometimes a mob of them, sometimes a handful. The faces always varied, and often I couldn’t even see the faces. But now there were always these two faces, and always clearly visible. When there was a mob, they were right in the middle. When there was no one else, they were there all by themselves.

But it wasn’t just public places. I’d be walking down a side street, which I’d only decided to walk down seconds before, and they’d leap from a phone box or from under a parked car. I’d leave a friend’s apartment, certain that no one knew I’d been there, and they’d be standing outside the building, in the middle of the street.

Besides being everywhere, they were ruthless, much more aggressive than other paps. They’d block my path, they’d chase me to my police car. They’d block me from getting into the car, then chase the car down the street.

Who were they? How were they doing this? I didn’t think they had any kind of sixth sense or extrasensory perception. On the contrary, they looked as if they didn’t possess one full frontal cortex between them. So, what hidden trick were they leveraging? An invisible tracker? A source inside the police?

They were after Willy too. He and I talked about them a lot that year, talked about their unsettling appearance, their complementary ruthlessness and idiocy, their take-no-prisoners approach. But mainly we discussed their omnipresence.

How do they know? How do they always know?

Willy had no idea, but was determined to find out.

Billy the Rock was determined as well. He walked up to the Tweedles several times, interrogated them, looked deep into their eyes. He managed to get a sense of them. The older, Tweedle Dumb, was doughy, he reported, with close-cropped black hair and a smile that chilled the blood. Tweedle Dumber, on the other hand, never smiled, and rarely spoke. He seemed to be some sort of apprentice. Mostly he just stared.

What was their game? Billy didn’t know.

Following me everywhere, tormenting me, getting rich off me, even that wasn’t enough for them. They also liked to rub my nose in it. They’d run alongside me, taunt me, while pressing the buttons on their cameras, reeling off two hundred photos in ten seconds. Many paps wanted a reaction, a tussle, but what Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber seemed to want was a fight to the death. Blinded, I’d fantasize about punching them. Then I’d take deep breaths, remind myself: Don’t do it. That’s just what they want. So they can sue and become famous.

Because, in the end, I decided that was their game. That was what it was all about: two fellas who weren’t famous, thinking it must be fabulous to be famous, trying to become famous by attacking and ruining the life of someone famous.

Why did they want to be famous? That was the thing I never understood. Because fame is the ultimate freedom? What a joke. Some kinds of fame provide extra freedom, maybe, I suppose, but royal fame was fancy captivity.