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Olive Snook was very knowledgeable about fairy tales. She liked to believe she knew every one her mother had told her as a child by heart and could recite them on demand, which she fully intended to do once she had children of her own- preferably children with Ned’s eyes and her blonde hair. She believed firmly that all princesses should get their prince at the end of the story and, as it were, she was very much convinced that since she was the princess in her own story and Ned, her prince, she believed herself justified in her vehement desire for him.
However, what Olive didn’t know was that Ned was not in fact her prince, and that right outside her metaphorical ivory tower was another prince, one who would love her the way she wanted to be loved, who would keep her head from spinning and her feet firmly on the ground unless she wanted to be swept off of her feet.
That man was one Alfredo Aldarisio, who, despite being a traveling salesman by definition had not been doing much traveling ever since his fateful meeting with the lovely pie house waitress whom he had decided he was smitten with. He was not unaware of the object of his affection’s not-so-secret devotion to the Piemaker, but he was, if anything, a patient man and willing to wait if he had to... And he apparently had to.
Sadly, this meant that neither the waitress nor the traveling salesman would ever get the happy ending they both were destined to have until the moment Olive finally realized that Ned was never going to return her feelings and Alfredo stopped lurking in the shadows, silently pining for Olive in the same way that she didn’t pine silently for the Piemaker. However, as everything is eventual, that didn’t mean that fate wasn’t already concocting a plan to throw the pair together through a strange and unforeseeable turn of events... And like most strange and unforeseeable turn of events, this one started with something that, at the time, was seemingly innocuous.
Specifically, a paperweight.
The paperweight in question was one that Olive had bought on impulse while on a shopping trip some years ago, despite having no immediate need for a paperweight. It was shaped like a globe, indented on the bottom to allow it to perch without rolling on any hard surface, and the hard glass was shot through with a yellowish substance that looked as if someone had captured sunlight in a crystal ball for the whole of the world to look upon. It currently sat on her kitchen counter where it held down a vast assortment of papers that Olive had neither looked at nor touched in several months. It did its job and it did it well. That was all one could ask of a paperweight.
The first specific instance of this paperweight figuring into the lives of one Olive Snook and one Alfredo Aldarisio and thus setting the course of this strange and unforeseeable turn of events that would lead to their eventual romance was one Saturday morning when the traveling salesman paid a social call on the young waitress who was currently on her day off. Olive, having been silently hoping that perhaps Ned would be paying her a visit leaped to her feet and rushed to the door before it could ring a second time, but was sorely disappointed to see that it was not the prince she thought she loved, but rather a man she thought of as being a frog- a rather quietly obtrusive frog, although one who listened when she talked and offered her compliments when she needed them and tended to fix things that needed fixing without having been asked (although none of those things were currently adding up to being endearing in her eyes just yet, because Olive Snook was, unfortunately, quite daft and even more smitten with the wrong man).
"Oh, it’s you," she murmured, not even bothering to hide her disappointment in the fact that Alfredo was not the Piemaker. Alfredo, as he often did, decided not to take offense to it.
"Can I come in or are you so sad to see me that my presence will only make you more depressed?" He pulled one of his bottles out of his pocket and waved it at her. He wasn’t one to mix business with pleasure, but he just so happened to have a spare.
"I just so happen to have a spare if you need it."
She gave him a look that silenced him in an instant. It was the sort of look he expected she’d give any potential children she might have when they misbehaved- children preferably with his eyes and her blonde hair. "Don’t peddle your herbal remedies on me, Mr. Aldarisio. I don’t believe in manufactured happiness."
"It’s not manufactured, it’s homeopathic," Alfredo protested, not one to stand still and let his work be insulted. Olive rolled her eyes and let him inside, busying herself with the task of making coffee, because company was company, even if it was Alfredo.
"And sometimes emotions just need a rough little shove in the right direction to let them to know who’s boss."
"I am in perfect control of my emotions," Olive lied. She shoved a cup of coffee at the traveling salesman and indicated that he should sit down, which he did as he pondered if the waitress was always this hostile of a host to her guests. Then again, he assumed it was only because of him. It seemed the more he was around her, the less she liked him, which was definitely the opposite of what he wanted.
"May I make an evaluation?" he asked, leaning over the table.
"Will it be critical?"
"Quite possibly just a little."
"Then no."
"I believe it needs to be said."
"I can’t take criticism."
"What would you do if I said it anyway."
"I’d leave this room immediately."
"What if you couldn’t?"
"What do you mean ‘what if I couldn’t?’ The door’s right there!"
"Humor me here." A pause. "Would you cry?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I would either throw you out or punch you in the face, depending on how what you say makes me feel."
Alfredo leaned back in his chair, a victorious expression on his face. "Well, I can handle either, so would it be possible for me to tell you what’s on my mind? The results could be disastrous for both of us if this isn’t said. Trust me on this."
Olive sighed with defeat. "Fine. Speak your mind."
Alfredo leaned forward again. "You appear to be stuck in a life doomed to lack love, because the man you’re secretly pining for doesn’t reciprocate your feelings, and because of this you’re ignoring anyone who might come along who might actually love you unconditionally."
Olive arched her brow. She could say a number of things to that. She had a number of things she planned on saying, too, but curiosity stayed her tongue. He was going somewhere with this. She was not immune to being intrigued by nonsense. "Your point?"
Alfredo sighed and decided that the best way to get his point across was through the use of props, and so he snatched a pear, an apple, and a grape out of the nearby fruit bowl and placed them one in front of the other. "The pear is you. The apple is Ned. The grape is everything you’re not seeing because you're blinded by your love for Ned. Now the grape may be tiny, but it’s still nice and it’ll love you back, unlike the apple, which probably won’t."
Olive reached out and grabbed the apple, taking a huge bite of it- pointedly. "I prefer apples."
"That’s not the point. Ned doesn’t-"
Olive cut him off with a sharp look. "Don’t. Ned will love me eventually. It’s fate. He’s my fairy tale prince... In a completely metaphorical sense."
"You’re sure of that?" Alfredo asked, his heart breaking and sinking as if it were the Titanic and Olive’s cold, thoughtless words were the iceberg that brought it down.
"Positive. I don’t want anyone but Ned." And then to prove her point, she flicked the grape off the table, only managing to break Alfredo’s heart further. She didn't mean to be callous like this, he was sure. It just... sort of happened that way.
In order to change the subject from his downfall, the traveling salesman looked for a different topic of conversation to avoid thinking about how his princess didn’t care about anyone other than the prince she couldn’t have, and found something slightly interesting on the counter. "That’s a nice paperweight you’ve got there."
Olive followed his gaze. "Oh that. I forgot it was there. Yes, it is very nice, isn’t it?"
And there the conversation was destined to rest, growing increasingly more awkward until Alfredo let himself out and Olive decided that she had some shopping to do, because she suddenly had a rather unusual craving for grape jelly.
~*~
While Olive and Alfredo were currently leaving each other to their own devices, the next stage in the strange and unforeseeable turn of events that led to their fairy tale ending was transpiring. As it turned out the sweet, charming traveling salesman’s record was not as clean as one would hope to think, although it was of no fault of his own.
Apparently, years ago while Alfredo was visiting a small town, he sold some his pharmaceuticals to an elderly man named Walter Harrington, who had been increasingly depressed in his old age and was desperate for a cure. Unfortunately, a day after taking the medication, he was found dead in his home. His son, Gregor, blamed the herbal antidepressants for his death and decided to dedicate his entire life to hunting down the man who had sold them to him.
At the moment, Gregor Harrington was attempting to break into Olive Snook’s apartment, because, through excessive spying on his quarry, he had assumed that she was his girlfriend and assumed kidnapping her was the best way to get back at the salesman that he believed killed his father, because that's what happened in the movies, and Gregor Harrington had seen a lot of movies.
Unfortunately, Gregor was sorely disappointed to find that Olive Snook was not in her apartment that night as she was still out shopping and so, to prove that his mistake had purpose and to prove a point to his quarry, he made off with a single, supposedly useless object.
Specifically, the paperweight.
~*~
Olive returned home that night, her arms laden with groceries, blissfully unaware that anyone had been in her home, and as she went about the task of making sure all of her newly bought foodstuffs were put in their proper place, she had a nagging suspicion that something was missing, but managed to shrug it off.
As she busied herself around her apartment, she realized that she’d forgotten to hang her coat up, which would have been a simple task to accomplish had there not currently been a man in her closet.
~*~
Gregor Harrington was not a very skilled criminal, and, in fact, when he attempted to make off with Olive Snook’s paperweight, he had run into her closet instead of out her front door (which also would have been a stupid move, now that he thought about it), and had gotten himself stuck inside up until this very moment when the lady of the house opened the door and saw him standing there, holding her paperweight and looking both thoroughly guilty and thoroughly shocked.
Olive was on the verge of screaming and once she did, his almost brilliant scheme would be over, and so Gregor did the only thing he could do in this given situation.
He hit her with the paperweight.
(This is, of course, a fairy tale, so it didn't kill her as it darn well should have. Do not fret about that, dear readers.)
~*~
Alfredo Aldarisio, not deterred by the awkward conversation that had occurred between them this afternoon, was about to pay another visit to Olive, this time with daisies, which he had learned from Ned (who only knew because Olive told him every Valentine’s Day) were her favorite flowers, in the hopes that he might try one last time to win her heart even though that seemed to be a moot point now. This would be his last attempt, he decided. If this failed, he would take matters elsewhere and sadly leave Olive to a fate of never truly tasting the metaphorical apple of her eye or... Well, that metaphor got away from him.
He knocked on the door and received no answer, which he found strange, because he was certain that he’d seen her come in as he crossed the street. He knocked a bit harder and was stunned to find that the door had been unlocked. This being a worrisome thing, he decided that there was no sense in waiting for an invitation to enter and walked inside, depositing the flowers on the couch he'd sat on earlier this very day. He surveyed the area, finding no sign of Olive, but plenty of signs of a struggle, including, but not limited to, one broken window, which he quickly investigated. There on the floor surrounded by broken glass was a piece of paper wrapped around a circular object. He pulled the paper off what he assumed was a rock, his breath catching in his throat as he realized that something very horrible had happened to his beloved, and then read the hastily scrawled words.
Alfredo,
You may not remember me, but I
My name is Gregor Harrington, you killed my father-
I’m writing this to tell you that I kidnaped your girlfriend, and I kinda hope she isn’t dead, because I hit her with a paperweight and I’m not sure if that can kill someone or not, but, uh...
Look, I suck at this. I have your girlfriend. Meet me at the edge of town and we can negotiate how you can get her back.
Sincerely,
Gregor Harrington
As a matter of fact, Alfredo did remember Gregor Harrington and his father. It was a memory that haunted him to this very day, and sometimes, when he sold a bottle of his amazing herbal remedy, he wondered if another Walter Harrington was about to lose their life. What both he and Gregor failed to realize was that Walter’s death had nothing to do with the drug at all, but rather the fact that he was eighty-five years old and his heart was due to give out any day before he took the medicine. The fact that it gave out the day after Alfredo arrived in town was merely an unfortunate coincidence. Unfortunately, neither man would ever know this until much later in their lives, and, had this event not reaped such extraordinary benefits, it might have been very hard for them to look back on it and not feel just a little bit awkward.
That, however, was of no consequence to Alfredo in the present, because somewhere between the hastily scrawled out sentences and the failure to create a decent ransom note, there lurked a madman who held Olive- his Olive- captive, and in that moment Alfredo Aldarisio knew what he had to do. He had to become the Prince Charming he was meant to become.
And at that moment, despite the worry and anxiety he felt about what Gregor Harrington might do to exact revenge on him for his father’s death, Alfredo realized that what he clutched in his left hand was not a rock at all, but the paperweight that had once set upon Olive’s counter, and he couldn’t help but find that strange somehow.
~*~
At the edge of town, the two men regarded each other- one with intense dislike and the other with nervous apprehension. Alfredo had never been a violent man and so he was quite concerned that this ordeal would probably come to violence- for what Prince Charming went down without a fight? Meanwhile, Olive watched the whole scene, bound and gagged and propped up in the front seat of Gregor’s car, wondering how she, of all people, had managed to get herself into this mess.
"You killed my father," Gregor said, which was the first thing he’d said since Alfredo arrived some five minutes earlier. He had been longing to say that to him for a very long time and it felt good to finally get it out.
Alfredo pleaded his case in response, using a variety of technical terms used in the field and trying to explain things like "homeopathic remedies" and "body chemistry" and ending with a statement that made more sense to Gregor than anything else the traveling salesman had said, but still wasn’t what he wanted to hear. "These things just happen."
Gregor Harrington, who refused to believe anything that Alfredo said that made him look the least bit innocent, drew a gun, which was when this entire turn of events got interesting.
In a time period amounting to about seven seconds, the following things happened- Gregor fired his gun with the aim of someone who couldn't hit a barn at point blank range, Alfredo fell to the ground to dodge the bullet as that was the only way he knew how to dodge a bullet, and Olive screamed as best she could with a gag in her mouth, because all she saw was Gregor firing and Alfredo falling.
This somehow brought out a side of Olive that very rarely anyone saw, and also caused a well of thoughts from her subconscious to bubble up and flow into her conscious mind like a pot overflowing on the stove- thoughts that she had hidden away because of her feelings for the Piemaker, but were, nevertheless, there, and had always been there since she met the salesman. Thoughts about how romantic she thought the repairing of the espresso machine was and thoughts about how much she loved the way Alfredo smiled and the way he spoke to her, not in a condescending tone like some did, but as an equal, and, most importantly, how he was a kindred spirit in a world where kindred spirits were often hard to come by.
And in that moment, Olive Snook realized that grapes had always been her favorite fruit and she knew completely and truly that her frog had always been her Prince Charming, she’d just been too blind to see it. Blind and daft and foolish. And now it was too late.
Meanwhile, as Olive was going through this process of revelation and a few stages of grief, at that, Alfredo was attempting to yank Gregor to the ground by his leg, which worked for approximately two seconds until Gregor regained his balance and aimed his gun at the traveling salesman once more, this time fully intending to kill. He couldn't possibly miss this time, even with his poor aim.
Alfredo’s life passed before his eyes and his final thought before he left this world reflected his sorrow that he never had what he had always wanted with Olive.
The end, however, never came, because Olive, as it turned out, was once a Girl Scout of the highest caliber. Her specialty had been knots, and, incensed by the realization that her true love could be hurt or dead before she ever had the chance to woman up and tell him the truth, she called forth those old abilities and ceased filling the damsel in distress role. With her bonds undone, she leaped from the car in a rage the likes of which no one who knew her currently could ever say they’d ever seen her in. Picking up what she thought was a rock on the ground, she sneaked up behind Gregor and hit him on the back of the head with it, bringing him down in an instant.
Alfredo, still lying on the ground, could not believe what he was seeing.
Olive, still shaking with anger she had yet to calm, could not believe what she was seeing either.
And both of them, in that moment, couldn’t believe that this was how their fairy tale concluded, because it was quite unlike any fairy tale either of them had ever read, and Olive liked to believe she knew how fairy tales were supposed to be. It was quite a bit unlike what they had anticipated.
And yet, that didn’t seem to matter to either one of them.
There were so many things that they could have said at the moment, so many words fluttering around in their minds like millions of tiny butterflies, and none of them had anything to do with the unconscious man lying between them who, as far as they were concerned had completely ceased to exist. Alfredo wanted to ask what made her change her mind. Olive wanted to tell him she was sorry for ignoring that he was her prince all along. And a million more things besides, but all Olive could say was:
"I love grapes."
And all Alfredo could say in reply was, "And I’ve always loved pears."
To the average person, this would have made absolutely no sense, but to them it was the best declaration of love that either of them had ever heard, and Alfredo stood up to take his princess in his arms and Olive kissed her Prince Charming as passionately as she could, realizing that kissing him was better than all of her fantasies of kissing Ned combined, and instantly she regretted being blind for so long.
When they finally broke apart and Alfredo decided that the most romantic thing for him to do at this point was carry Olive to his car, the two of them realized that Olive was still holding the rock that she had used to knock Gregor unconscious, which was not actually a rock at all, but the paperweight. Alfredo had shoved it into one of his pockets (which were unusually large, because he liked to be able to keep large things in there) to keep it with him as a token of his lady fair’s, like a knight riding into battle with his beloved’s scarf. It had apparently fallen out of his pocket when he had hit the ground and Olive had retrieved it, thus giving it just one more piece of significance in this strange and unusual turn of events that led to this fairy tale ending.
And at this point, neither of them could really find it strange. It was an object blessed by Fate.
And so Olive Snook finally got her prince, Alfredo Aldarisio finally got the girl, and the paperweight returned to its proper place on Olive’s counter (after it was cleaned properly as it had had a rather rough day). And, as this is a fairy tale, however strange it is, it can honestly be said that they all lived happily ever after.
(Including Gregor Harrington who awoke in the middle of the road sometime after Olive and Alfredo had left with a slight concussion and no recollection of the last five years, which, of course, meant that he no longer believed that Alfredo killed his father. He would spend the next several months trying to regain his memory until finally giving up and, under some influence from his subconscious, opening a rather large and rather prosperous fruit stand.)