The crowd, naturally, went berserk, and I had a flash, from Abby’s eventual video album, of His Royal Highness standing beside me and beaming. How was this in any way my life? I’d known Edgar such a short time, and he was already scoring a huge win at my sister’s wedding, and he’d just put his arm around my shoulders. My immediate response was a brain-bomb of trepidation: I knew I’d fuck this up; the only questions were how and when. My mom shot me a look, because she could tell I was spiralling, and she mouthed the words, “Stop it!”

After a trip to the restroom to pull myself together, I couldn’t find Edgar, until James approached me and confided, “I believe His Highness is engaged in conversation with your great-aunt Miriam. I’ve served in two wars, dealt with the media and wrangled Her Majesty Queen Catherine. But I will say only this: Miriam scares me.”

My great-aunt Miriam is maybe four feet tall in the flesh-toned patent leather pumps she buys in bulk, with a towering, shellacked hairdo tinted a shade my mom calls Ash Blonde Eternity. I’ve never seen Miriam with her hair even slightly relaxed, so it may be a permanent achievement, much like her rice powder makeup accented with unblended circles of rouge and lavishly applied red lipstick. I love the way Miriam looks, because it’s not based on anything human; she’s going for German Expressionism or Kabuki sheet cake. She’s always very well-dressed in stiff, glittering brocades reminiscent of Miami Beach hotel bedspreads, with coordinated handbags the size of steamer trunks. Miriam’s handbags seem to be handcuffed to her birdlike wrists, due to her armloads of bracelets in Italian gold, Mexican silver and Home Shopping Network Ping-Pong ball pearls.

Miriam had sequestered Edgar in the lobby, possibly at gunpoint, and sat facing him, both of them on gilded bamboo chairs, their knees touching, the interrogation lacking only electrodes and snarling Dobermans.

“So someday, when your grandma dies, God forbid, kina hora,” Miriam was saying, and then she mimed spitting on the ground three times by saying “Poo poo poo” to keep the evil eye away—this was a Yiddish expression she used, and who’s to say it doesn’t work? “Then you’ll be king, Mr. Big, all the marbles, am I right?”

“Yes, that will be the line of succession,” said Edgar. Miriam grabbed his hand and looked into his eyes as if she was about to deliver a psychic prophecy.