Do the Hard Work First

In a cramped kitchen in a bar in Anchorage, Alaska, a slight, dark-haired woman with pale skin and bright blue eyes sweated as she turned out burgers, fries, and assorted bar snacks. Working the early shift meant she got the lunch regulars, and a few die-hard barflies, but she avoided the crowded, noisy nights.

While the bar was ostensibly a “sports bar,” the large TV screens displaying whatever games were live couldn’t be heard during regular bar hours. During the day, however, they were tuned to cable news. As the bar was quiet it was easy to follow what was being said, if she wished to. Instead, Ana chose to tune it out and focus on getting the orders out.

She plated the burgers and rang the bell to let the Janice know orders were up. There were no more orders waiting, so she took the time to scrape the grill, clean and sharpen knives, and run the waiting rack of dishes through the washer.

“Ana, did you hear about Merovina?” Janice, the bartender of indeterminable advanced age leaned in the order window. She’d recently told Ana she had been working there for forty years.

“Another protest for elections?” Ana asked.

“No, but something big is happening. The government shut down all communications and isn’t letting foreign journalists in or out.”

Ana sighed. “No doubt it’s something manufactured to scare everyone into accepting things as they are.”

“While we’re not busy,” Janice said, “you never told me why you left.”

“I got asylum from the US because of…political issues.” Ana chuckled. “And they probably didn’t want me to go to Russia for asylum. Like I’d give them a reason to annex my country.”

“How can you still care about it when you had to run away in the first place?”

“I ran away to avoid an arranged marriage…to a seventy-year-old lecher.”

“How’s that political?”

“It was a political marriage. Besides,” she said, changing the subject, “I was publicly calling for the сборка to be elected rather than appointed by the crown.”

“Sborka?”

“Assembly, kind of like a congress or parliament.”

“Ah. So, the king decides who makes up the whole government?”

“It used to be all princes, lords, and dukes, but for the last hundred years or so it’s also included influential industrialists, and the ultra-wealthy loyalists.”

“Ah, I could see how that could get you in trouble.” Janice looked like she was going to circle back to the marriage question, when a large group of people in business attire entered.

“Looks like a three-martini lunch meeting just walked in.” Ana winked and got ready for the flurry of orders. She knew to expect every order to be personalized; no onion, extra tomato, bacon extra crispy, no salt, lettuce wrap, substitute this for that…the whole thing.

While it meant she couldn’t whip through the orders on muscle memory alone, it kept her mind occupied enough to not worry about what was happening in her home. Sure, she had a green card, and was probably going to be living in the US for a long time, but it still wasn’t home. Anchorage came close, at least in climate, and there were plenty of native Russian speakers.

She closed out the day at four, when the swing shift crew came in; three people to handle what she did on her own during the less-busy days. “Have a good night, guys,” she said on her way out.

Ana lay down on her bed, a mattress on the floor of a small apartment in the “rough” neighborhood. Sure, there were a few drug dealers and prostitutes, but it was nothing like Chicago’s South Side, where she’d been when she first came to the US.

She was woken in the wee hours of the morning by an earthquake. How the locals ever got used to them enough to sleep through them she didn’t know, but it was small, and nothing fell. Realizing that she wouldn’t be getting back to sleep, she opened her laptop and checked the news on Merovina.

So far, it was all speculation, as no news had come out of the country in more than thirty-six hours. The UK and US governments were demanding their reporters be allowed to leave the country, and instead, the Merovina government blocked all flights leaving the country, and limited inbound flights to those carrying Merovinan citizens. Those planes were then allowed to fuel and leave after the Merovinans got off, providing no one else got on.

In response to the increasingly tense situation, NATO forces and Russian forces began moving closer to the Merovina borders. Meanwhile, it seemed that the crown had followed the examples of more authoritarian states, cutting off the internet from the entire country.

Ana wondered whether it was a coup, or something else. Either way, she was in no position to do anything about it. She left for work early, stopping at an all-night diner for breakfast first.

The eggs and sausage sat like lead in her guts as she started the day. Janice was kind enough to not bring up the marriage topic at all in the morning. As it was a Thursday and between paydays, it would be slower than usual.

On days like this, she and Janice would do the grunt work. Scrubbing the walk-ins, clearing off every shelf in the kitchen and sanitizing, doing an inventory count on everything from toothpicks to saucepans, kegs to potatoes. As Janice was fond of saying, “If you do the hard work first, everything else is a piece of cake.”

Ana had finished the hard work and moved on to the “piece of cake” part of the day. She was busy filling out the order form for their vendors, when three people came in. A man and a woman in ICE police uniforms, and a man in a suit. Janice told them to sit wherever they liked, and the man in the suit shook his head.

“Ma’am,” the woman officer said, “we’re looking Anastasia Politskivina.”

“What’s the problem?” Janice asked. “Her green card’s still good.”

“Is she here, ma’am?” the male officer asked.

“I’m here,” Ana said, leaning through the order window.

“Could you come around and talk with us, please?” The man in the suit pointed to a table and the ICE officers sat there. “You’re not in trouble, and we’re not here to deport you.”

“Janice, could you get the officers some coffee? I’ll come out and talk to them.” While Janice moved behind the bar to get the coffee, Ana set her phone up to record the area around the table where the officers sat and made sure Janice saw it.

“Sure, sweetie.” Turning back toward the officers, she asked, “Cream and sugar? On the house.”

Ana came into the main part of the bar and joined the three at the table. She laid her green card, driver’s license, and Merovinan passport on the table. “What is this about?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this here?” the suited man asked. “We can go somewhere more private—”

“Anything you have to say you can say here.”

He took a deep breath. “Our embassy in Merovina managed to contact us late last night. We need you to go home.” Before she could raise an objection, he went on. “Your father died two days ago…heart attack. In the absence of the crown princess, Minister Kosolovich has taken over, and is trying to get control of the throne. The people, however, want their rightful heir to return, or at least that’s what the protestors are saying.”

“The old crow that father wanted me to marry is running the country?” Ana snorted a derisive laugh. “No wonder it went to hell so fast. As if he could ever be a ruler. He can’t even control his own hands.”

“Will you consider it?” he asked. “You wanted democratic reform; this is your chance to make it happen. It would go a long way to relieving tensions in the area. Not to mention, you really should be there for your father’s funeral.”

Janice had been standing near the table holding the coffee pot and four cups, her mouth agape. “Y—you’re a princess?”

Ana smiled. “Yeah, glamorous, isn’t it?” she asked, flipping the edge of her greasy apron. “Janice, would you be upset if I quit?”

“Are you shitting me? Of course not! You go home and be the queen!” She laughed, then composed herself. “Oh, sorry, here you go, darlin’,” she said as she placed the cups on the table and began pouring coffee.

“I’m very sorry, Anastasia…and Janice,” the man said, “but there’s a private jet waiting at Anchorage International. The sooner we get you there, the better. You’ll fly to Dubai, then take a chartered Emirates flight to Merovina. We’d like to avoid making you look like an American puppet.”

“What about my apartment, and my clothes?” Ana asked. “My car can go to the scrapyard for all I care, but I can’t very well walk into the palace looking like this.”

“The State Department will take care of your apartment and car, and we’ve loaned you an assistant for a couple weeks. She’ll get you properly clothed, after a shopping trip in Dubai, and prepped to meet the government.” The man smiled. “I think she’ll find her job a lot easier than the ambassadors she usually deals with.”

“And am I an American puppet, now?”

“If the CIA got to you before we did,” the man said, “you might have been. The State Department would rather have friendly allies than puppets that need to be kept on a leash.”

“And Merovina has no oil, diamonds, or other exploitable materials,” Ana said through a half-scowl. “I should be glad of that, though. Otherwise, we would have been swallowed by the USSR, rather than ignored as insignificant.”

After thanking Janice for the coffee, the ICE officers stood up and shook hands with the man and with Ana. “We’re done here. Good luck, Ana,” the woman said.

Ana took off her apron and handed it to Janice. “I guess I won’t be needing this any longer. Don’t forget to order limes this week.”

“Before you leave,” Janice said, “come here and take a selfie with me. We had an honest-to-god princess working here!”

#

The funeral was broadcast world-wide, with Queen Anastasia bidding a tearful final farewell to her father, King Freidrich IX. In the weeks that followed, Merovina faced sweeping reforms. The entire 130-member сборка was disbanded, and elections for a new parliament of 200 were held.

Sergei Kosolovich and everyone who backed his attempted takeover were forgiven, but the high court banned them from ever holding any political office. Ana’s first impulse had been to have them all imprisoned, but she didn’t want to be yet another Merovinan monarch that dealt with dissent by permanently silencing it. Instead, in her first public address, Ana said, “Treating harshly those who attempted to fill a vacuum would reflect poorly on the new Merovina. As such, the crown will not seek any further charges nor take any further action against them.”

In that same address, Ana did something few monarchs ever do; she drastically curbed the power of the throne, making her role more ceremonial than political. The newly elected parliament was made up of twelve parties, and more than a little messy, but the newly fledged democracy was finding its feet.

“The first order of business for the new parliament,” she said, “is to draft a new constitution befitting Merovina. Until it is drafted, passed by the parliament, and meets the approval of a referendum vote, we are still shackled with the old way of doing things. It is my deepest desire that the previous call for election, and the signing of the constitution will be my only actions as queen under the laws that are now more than six centuries old. I look forward to serving as your queen under a new constitution, in a new Merovina.”

Closing out her address, Ana smiled brightly for the cameras, and gave a closing line that left Janice beaming. “I have faith in my fellow Merovinans that we can and will create a new rule of law based on equity, humanity, and good will for our neighbors. As a dear friend often said to me, ‘We will do the hard work first, then everything else will seem easy.’”