by M. L. Rio
I knew better than to believe it.
SCENE 5
The following morning, James dragged me out of bed a little after seven to go for a run. The bruises on his arms had faded to a rotten green, but he wore a sweatshirt with the sleeves pulled down to his wrists. It was cold enough by then that it didn’t look peculiar.
We often ran the narrow trails that wound through the woods on the south side of the lake. The air was cool and sharp, the morning overcast, our breath coming out in long plumes of white. We kept a good pace together for a two-mile loop, talking in short stilted bursts.
“Where’d you go last night?” he asked. “I couldn’t find you after final curtain.”
“Didn’t want to deal with Richard in close quarters so I waited in the lobby.”
“Did Meredith ambush you?”
I frowned at him. “How did you know?”
“I thought she might.”
“Why?”
“Just the way she’s been looking at you lately.”
I stumbled over a root and fell a little bit behind him, then doubled my speed to catch up.
Me: “How has she been looking at me?”
James: “Like she’s a shark and you’re an oblivious fur seal.”
Me: “Why is that the word everyone’s using to describe me lately?”
James: “Who else called you a fur seal?”
Me: “Not that. Never mind.”
I watched the ground for a moment, thinking. The dull ache in my left side intensified whenever I inhaled. The air smelled of earth and evergreen and approaching winter.
“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” James asked.
“What?”
“With Meredith.” He said it lightly, teasing, but there was apprehension there, too. Guilt made my face warmer than exertion already had.
“Nothing happened,” I said.
“Nothing?”
“Not really. I told her I wasn’t interested in becoming Richard’s next punching bag and she left.”
“Is that the only reason?” I could tell from his tone that he wasn’t convinced.
“I mean, I don’t know.” I’d lain awake most of the night repeating the scene in my head, agonizing over those last few words, thinking up a thousand things I should have said instead, wishing it had gone a different way. I couldn’t pretend I was immune to Meredith; I’d always admired her, but from what I thought was a safe distance. By coming closer she’d confused me. I didn’t believe she really wanted me, just that I was the easiest mark. But I couldn’t admit that to James—because I was embarrassed, and because I was afraid I was wrong.
He watched me, waiting for me to elaborate.
“It’s like Alexander said the other day,” I told him. “I couldn’t decide if I wanted to kiss her or kill her.” We jogged on in an awkward silence softened by the twittering of whatever dim-witted birds hadn’t yet flown south for the winter. We passed the trail leading back to the Castle and started up the steep hill toward the Hall. When we were halfway up I asked, “What do you think?”
“About Meredith?”
“Yeah.”
“You know how I feel about Meredith,” he said, with a note of finality that discouraged further questions. But it wasn’t really an answer—there was something unsaid, something trapped behind his teeth. I wanted to know what he was thinking but didn’t know how to ask, so we climbed the rest of the way up the hill without speaking.
My calves were burning by the time we landed on the wide lawn behind the Hall, doubled over, breathing hard. As our bodies cooled, the November chill crept in. My shirt was stuck to my back, beads of sweat sliding out of my hair and down my temples. James’s face and throat glistened feverish red, but the rest of his skin was pale from sleeplessness, and the contrast made him look distinctly unwell.
“Water?” I said. “You don’t look good.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
We trudged across the wet grass to the refectory. At eight a.m. on a Saturday, it was mostly empty. A few teachers and early risers sat reading quietly, mugs of coffee and breakfast plates in front of them. At one table, a cluster of dancers clad in black spandex stretched their long legs. At another, a choral music student sat inhaling steam from a cereal bowl filled with hot water, perhaps hoping to counteract the effects of what looked like a murderous hangover on her vocal chords. A small mixed group had accumulated at the far wall where the mailboxes were.
“What do you suppose that’s about?” I asked.
James grimaced. “I have a fairly good idea.”
I followed him over, and the little crowd parted easily to let us through—maybe because we were flushed and sweaty, but maybe not.
In the middle of the wall was a long corkboard reserved for general campus announcements. Usually it was thatched with club flyers and tutoring advertisements, but that day everything else was hidden behind an enormous campaign poster of Richard. He glared out at the viewer in monochrome red, his handsome features sharpened by deep black shadows. Below the immaculate knot of his tie but above the smaller text detailing the production information white block letters proclaimed,
ALWAYS I AM CAESAR
James and I stood staring at it for long enough that most of the other people who had come to investigate lost interest and wandered away.
“Well,” he said, “that’s bound to get people’s attention.”
I was still staring, annoyed that James wasn’t more annoyed. “Fuck this,” I said. “I don’t want him watching me like Big Brother from every wall for the next two weeks.”
“He doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus,” James remarked, “and we petty men / Walk under his huge legs and peep about / To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”
“Fuck that also.”
“You’re starting to sound like Alexander.”
“Sorry, but after last night I think the odds of Richard ripping my head off went up like a hundred percent.”
“Keep that in mind next time Meredith throws herself at you.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t spoken.
“Be careful, Oliver,” he said, knowingly, as if he could read my mind. “You’re much too trusting. She did this to me, too, first year. We were partners for voice class—that weird humming thing. Remember?”
“Wait, she did what?”
“Decided she wanted me and assumed I wanted her, because doesn’t everyone? When I told her no she changed her mind. Acted like it never happened and went after Richard instead.”
“Are you serious?”
He gave me a wry sort of look in reply.
“Jesus.” I glanced away, around the refectory, curious what sort of secrets everyone else was keeping. How little we wondered about the inner lives of other people. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
I thought of him twirling a strand of Wren’s hair around his finger and asked, “Anything else I should know, while we’re on the subject?”
“No. Honestly.” If he was hiding something, his expression—at ease, unaffected—didn’t give it away. Maybe Alexander was right and James and I were equally oblivious.
I shifted my weight. I felt like Richard was watching me, the poster a garish red blotch in my peripheral vision. I turned, sighed at it, and said, “I guess the good news is that after yesterday’s drama he’ll have to stop trying to break your arms in Act III.”
“You think so?”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head in a sad, distracted way. “He’s too smart for that.”
“So … what do you think he’ll do?”
“He’ll lay off, but just for the next few days. He’ll wait for opening night. Gwendolyn’s not going to run onstage and stop the show.” His eyes flicked back and forth across the poster. For a moment he might have forgotten I was there.
James: “Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great?”
I was quiet for a while, then spoke one of my own lines in reply, unsure of where exactly it had come from.
Me: “Hold, my hand:
Be factious for redress of all these griefs,
And I will set this foot of mine as far
As who goes farthest.”
James’s gray eyes sparkled gold as he looked back at me and said, “There’s a bargain made.” There was something unfamiliar in his smile, some fierce gladness that made me at once eager and uneasy. I grinned back as best I could, then followed him to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My mouth was unbearably dry.
SCENE 6
Richard’s face haunted me for the rest of the week, but his wasn’t the only one. Posters of James had also appeared—his done in royal blue, bearing the slogan Soul of Rome. Other publicity photos—featuring Alexander; Wren and Meredith; and then me, Colin, and our Lepidus together—appeared in the lobby of the FAB and the school newspaper. Campus began to hum again with anticipation for an upcoming production.
On opening night, there wasn’t a single empty seat in the house. Dellecher’s production quality was legendary, and the prospect of seeing the next big actor, artist, or virtuoso before fame snatched them away attracted more than the obvious collection of students and faculty. The house was packed with local Bardolators, students on field trips, and season ticket holders. (In the spring, the best seats would be reserved for a troop of agents invited from New York to watch us perform.) The lights came up on a group of excitable second-years, the common Romans, giddy at the idea of being onstage at Dellecher for the first time. The rest of us, more experienced and only half as agitated, waited in the wings.
The play climbed through the first two acts until the tension was so great that the whole auditorium seemed to be holding its breath. The assassination was swift and violent, and as soon as James directed the conspirators to disperse, I stumbled offstage, ears ringing.
“Fuck!” I blundered into the heavy black curtains on stage left. Someone caught me by the shoulders and guided me out of the tabs as the secondary conspirators shuffled past on their way back to the dressing rooms. The house rang with Antony’s impassioned soliloquy over Caesar’s body.
Colin: “O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!”
I groped toward the wall in the dark, one hand over my ear. The same someone turned me around so I didn’t fall face-first into the fly lines.
“Are you all right?” Alexander whispered. “What happened?”
“He hit me right in the ear!”
“When?” James’s voice.
“When I stabbed him, he turned around and smashed me with his elbow!” A bolt of pain so acute it felt solid had lodged in my skull like a railroad spike. I perched on the locking rail, leaning forward on my knees. A warm hand landed on the back of my neck; I didn’t know whose.
“That’s not the blocking,” Alexander said.
“Of course it fucking isn’t,” James said. “Breathe, Oliver.”
I unclenched my jaw and inhaled. James’s hand slid to my shoulder. “Did he try to snap your wrists again?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He glanced toward the light slanting in between the downstage legs. Colin had finished his speech and was conversing with a servant.
“Is he doing this shit on purpose?” Alexander said. “He about took my head off when I stabbed him but I thought he’d just gotten carried away again.”
“Have you seen James’s arms?”
James hushed me but unfastened his left cuff button and peeled his sleeve back. Even in the gloom of the wings we could see blotches of blue and purple on his skin. Alexander let out a string of obscenities all in one breath.
James shook his cuff back down. “Exactly.”
“James,” I said, “we have to do something.”
He turned, the light from the stage turning his face a sickly malarial yellow. It was nearly time for intermission. “All right,” he said. “But we leave Frederick and Gwendolyn out of it.”
“How?”
There was a growl in Alexander’s voice as he said, “If he wants a fight, let’s give him a fight.”
I tugged at my earlobe. A faint, shrill ringing pestered me like a fly. “Alexander,” I said, “that’s suicide.”
“I don’t see why.”
“He’s bigger than all of us.”
“No, Oliver, idiot. He’s bigger than each of us.” He gave me a very pointed look.
The lights onstage were suddenly doused, and the audience erupted into applause. All at once people were rushing by. In the darkness it was impossible to tell who was who, but we knew one of them must be Richard. Alexander pushed me and James both back against the line sets, and the heavy ropes wobbled and groaned behind us like a ship’s rigging. His hand was a vise on my shoulder, the audience thundering in my ears. “Listen,” he said, “Richard can’t fight off all three of us at once. Tomorrow, if he tries anything, instead of assassination we give him a righteous ass-kicking.”
“Here is my hand,” James said, after a split second’s hesitation. “The deed is worthy doing.”
I hesitated also, a split second longer. “And so say I.”
Alexander squeezed my arm. “And I and now we three have spoke it, let the stupid bastard do his worst.”
He let go of us abruptly as the house lights came up and the audience all rattled to their feet on the other side of the curtain. A few first-year technicians in black had already hurried onstage and were cleaning up the mess left after the assassination. The three of us shared a grim look, and said nothing else, but went single file to the dressing room. I trailed after James, limbs tingling with the same restless feeling from the week before, both eager and uneasy.
SCENE 7
Apart from Richard’s unnecessary roughness, opening night had gone well, and the following morning praises were lavished on us in the hallways. The choral and orchestral students remained aloof—unimpressed by anyone who didn’t have the discipline for something so refined as music—but the others regarded us with wide-eyed admiration. How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance. Unable to articulate it, we simply accepted their compliments and congratulations with the appropriate (and, in some cases, entirely contrived) humility.
In class, we were easily distracted. I barely listened to Frederick’s lecture and my mind wandered so far during one of Camilo’s balance exercises that I let Filippa knock me over backward. Alexander gave me an impatient sort of look that clearly meant, Get your shit together. As soon as we were dismissed, I retreated to the Tower with a mug of tea and René Girard’s Theatre of Envy, hoping to distract myself from a dozen distressing premonitions of the night ahead. By then I felt no sympathy for Richard—the relentless, catchall antagonism he’d practiced over the last few weeks left a deeper impression than three years of placid friendship had—but I knew that no retaliation on our part would go unpunished. Any impartial observer would have dismissed it as a grandiloquent grudge match, but when I tried to persuade myself that that was all it was, Frederick’s voice quietly reminded me that duels had been fought over less.
The prospective comeuppance of our feud with Richard, enormous as it loomed, was not the only thing weighing on my mind. Friday night was the night of the cast party; an hour after final curtain, most of Dellecher’s theatre students and the bolder ones from other disciplines would invade the first floor of the Castle to celebrate a good opening and drink to the coming c
lose. Meredith and Wren, neither of whom appeared onstage after Act II, had graciously agreed to sneak back between intermission and curtain call to get everything ready for a night of riotous revelry. When the rest of us arrived, we would have nothing to do but give our thanks to Dionysus and indulge.
At half past six I closed my book and took the stairs down to the dining room. The table and chairs had already been cleared away to make enough space for a dance floor. A set of speakers surreptitiously borrowed from the sound booth was stacked in one corner, cables trailing along the baseboards toward the nearest outlets. I left the Castle and began the long walk to the FAB with a fretful, anxious feeling that became more and more like dread with each passing minute.
It must have been showing on my face by the time I opened the door to the dressing room, because Alexander grabbed the front of my jacket, hauled me out to the loading dock, and stuck a lit spliff in my mouth.
“Don’t get jittery,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
(I’m not sure anyone has ever been so wrong.)
I puffed obediently on the spliff until there was only a half inch left. Alexander took it, sucked it down to his fingertips, threw it on the ground, and led me back inside. My misgivings faded to a vague paranoia at the back of my brain.
Time moved slowly as I put on makeup and costume pieces and went through the motions of a vocal warm-up. James, Alexander, Wren, Filippa, and I leaned on the wall in the crossover, hands splayed on our diaphragms, chanting, “Howl, howl, howl, howl—O, you are men of stones.” When a first-year with a headset appeared to tell us we had five minutes to places, my personal time lag collapsed and everything started to move as if on fast-forward.
The second-years vacated the dressing rooms and scrambled to find their places in the wings, hastily buttoning shirts and cuffs, or hopping down the hall as they tried to get their shoes tied. Filippa threw me in a chair in the girls’ dressing room and attacked me with a comb and a tube of hair gel as the lights came up and the first lines of the play crackled through the backstage speakers.