by M. L. Rio
Flavius: “Hence! home, you idle creatures, get you home:
Is this a holiday?”
Filippa gave me a smart little slap to the forehead. “Oliver!”
“Fuck, what?”
“You’re done, get out of here,” she said, scowling down at me, one hand on her hip. “What is the matter with you?”
“Sorry,” I said, as I climbed out of the chair. “Thanks, Pip.”
“Are you high?”
“No.”
“Are you full of crap?”
“Yes.”
She pursed her lips and shook her head, but didn’t reprimand me further. I wasn’t entirely sober, but neither was I entirely stoned, and she probably knew that Alexander was mostly to blame. I left the girls’ dressing room and loitered in the crossover until Richard brushed past, taking no more notice of me than he did of the paint on the walls. I followed a half step behind him, emerged into the glaring lights, and said, with as much sincerity as I could muster, “Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.”
Acts I and II passed not unlike the first rainy front of a hurricane. There was rumble and bluster and a sense of impending peril, but we and the audience knew that the worst was yet to come. When Calpurnia entered, I watched from the edge of the wings. Richard and Meredith seemed to have overcome their difficulties, or had at least put them on hold for the duration of the run. He was rough with her but not violent; she was impatient with him but not provocative. Before I knew it, James was shaking me by the shoulder and whispering, “Let’s go.”
Act III opened with the silhouette of the colonnade against the scrim, which glowed scarlet—a raw, dangerous dawn. Richard stood between the two center columns, the rest of us arranged in a ring around him as Metellus Cimber knelt in the Bowl and pleaded for his brother. I was standing closest, so close that I could see the tiny tic of a nerve in Richard’s jaw. Alexander, waiting with predatory, feline patience on the opposite side of the circle, caught my eye and flicked the front of his jacket open to reveal the paper knife tucked in his belt. (They were more in keeping with the theme than daggers would have been, but no less threatening.)
Richard: “I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.”
He looked around at the rest of us with bright gleaming eyes, daring us to contradict him. We shifted our feet and fingered our narrow blades, but kept our silence.
Richard: “The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place:
So in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men,
And men are flesh and blood and apprehensive.
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion: and that I am he!”
His voice filled every corner of the auditorium, like a crack opening in the earth’s crust, the boom and tremor of an earthquake. On my right, Filippa raised her chin, just barely.
Richard: “Let me a little show it, even in this;
That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d,
And constant do remain to keep him so.”
Cinna began to object, but I had no ears for him. My eyes were fixed on James and Alexander. They mirrored each other’s movements, turning slightly downstage so the audience could see the steel glinting on their belts. I licked my bottom lip. Everything felt too close, too real, like I was sitting in the front row of a movie theatre. I squeezed my eyes shut, fist clenched on the hilt of my knife, listening for the five fatal words that would spur me to action.
Richard: “Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?”
I opened my eyes, and all I saw was James, one knee bent in genuflection, staring up at Richard with bold contempt in his face.
“Speak hands, for me!” I shouted, and leapt at Richard, thrusting my blade under his upstage arm. The other conspirators came suddenly to life and swarmed on us like wasps. Richard glared at me, teeth bared and grinding hard together. I wrenched my knife away and made to move back, but he seized me by the collar, crushing the fabric so tightly around my throat that I couldn’t breathe. I dropped the knife, groping at his wrist with both hands as his thumb jabbed into my carotid artery.
My vision was already swimming when Richard released me, with a roar of pain—Alexander had grabbed him by the hair and yanked him backward. I fell heavily on my tailbone, one hand flying to my neck. Someone had Richard’s arm bent behind his back and the other half-dozen conspirators lunged to take their stabs at him, all blocking abandoned. In the confusion he lashed out wildly and hit Filippa right in the stomach, hard enough to knock her sprawling. She landed in a heap on the stairs—I’d made it to my feet just in time to watch her fall, and an inarticulate sound of outrage stuck in my throat. I shoved Cinna aside and dropped to my knees beside her. She lifted her head, clutching her stomach, gulping futilely, all the wind knocked out of her.
Suddenly the bedlam subsided, and I turned halfway around, kneeling over Filippa, who was quiet but gripping my leg hard. Richard stood surrounded by panting conspirators, arms pinned to his sides, Alexander’s fist still clenched in his hair. James stood just out of his reach, suit disheveled, knife clutched tightly in his hand.
Richard’s words were thick with hatred as he said, “Et tu, Bruté?”
James took one step forward and placed the blade against his neck.
Richard: “Then fall, Caesar.”
James’s face was unnervingly blank. He slid the knife quickly forward—Richard made a short choking sound, then let his head loll against his chest. Alexander and the rest of the conspirators released him one by one, and he slumped to the floor. When they straightened up again, the second- and third-years looked from me to James to Alexander, wide-eyed, painfully aware of the audience and the fact that the scene had spiraled completely out of control. One of them had a line, but she must have forgotten, because nobody spoke. Alexander waited as long as he could, then spoke for her.
“Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” He gave the nearest second-year a small shove. “Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.” The rest shifted, exhaled, relieved. Filippa gasped as the air rushed into her lungs again. I helped her sit halfway up while Alexander continued barking orders. “Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, / ‘Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!’”
“People and senators, be not affrighted,” James said to the conspirators, and his calmness seemed to reassure them. “Fly not; stand still; ambition’s debt is paid.”
We relaxed into the text again, as if nothing at all unusual had happened. But as Filippa and I climbed to our feet, I couldn’t help glancing down at Richard. He lay motionless except for the angry twitch of his eyelids, a vein bulging and throbbing in his throat.
SCENE 8
My head cleared as Brutus and Cassius’s coup collapsed. Richard had disappeared out the door during intermission, and no one saw him again until Act IV when he returned as Caesar’s ghost—an apparition doubly sinister for its stony solemnity. The final curtain fell at ten thirty, and my body ached with fatigue, but the layered drama of the assassination scene and anticipation for the party kept me awake and alert. By the time I’d washed my face, gotten my costume off, and dressed myself again, most of the second- and third-years had gone. James and Alexander were waiting in the crossover with four fat spliffs rolled already (one for each of us and one for Filippa, who had already gone back to the Castle to change). We left the FAB and strolled down the path through the woods with our hands in our pockets. We didn’t mention the Three-One incident, except for Alexander saying simply, “I hope he’s learned his lesson.”
When we were only thirty feet from the Castle, the sultry party light began to soak throu
gh the thick shadows of the trees. We stopped to finish smoking and stamped the roaches down in the damp pine needles. Alexander turned to us and said, “We’ve had a long week. I plan to make a long night of it, and if you two aren’t royally fucked by midnight I will take it upon myself to see that you are fucked, royally or otherwise, by morning. Understand?”
Me: “You make it sound a lot like date rape.”
Alexander: “Do as I’ve said and it won’t come to that.”
James: “You’re both of you going to hell.”
Alexander: “Directly.”
Me: “Posthaste.”
Alexander: “Every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him. Go.”
Obediently, we went.
The front door opened and a wave of noise crashed out to meet us. The Castle was crammed with people, some drinking, some dancing, sparkling in their party clothes. (The boys didn’t look too terribly different from usual—only better dressed, better groomed—but the girls were hardly recognizable. Night had fallen, and with it came short slinky dresses and dark mascara and satin lipstick, transforming them from mere girls to a coven of bewitching nocturnal creatures.) The welcoming roar washed over us; hands reached out to snatch our clothes and drag us helplessly inside.
Two kegs sweated in the downstairs bathtub, tightly packed in with ice and bottles of water. Stacks of Solo cups cluttered the kitchen counter, while handles of cheap rum, vodka, and whiskey were arranged in a bowling-pin pyramid on the stove (mostly paid for by Meredith’s exorbitant monthly allowance, with more modest contributions from the rest of us). The good stuff was stashed in Alexander’s bedroom. As soon as we arrived, Filippa nipped upstairs and returned with a Scotch and soda for each of us. Immediately thereafter, James and Alexander both disappeared, sucked away into the crowd. Most of the theatre students had assembled in the kitchen, where they talked and laughed twice as loudly as they needed to, still performing, observed by less obnoxious onlookers from the art, language, and philosophy departments. Choral and orchestral students eager to criticize the music selection and dancers eager to show off had filled the dining room, which was so poorly lit that they either had only a dim idea who they were dancing with or simply didn’t care. Music thundered through the floorboards, every bass note a tiny earthquake, the footstep of a slow-approaching dinosaur. The surface of my drink shivered and vibrated until Filippa threw a handful of ice in it.
“Thanks,” I said. Her expression was distant, distracted. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, with a pained sort of smile. “Got a wicked bruise but not where anyone will see.”
“You look good to me,” I said, lamely. She wore a short blue something that showed off her long legs. Mercifully, she wasn’t too made-up and still looked human.
“It happens every now and then,” she said, exhaling, allowing herself to relax. “Where’ve you been?”
“Outside. Alexander rolled you a spliff if you want it.”
“God bless the filthy hedonist. Where is he now?”
“On the dance floor,” I said, “prowling for first-years who don’t know they’re gay yet.”
“Where else?” she said, and left the kitchen, deftly weaving between the people at the counter fighting to get a hold of the rapidly diminishing mixers. I took a long drink of Scotch and soda, wondering how long the cross-fade would take. Colin and several other third-years paused on their way out to the driveway—where people would be smoking and chatting and waiting for their eardrums to stop throbbing—to congratulate me on a good show. I thanked them, and when they filed out, Colin hovered on the threshold. I bent my head close to his to hear him.
“Three-One went off the rails today,” he said. “Everything all right?”
“I think so,” I said. “Pip got knocked around a bit, but she’s tough. Have you seen Richard?”
“He’s upstairs, throwing back whiskey like it’s keeping him alive.”
We shared a look that was one part disdain, one part concern. We both remembered all too well what had happened the last time Richard drank too much.
“What about Meredith?” I asked, wondering if she might be a contributing factor to Richard’s foul mood, or if James and Alexander and I were solely to blame.
“Holding court in the garden,” Colin said. “She hung all the lights out there. I think she’s watching to make sure no one tears them down.”
“Sounds about right.”
He grinned. (Though we had originally compared him to Richard, the comparison didn’t stick. He played the same bombastic roles, but offstage his cockiness was endearing more than infuriating.) “Want to come out for a smoke?” he said.
“I’ve had one, but you should find Pip in the yard.”
“Great,” he said, and stepped out after his friends. I turned to scan the kitchen, wondering where James had gotten to.
For maybe an hour, maybe longer, I wandered from room to room, conversation to conversation, accepting drinks and congratulations with polite disinterest. The music in the dining room was so loud I could hardly hear what anyone said. The dull red light and constant surge and sway of bodies exacerbated my state of intoxication, and when I began to feel dizzy, I ventured out into the driveway. As soon as I set foot outside, the same flirtatious girl from Halloween spotted me. I did an abrupt 180 and escaped around the side of the building to the garden.
The garden—less an actual garden than a small plot of grass bordered on three sides by trees—wasn’t as crowded. People stood in clumps of three or four, talking and laughing or gazing up at the string lights, which had been painstakingly stretched from tree to tree. The yard twinkled as though several hundred obliging fireflies had decided to attend the party. Meredith sat on the table in the middle with her legs crossed at the knee, a drink in one hand and a toothpick speared through two olives in the other. (She, apparently, was sipping martinis while everyone else made do with well liquor and Coke.) I hovered uncertainly at the edge of the yard. We hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since the dressing room incident, and I wasn’t sure where we stood. Before long I found myself staring at her legs. Her calves tapered perfectly to slender ankles and black pumps with five-inch heels. I considered the possibility that she was sitting on the table because she couldn’t stand on the soft ground without sinking into it.
When she realized I was there she smiled—without resentment, it seemed. (The boy beside her—he played cello with the orchestral students, though I didn’t know which year he was—carried on talking, unaware that her attention had shifted.) A little ripple of relief went through me. She turned toward the cellist again but looked down into her drink, stirring slowly with her olives.
I was about to go back inside when I felt an arm slide around my waist.
“Hello, you,” Wren said, with the cuddly, kittenish affection she always displayed when she’d been drinking. She was wearing something pale green and floaty that made her look like Tinker Bell.
I ruffled her hair. “Hello. Having a good time?”
“Splendid, only Richard’s being a snot.”
“I’m shocked.”
Her nose crinkled as she frowned. She was still hugging me around the waist and I wondered vaguely if she could stand up on her own. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” she said, with an edge of bitterness in her voice I hadn’t heard before. “He’s always been a bit of a pig, but now he’s … I don’t know. Mean.”
It was such an innocent word that I felt a twinge of something protective, big-brotherish. I squeezed her against my side and said, “I don’t know if ‘mean’ does it justice.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, it’s not just mean—it’s sadistic. He’s been battering us onstage. Opening night he about busted my eardrum, Filippa’s got a bruise the size of Australia, and James—” I stopped, belatedly remembering my promise to keep it to myself. My verbal and visual fi
lters weren’t working properly.
“What’s he done to James?” she demanded, with a kind of fearful uncertainty. She was trying to keep up, but the whiskey wouldn’t let her.
“I said I wouldn’t tell anyone. But he’ll tell you, if you ask him.” I thought of him twirling a strand of her hair, and it occurred to me that he’d do just about anything she asked him to. Something clenched uncomfortably in my chest.
She frowned again. Her arms had gone loose around me, as if she’d forgotten they were there. “You know, he scares me sometimes.”
“James?” I asked, bewildered.
She shook her head. “Richard. I’m afraid he’ll really hurt someone, or himself. He’s just … reckless, you know?”
It wasn’t the word I would have chosen, but I nodded anyway. “You should tell him that. You’re probably the only person he’d listen to.”
“Maybe. But it’ll have to wait ’til morning. Right now he’s completely plastered.”
“Well,” I said, “if he’s too drunk to stand up this party might turn out okay.”
I had a strange, sinking feeling just then. Richard, no matter how much he drank, had never been fully incapacitated by alcohol. It only made him more, if I used Wren’s word, reckless.
Meredith slid off the table and excused herself from her admirers (of which there were four, by that time). She crossed the yard with surprising steadiness, cocked her head, and said, “Aren’t you two precious.” Up close and in my less than lucid state, I couldn’t stop staring at her. She wore a snug black sheath, one shoulder bare, a strap of tiny jet beads glittering on the other. In those shoes, she was almost as tall as I was.
“The garden looks amazing, Mer,” Wren said.
“Yes.” She smiled up at the lights. “I hate to leave it. And I must lose / Two of the sweet’st companions in the world.” She winked. Her eye shadow—dark plum purple—somehow made her eyes even greener.
“Where are you going?” Wren asked.
“Inside for another drink.” She raised her empty cup. “Refill?”