If We Were Villains

by M. L. Rio

  I stood staring at the wistful collage she’d created until I felt a lump form in my throat. When I glanced over my shoulder at the pristine impersonality of the rest of the room—the smooth flat bedspread, the bare hardwood floor—it occurred to me at last how alone she was. Unable (as always) to find the words to express my own belated understanding, I said nothing.

  For three days Meredith and I lounged around—reading, talking, not touching—as Caleb came and went, indifferent to my presence, rarely sober, always on the phone with someone. Like his sister he was almost unfairly good-looking, their shared features strangely (though not unpleasantly) delicate and feminine in him. He had a quick smile, but his eyes were distant, as though his mind was perpetually preoccupied with important business, elsewhere. He did promise, though it made little difference to us, an extravagant New Year’s party. Caleb, for all his shortcomings, was a man of his word.

  By nine thirty on December 31, the apartment was packed with people in glamorous party attire. I knew none of them, Meredith only a handful, Caleb a quarter of them at best. By eleven everyone was drunk, including me and Meredith, but when people started snorting lines of coke off the kitchen counter, we slipped out, unnoticed, with two bottles of Laurent-Perrier.

  Times Square, like the apartment, was teeming with people, and Meredith clung to my arm to keep from being swept away down the sidewalk by the crowd. We laughed and stumbled and drank pink champagne straight from the bottle until it was confiscated by an exasperated police officer. Snow fell like confetti on our heads and shoulders and stuck in Meredith’s eyelashes. She glimmered in the night like a precious stone—vivid and flawless. I drunkenly told her as much, and at midnight we kissed on a Manhattan street corner, one of a million couples all kissing at the same time.

  We wandered the city until the champagne wore off and the cold set in, then clumsily made our way back to the apartment. All was dark and quiet, the last partygoers sprawled on the living room furniture, asleep or too high to move. We crept to Meredith’s room, stripped off our wet layers, and huddled under the blankets on her bed. The search for warmth turned slowly but predictably to more kissing, then gradual undressing, cautious touches, and eventually, inevitably, sex. Afterward I waited for the guilt to come, the compulsion to beg Richard’s phantom for forgiveness. But for once, when I most expected to open my eyes and find him standing over me, he declined to show himself. Instead the silhouette I saw on the wall belonged, inexplicably, to James—who had no business in that room, in my thoughts, at that moment. Anger rushed through me, but before it went to my head Meredith moved, nestled closer, interrupted the illusion. I exhaled, relieved to think she’d woken me from some disturbed half dream. I let my fingertips trail from the tip of her shoulder to the smooth inward curve of her waist, comforted by how soft and feminine she was. Her head rested on my chest, and I wondered if she felt the fleeting stillness of my fitful, troubled soul.

  The next three days passed in much the same way. By night we drank just barely too much, tolerated Caleb as long as we could, then tumbled into bed together. By day we roamed New York, wasted time and the Dardennes’ money in bookstores and theatres and cafés, talking about life after Dellecher, realizing at last that it was only a few months away. We’d had so much else on our minds.

  “They’ll have scouts down for the spring production,” Meredith said one afternoon as we wandered away from the Strand, empty-handed only because we’d been there once already. “And then we’ll have showcase in May. I haven’t even thought about what I’ll read.” She nudged me with her elbow. “We ought to do a scene together. We could be … Oh, I don’t know. Margaret and Suffolk.” She tossed her head and said, airily, “Would you carry my heart like a jewel in a box?”

  “I dunno. Would you carry my head around in a basket if I got decapitated by pirates?”

  She looked at me like I was crazy, but then—to my relief and my delight—she laughed, the sound wild and lovely, like a tiger lily bursting open. When her mirth had subsided she glanced around at the other people on the sidewalk, moving in a steady stream toward Union Square. “How odd it’ll be,” she said, more soberly, “to have everyone here in the city.”

  “It’ll be fun,” I told her, wondering if we’d all stay with her the week of showcase, sleep on the floor like it was a middle school slumber party. “Like a test run. This time next year we’ll all probably be living here.”

  “You think so?”

  “Well, we’ve got to go somewhere there’s Shakespeare. Will you stay in the apartment?”

  “God, no. I need to get out of there.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to move into some hovel in Queens with the rest of us.” I leaned toward her until our shoulders bumped together and she gave me a tentative smile.

  “We’re all going to live on top of each other, like it’s the Castle all over again?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  The smile slipped and she shook her head. “It won’t be the same.”

  I looped one arm around her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her temple. I felt her sigh, and when she breathed her sadness out, I breathed it in. No, it wouldn’t be the same. I couldn’t argue with that.

  On Sunday evening we flew back to O’Hare, first class—Caleb’s treat. We were the first to arrive at the Castle, as classes didn’t resume until Wednesday. (I was grateful for this. Whatever Meredith and I were doing—we hadn’t actually talked about it since our unfortunate “date” at the Bore’s Head—I wasn’t ready to discuss it with anyone else.) I tore the LaGuardia tag off my suitcase and left it at the foot of my bed. For a moment I paused, staring into James’s corner of the room. What with family histrionics and the enormous distraction of Meredith, I’d managed to push him, for a week or two, out of my mind. I’d told myself that the jealous dismay that seized me during the Christmas masque was merely a moment of insanity, a side effect of manipulative theatre magic. But as I stood there in the Tower with his shadow in the room, I felt it come creeping slowly back again.

  I went unsteadily down the stairs and spent one more night with Meredith—the only cure I could think of.

  SCENE 2

  Second-semester auditions were posted on the call-board first thing Wednesday morning.

  All fourth-years, second-years, and invited third-years, please prepare a two-minute monologue for

  KING LEAR

  The audition and rehearsal schedules were posted below. Alexander would audition first, unobserved. Then he’d watch Wren’s audition, she’d watch mine, I’d watch Filippa’s, she’d watch James’s, and he’d watch Meredith’s.

  We spent the next week scrambling to prepare new audition pieces, universally surprised by the choice of production. Lear had never in fifty years been attempted at Dellecher, likely because (as Alexander pointed out) having a tender twenty-something in the title role would be entirely absurd. How Frederick and Gwendolyn intended to address this problem, we couldn’t guess.

  At eight on the evening of the auditions, I sat alone in our usual booth at the Bore’s Head, attracting dirty looks from larger parties waiting for a table. Meredith had just left me to prepare for her own reading, and Filippa, I guessed, would be arriving shortly. I’d watched her audition—an excellent take on Tamora—and was eager to discuss casting with somebody else who had already read. (Alexander and Wren were nowhere to be found.) I finished my beer, but I didn’t leave the table, certain it would be stolen if I got up to go to the bar.

  Fortunately, Filippa breezed in from outside after only five minutes or so. Her hair was windswept and tangled, cheeks glowing pink from the sting of the cold gusts blowing snow down the street. As she sat down I said, “Drink?”

  “God, yes. Something warm.”

  I slid out of the booth as she piled her outer layers—scarf, hat, gloves, coat—in the corner. I returned from the bar with two mugs of hot cider, and Filippa raised hers in a silent toast before gulping down a mouthful.

  “
I think hell may have frozen over,” I said, brushing bits of snow that had fallen from her hat and scarf off the bench beside me.

  “I’ll believe that when I see the cast list.” She wiped a sticky drop of cider from her lips. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “If I had to guess? No clue about Lear, but obviously Wren will be Cordelia. You and Meredith will be Regan and Goneril. I’ll probably be Albany, James’ll be Edgar, and Alexander’ll be Edmund.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that last bit.”

  “Why not?”

  She shifted in her seat and glanced at the next booth, where a trio of dancers sat sipping long-stemmed glasses of white wine. When she leaned low over the table I instinctively mimicked her. We were so close that a strand of her hair tickled my forehead.

  “So, I just watched James’s audition,” she said.

  “What did he read?” I asked. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Richard Plantagenet, Two Henry Six. And force perforce I’ll make him yield the crown / Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.”

  “Really? That speech is so … I don’t know, aggressive. Doesn’t really seem his style.”

  “Yeah. As soon as he got to A day will come when York shall claim his own, it was like he was a different person all of a sudden.” She shook her head slowly. “You should have seen it, Oliver. He scared me, honestly.”

  I was mute for a moment, then shrugged. “Good for him.”

  She gave me a look so deeply skeptical that I almost laughed.

  “Pip, I mean it,” I said. “Good for him. He said at the beginning of the year he was tired of playing a type, and he’s always had that kind of range, he’s just never had a chance to show it because those sorts of roles were always going to go to Richard. Why bother? He’s got a chance now to do something new.”

  She sighed. “You’re probably right. God knows I’d like a chance to do something new.”

  “Maybe they’ll change it up this time around. It’s a different dynamic.” I nodded vaguely toward the end of the table, where, six weeks before, Richard might have been sitting. He had become a perpetual blind spot in my—and, I suspected, the others’—peripheral vision.

  “Well, you’re not wrong,” Filippa said, looking away, toward the door, at nothing in particular. “At any rate, I’ll be surprised if they don’t cast James as Edmund.”

  I didn’t set much stock by her prediction (the more fool I). Our conversation changed course, and two hours passed without incident before Meredith came in from outside, bringing a little whirl of snow in with her. “The list is up and you’ll never believe it,” she said, slapping the paper down on the table. I didn’t have time to ask where everyone else was.

  Filippa and I nearly cracked heads trying to see the list at the same time; she choked and spluttered cider across the booth. “Frederick is going to play Lear?”

  “Camilo is Albany?” I said. “What the hell?”

  “That’s not all,” Meredith said, struggling to unwind her scarf. “Read the whole thing, it’s utterly insane.”

  We bent our heads again, more cautiously. Frederick and Camilo were listed first, followed by the fourth-years, below that the third-years, and finally the second-years.

  The cast for King Lear is as follows:

  KING LEAR

  — Frederick Teasdale

  ALBANY

  — Camilo Varela

  CORDELIA

  — Wren Stirling

  REGAN

  — Filippa Kosta

  GONERIL

  — Meredith Dardenne

  EDMUND

  — James Farrow

  EDGAR

  — Oliver Marks

  FOOL

  — Alexander Vass

  CORNWALL

  — Colin Hyland

  I stopped reading after Colin’s name and gaped up at Meredith. “What on earth have they done?”

  “Fuck knows,” she said, still fiddling with the scarf, which was tangled in her hair. I instinctively lifted my hand to reach over and help, but my wrist smacked against the underside of the table and I thought better of it. “It’s like they mixed all the boys around and then decided that moving the girls was too much effort.”

  Filippa: “Alexander’s going to be thrilled.”

  Me: “For what it’s worth, I’m thrilled.”

  Meredith: “Honestly, Oliver, you act like they’ve done you a favor. It’s not as if you haven’t earned it.”

  Her face disappeared as she gave up on untangling the scarf and pulled it off over her head. Filippa looked at me and raised her eyebrows. I could have blamed the cider for the warm, melting sensation in my stomach, but my mug had long been empty.

  Meredith resurfaced and tossed the offending scarf on top of Filippa’s things. “Is it just you two?” she said.

  “It was just me for a while,” I said. “Where is everyone?”

  “Wren went back to the Castle after her audition and went straight to bed,” Meredith said. “Don’t think she wants to risk another ‘episode.’” This was what we had taken to calling Wren’s fainting spell during her Lady Anne speech. What exactly was wrong with her, nobody seemed to be able to say. “Emotional exhaustion” was how the Broadwater doctor described it, but Alexander’s diagnosis of “guilt complex” seemed more likely.

  “What about James?” Filippa asked.

  “He sat through my audition, but he was in an absolute state the whole time,” Meredith said. “Moody. You know.” (This directed at me, though I did not, in fact, know anything of the sort.) “I asked if he was coming to the bar and he said no, he wanted to go for a walk.”

  Filippa’s eyebrows climbed higher—so high they nearly disappeared into her hair. “In this weather?”

  “That’s what I said. And he said he wanted to clear his head and that he didn’t much care what the cast list said; it would say the same thing in the morning.”

  I glanced from Meredith to Filippa and said, slowly, “Okay. Where does that leave Alexander?”

  Filippa: “Probably he’s with Colin.”

  Me: “But—how did you know?”

  Meredith: “It’s not like it’s a secret.”

  Me: “He said it was!”

  Filippa: “Please. The only person who thinks it’s a secret is Colin.”

  I shook my head, glanced around the crowded barroom.

  Me: “Why do we even pretend anything is private around here?”

  Meredith: “Welcome to art school. It’s like Gwendolyn always says: ‘When you enter the theatre, there are three things you must leave at the door: dignity, modesty, and personal space.’”

  Filippa: “I thought it was dignity, modesty, and personal pride.”

  Me: “She told me dignity, modesty, and self-doubt.”

  All three of us were silent for a moment before Filippa said, “Well, this explains a lot.”

  “Do you suppose she has three different things for every student she talks to?” I asked.

  “Probably,” Meredith said. “I’m just surprised she thought personal space was my biggest issue.”

  “Maybe she wanted to prepare you to get ogled and groped and borderline sexually assaulted in every play we put on,” Filippa said.

  “Ha ha, I’m an object, very funny.” Meredith rolled her eyes. “I swear, I should have just been a stripper.”

  Filippa smirked into her mug and said, “Everyone needs a backup plan.”

  “Yeah,” Meredith said. “You could always get a sex change, become a boy on a permanent basis and start calling yourself ‘Philip.’”

  They scowled at each other, and in an effort to lighten the mood I said, “I guess my other option is an existential crisis.”

  “Not so bad,” Filippa said. “You can just play Hamlet.”

  We drank six more ciders between the three of us, waiting in vain for one of the others to make an appearance. Never before had there been so little interest in a new cast list. Even as
we drank and talked and laughed halfheartedly, it was impossible to ignore the fact that everyone’s priorities had changed. Wren was too fragile to make the usual walk from the FAB to the bar. James too distracted. Alexander, otherwise occupied. The whims governing the Dellecher staff were similarly unfathomable. Why had they suddenly lifted their half-century boycott of Lear and wedged Frederick and Camilo in with the rest of us? I told myself as I gathered my coat and gloves at the end of the night that they were simply trying to fill the hole Richard had left behind. But another nagging voice at the back of my mind kept asking whether there might be an ulterior motive. Was it possible that they, like Colborne, didn’t trust us? Perhaps Frederick and Camilo were more than cast mates and teachers. Perhaps they’d at last begun to realize what danger we were in.

  SCENE 3

  As we made our first foray into the tragic morass of King Lear, little was clarified. What became painfully clear to me, however, was that we had greatly underestimated the enormousness of Richard’s absence. He was more than a vacant bedroom, an unoccupied seat in the library, a chair at our refectory table where he sat like Banquo’s ghost, invisible to everyone but us. Often I thought I saw him out of the corner of my eye, a passing shadow, slipping out of sight around the corner. By night he was a recurring character in my dreams—as my midterm scene partner, or my silent companion at the bar—twisting the most mundane scenarios into something dark and sinister. I was not the only victim of these nocturnal torments; James had taken to muttering and fidgeting in his sleep, and on the nights I shared a bed with Meredith, sometimes I woke to find her trembling beside me. Twice we were all woken by sounds of screaming and sobbing from Wren’s room. He was as much a bully in death as he was in life, a giant who left behind not an empty space so much as a black hole, a huge crushing void that swallowed up all of our comforts, sooner or later.