Romeo, Juliet & Jim

by Larry Schwarz

  At the very least, a new guy distracted from Romeo’s business news enough that fewer people gave him “sucks to be you” grimaces than he thought would.

  It kind of bothered him.

  “Come on, dude,” Jim said. “I go to school here now. It’s my first day. Ten years, fourteen boarding schools. Make that fifteen now. But maybe I won’t get kicked out of something public. And French.” He watched as a brood of black-clad girls swish-hipped their way past. They were Les Unimpressed, as Benny liked to call them, because they never looked his way, but each one looked at Jim and each one offered her own version of a come-hither smile. “Or at least I’ll try not to.” Jim grinned back at the girls. But it was a smile Romeo had delivered a time or two: It meant the female attention was of little consequence to him. His grin said, There are always more where you came from. Romeo knew that grin because he himself had perfected it.

  He didn’t care, of course. He had Juliet. He loved Juliet.

  But who did this Jim think he was?

  “I didn’t know you were a boarding-school kid,” Romeo said. He held open the tall wrought-iron gate that led to the school’s front courtyard, facing Rue Saint-Jacques. Students milled about, finishing takeaway cups of coffee while hovering over smartphones, furtively puffing Gitanes, Camels, and Gauloises in corners nestled away from the front doors.

  Now he could feel the examining gazes returning his way. His classmates had two reasons to size him up today: The idea that a golden boy like Romeo might lose everything with this takeover scenario was juicy gossip. Plus, he was walking around with a new American kid.

  Jim shrugged. “Yeah, I try not to wear my pedigree like a country club blazer. Leave it to the other men in my family to do that. Full name is Jim Gardner. And my guess is you’re not Benedict.”

  On cue, a few guys from the lacrosse team yelled to Romeo, “Montague, does this takeover mean you won’t be Côte d’Azur–ing with us on winter break?”

  Romeo swiped the air with his hand, like he was clearing it. “Come on, like James Redmond can really take down the biggest fashion label in Paris.”

  Christian Torrant, one of the forwards, shrugged arrogantly. Romeo had always hated him. “Sounds like he’s taking down you and Capulet. But she’ll go down prettier.”

  His cocky grin made Romeo want to slug Christian in the face. Instead, he gave him the finger and turned back to Jim.

  “Yeah, not Benedict. Romeo Montague is my name,” Romeo said. Then, looking around, he spoke in a whisper. “And Beatrix, the girl you met me with, she’s really Juliet Capulet. And yes, I fucking hate what that prick just said about her.” Yesterday, he’d been so glad for the aliases Juliet had crafted, but it was pointless to keep up the ruse now. Jim would find out their real names. Romeo guessed that the guy would be like most Americans, though—unconcerned with the bold-faced names of French fashion. “Just don’t say you saw us together. I’m not supposed to be with her. She’s not supposed to be with me. No one can know.”

  They were walking through the front doors now, and Jim unzipped his jacket to reveal the same kind of tight T-shirt he’d had on yesterday. Romeo had always been lean and suddenly felt self-conscious about it. Jim had that boxer build that Romeo knew to call a boxer build because it had been key for the Montague men’s line last fall.

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that,” Jim said coolly as he glanced around the hallways of the old building.

  Romeo found the American’s easy way about the situation infuriating. “How would you know that?”

  “You don’t think the tip-off would be having to sneak you out of a bar like two fugitives? It’s not every day a future captain of industry flees the scene scrunched down in my sidecar.”

  Even more infuriating. Mostly because he was right.

  “What do you mean, ‘captain of industry’?” Romeo said. Now his hackles were up.

  Jim waved off the question. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Look, you and some model are all over the blogs this morning. I don’t even read that crap most of the time, but you’re everywhere today. Even if I was just some Joey T-Shirt American, I’d probably notice you guys.”

  Romeo didn’t really want to be reminded about the inescapability of the Rosaline images. They were everywhere, and he knew Juliet must have seen them. She had nothing to worry about. He’d been playing a part, thinking the whole time of how perfect it had been to hold Juliet’s hand in that dusty room of the museum. But a photo could make a person’s mind wander. And one of the things he loved about Juliet was her ability to imagine whole other lives for them. He could see how that quality could turn on him.

  “So, you going to need a tour guide?” Romeo asked, changing the subject. He was jealous of the way the American glanced around without giving off the slightest sense he might be nervous about his new school, or about anything … that was supposed to be Romeo’s attitude. “Someone to make sure you know the ropes?”

  “What is this, a TV movie?” Jim asked, smirking at a third-year girl with shiny raven-colored hair. “I’ve got a schedule and a map.”

  Jim talked like he didn’t care about a guide, but he didn’t seem to hate following Romeo to his locker, which was in the school’s east wing. It was the same hallway where Juliet’s locker was stationed, but she was never as early as Romeo. He lingered some mornings, for the chance to see her walk in. If the halls were especially crowded, they might make brief, secret eye contact.

  Just as he was thinking about this, she arrived. Her friends Catrine and Margaux flanked her. Juliet wasn’t close with the girls, but she’d been besieged with offers of friendship from the day of her arrival.

  He saw, as she passed, the flick of her eyes over him and Jim. Her soft brow furrowed slightly and the sweet frown he loved appeared. Romeo knew she must be wondering what Jim was doing here. He hoped the sad look on her face had nothing to do with the Rosaline photos.

  Romeo grabbed his books and shut the locker, watching but not watching as she walked away.

  “You don’t say hi,” Jim said. “That’s sad. But, again, I figured.”

  “What, because of the model?”

  “Geez, you forgot squishing yourself in my sidecar to protect your secret relationship already? I was hoping it would be a traumatic memory for you,” Jim said.

  Romeo couldn’t help it. He laughed. “I’ll make it one,” he said. He hated to admit it, but he felt a relief around Jim that he’d never felt with Benoit, even if the latter was one of his oldest friends. He knew it was because Jim knew about him and Juliet. But how comfortable could he let himself be?

  He looked at Jim with what he hoped was a serious expression. “Look, Juliet and I … obviously, well, it’s not easy. And even though I’d love the world to know, it’s beyond complicated.”

  Jim shrugged. “Bet it’s not that complicated. Your families hate each other, right? And the old people figure if they keep the young people apart, it keeps their war raging. You’re pawns.”

  Romeo nodded. This guy really got it. “What’s your family business?”

  “Hostile takeovers,” Jim said with a laugh. “Heavy on the hostile.”

  “Sounds like you could be part of my family,” Romeo said.

  “Rich kids are all part of the same family, aren’t we?” Jim pulled a slip of paper from his back pocket and looked down at it. “We have it good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not like it looks from the outside. Seems like there’s a price we pay for having money.”

  Romeo nodded. He wondered if he’d ever get to stop paying that price, or if all the promises he made to Juliet were hollow.

  Jim patted his shoulder. “Anyway, I’m not saying a word. It’s a special kind of dysfunction, ain’t it?” Catching himself, Jim grinned. “Sorry, my last roommate was a good ol’ boy whose dad did oil-field stuff. Sometimes I sound like him. I need to brush up on my French. I’ll start in this next class, if I find it.”

  He walked off, lifting a hand to wave as he did so.

/>   Romeo caught himself wondering when he would see him again, even as he knew he should stay away from him. Jim knew his biggest secret. But Romeo found himself thinking maybe it was okay to let one person know.

  No, Romeo didn’t want to like Jim, but he did. Romeo had a thing, it seemed, for liking people he wasn’t supposed to.

  CHAPTER 8

  JULIET

  IF SHE AND Romeo were a normal couple, this Monday would be a normal Monday. She could, like any jealous girlfriend, fling in her boyfriend’s face that he’d gotten too cozy with another girl over the weekend.

  Even if Rosaline was just business, Romeo had looked like he was taking some pleasure in the moment. Juliet had been fearful at the gala itself, but it was made even worse this morning, when she’d been scouring the gossip blogs. The worst: Romeo’s hand on the small of Rosaline’s back as they slipped out of their limo into Le Petit Marché. Rosaline leaning toward Romeo, whispering something into his ear with one hand possessively clamped on his sleeve.

  The images conveyed the kind of close intimacy that Juliet imagined existed between her and Romeo. But it wasn’t like she had any photos of them together to prove it to herself.

  Funny how it was just so easy to take a single moment between Romeo and Rosaline and imagine an entire romance for them, with the same detail she’d used for her own visions of life with Romeo. It was an ability unique to females, she thought, to imagine not just an instance, but everything. Gabrielle concocted fantasies about her crushes—whole lifetimes—as soon as she met them. (And Gabrielle, Juliet knew, could take one morsel of a glance from Henri and imagine it meant something fateful between them. Gabrielle’s capacity for denying the obvious—Henri liked but didn’t love her—was another womanly ability.) Did men do the same thing? It didn’t seem like it. Not from the way Romeo told her she was being silly to dream of escape. Not even, it seemed, from the way he didn’t seem to realize how her mind would interpret the photos from the night before.

  She was a mess this morning, moving as though in a fog, her body a clatter of anger and urgency. She wanted to rage against Romeo for his attentions to Rosaline. She also thought how she might need not rage if it weren’t for fate, keeping them from just being Romeo and Juliet. Then there would be no Rosaline.

  Life—even in a mansion right in the bud of the beautiful Avenue Montaigne—was not fair. When you grew up rich and privileged, you were prone to think that it was more than fair to you. But it found a way to take something from you, didn’t it?

  Lu Hai had noticed Juliet’s existential funk that morning. “Last night was not everything you wanted it to be?” She was shaking her head as she brushed Juliet’s hair. The hair-brushing wasn’t part of the normal routine anymore, but Lu Hai seemed to know what Juliet needed as she sat like a lump at her vanity.

  Besides the obvious problems, this was what bothered Juliet about their secret relationship: What could she honestly ask of him? For that matter, what could he ask of her? Their relationship was just stolen moments in hidden rooms. Divine moments, yes, but as ephemeral and wispy as the way Juliet believed in a divinity. Sometimes the sun seemed to shine out from the center of every flower in the Jardin du Luxembourg … and it was easy to think a god had done it. But then the rest of the time, even in Paris, everything felt so humanly mundane that it was just as easy to forget the divine moment had ever occurred at all.

  Was Romeo just a dream? A drug?

  No, she couldn’t march up to him between classes now and, with fire in her eyes, ask why she’d seen pictures of him leaving a late night dinner with Rosaline. (A dinner where the lithe model had no doubt smoked much and eaten nothing, not that Juliet was such a stranger to that diet.)

  She was late for her French literature class but her mind was such a blur that she was fumbling through her locker, pulling out the wrong books again and again.

  “Merde,” Juliet huffed, finally finding her Balzac and slamming the locker shut. The halls had emptied. Catrine and Margaux had left her alone after making a fuss over the takeover news—“Does this mean you won’t get free clothes anymore?” Catrine had asked, like an idiot. And then Juliet had refused to talk about Pierre, annoyed that her so-called friends couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t like a real LeFevre. She just felt bad for him, being so happy in her presence last night when her desires were so firmly elsewhere.

  She never wanted to be where she was anymore, except when she was with Romeo. Her heart tugged angrily away from her body all the time now. She was distracted in school, depressed at home, and felt a hole inside her that wouldn’t be filled if she couldn’t have him. Her enviable life was spiraling out of control.

  And then what she’d just seen in the hallway. Was it a hallucination? Or had Romeo really been standing there with the American from yesterday? She was in the dark as to what it meant. All her anger toward Romeo had fused with a fresh confusion and, if she admitted it, guilt. Yes, Juliet felt guilty. Guilty because when she’d woken this morning, it was with the fuzz of a dream in her head, and the fuzz—if she allowed herself to smooth it out—was from a belle rêve in which she was on the back of the motorcycle again, the lights of Paris far behind her and a wide expanse of ocean ahead of her. And also ahead of her were the shoulders she remembered from yesterday, encased in the black leather jacket she’d seen on Jim again today.

  In sleep, her mind had gone to Jim, even though awake, she craved Romeo.

  Her guilt over a dreamed dalliance was screwing up her fury at Romeo’s real indiscretion.

  She rushed down the hall toward her first class, almost tripping though she wore low-heeled boots along with a vintage Chanel skirt and a half-tucked old button-down of Henri’s—another one. (Though she was the unofficial face of the House of Capulet, Juliet was also known for her effortless street style, a fusion of new and vintage pieces.)

  “Damn!” She was so out of sorts she seemed capable of only one-word curses. Why should she feel bad about a dream—a dream that meant nothing? (Or, if it meant anything, it was probably her subconscious also being angry at Romeo for not agreeing to run away. Whereas Jim seemed like just the type to say yes without a second thought.)

  She was angry at Romeo. That was all the dream signified. She wanted him to run away and Jim represented her wish for freedom. (How very American, no?)

  As she rounded the corner in a hurry, two hands reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Whoa, hold up there,” came a voice immediately familiar. An American accent.

  Juliet looked up into Jim’s coffee-colored eyes. They jolted her to earth like they were caffeinated.

  She felt color rising in her cheeks. Could dreams be broadcast across foreheads, like replays of soccer matches?

  “Hey, it’s you,” he said, en anglais. “Juliet.” He said it hesitantly, watching her face almost like he wanted to make sure it was okay. His voice was soft and less assured than the day before. And was it her imagination or was he blushing a little, too?

  “How do you…” Juliet’s own English was fair but her voice trembled. Had they made an awful mistake, letting this American help them?

  “Benedict told me,” he said, in French now. Juliet took a second to process who “Benedict” was, but when she did, she felt her mouth pull into an O of surprise. Jim’s eyes softened, the skin at the corners crinkling as he smiled down at her. Touching the top of her arm, he said, “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed about you and Romeo.”

  His hand on her arm was warm and she caught herself looking at his face for far too long. Jim was someone who invited closer inspection. Juliet detected something beneath the swagger, as was usually the case. Most of all, she sensed she really could trust him.

  “Well, who knows if there’s anything to keep your lips sealed about?” Juliet said, dropping a step back and out of Jim’s reach. A day when she was mad at Romeo was no time to be standing so near someone who’d featured in her dreams the night before. Not that she was honestly tempted, bu
t she didn’t want Jim to seep further into her subconscious.

  Jim laughed. “You have to be kidding me. Is this about the model in the pictures?”

  “What, you’re on his side?” Juliet started down the hallway at a fast clip. Who was this stranger to come weigh in on her relationship problems? Or her problem relationship, as the case might well be.

  Jim walked just as briskly as she did, or at least his stride was longer and he had little problem keeping up. “There are no sides,” he said. “That guy is in love with you. Whatever was up with the model thing yesterday is pure publicity.”

  Now Juliet stopped. “Did he tell you that? She’s just ‘publicity’? Of course that’s what he’ll say,” she said. “But that’s not what I saw.”

  Jim hung his head down, like he was taking responsibility for the Rosaline incident, and for all men in general. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “I’m a cocky American. And when I see a girl like you, nothing in the world would stop me from hitting on her, even if she had a boyfriend.”

  “Charmant,” Juliet said. Had she just been giving this guy credit for running deep two seconds ago?

  Jim held up a hand and that cocky American grin returned. It was such a contrast from Romeo’s more still intensity. There was something in the way Romeo looked at her that made her feel liquid, and like he could drink her all in. Whereas Jim made her feel like he might throw her over his shoulder and cart her off for more playful amusement.

  “Gimme a second to get to the point,” he said. His eyes were trained on hers, like he really wanted to be taken seriously. “I would hit on her unless I could tell so easily that she was in love with a guy who loved her back. And that guy leaves no doubt that he loves you back. Believe me. I hate admitting when I’m outmanned.”

  Juliet smiled at the sweet, shy way he said this. Why, sometimes, with Romeo and now with Jim, did she feel so much wiser, like she understood more, even if her experience in the world was more limited? Romeo called her a crazy dreamer when she spun tales of their running away, but some piece of her knew that her ideas were wholly sane. And now here was Jim, and she knew that he harbored some loneliness beneath all his bravado. Maybe she was wrong, but why did boys hide so many truths from themselves?