Romeo, Juliet & Jim

by Larry Schwarz

  “Juliet, who is your friend?”

  Juliet swallowed a mouthful of sushi and held up a finger for Prince Charming to wait. Jim could tell just by the way the guy’s eyes tracked Juliet’s movements that he liked her as more than a friend. The question Jim needed to answer was whether Juliet liked this guy the same way.

  Which he only needed to find out for Romeo. Of course for Romeo.

  “Pierre!” she said, with genuine surprise. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Your mother invited me,” he said. In that instant, Jim knew Prince Charming didn’t have a chance with Juliet and probably had uttered the words guaranteed to end any possibility of a chance. Your mother invited me were the words of a guy with no game, except maybe Tiddlywinks.

  “Oh, Maman, bien sûr,” Juliet said, in a tone that threatened to turn to laughter. Now she grabbed Jim’s arm like he was escorting her to a dance. To Pierre, she said, “Have you met my new friend Jim?”

  The way she said “new friend” held all the assurances of someone who was more than a friend and Jim took the bait, for Pierre’s benefit.

  “Jim Gardner,” he said, his “this is mine” voice sounding more like his father’s than he was used to. He shook hands with the cartoonishly handsome Pierre, thinking he should tell Romeo to kick this guy’s ass. It wasn’t fair, though, since Romeo and Juliet weren’t a public thing. And didn’t Romeo have his pseudo-date—Rosaline—for media consumption?

  Maybe Jim was lucky to be single.

  “Pierre LeFevre,” the guy said in a tone that dripped with entitlement. As if Jim had any notion of what a LeFevre was.

  “Well, glad you two could meet,” Juliet said, steering Jim—plate still in hand—away.

  “Did I just help you shut that guy down?” Jim asked, looking over his shoulder at the stunned LeFevre.

  “I’ve been ruder and he always comes back. But at least he’ll leave me alone for now.” Her face had an impish quality about it as she said this, and Jim relished even more his role as her co-conspirator. “You see, he’ll go talk to Thibeau. Maybe he thinks it will get him points. Too bad he doesn’t know I hate Thibeau.”

  But sure enough, the LeFevre dude was clinking champagne flutes and greeting a guy Jim assumed had to be Thibeau, who wore his hair slicked back like he was trying to look the part of a rich douchebag villain. Pierre and Thibeau together looked like the kind of guys who would accidentally kill a hooker and hide the body.

  “I want you to meet my brother,” Juliet now said, rolling her eyes as Thibeau let out a loud laugh, and dodging other guests. Her avoidance wasn’t cold, though, just familiar. What would it have been like to grow up with a house full of people like this?

  “Is that Thibeau?” Jim pointed to the douchey guy, who was now greeting guests like he owned the place. There was something nasty to his eyes, even when he smiled.

  “Ew.” Juliet practically spat. “Yes, that’s Thibeau. The undeserving guest of honor I told you about. My cousin. Remember, we do not like Thibeau. Or I do not openly. The rest of the family pretends to.”

  Jim grinned. “You’re so sweet and innocent seeming, and here you are breaking hearts and badmouthing family.”

  “I’m not sweet, nor innocent. And he’s a jerk, believe me.”

  She squeezed his hand and pulled him around a table buried under a mound of gifts, presumably for the atrocious Thibeau. “My brother’s name is Henri. He’ll like you. You’ve probably been kicked out of some of the same boarding schools.”

  Jim laughed, and felt flattered. Girls often liked him but never in a way that made them want to introduce him to their older brothers.

  “Just so you know, he’s been a bit gloomy lately,” she added, her eyes darkening. “It’s complicated.”

  Jim was guessing this had to do with the drug issues Juliet had mentioned to him in the hallway. It was exactly the kind of bombshell his father was probably waiting to get his hands on. Jim wondered how long he could hold off on telling him, while still feeling like a good son. “The drug thing you mentioned?”

  “Yes, and just … things. I can’t really talk about it here.” She took Jim’s forearm and stepped close to his ear. “With everything going on with James Redmond and the House of Montague, I have to be very careful what I say, in case someone is listening. I never know if the wrong person will use the information against us.”

  Jim grinned, even as his gut clenched. “Yeah, always best to be careful.”

  CHAPTER 17

  ROMEO

  “HOLY SHIT, WOULD you look at the women in here,” Benny was yelling unsubtly over the thumping French techno. He banged his head in time with the beat, his eyes almost bursting from their sockets as every new nymphet passed by. “There’s no way we go home alone tonight, Romeo.”

  Romeo looked sideways at Jim, who knew that Romeo didn’t want to go home with any of the gyrating sirens who flooded the vast dance floor. Romeo had left a message for Juliet in their secret email, but she’d only written to say that she had to go to a family party that day. She did sign it “love,” but he was worried. So he’d invited Jim out with him and Benny tonight, and now realized he hoped for Jim to reassure him that things would be fine with Juliet. He felt so discombobulated by her long absence—it had been nearly two weeks since they’d touched at the Palais ball—that he was grasping at straws.

  The party was Benny’s idea. Another warehouse thing in a sketchy part on the edge of the Tenth. Still exclusive, of course. Maybe a harder invite than something more outwardly swank. The guest list boasted a blend of haves like Romeo, Benny, and Jim, and have-lesses, some of whom made up the difference by selling the pills that could make the party fun for people who weren’t able to do it on their own. The theme was Dans les Bois (French for “Into the Woods”) and all around them were girls in various states of au naturel dress. Whether wearing the garb of a woodland sprite, a butterfly, a bird, or a furry mammal, the uniform was similar—bikini tops and hot pants–style bottoms worn with wings or tails and ears of some sort—and lots of body glitter.

  The effects on Benny—and most of the guys present, really—was to turn them into wolves on the prowl.

  “What? You guys too good for these ladies?” Benny intoned, looking from Romeo to Jim and then back out on the sea of glistening skin. “I suppose you only date big-time models, too.” He said it with a sneer toward Jim. So far, Benny had made almost no secret of his distaste for Romeo’s new friend. As a loyal lieutenant, Benny was often skeptical of anyone who tried to befriend Romeo, but Jim had the two added annoyances of being someone Romeo actually seemed to like and attracting the attentions of most of the female population at Louis-le-Grand.

  “Me? No,” Jim said. “Just, you know, sizing up my options.” Romeo only knew a little of Jim’s romantic past—mostly because the past he had, as Jim told it, wasn’t necessarily romantic. In fact, it had been a lot like Romeo’s: many seductions but a lack of real feelings.

  The guy needed to find his Juliet. Even if Romeo didn’t believe many people were able to find their perfect matches the way he had.

  A cocktail waitress who definitely wasn’t it approached them. The girl was wearing an oversized foxtail and a hat that looked like a fox’s head, with long furry extensions falling over her russet bikini. She carried a tray of drinks. Steam seemed to rise from them against the flashing colored lights. “Magic potions, boys?”

  “Three,” Benny said before asking the others. His gaze sank so far down the girl’s top it was a wonder he didn’t dive right in.

  Romeo pulled out his credit card. Benny had paid the cover and Romeo was used to footing a lot of their entertainment bill. He treated for a great many things.

  The waitress tapped the magnetic strip against her iPad, waited a few seconds, then frowned.

  “This isn’t working,” she said, leaning close to Romeo. “Declined.”

  A declined credit card was so out of the ordinary for Romeo that he didn’t for a second
think that a real money issue could exist. Thus, he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed, the way someone used to watching his spending would be. Jim, too, was unfazed, even knowing as he did that Redmond was looking into the House of Montague’s finances. A life of privilege had the singular disadvantage of putting a person far out of touch with reality.

  “I got it,” Jim said, handing the waitress his card. The waitress trailed a long-nailed hand down his arm as she lifted the card from his fingertips.

  “You certainly do,” she said to Jim, who seemed impervious to her woodland-creature charms. Still, he left a sizable tip, Romeo noted. More than Romeo would have, even. He wondered for a second what kind of hostile takeovers Jim’s dad specialized in. But what did it matter? Weren’t all rich kids the same in a way?

  “Thanks for the drink, bro,” Benny said, not sounding grateful at all. He took a large swig and excused himself, making his way across the dance floor to talk to a guy in a hooded sweatshirt who was supposed to look like a grizzly bear. No doubt the guy supplied something Benny wanted. Romeo wasn’t much for pills and honestly wished his cousin would refrain. But he had other problems: mostly that he felt his only reassurances lately that Juliet still loved him had come through Jim.

  “Your cousin’s really big on you hooking up with someone,” Jim said, offering an appreciative glance at a flock of girls wearing butterfly wings.

  “I know,” Romeo said. “It’s my fault. I used to be quite the collector and Benny got to enjoy the tales.”

  Jim gestured with his drink toward Benny, dancing wildly in the middle of a circle of girls. “He looks like he’ll live,” Jim said.

  “Yeah…” Romeo felt his energy flagging. He’d come tonight to be out and about, and to keep up appearances—for who, exactly, he didn’t know. Benny. Bloggers. Women who knew him. He had the wrong kind of reputation to uphold. The only good thing about being here was that at least Jim was aware of his real feelings.

  “Wood nymph at twelve o’clock,” Jim said, using some Americanism that Romeo wasn’t familiar with. Romeo turned to find himself caught in Rosaline’s arms, each one wrapped with green silk fashioned to look like climbing vines.

  “I heard you were here,” Rosaline said, her slithering limbs constricting him on all sides.

  The Rosaline conundrum was something he had to address, and soon. The more he was seen with her, the more he feared Juliet would be too angry to bear him.

  But she didn’t understand that Rosaline was good for their cover. She helped him maintain some sense of his playboy lifestyle. He didn’t want that lifestyle any longer, of course, but what was the harm in being seen with Rosaline to ensure attention stayed off him and Juliet? As long as he didn’t mean anything by it, Juliet should have known that she was the one.

  “Come dance with me,” Rosaline said, skipping off into the throbbing mass of people with a come-hither flick of her wrist.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  Jim was looking at him with some kind of macho American squint, as if to say, What are you doing?

  Romeo didn’t acknowledge what he presumed to be a judgment. Instead, he said, “I need a drink.”

  He ordered another round of drinks and let Jim pay. Among the very rich, there was often no money-counting (except, of course, when it came time for one party to buy the other party whole).

  When the literally foxy waitress had gone, Jim turned to Romeo, who was scouting the dance floor in search of Rosaline.

  “I know you have your reasons for the Rosaline thing, but just, you know, be careful with Juliet,” Jim shouted over the music.

  “I’m nothing but careful with Juliet,” Romeo said, irritated. What did Jim know about being in love? The guy had all but admitted he’d never dated anyone seriously. “I would rather be with her. But it’ll be a long time before I can change things enough to make our relationship safe.”

  “Isn’t your company being bought?” Jim said. He tossed off the question casually as he held eye contact with an Amazonian girl in an owl costume.

  “Since when is that of interest to you?” Romeo shouldn’t have been so nasty with Jim. He wasn’t mad at him. But he bristled at the sudden interrogation. Wasn’t he allowed to blow off steam at a nightclub?

  “It was just a question,” Jim said. “It’s been in the papers. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. More annoyed. Romeo realized he was being a prick to Jim. Too much time around Benny and assorted yes-men and now he couldn’t handle a few honest questions from someone who wasn’t sucking up to him.

  “You’re right, man,” Romeo said, tuning in to the music and his drinks, which were pretty good. He needed this. Between his stressed-out father, Benny constantly hounding him about landing girls, and the fact that he couldn’t see his real girlfriend, things hadn’t been as effortless for him lately. “I’m just being a dick.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. You’re in a hard situation,” Jim said. “All I’m saying is that she seemed upset when we talked today. And then when she sees your photo with Rosaline, no matter what I or even you tell her, she’ll feel like your relationship isn’t real.”

  “Wait, when did you see her?” Romeo had barely registered anything Jim had said past “we talked today.” He could almost imagine the music screeching to a halt. What had Jim been doing with Juliet today—a Saturday? Romeo thought Jim was going to talk to her at school. And that their talk in the halls would be brief and impersonal (or at least only about Romeo).

  “It’s not a big deal. There was a party for her cousin Thibeau at the house. She invited me, kind of as a cover so her friend Catrine wouldn’t—”

  He didn’t let Jim finish.

  “So you were at her house?”

  “Yeah,” Jim said, while eyeballing another girl across the club. She was dressed in fairy garb and fluttering her long blue eyelashes at him. The Amazonian owl was still watching him, too. Romeo wasn’t used to being second fiddle to another guy. “I went to talk to her about you, at school, like we talked about, and she invited me. I mean, it’s not weird if I’m friends with both of you, right? We’re all friends.”

  Romeo downed half his drink in one go, feeling the warmth of the whiskey flood his system.

  They were all friends but this wouldn’t do. He should have been the one at Juliet’s house. He should be the one seeing her.

  “Hey,” he asked Jim, feeling seized by an impulse to be with her that went beyond even his normal urge, “do you have Juliet’s number?”

  “You’re dating her, you don’t have it?” Jim looked at him like Romeo had just asked him to join a cult.

  “No, you know our relationship hasn’t been like that,” Romeo said, bristling. “I can only reach her through a goddamn secret email account.” He knew Jim’s question was a reasonable one, but he still didn’t like the idea that he was judging them.

  But as Jim sent him the number from his own phone, Romeo thought maybe he had been playing things too safe.

  He sent her a text message, writing it so she’d know it was from him.

  Then he went to join Rosaline on the dance floor.

  CHAPTER 18

  ROMEO AND JULIET, TOGETHER AND APART

  A TEXT.

  Let’s meet at our place in the 13th. Noon. A.V.O.

  “Who’s texting you so early in the morning?” Hélène was an early riser, but until she was out of her robe, she didn’t believe the day should start for anyone else. She sipped her café au lait carefully, more to not drive wrinkles into the skin above her lips than to keep from spilling the drink.

  In truth, the text had come hours ago, while Juliet slept. And though the number was unfamiliar, she knew at once it was from Romeo. A.V.O. gave it away.

  Romeo’s carelessness was perhaps risky but it was also romantic.

  He wanted to see her.

  Badly enough that he had texted. No secret email, no notes left on bridges. He’d just been gripped by a need for her and
acted. It may have been what she’d wanted all along.

  He must have wanted to make sure she saw his message immediately. (She’d never tell him how obsessively she checked their secret email account.)

  Juliet turned the phone facedown on the breakfast table and pulled a petal from one of the pink roses from the centerpiece vase. (The Capulets had fresh flowers delivered every other day.)

  Turning the velvety petal over in her fingers, thinking, He loves me, she told Hélène, “Oh, a friend for a school project. I’ll have to go to the bibliothèque.”

  “You can have Guillaume drive you,” her father said, not looking up from his tablet, where an array of numbers flooded the small screen. She couldn’t tell from his expression if they were good numbers or bad, and right now she didn’t care all that much.

  Henri could sense something, though, and he raised his eyebrows at her from across the breakfast table. The Capulets didn’t eat breakfast together all the time, but the caterers for yesterday’s party had sent over a breakfast spread to say thank you, and now the family was nibbling on croissants, a berry tart, and expensive Spanish ham. Juliet could only pick at a croissant. Her body was eager with anticipation.

  “I’d better get ready,” she said, excusing herself. It was the ideal morning to be in a rush. Hélène would have her aesthetician and masseuse make house calls to rid her of toxins from the party. And her father would likely be engrossed in work after missing a day of doing it.

  Henri followed her to the stairs. “Is it the motorcycle boy?” He wore a grin that indicated he was happy for her. “He’s a good-looking guy. I didn’t know you went for young street toughs.”

  She slapped Henri’s arm playfully. Her brother was doing much better since his incident, and even though she knew things were always precarious, she was hopeful. “No, it’s really a class project.” Henri had liked Jim, and vice versa. Juliet wasn’t sure if it was Jim’s resounding Americanness—so unlike Pierre’s more posh ways—that intrigued her brother, or if he just saw that she was comfortable with Jim, but she didn’t dare to ask. It was better if her family—even Henri—saw her as their chaste, sweet little girl.