Romeo, Juliet & Jim

by Larry Schwarz

  “Nothing, I love it,” Juliet said, reaching back to squeeze his hand. “It’s just how crowded this place is. See, we have company.”

  The redhead who’d chatted up Jim earlier had come back with him now. She came up to his shoulder and she leaned on him as if they’d been a couple for years. She was definitely American. “You look so familiar,” she was saying to him.

  Jim smiled and took a sip of his beer. He rolled his eyes at Romeo, as if this kind of drunken recognition was a trick women used on him all the time. For all Romeo knew, it probably was.

  “I get that a lot,” he said. “I think it’s just my face.”

  “No, no, isn’t this you?” the girl said, walking to the edge of the bar and picking up a newspaper that was strewn across the surface. Places like this opened early enough that big-time drunks could sip their morning bourbon while reading Figaro.

  Romeo could see Jim’s face grow pale, even in the dim light of the bar. He was shaking his head with such vigorous denial that Romeo had to find out what this was all about.

  Romeo pulled the paper from the hands of the stunned American.

  It was Jim, with James Redmond. Eating dinner. In the Eiffel Tower.

  The caption read, “A Family Affair.”

  Romeo’s teeth pressed against each other as he tried to read the accompanying story. He could barely get through it as blood flowed to his clenched fists. What he could digest mentioned the proposed takeover of the Houses of Montague and Capulet. Jim Gardner was Jim Redmond, son of James Redmond, who was planning to buy the two houses and slice, dice, and merge them into some streamlined shell of their former selves. Romeo didn’t have to read any more.

  “What is this?” Romeo said, shoving the paper into Jim’s chest. “What is this? This is your father?” His voice was shaky but loud. He pushed his weight against Jim, sending Jim back a few steps. But Jim’s hands were in the air, like a surrender. It infuriated Romeo even more. He wanted a reason to crush the American scum, but he wasn’t going to throw a punch at someone who might not fight back.

  He crumpled the paper and threw it down with all the force he wanted to use on Jim. Juliet grabbed it from the floor and opened it, then looked up with tears in her eyes.

  She emitted a soft, heartbroken cry. “How could you? How could you do this to me?” she said to Jim. It wasn’t just that she’d said “to me” and not “to us,” but something worse in her tone that crept along Romeo’s bones like an ugly, prickly vine. She sounded like Jim had betrayed her, not them.

  Jim looked from Romeo to Juliet and didn’t say anything at first. He still looked stunned, like his secret was just being revealed to him instead of the other way around.

  The redhead backed away. “Oh-kay,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t have pressed the subject.”

  Romeo’s fists still vibrated with an urge to punch Jim. He should have. But the guy didn’t even deserve a real fight. It wouldn’t hurt him enough. What would? He was a traitor. He was a liar. He was never the friend Romeo had believed he was.

  And Juliet was standing too far away. She should have been next to him, leveling Jim with a glare that buttressed all his anger. Romeo tried to control it, but he felt his arm draw back and he punched Jim in the face. There was no love in it this time. He felt cold satisfaction as Jim’s body sprawled against the bar, as his hand flew to his eye, which was already darkening.

  The American girl who’d shown them the paper shrieked and scurried to join her friends.

  “It’s not like you think,” Jim said, struggling back to his feet. “I didn’t do anything.” His hands remained up in an “I’m innocent” pose. His jaw was trembling. His normally cocky gaze was replaced by a humbled, saddened look of being lost. But Romeo didn’t feel sorry for him. He was just a worthless American liar, and who knew how else he’d fucked them over?

  Now Juliet spoke.

  “But you didn’t say that James Redmond was your father,” she said. “Why would you keep that a secret?”

  “I don’t have a good answer for that,” Jim told them. His eyes were focused somewhere on the space between them, rather than actually at either Romeo or Juliet. Romeo wondered if the asshole actually felt bad or was just avoiding their eyes because he thought they were so far beneath him for not figuring it out sooner.

  “This was just a game to you,” Romeo said, and now he closed in on Jim, pushing him a little so Jim’s back hit the bar. Who cared if he wasn’t ready for it? Romeo didn’t care about being the bigger man. He just wanted to hurt this guy. “I suppose we’re part of the hostile takeover.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. To Romeo, it was silence that admitted everything. To think he’d thought of Jim as a brother.

  “Juliet, let’s go,” he said, pulling her toward the door.

  But Juliet drew her arm away. She did it just slowly enough that he could literally feel her slipping away from him.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not being hauled off like some prize. I can be mad of my own accord.”

  She looked from Romeo to Jim and then back.

  And she was the first to leave.

  CHAPTER 28

  JIM

  HE WAS ALONE.

  Again.

  Juliet had left.

  Then Romeo.

  He wasn’t someone well versed in apologizing. Besides, he wasn’t sure an apology was what he needed to do. Maybe this was just who he was.

  His father did hostile takeovers.

  And Jim made friends and screwed them over.

  What was the point anymore of even trying?

  “We’ve let you ruin enough,” Romeo had said.

  And he hadn’t even known the half of it.

  Without speaking, the bartender slid a glass of ice to him. Jim pressed it to his eye and ordered another drink, feeling and looking every bit the Ugly American.

  CHAPTER 29

  JULIET

  JULIET WOKE IN a fog the next day. The covers were over her head and she breathed the thick heat of her sleep, sure that there was no better place for her than bed.

  She didn’t want to see Jim or Romeo. She didn’t want to be with anyone.

  Not with Jim. She didn’t trust him.

  Not with Romeo. She didn’t believe him.

  Not with herself. Today, more than ever, she really wished she were someone else.

  “Juliet. Juliet.” A hand was shaking her out of bed. Her father. Why was her father in her room? She pulled back the top corner of her covers, putting her palm over the necklace Romeo had given her, trying to hide it.

  Was this about Romeo? Her father knew, didn’t he? Jim had told. Why would Jim tell? To break them up. Or maybe something crueler.

  These thoughts careered inside her and she sprang up from the bed, about to tell her father everything.

  She looked up into his eyes, expecting to see disappointment, anger … but not what she saw. Panic and fear shot out from his dilated pupils.

  “It’s Henri,” he said. His normally booming voice was wispy even though his grip on her arm was tight. “He’s dead.”

  * * *

  In the week that followed, she felt like she never left her bed. She did, of course. She had to, as preparations were made and flowers arrived and her mother cried and her father swore and Lu Hai silently maintained the order of Juliet’s room, even as disorder spiraled around them.

  There were messages in the secret email account from Romeo. She didn’t reply. Jim called her. She didn’t answer. Emails and phone calls flooded her—from Gabrielle, Catrine, Margaux. She felt at liberty to ignore everything.

  She wandered the house like she was the ghost, and continued to breathe the same air she’d breathed before she learned Henri was dead.

  Her brother had been murdered. That’s what they were saying, anyway. A maid had found his body in one of those apartments in the Ninth. Or, what appeared to be his body. He’d been badly burned. His teeth had been removed, indicating foul play. A test on the remains
found his DNA, and unsinged was his Capulet signet ring.

  Juliet twisted her own ring, thinking of the awful visit to the De Molay Hospital in the Marais. The family had been summoned to the morgue before the official autopsy, but the whole thing seemed like a special kind of torture. There was no body to be seen. Just a brisk nurse handing them a bag with the scorched ring. Nothing else in the apartment was burned, indicating he’d been killed in another location and brought there.

  Now, Juliet was in the back of a hearse.

  Numb.

  She knew she was supposed to cry. She wanted to cry. She wanted the release of it; she wanted tears because they’d make her feel emptied.

  Instead, she felt a nothingness so solid she thought she might turn to stone.

  Was this her comeuppance for doing whatever she wanted?

  If she hadn’t been so entangled with Romeo and with Jim, would Henri still be alive?

  She thought back to that last conversation they’d had and scoured it for hints. She thought now that he had wanted to tell her something that day, but she’d been so eager for revenge on Romeo that she’d missed it.

  And now her brother was gone. Who knew what he’d been thinking as he died? Who would want to kill him like they had?

  People were looking into it. The family had been assured the killers would be brought to justice. Juliet thought these were more lies.

  All she could do now was watch her brother be put into the ground.

  The cemetery was much nicer than the one Jim had taken her and Romeo to. Père Lachaise was the resting place of Oscar Wilde, the writer; Jim Morrison, the rock star; and Maria Callas, the opera singer. Being so filled with “names” meant only people who had the money could bury their dead here now. The smallest plot cost thirteen thousand euros. But the Capulets had a mausoleum—a circular, marble-walled fortress with a cluster of sculpted angels looming above it. The inside held a set of damp passageways that curved and wended along walls that housed the entombed Capulets.

  Neither of her parents cared about what the thing cost or if it was the best. Like Juliet, Hélène and Maurice had gone rigid. It was the Capulet way, to show nothing of what they were truly feeling. Her mother, she knew, would just go deeper into the superficial after this—try to make her life pretty and light to hide all the hurt she’d lived. And her father would do his best to be strong, because too much questioning would make him wonder if it was his fault his son was dead.

  The church service had been small, just the immediate family and servants who’d known Henri since childhood. Her parents, betraying their unspoken vows of showing only strength, had wept openly during the sermon, but Juliet could only stand between them, holding their hands, feeling uncertain whether she was holding them up or the other way around.

  In the limo, Juliet allowed her father to stare sadly at the passing scenery. He didn’t worry her as much as her mother did, because Maurice would have things he had to do. But her mother would keep retreating into herself, covering her misery so that things could still seem perfect. Saddened by the thought, Juliet cuddled close to her mother, as she had when she was a young girl. She felt relief when her mother’s cool hand petted the hair out of her eyes.

  “Will it be okay, Maman?” Juliet whispered.

  Her mother clutched Juliet’s shoulder and pressed her lips against her daughter’s temple. “No, but we will do our best,” Hélène said, and Juliet felt the slightest bit heartened by this little truth as they pulled onto the narrow path that led to the mausoleum where Henri would be interred.

  As she stepped out of the limo, Juliet saw a crowd had already gathered, awaiting the family procession to the gravesite. Shareholders, actors, lawyers, models, businesspeople. All of them in their best black, some of them vying to be the most photo-worthy at the funeral.

  And for every person, there seemed to be three paparazzi, pushing their way in. They forced themselves through the crowds to get shots of the Capulets. As much as Juliet loathed them, though, they at least were working. It sickened her even more to see the preening poses of the funeral-goers around her, hopeful that if they were going to be in a shot, they’d look glamorous.

  “Did any of you even know Henri?” Juliet muttered under her breath as she walked down the passageway left by the onlookers.

  Surprisingly, Hélène didn’t scold her, only squeezed her arm lightly to calm her. “Je sais, Juliet. Just be strong.” Her voice wavered.

  Gabrielle, wearing a sedate dress that did nothing for her million-dollar figure, came up alongside Juliet and put an arm around her. “I’m so sorry,” she said sincerely, with none of her trademark Gabrielle jocularity. “I loved him,” she added, more to herself, the candor unlike her. Juliet knew she was being honest.

  But many others, Juliet thought, seemed to think the funeral was a party. Catrine and Margaux wore exotic feathered veils and were eyeballing the male models in attendance. One of the shareholders, a commercial real estate developer, slipped his card to the head of the bank that oversaw the family trust.

  “This is disgusting,” Juliet said to Gabrielle. Over Gabrielle’s shoulder, Juliet caught Thibeau and Pierre (were they really friends now?) glad-handing with some Capulet board members, like this was a cocktail party that just happened in the cemetery. She hoped one day that each of their worlds would collapse so that she could treat their situations with the same jovial opportunism.

  “I know, and I’m not even a good person,” Gabrielle agreed. “At least they’re here and not at the Montagues’ thing.”

  “The Montagues’ thing?” Juliet’s heart alternately fluttered and cringed at the name.

  “Yeah, while you’re putting your brother underground, they’re having a party on a yacht,” Gabrielle said. “Can you say horrible?”

  “What do you mean?” Juliet strained to make sense of what Gabrielle was telling her. Her brother, her father’s son, was dead—had been murdered—and the Montagues were on a boat? Having a party?

  She dug her fingernails into her palms until it seemed she might draw blood.

  She had arrived at the gravesite without even noticing. White lilies surrounded the entry to the mausoleum, waiting to accept what was left of her brother—an almost-empty mahogany box. He was more gone from her life than she ever imagined he could be. She’d been fighting to keep him from exile, never daring to imagine something like this could happen.

  Cry, she thought. Cry. Tears would drain her, maybe even shatter her, and she wanted that.

  But nothing would come. The sky sank with the weight of heavy clouds. The clouds would cry before she did.

  She was all she had now. Henri was gone. Jim was gone. Romeo was gone.

  No, Romeo wasn’t gone.

  Romeo was cold and callous and on a boat, celebrating what? That the people he cared about were still alive?

  He was dead to her.

  Her eyes saw nothing and her ears heard nothing and her skin was cold to the touch; she might as well have been made of steel.

  Juliet reached for her mother’s hand and squeezed it. Hélène’s hand felt like death itself, but she squeezed back faintly as the priest continued to talk over the muffled sobs of mourners.

  “Some things are not meant for this earth. Some people cannot be ours, no matter how much we want to keep them.”

  Juliet thought he was talking about more than Henri.

  But she still couldn’t cry.

  CHAPTER 30

  ROMEO

  HE SHOULD HAVE been with her.

  Her brother was dead.

  The Capulets were at a funeral. And he was on a boat.

  “I hope you don’t have plans today, Romeo.” His mother had caught him just as he was headed out the door, restless and wanting to figure out how to get a message to Juliet. He’d left an email in their secret account and gotten no reply—he didn’t blame her—and he didn’t think he should text her, either. He’d barely slept the night after the argument at the bar—trying to figure out
what to do and how to handle Jim and his treachery. Before he could do anything, though, the news had come about Juliet’s brother. She’d hate Romeo if he expressed any worry over something as relatively inconsequential as them being discovered, or even about Jim and his betrayal.

  Everything had become that much worse. He didn’t know Henri, but he knew Juliet loved her brother, and that was enough. He could only imagine how awful she felt. She needed him more than ever and he couldn’t help her.

  He looked at his mother’s pretty, impassive face. “I did. Why?”

  “We’ve rented a yacht, for a party. A House of Montague special event. You’re needed.” She tapped the screen of her phone. “Invite Benoit. Invite your other friends. Girls. Pretty ones.”

  If it had been his father asking, he might have argued. But his mother, with her jade eyes on the verge of disappointment, was someone he couldn’t turn down.

  “And what does this have to do with me?” He asked it not with petulance but with genuine curiosity. The House of Montague had special events all the time. His presence was rarely so coveted.

  “Youth is good for business, my love,” his mother said, surveying her nails and then tapping her phone to send a text to the manicurist who visited the house. Catherine Montague was very tech-savvy. “If your father and I invite our friends, it’s just the middle-aged rich on a yacht. If we send you out with the prettiest models, it’s gossip and relevance for the brand. You know that. And how many mothers would demand their sons go drink champagne with models?”

  Romeo raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it bad form to do it on the day that Henri Capulet is being buried?”

  Catherine looked at him like she was surprised he knew who Henri was, much less cared. “That is a shame, about that Capulet boy. But all the more reason to be in the press: Death has a certain glamour, and that family will be all over the news.”

  “Wow, way to be charitable,” Romeo said, but under his breath. Catherine wasn’t paying attention, as she’d gone back to making her appointments.

  “Yes, you’re a lucky boy,” Catherine said, responding to something Romeo hadn’t said.