The Juliet Spell

by Rees, Douglas

  “Aye, so do I,” Edmund said.

  Vivian laughed. “You are so cute. Your accent and every.thing. You’re really English, right?”

  “I am a Warwickshireman,” Edmund said. “And ye, where are ye from?”

  “I am from right here in Guadalupe,” Vivian said. “But I plan on going to England as soon as I graduate.”

  Why wait? I thought. There are planes every day.

  “Come on, cousin, we’d better get home,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s your cousin?” Vivian said.

  I could see she was mentally crossing me off the list of po.tential competition for the English guy.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Not like in this country. It’s a com.plex relationship.”

  “Aye, complex,” Edmund agreed.

  “Can I give you a lift?” Vivian asked.

  “Edmund gets carsick.”

  But Edmund said, “I think I will be well, cousin. I did not puke when your mother drove me here. Thank ye, Vivian. We will take your lift, and gladly.”

  She grabbed his arm and giggled. “So cute.”

  Drew showed up, then. Exactly ten seconds too late to of.fer a ride. I wanted to kick him. “Great working with you,” he said to Edmund.

  “I thank ye, Drew, and ye, Bobby. I hope we may all clap parts and clasp hearts.”

  Bobby hung back. He nodded, but the look on his face wasn’t friendly. He gave Drew a little tug, and they went off.

  “Let’s go,” Vivian said, but before we could leave Gillinger came sliding over from his seat in the third row.

  “Very interesting resumé, Shakeshaft,” he said. “Strat.ford Grammar School. And the Lord Admiral’s Men. You’re probably not aware, of course, that the Lord Admiral’s Men haven’t staged a play since 1631.”

  “Ye’re right, milord.” Edmund grinned. “I was not aware of it.”

  “So where did you actually get the chops I saw just now?” Gillinger wanted to know.

  “Chops? Oh, anywhere I could get a part,” Edmund said. “Anywhere at all.”

  “I see…. Well, I may have something for you. But don’t lie to me again. You’re good, Shakeshaft, but don’t try to show off. You can’t impress me.”

  “But ye will permit me to try, I hope.” Edmund flashed that lethal grin.

  “We’ll see,” Gillinger said. “If I cast you, you’ll have to work on that accent. It’s too thick for the kinds of audiences we’ll be getting here.”

  “I am master of a dozen accents—Cockney, Welsh, Bor.der Scots, French and Italian are me best. What would ye have?”

  Gillinger just “Mmph’d” and walked away.

  “What did I say?” Edmund asked.

  “He just thought you were trying to impress him again.”

  “Can you really do twelve accents?” Vivian asked.

  “Well enough. Can ye really drive a car?”

  “Well enough,” she said, practically smirking. “Let me show you.”

  “I hight—call—shotgun,” Edmund said.

  The ride home took about twenty years. Vivian and Ed.mund blathered away in the front seat like a couple of spar.rows. But underneath the chitchat she was coming on to him like sex was going out of style, and he was loving every second of it. I kept hoping he’d barf, but he didn’t, the self.ish pig.

  When at long last Vivian dropped us in front of my house, she waved goodbye in a way that said, “Get over here.” And Edmund gave the same low bow he’d given me when he’d

  thought I was Helen of Troy.

  “Careful, Edmund,” I said. “She eats guys for breakfast.”

  “Should I pour milk on meself?” Edmund asked me, and grinned.

  “I’m serious, Edmund. She’s bad news. Girls aren’t the way they were the last time you went out on a date or whatever you did in England. They’re a lot tougher and meaner than anything I’ll bet you’re used to.”

  Edmund hugged me. “Oh, cuz, ye are so good to me. I know ye mean to keep me safe from harm. But a man can.not keep his heart in a golden box. ’Twas meant to be given away.”

  He released me, and I stood there fighting the urge to hug him back. “Just be careful.”

  “Ye will help me keep from going wrong,” Edmund said.

  If only.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  That was a long night. We waited up for Mom, and she and Edmund talked about everything that had happened at tryouts. I put in here and there, but I wasn’t really in the room with them. I was doing what I did best, obsessing. Even-numbered minutes I obsessed about being Juliet. Odd-numbered minutes I obsessed about Edmund and Vivian. I hardly noticed when, after an hour, Edmund and Mom de.cided they were hungry and made popcorn.

  Next day, I headed over to Gillinger’s office as soon as the two-thirty bell rang. There were a bunch of us crowd.ing around the sheet Gillinger had just posted on his door.

  I couldn’t look. I stood there with my head down, scared and hopeful. But finally, I forced myself to start reading from the bottom. There was a string of names next to SER.VANTS AND CITIZENS, and mine wasn’t one of them.

  Neither was Edmund’s. But Vivian’s was. With my heart ris.ing, I read slowly up the page.

  TYBALT—BOBBY RUSPOLI MERCUTIO—DREW JENKINS (And!) JULIET—MIRANDA HOBERMAN (And, at the very top!) ROMEO—EDMUND SHAKE.SHAFT

  Edmund would play Romeo. And I was Juliet! He’d get his phone call tonight, but I was going to be the one to tell him. Me, his Juliet. Oh, yes. Life was good. I was so happy, I felt dizzy.

  I read it all again and noted the understudies: Bobby for Romeo, Vivan for Juliet—me! I sat down against the office wall.

  “Whoa, Miri, you okay?” Drew asked, bending over me. “Just happy,” I said. “Just totally, completely without any holdbacks or footnotes, happy. It’s a weird feeling.”

  “Speaking of weird, he gave me Mercutio,” Drew said, joining me on the floor. “I hope Gillinger knows what he’s doing.”

  “Stop whining.” I laughed. “You read for the part.” “Like I told you, I can read for anything.” Bobby loomed over us. “Tybalt,” he said. He didn’t even say the word understudy. “You’ll be great,” Drew told him. “Like Edmund said, he

  makes the whole play happen.” “Mmm-hmm,” Bobby said. “Whatever. Let’s haul it.” Drew offered me a ride home, but I wanted to walk. I

  wanted my wonderful feeling all to myself for a while. So I went slowly away from the theater where I was going to be spending all of my free time for the next six weeks, plus four performances.

  The sky was brighter, the air was softer, the shadows on the sidewalks were more vivid. I walked extra-slow and took a long way home so that Mom would get there first and I could walk in and see the question that would be on her face, and answer it with my smile and tell her that I was doing this role for the both of us.

  I’m Juliet, I kept saying to myself. I really am.

  But when I walked in, Mom was nowhere around. Nei.ther was Edmund.

  “Hey, guys?” I called.

  My answer was a horrible retching sound from the bath.room.

  “In here,” Mom said.

  Edmund was curled up on the floor, and Mom was bend.ing over him, looking worried.

  “He was like this when I came home. He’s been vomiting all day,” Mom told me.

  “I am so ashamed of meself,” Edmund said. “I have not been thus—this—nervous about a part since I was fifteen.”

  “Oh, Edmund,” I said, and knelt down by him, too. “You got it. You’re Romeo. Bobby is Tybalt. And your under.study.”

  “Bobby is to be Tybalt, and understudy?” Edmund said. “Oh, God bless Bobby and make him the greatest Tybalt ever. And God bless Gillinger for making him play it. And God bless you, dearest cuz, for telling me. I think I will try to stand.”

  Mom and I helped him get to his feet. He wavered, grabbed Mom’s shoulder, and staggered out into the hall.

  “Bobby is to be Tybalt! Bobby is to
be Tybalt! Oh, that is grand.”

  Mom and I followed him down the hall to the living room, where he sank onto the sofa.

  “And Drew is Mercutio,” I added.

  “Aye. I mean, right,” Edmund said. “But tell me, cuz, are you Juliet?”

  “Yes! I am!”

  Mom screamed and hugged me. Edmund pushed himself up and hugged us both.

  “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Oh, cuz, I prayed we may work together.”

  The three of us sat around and waited for the phone to ring. I told Mom and Edmund every bit of trivia I could think of, then they asked me, and I told them again, slightly differently. Then Mom made tea for herself and me, and beef broth for Edmund.

  Then we just waited.

  And at five minutes after seven, the phone rang.

  “Gillinger here,” the voice on the other end said. “May I speak to Mister Shakeshaft, please?”

  “It’s for thee,” I said, handing the phone to Edmund.

  Mom and I watched his face while Gillinger spoke to him. It was like the sun coming up.

  “Yes, yes. I would be very willing to play the role, sir. I—I am in your debt, sir. Tomorrow, aye. I will not fail ye, sir.”

  Edmund handed the phone back to me. He stretched his arms as far over his head as they would go. Then he rubbed his stomach.

  “All’s well that ends well,” he said. “May we not eat? For I am rare hungry.”

  So there it was. I was Juliet. Edmund was Romeo. It looked like the spell I’d cast was working.

  The Juliet Spell

  But a thought about the off-kilter spell kept entering my head as we ate: was there enough magic in it to make me Edmund’s Juliet forever?

  Chapter Nine

  There were twenty-two of us in the classroom the next day. There could have been forty, but Gillinger had doubled and tripled a lot of the smaller parts. Besides me, Edmund, Drew and Bobby, all of the kids’ parts were cast with students. But Romeo and Juliet’s parents, the Chorus, the Prince, Friar Lawrence, the Nurse, and some other parts were be.ing played by adults.

  We were sitting around some pushed-together tables with our scripts ready and Gillinger at our head. Not only at our head, but sitting on a throne. The throne had been made for a production of Once Upon a Mattress back in the nineties, and Gillinger had been using it as his director’s chair ever since.

  “It’s usual at the first read-through for the director to give the cast some idea of how he sees the play,” he said. “But you’ve all been to rehearsals and you know how I see it. I see it as a burden that must be borne. If Romeo and Juliet proves anything, it proves that Shakespeare’s reputation is based, at least in part, on crap. I know, he hadn’t been writing very long when he wrote it. The play was written in 1594 or ’95—”

  “Ninety-three,” Edmund muttered to me. “Winter of ninety-three.”

  “But I don’t think that excuses him. The play is suppos.edly a tragedy, but structurally it’s a comedy. Nothing that happens in the last two acts would happen if a couple of letters had been delivered when they were supposed to be. Everybody running around, missing each other. Give this play four doors and it would be a French farce.”

  Gillinger shrugged.

  “Frankly, it reads like Shakespeare got to a certain point and couldn’t figure out what to do next. The second half of this thing might as well be called The Comedy of Errors II. Except that a couple of overexcitable teenagers end up dead. But, we have managed to assemble a cast that I believe can take this Elizabethan turd and put a decent polish on it. Of course, a polished turd is still a turd. Nonetheless, let’s be.gin. Act one, scene one.”

  And he pointed a finger at Bill Meisinger, who was Cho.rus.

  Bill Meisinger was a fat middle-age guy with thin, greasy hair, but he had a beautiful voice. I’d heard he’d done radio commercials a few times. It was probably true, because that’s just how he read his lines.

  “Two households, both alike in dignity

  In fair Verona where we lay our scene

  From ancient grudge break to new mutiny—”

  I could just see the two households: a couple of ranch houses in a really nice development. Something like 1593 Capulet Drive and 1593 Montague Court. But he did have a warm voice.

  We whipped through the reading in a little under two hours. By the time it was over, everyone who hadn’t already seen Edmund at tryouts was as blown away as the rest of us. It was like his reading had picked us up and carried us along with it. Everyone felt good about him, and about themselves, everyone except Vivian, who was pretty clearly not happy about being cast as a Citizen, a Gentlewoman and a Masker and nothing else, and Bobby was still mad. My—Juliet’s— parents were Doris Lawson, whose voice was so soft I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear her onstage (I wondered how the audience would) and Bill London, who had done a lot of community theater. He read with a very bad Brit.ish accent. Romeo’s father, Old Montague, was Jimmy Ma.honey, who had been my eighth-grade science teacher. Lady Montague was Vivian’s mother, Maria. She was a stunning, strong-looking German blonde. She read her lines like they were orders, and Bill played his like they were jokes.

  Juliet has a nurse who raised her from a baby and can’t stop talking about it. She was played by Ann Millard, who had a real British accent and read every line as if she expected to get a laugh.

  But the most important adult role in the play is Friar Law.rence. He’s Romeo’s spiritual advisor, and an herbalist. He’s the one Romeo and Juliet will both go to for help when they’re in trouble. Sort of like a guidance counselor who deals drugs on the side. And that part was played by Phil Hormel.

  He was thirty-something, a tall blond guy with no chin, who turned up in all kinds of plays in Guadalupe and the towns around. He claimed to have been a Broadway chorus boy, and liked to begin conversations with lines like, “You know, when I was in Cats—” but he had a gut on him that could have been cast in a show all by itself, so his dancing days, if they’d ever been, were long behind him.

  He wasn’t a bad actor, but he wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was. In fact, besides Hormel, there was only one person who seemed to think he was brilliant. That was Gil-linger. They never missed a chance to work together.

  It was just a little after nine when we broke up, and everyone who didn’t already know Edmund came over to introduce themselves and tell him what a great job he’d done.

  Drew put his hand on Edmund’s shoulder. “Coffee?”

  “Aye, sure,” Edmund said.

  “Where are we going?” Vivian said, smiling.

  “The bookstore, I fancy,” Edmund said. “That’s where the coffee is.”

  Vivian laughed. “Oh, Edmund, there are lots of coffee places. You don’t have to go to a bookstore. Don’t they have coffeehouses in England?”

  “Sure. The bookstore,” Drew repeated. “Follow us there, Vivian.” And he edged in between her and Edmund and sort of eased us toward the door.

  But Edmund said, “Friend Drew, I will ride with Viv.ian. Her car, I think, will be more easeful to me. And I call shotgun.”

  “Great,” Vivian said, and practically threw Edmund over her shoulder.

  “See you in fifteen,” Drew said. Then to me and Bobby he said, “Shall we go?”

  Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in line at the bookstore café, waiting for Edmund and Vivian to show up.

  “An interesting rehearsal, I thought,” Drew said.

  Bobby shrugged and fluttered one hand. “Just a read-through. Not a rehearsal. The real work starts now.”

  “Edmund certainly was impressive,” Drew continued. “Has he played much Shakespeare?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “I heard a rumor that he played Juliet,” Bobby said. “Is he gay?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Just asking,” Bobby said.

  “My good friend, I think you are feeling the gnawing bite of jealousy,” Drew said.

&n
bsp; “You know what you can bite,” Bobby replied.

  “Temper, temper. I’m here for you,” Drew said and gave him a fake hug.

  “I’m here for coffee,” Bobby said, and ordered a mocha.

  “Bobby has always harbored a strange affection for Viv.ian,” Drew said. “Well, maybe not so strange. But affection, nonetheless. Or maybe not so much affection as unbridled lust.”

  “Like you don’t,” Bobby said. “Like any guy wouldn’t.”

  “I admit the girl is stimulating—double espresso, please— but only until she opens her mouth. Then I feel my desire leaking away into the vast, empty caverns of her total vapid.ity.”

  I laughed. Good old Drew. If he could see what a ditz Viv.ian was, then Edmund would, too. He was probably figur.ing it out right now. All I had to do was give it a little time.

  So why weren’t the two of them here already?

  “What are you having?” Drew said.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said.

  “I’m buying.”

  “Now you tell me,” Bobby said.

  “Thanks, Drew,” I said. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  Double espresso. Not a good idea when you’re already a little wired from waiting for a guy who isn’t showing, I found out. After the third sip, I was so twitchy, Bobby said, “Calm down, Miri. He’s fine. Viv’s a good driver.”

  “I am calm,” I almost yelped.

  “I fear Vivian may have taken our leading man on a long detour.” Drew smiled. “As she said, there are so many places to get coffee.”

  Bobby snickered. “Oh, ha-ha,” I said. “I never knew you had such a hate on for Vivian,” Bobby

  said. “What’s up with that?” “Nothing. I don’t hate her. But—he’s my cousin, you

  know?” “On which side?” Drew asked. “My father’s…” “The German Jewish side?” Drew said. “How does that

  work, if it’s any of my business?” “I mean, my mother’s,” I said. “That’s the Brit side. Any.

  way, how did you know my dad’s Jewish?” “I heard you mention it once,” Drew said. “Huh? When?” “Long time ago.” And with that, he tipped his cup back. That was funny. Before this week, I hadn’t talked to Drew