The Juliet Spell

by Rees, Douglas

  When we got to my place, we parked at the curb because one of Dad’s clients was in the driveway. Dad’s been getting a lot of work lately.

  “Do you miss working with Doctor Dee?” I asked.

  “I miss—everybody. All of it,” Drew said. “Well, ex.cept for the part when I worried that time might be coming apart.”

  “I’m sorry I said I never wanted to see you again,” I said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Drew said. “If I had the choice, I’d never see me again, either.”

  I laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was my first one in months.

  “You were the best friend he had, Drew,” I said.

  “Maybe. But I was the one who made it possible for him to go back.”

  I closed my eyes. “But I was the one that brought him. And that started everything else. At the end, there were no choices left.”

  “Not quite,” Drew said. “We did have choices. But we made the choices that we had to make.”

  “Well,” I said. “That’s one definition of tragedy.”

  “Ha, too true, I guess,” Drew said, and then we both looked across the parking lot in silence for a moment.

  “I want some coffee,” I said. “Do you want some?”

  “Yes.”

  We drove to Malpaso Row and parked. We walked past the plaza where we’d staged the play a year ago. The banners were all gone. The set had been struck. There was no sign that there’d ever been a play there, one night when a cast of actors and its audience had made one great night of theater. That’s the way theater is. It leaves nothing behind, unless it changes you in some way.

  I had been Juliet.

  I had taken a try at being Beatrice.

  Maybe now was time to be Miranda.

  I took Drew’s hand. It was warm and strong. It wasn’t like holding Edmund’s hand had been, but I liked the glow it gave me.

  “I’ve missed you, Mercutio,” I said.

  “I’ve missed you,” Drew answered.

  We pushed through the bookstore door. Our hands stayed locked together.

  * * * * *

  Historical Note

  Edmund Shakespeare was born in 1580 and died in 1607. He worked as an actor in London at the same time his brother William was writing the greatest plays in the English lan.guage. He never married, but he had a daughter who died before she was two. That is all that we know about him, ex.cept for one fact. When he died, someone paid a pound to have all the bells rung from the Church of Saint Saviour on the day of his funeral. A pound was a great deal of money to spend on bells. If William Shakespeare gave the money for the bells, it may well be that he loved his brother very much.

  Quotes Note

  Readers may notice that Edmund spends a lot of time quot.ing from his brother’s plays. Some readers may even notice that his quotes all come from plays that were written after 1597. This is intentional. Shakespeare had no problem with taking inspiration anywhere he could find it, and of course one of Edmund’s problems with his big brother in The Juliet Spell is exactly this.

  We’ve been quoting Shakespeare for four hundred years. Who was he quoting?

  Readers of this story finally have the answer.

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to thank Sam Krow-Lucal for his background in.formation on acting Shakespeare; Charles McKiethan, of Thrust, which builds the sets for theaters all over the San Francisco Bay area for information on set construction; Carol Wolf for her insights into the structure of Romeo and Juliet; and my wife, JoAnn, for her help with a very difficult story.