The Juliet Club

by Suzanne Harper

  Act I

  Scene VII

  “What, daydreaming already? Class has not even begun.”

  Kate spun around to see Giacomo leaning in the doorway of the seminar room, yawning. “I was beginning to wonder if I had the time wrong,” she said, making a great show of checking her watch.

  She had gone for a run at dawn, showered, dressed, and arrived in the seminar room early, only to find that she was, as usual, the first one there. It was a large room on the second floor, with six windows on one wall, a small fireplace, and bare wooden floors. In the center of the room sat a long table surrounded by seven chairs. Kate had seated herself, pulled out her fresh notebook, favorite pen, and well-thumbed copy of Romeo and Juliet, and settled herself in to wait.

  After five minutes, she had been bored; after ten minutes, annoyed; and after fifteen, wondering if everyone else had been mysteriously killed in their beds. Indeed, Kate was half hoping that was the case, since it was the only possible excuse for all of them being so late. To calm herself, she had gone to the window to look out at the garden below. Even as she watched birds wing in and out of a tree, however, she had been aware of sounds from the next room that indicated that her father and his students—obviously serious scholars who understood the importance of punctuality—were already getting started.

  “Wasn’t class supposed to start at nine?” she added with some asperity.

  “Or thereabouts.” Giacomo dropped into one of the chairs and closed his eyes.

  “It’s already ten minutes after.”

  “You Americans,” he said. “You always want to get started, get going, get things done!”

  And what’s wrong with that? Kate thought, feeling nettled by both his comment and the amused look he gave her.

  “I’m simply looking forward to this seminar,” she said coolly. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said solemnly. “Me, too.” He pulled a few sheets of folded paper from his back pocket and tossed them on the table. “Do you have a pen I could borrow?”

  “Of course,” she said, handing him her spare. She glanced down at the paper, which had obviously been torn from a spiral notebook. “You don’t have a notebook either?”

  He grinned at her. “You sound positively scandalized.”

  “Well, no, I’m just . . .” Kate stopped, at a loss for words. Coming to class without a pen and notebook was like showing up in her pajamas. She couldn’t imagine it. “Here,” she blurted out. “I brought extra notebooks, too. Take one of mine. Please.”

  He laughed, but he nodded his thanks and took the notebook just as Silvia stomped into the room. This morning she was dressed in a short black skirt, a gray T-shirt with a torn hem, ragged fishnet stockings, and heavy black boots. She wore four earrings in each ear and a ferocious frown.

  “You’re up early, Giacomo,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said. “It is the first morning of class, after all.” He gave Kate a smiling glance and added piously, “And punctuality is a virtue.”

  Kate rolled her eyes a little at that, but she smiled back.

  Silvia’s sharp eyes flicked suspiciously from Giacomo to Kate, but she just tossed her backpack on the table with perhaps a little more force than necessary. The buckles snapped open and a battered notebook, several chewed pencil stubs, and a handful of crumpled candy wrappers spilled out.

  She threw herself into a seat and flung one leg over the arm of her chair. “Well, I am surprised,” she said. “Considering what you were up to last night.”

  Her waspish tone implied massive impropriety, a bacchanale that was best left to everyone’s imaginations. Giacomo shrugged.

  “You should not be fooling around with Anna Tomassi,” she went on. “She has five brothers. And they are all much bigger than you.”

  He simply smiled in a way calculated to annoy her.

  “You need to watch out for this one,” Silvia said to Kate. “I am warning you as a friend.”

  Kate lifted her chin an inch as she met Silvia’s gaze. “I’d already figured that out, thanks.”

  “Condemned without a trial!” Giacomo protested mildly. “This hardly seems fair. I should at least be allowed to argue in my own defense, don’t you think, Katerina?”

  “It’s Kate,” she said.

  “Kate,” he repeated. The word sounded clipped and abrupt. He tilted his head, as if considering this. “I think I prefer Katerina.”

  His British accent disappeared, and Katerina rolled off his tongue with a beautiful Italian pronunciation, making the name sound different, foreign, exotic, as if it belonged to another person altogether.

  “I,” she said firmly, “prefer Kate.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that, but before he could respond, Tom rushed in through the door. He was breathless and his hair clung to his forehead in damp spikes. “Hey, everybody,” he said. “Oh, good, class hasn’t started yet.”

  Lucy strolled in unhurriedly after him and gave them all a sunny smile. “I’m sorry, it’s totally my fault we’re late,” she said. “I saw this cute bakery down a side street yesterday and I wanted to check it out, so Tom came with me and somehow—”

  “We got a little turned around,” Tom said.

  “Aren’t you a gentleman,” Lucy said, peeping up at him from under her lashes. “I managed to get us completely and totally lost! I’m sure I would still be wandering the streets if he hadn’t remembered to bring a map!”

  She made it sound as if he had rescued her from a remote mountain in Tibet, Kate thought. Did this approach really work on guys?

  She glanced at Tom. Apparently the answer was yes. He ducked his head in confusion, then actually pulled out a chair for Lucy to sit in. Kate had never seen anyone do that in real life, except for waiters at fancy restaurants. And they were paid to pull out chairs.

  Lucy sat down as gracefully as a butterfly alighting on a flower. The faint scent of perfume, something light and flowery, drifted through the room. When Kate flipped open her notebook, she noticed that she had somehow broken a nail.

  Lucy smiled happily and looked around the table. Her gaze fell on Silvia’s skirt, which was a complicated affair involving a ragged hem, a number of large and vicious-looking safety pins, and what could have been bloodstains, although the material was so inky black it was hard to tell.

  “What an interesting skirt,” she said in a doubtful tone. She spotted a brooch pinned to the skirt’s waistband and brightened; it looked like a rose. “Oh, that pin is darling!”

  Silvia glanced down at the brooch with some pride. “Si, it is an antique,” she said. “See the little hinge? It opens up.” She demonstrated. “Two centuries ago, the woman who wore this pin used it to carry a deadly poison with her.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “Why?” she breathed.

  “To kill her unfaithful lover, of course,” Silvia said carelessly. “Or perhaps, to kill the woman who wanted to steal her lover’s affection.” Her eyes glittered with enthusiasm as she gave this second possibility some serious thought. “Yes,” she finally decided. “Kill your rival, keep your lover. That’s a much better plan.”

  “Would she really want to keep him, though?” Lucy sounded dubious. “I mean, if he’s cheating on her?”

  Before this interesting point could be discussed further, the door was flung open, revealing Professoressa Marchese framed dramatically in the doorway. She was wearing a white silk blouse, a dark skirt cinched with a wide leather belt, and extremely high black heels with extremely pointy toes. Gold earrings and necklace winked with reflected light; even at a distance, they looked genuine and very expensive.

  “Welcome,” she began in a low, thrilling voice, only to be interrupted by Benno, who staggered in carrying a large box. He dropped it on the table with relief and sank into a chair with a muttered apology for his lateness.

  She cleared her throat and began again. “As I was saying. Welcome to the University of Verona’s first Summer Shakespeare Seminar. />
  “The purpose of our seminar is not to learn Shakespeare through the head”—she pointed to her own head as if to illustrate the point—“but to feel him, through our hearts!” She swept her hand through the air until it dramatically landed on her ample bosom.

  She paused as if waiting for applause, but when she was met with silence, she plunged on. “You will not be sitting at a desk, poring over dusty books and writing endless essays!”

  Tom and Benno looked cheered by this.

  “No!” Professoressa Marchese continued. “Instead, you will live and breathe and experience Shakespeare to the core of your souls! How, you may ask?”

  Kate glanced at Giacomo. He had tilted his chair onto the back two legs and was rocking dangerously back and forth, staring at the ceiling.

  “By embodying the spirit of the plays through physical movement! By exploring the sense of the poetry through acting! By channeling the spirit of Shakespeare’s most romantic characters by answering letters that have been sent to the Juliet Club! And what, you may ask, is—”

  “The Juliet Club?” Lucy interrupted.

  Professoressa Marchese shot her a quelling look and Lucy sank back into her seat. “As I was about to say,” the professor went on, “the Juliet Club is a volunteer organization that answers thousands of letters sent to Juliet each year from people around the globe. People who are lost, wandering, desperate for advice about love. I have received permission for all of you to serve as volunteers during this seminar. You will each answer at least two letters a day, although you may discuss your response with your classmates. In fact, I would recommend . . .” She paused as if mentally replaying what she had just said. “No,” she corrected herself, “I would encourage you to do so. A photocopy machine is available so that you can keep your letters on file.” She gestured toward the box. “We selected letters from other teenagers, of course, so the problems you’re presented with should be quite familiar.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be studying the play,” Kate began.

  “Indeed, you will! In fact, you will need to study it extremely closely in order to channel the voice of Juliet,” Professoressa Marchese said. “Each line of Shakespeare, when examined closely, reveals worlds within worlds within worlds. The way a character speaks, responds, moves, doesn’t move, every tiny detail tells you something important about that character.”

  A small line appeared between Kate’s eyebrows. Professoressa Marchese was making it sound as if they were on the same side here when, actually, they weren’t at all. “I agree,” Kate said, trying to be polite. “But I don’t see how writing letters filled with love advice will teach us about the play itself—”

  “Trust me,” Professoressa Marchese snapped, clearly losing patience. “When studied properly, my method will teach you more about this great work of art than you would ever learn by studying the play as”—she curled her lip with disdain—“mere text.”

  The professor did not raise her voice; nevertheless, the last two words rang out as clear as a bell at dawn, just when the voice of Kate’s father had stopped for a moment.

  There was a long silence that seemed to hum with tension. And then, as if in response, a loud voice boomed from the room next door. Kate had no problem imagining her father in the full throes of his first lecture. He would be striding back and forth, declaiming in a lordly fashion, and waving his arms excitedly in the air. And as for what he would be saying . . .

  “As always with the Bard, one must begin by making sense of the rhythm and words,” he was saying, his words becoming louder and clearer through the wall. “In other words, the text. None of this touchy-feely nonsense that is so fashionable these days! No, we will take a rigorous, classical, intelligent approach to Romeo and Juliet. We will measure the meters of the verse until our hearts beat in iambic pentameter! We will explore the richness of the language! We will discuss the historical context. . . .” His voice faded a bit as he apparently turned to stride forcefully in the other direction.

  Professoressa Marchese’s eyes flickered toward the cloakroom door, then she turned back to her class. “So many people insist on teaching Romeo and Juliet as an academic exercise,” she said, perhaps a bit more loudly than was strictly necessary, especially since she was addressing six people rather than a crowd of thousands. “Count the syllables, analyze the metaphors, note the line breaks! Paagghh! How dry! How dull! How drearily unimaginative!”

  There was another pause in which the very air seemed to be electrified. Then it was broken by the cloakroom door in the other room slamming shut with a bang that made everyone jump. Professoressa Marchese simply smiled with satisfaction.

  “I assure you,” she said in a calm voice, “at the end of our month together, when you present your program at our gala costume ball, you will be amazed at how much you have learned by approaching the play experientially!“

  “We’re presenting a program?” Tom sounded concerned.

  “There’s going to be a costume ball?” Lucy’s eyes sparkled with delight.

  “Si, it will be a fantastic celebration and a marvelous opportunity for you all to demonstrate what you’ve learned,” she said. Her eyes became dreamy. “The villa will be gorgeous, filled with light and flowers and music. The guests will arrive. They will be served drinks, they will begin to mingle, they will walk through the rooms and into the garden. And in every room they enter, around every corner they turn, they will come upon a scene from Romeo and Juliet being acted out by our wonderful Shakespeare Scholars!”

  Giacomo cast his eyes to the ceiling, but Lucy seemed enthralled, Silvia attentive, and Benno and Tom cautiously interested. Kate folded her arms, withholding judgment until she had heard more.

  The professor waved her hand slowly through the air, as if she could make the scene appear before their eyes. “They will walk out into the perfumed night and hear Romeo wooing Juliet on the balcony!” she said in a hypnotic tone. “They will enter the ballroom and see an elegant Elizabethan dance! They will pause beside a flower bed and hear the greatest poetry the world has ever known being recited! It will be as if they have stepped into Romeo and Juliet’s world! It will be . . . magnificent!”

  “Magnificent,” Lucy repeated, sighing.

  Then Tom said, “But I can’t act.” He was definite on this point. “Not if there’s an audience. Not even if there’s not an audience.” He wondered if he had made his position quite clear. “Not at all,” he finished firmly.

  It was as if he had awakened Professoressa Marchese from a dream. “Not to worry, Tom,” she said briskly. “I have engaged the services of a brilliant theater director, a Signor Renkin, to help you rehearse. And your parts will not be long or difficult. My plan is to focus on a few key scenes from the play and have each one performed several times during the evening’s festivities, so each Shakespeare Scholar has a chance to shine.”

  Tom did not look convinced, but Professoressa Marchese sailed on. “Signor Renkin also will teach you an Elizabethan dance to perform—”

  “We’re going to dance?” Benno asked, horrified. “In public?”

  “I will take you all to a costume rental shop next week to pick out what you will wear on the gala evening—”

  Lucy actually clapped her hands at this news. Even Silvia looked interested before she caught herself and sank back down into her chair with a scowl.

  “I’m not wearing tights,” Tom said, mutinous.

  Professoressa Marchese ignored this. “And finally, Signor Renkin has a great deal of experience in stage sword fighting—”

  Tom and Benno perked up.

  “We get to fight?” Tom asked. “What kind of swords?”

  “Where will we practice? When can we start?” Benno was trying not to get too carried away, but he was already imagining the dashing figure he would cut, bounding across a stage, up and down a staircase, even—why not?—swinging on a rope from a balcony, wildly waving his rapier, and then killing all his dastardly foes.

  “
And we all get to fight?” Silvia was intent. “Not just the boys?”

  Professoressa Marchese laughed. “Of course, Silvia, I would walk in fear if I tried to keep a sword from your hand.”

  Silvia gave a thin, satisfied smile at that.

  “But all that will wait until the morrow! For now . . .” Professoressa Marchese opened the box that Benno had brought in, reached inside, and held up a letter. “I have the first letter for you to answer as official members of the Juliet Club.”

  Dear Juliet,

  I am totally in love with a boy named James. I’m only fifteen, and my parents won’t even let me date for another year, so James and I have been meeting in secret. My problem is that it’s really making me nervous because I’m afraid we’ll get caught. Plus, James used to date this girl Alice and even though he doesn’t even like her anymore, he doesn’t want to break up with her because he says she’s kind of a hysterical personality and he’s afraid of what she might do. So he still has to go out with her sometimes, just to keep her stable. Anyway, I’m asking for your advice because you had a very similar situation with Romeo (except for the part about Alice), so you know how it feels! Please write back as soon as you can.

  Jill B.

  Professoressa Marchese finished reading the letter aloud, then put the paper down and looked around the table. “A most thought-provoking letter, don’t you agree? Kate, we will start with you. What advice would you give to Jill?”

  “She should forget James,” Kate said promptly. “Don’t date until she’s twenty-one, and then only under strict supervision. And quit writing to fictional characters for advice.”

  Silvia raised her hand. “Aren’t we supposed to answer the way Juliet would?” she asked sweetly. “Excuse me for saying so, but that response doesn’t sound very romantic.”

  “Is our advice supposed to be romantic, or useful?” Kate asked.

  “Both, if possible,” Professoressa Marchese replied.

  “Well, I feel real sorry for her,” Lucy said. “And I’m not sure about that James. He sounds kind of sneaky.”