The Juliet Club

by Suzanne Harper

  “È vero. It’s true.” He fell back on the table and crossed his arms, staring blackly at the ceiling. He had dated exactly two girls in his life, and both relationships had ended with screaming recriminations, a series of increasingly violent text messages, and, in one case, a few very scary threats from a protective older brother. Benno wasn’t sure why his love life seemed destined to turn into grand opera; he just knew that he always went wrong somewhere. And, he feared, he always would.

  “It would be so satisfying,” Silvia finished softly, “to see Giacomo play the fool for once.”

  “More than satisfying,” Benno muttered. “It would be cosmic justice.”

  “And that Kate!” Silvia rolled her eyes.

  Kate frowned and pressed her ear to the door.

  “She has a very superior attitude, don’t you think?”

  Kate dug her fingernails into her palms.

  “She seems all right,“ Benno said offhandedly. “A little too serious, maybe.” He turned his head to look at her. “Why? What does Kate have to do with this?”

  “That is the trick we play!” Silvia’s voice was triumphant. “We will make them fall in love with each other.”

  “What? How?“ Benno sat up, startled. “They could not be more unlike each other!”

  “Exactly! That is what will make the spectacle so diverting!” she said, her eyes gleaming with mischief. “This Kate, she’s the type who always has her nose in a book, yes?” Silvia lowered her voice. “Can you imagine Giacomo trying to woo her?”

  “Maybe he won’t,” Benno said. “Maybe he’ll just let her yearn for him from afar.”

  Silvia gave a little snort at that. “You know Giacomo. He loves a challenge. And he can’t resist the idea of being adored.”

  “That’s true,” Benno said thoughtfully. He and Giacomo had been friends since they were five years old. Good friends, of course, stalwart friends, loyal friends . . .

  On the other hand, it did get tiresome, having a friend who made love look so easy. He gave a malevolent chuckle. “And after all, it is just a joke.”

  “Exactly,” Silvia agreed with satisfaction. “All in good fun.”

  Act I

  Scene IX

  The only value this seminar would ever have, Giacomo thought to himself, would be if one day he was threatened with life imprisonment by a clever lawyer who was intent on twisting his words, misconstruing his meanings and showing that every opinion he had was false, not only in its conclusion, but in its very premise. Perhaps, in that unlikely event, he would be able to use this experience to out-argue the lawyer and emerge from his dank prison cell into the sunshine of a new day.

  He took a moody sip of espresso and silently counted up how many days he was expected to spend in this purgatory. The answer was appalling. Determined to wallow in gloom, he then figured out the number of hours and had just moved on to calculating the actual minutes when he was abruptly interrupted.

  “Giacomo, good, I’m glad I found you. I have to talk to you!”

  He looked up to see Kate standing next to his table, her posture as straight as a sentinel, her eyes snapping with righteous indignation.

  “Of course,” he said warily. In his experience, conversations that began, “I have to talk to you” rarely ended well. “Please, sit down.”

  “Grazie.” She pulled the chair back and sat down, jostling the table.

  His elbow had been propped on that table. Sighing, he looked down at the coffee stain on the cuff of his pristine white shirt, then waved for the waiter to bring two more espressos.

  Kate didn’t seem to notice. She crossed her arms and leaned in to him. “I just overheard Silvia and Benno talking!”

  He dipped his napkin in his water glass and dabbed at his sleeve. “You were eavesdropping?” Perhaps there was some hope for her after all, he thought. After all, eavesdropping was a sin, if a minor one. From what he had observed so far, this Kate was too saintly for comfort. He glanced across the table and saw her straighten up in her chair, blushing.

  “Not on purpose, of course!” she said.

  Ah, well. “Of course not.”

  “I just happened to go back to the seminar room to get my notebook.”

  He gave her a look of polite interest.

  “And I just happened to be in the cloakroom when they started talking.”

  He shaded that look with a hint of disbelief.

  “And then I couldn’t leave without them thinking that I was hiding there.”

  He increased the disbelief to outright incredulity.

  “And so I waited and it’s good that I did, because that’s when I heard them decide to play a prank on us. A really stupid, humiliating prank.”

  “Oh, yes?” he said, as he continued to rub at the stain on his shirt. The waiter brought their espressos to the table; Giacomo nodded his thanks. “Well, Benno is always playing jokes, he was born a clown.”

  “It wasn’t his idea at all,” Kate said, miffed by his reaction. “It was Silvia’s.”

  He stopped paying attention to his sleeve. “Silvia?” Giacomo knew the way Silvia’s mind worked; it was subtle and cunning and malicious.

  “Yes,” she said. “They’re trying to pull a Beatrice and Benedick on us.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Much Ado About Nothing,” she said, as if it was obvious. “Beatrice and Benedick are two characters who are always insulting each other, so their friends decide to make each think that the other has fallen in love with them and then—”

  “Yes, I know the play,” he said, with an edge in his voice.

  “Well, they want to fool us into thinking that we’ve fallen in love with each other. They seemed to think it would be like watching a farce.”

  “A farce?” A slight frown appeared on Giacomo’s face. “Why?”

  “Oh, because we were arguing in class, I suppose.” She took a sip of her espresso. “I, apparently, am too serious!” she said, clearly outraged.

  “Well, eavesdroppers seldom hear good things about themselves,” he said in a pious tone.

  Kate glared at him. “And you are too—” She stopped abruptly and smiled down at her espresso. “Well. I suppose I really shouldn’t pass on what they said about you.” She took a little sip. “That would be most unkind of me.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. Strands of hair had come loose from her braid; in the light from the window, he could see them floating around her head like a golden halo. But the eyes that looked at him over the edge of her coffee cup were too challenging to belong to an angel, he was sure of that. And the way she just waited, with that knowing look on her face, as if she knew he wouldn’t be able to resist asking her. . . .

  “What did they say about me?”

  He would have thought it impossible, but she looked even more smug. “You are too frivolous,” Kate reported with satisfaction.

  “Hmm.” A slight frown appeared between his eyebrows.

  “When it comes to girls, that is,” she went on, watching his scowl deepen. “In fact,” she added, enjoying this report, “Silvia called you a farfallone.”

  He looked annoyed.

  “What does that mean, anyway?” She had been wondering ever since she had heard Silvia spit out the word as if it were the vilest insult she could utter.

  “A man who chases women,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, I can see why you wouldn’t appreciate that, but—”

  “I do not dislike the term because of its definition,” he interrupted. “I dislike it because it is inaccurate.” He took a tiny sip of espresso before adding complacently, “I do not chase women. They chase me.”

  She just said, “Oh, right,” but he could see her nose turn pink and knew that he had annoyed her. “Anyway, they kept going on about how we were total opposites and that was what would make the whole spectacle so funny.”

  “Really?” He looked at her speculatively. “Well, it’s often said that opposites attract.“

  “You’re
thinking of magnets,” she corrected him. “Not people.”

  He opened his mouth to argue, but she was still talking. “It’s completely ridiculous!” she was saying. “As if I would ever be attracted to you!”

  “Or I to you,” he said, stung. Then he took another sip of his bitter espresso, and gave the situation more thought. The idea that Silvia and Benno could even contemplate tricking him in this way made him flush with anger. The idea that they had chosen Kate—serious, pragmatic, down-to-earth Kate—as his potential love interest irritated him beyond belief. And the mere fact that they believed that he would fall for their simple trap made him determined not just to avoid it, but to retaliate with his own plan. A plan that was so cunning and clever that they would be the ones to end up thoroughly hoodwinked.

  So he said, “Here’s what I think we should do: turn the tables on Silvia and Benno. That would teach them a lesson!”

  She gave him a glance—half wary, half interested—over the rim of her coffee cup. “How would we do that?”

  “We would pretend that their prank is working,” he said, as if this were obvious. “We would pretend that we were falling in love.”

  “But all the time they thought they were fooling us, we would be fooling them,” she finished slowly, a small smile flickering across her face. Her eyes met his, and for the first time, Giacomo saw that there was a hint of mischief hidden somewhere inside Kate.

  He smiled back and took a thoughtful sip of coffee. He could have fun pretending to fall in love with Kate, he thought. It was so amusing to tease serious girls. He liked the way they condemned his every move. It made him feel worldly and depraved.

  Still, this plan sounded like a lot of work, and he had been looking forward to doing as little as possible this summer. Perhaps it would be wiser to let it go. . . .

  But Kate had been watching him closely and seemed to sense his second thoughts. “Of course, we may not be able to pull it off,” she said. “But it would be a shame for Sylvia and Benno to think they were right. . . .” Her voice trailed off suggestively.

  He gave her a cool look, but he couldn’t help asking. “About what?”

  She gave him a smug smile. “They said,” she reported carefully, “that you would never see the trap they set until it was too late. They said that you were, well, a little too caught up in yourself, perhaps, to notice that a trick was being played.”

  The image of Silvia and Benno sniggering behind his back stiffened his resolve. He set his coffee cup down, rather harder than he meant to, and it rattled in the saucer. Kate’s smile widened.

  “Then let’s let them think that, and use their self-confidence against them,” he said, forcing himself to smile back at her. “If this is a battle of wits, I have no doubt that we will end up the winners.”

  Entr’acte

  “They’re going to pretend to be in love?” Sarah was smiling into the distance.

  Actually, she was gloating. A very unattractive quality, in Annie’s opinion.

  “He sounds completely obnoxious,” Annie said. “Not at all Kate’s type.”

  “Kate doesn’t have a type yet. She’s only dated Jerome,” Sarah protested.

  “Exactly. Introverted genius boys with no social skills,” Annie agreed. “That’s Kate’s type.”

  “Then it’s time she found a different type,” Sarah said stoutly. “And I think Giacomo sounds like the perfect guy to change her ways.”

  “Or drive her to homicide.”

  “We’ll see.” Sarah had gone back to smiling her Mona Lisa smile. “But in the meantime, they’re going to pretend to be in love. This is promising. Very, very promising.”

  Act II

  Scene I

  “I understand from Professoressa Marchese that you all know the play quite well, so I’m sure you will have great fun as we embark on this adventure,” Mr. Renkin said, smiling at them encouragingly. “Great fun, indeed!”

  Mr. Renkin—he had told them to call him Dan—had a mop of brown hair, lively dark eyes, and a merry expression. He was a British director, temporarily based in Verona to scout locations for his next film. He had been immediately dragooned by Francesca Marchese to provide coaching, dancing lessons, and fight direction for her students—at a nominal fee, of course, since he would be furthering the cause of education. He had stayed politely quiet as Professoressa Marchese had unveiled the enormous piece of paper that was her casting chart and briskly announced what parts they would play.

  “First, Benno and Tom,” she had said briskly. Tom looked tense, Benno wary. “You will play Mercutio and Tybalt.” She gave them a smiling glance and added, “I’m sure you will enjoy the duel greatly.”

  They both sighed with relief and grinned at each other.

  “Giacomo, you will play Romeo’s part in their fight scene—that shouldn’t be too taxing, since you just have to watch them and look horrified,” she said. “As for Juliet—”

  She flipped through the casting chart, which was covered with livid squiggles and dramatic crossouts. Kate saw Lucy surreptitiously cross her fingers, biting her lip with anxiety.

  “Lucy, you will play Juliet in the scene where you first meet Romeo at the party,” Professoressa Marchese announced. Lucy let out the breath she had been holding and smiled with pleasure. “And you, Kate, will play Juliet in the balcony scene.” She glanced over her glasses at her son. “After going over the schedule many times, I have decided that it would make the most sense if Giacomo plays Romeo in both those scenes.”

  “Better him than me,” Tom whispered to Benno, even as Giacomo raised a hand to protest.

  “I’m not sure that’s quite fair,” he said quickly. “I mean, after all . . . Romeo! It’s the part that everyone wants, isn’t it?” He gave Tom and Benno a glinting look. “And I would hate to deny others whose acting skills are surely far superior to mine—”

  “Basta!” His mother clapped her hands once, sharply, glaring at him. “I’m also considering the fact that you already know the part.”

  “Indeed I do,” he said glumly. “I could recite every blasted line of that play while juggling blindfolded.”

  “Precisely my point,” she replied. “And since our rehearsal time is limited, I believe that this is the most sensible solution.”

  Giacomo folded his arms across his chest, looking martyred, and Benno gave him a patently insincere look of sympathy.

  “Now Sylvia,” Professoressa Marchese went on. “You, I think, will be perfect as the Nurse.” She glanced up sharply, as if expecting protest. “It’s an earthy, comic role that you will play to perfection, I am sure.”

  But Sylvia shrugged one shoulder carelessly and said, “Fine. I would never want to play Juliet, she is far too dull.” Then she added stubbornly, “But I still don’t see why I can’t fight.”

  Professoressa Marchese frowned. “I agreed that you could learn stage sword fighting, but I have many male students that I need to cast. The duel scene can only be presented so many times, Sylvia! Now, I don’t want to hear any more arguments. I was up until midnight creating this chart, so for now—è fatto! It’s done!”

  Professoressa Marchese had then turned to the others, ignoring Silvia’s sulking, clapped her hands twice, and said, “Remember, everyone, surrender to the experience! Now I must go deal with a catering crisis and a plumbing disaster, but I leave you in the best of hands. Carry on, Signor Renkin!”

  When she had left, Dan turned to his cast. “Right,” he said. “Let’s begin by running lines. Giacomo, Kate, why don’t we start with your scene? In your own time . . .”

  “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” Giacomo reeled off his lines with polish and flair, aware that he had an audience. They were, he was quite sure, admiring his delivery.

  At the far end of the room, Lucy and Tom were supposed to be running lines, with Tom standing in as Romeo, and Benno and Silvia were supposed to be doing stretching exercises. But they had all stopped
what they were doing to listen.

  For the next few lines, Giacomo’s voice became louder, his stance more self-assured, as the rhythms of the poetry took over.

  But when he got to “Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—I am too bold. ’Tis not to me she speaks,” Dan interrupted.

  “Nicely done, Giacomo,” he said. “Marvelous voice, very resonant. Clear articulation, very good.”

  Giacomo looked gratified. Dan moved closer and murmured, “But if I could just make one or two notes. . . .”

  Giacomo frowned. “Yes?”

  “Your delivery is perhaps a little . . . glib. I feel that you’re not quite connecting yet with the character’s emotions. Romeo has fallen instantly in love with Juliet and they’ve met and shared a kiss, but he doesn’t really know how she feels about him. He’s so intent on finding out that he’s come to this dangerous place, he’s standing right under her balcony! So Romeo is bold, daring! But at the same time”—Dan’s voice softened, paused, stuttered. “He’s hesitant. Look at the text: ‘I will answer it.’ He’s determined to get her attention. Then the next line: ‘I am too bold.’ Backing off. You see? He’s like any young man who is approaching the girl of his dreams and wondering whether he’ll be greeted with a smile or told to shove off.”

  “Mmm.” Giacomo nodded in what he hoped was a thoughtful manner. “I see.”

  “So what you could do here, I think, is recall a time when you felt that way,” Dan suggested. “When you tried to talk to a girl you fancied, and you weren’t sure of what to say, or the words came out all wrong. Can you remember a moment like that to help you connect here?”

  Giacomo tilted his head and stared intently at the ceiling, as if the answer might be written in the cobweb that was strung across the corner. “Well,” he said after a long moment, “no, actually.”

  From the other side of the room, he heard Silvia give a little snort. He glanced over and saw Benno glaring at him, and realized that his answer, although true, was not calculated to make him friends. He was slightly cheered to see that Tom looked impressed and that Lucy was smiling at him in a friendly way. . . . But when he stopped to think about it, that didn’t mean much because it didn’t take anything at all to impress Tom, and Lucy always looked friendly.