If We Were Villains

by M. L. Rio

  “Something funny?” James asked, as he reached over to turn out the light.

  “You’ll have to be Cressida,” I told him. “You’re the only one of us pretty enough.”

  We lay there laughing in the dark until we dropped off to sleep, and slept deeply, with no way of knowing that the curtain was about to rise on a drama of our own invention.

  SCENE 2

  Dellecher Classical Conservatory occupied twenty or so acres of land on the eastern edge of Broadwater, and the borders of the two so often overlapped that it was difficult to tell where campus ended and town began. The first-years were housed in a cluster of brick buildings in town, while the second- and third-years were crowded together at the Hall, and the handful of fourth-years were tucked away in odd isolated corners of campus or left to fend for themselves. We, the fourth-year theatre students, lived on the far side of the lake in what was whimsically called the Castle (not really a castle, but a small stone building that happened to have one turret, originally the groundskeepers’ quarters).

  Dellecher Hall, a sprawling red brick mansion, looked down a steep hill to the dark flat water of the lake. Dormitories and the ballroom were on the fourth and fifth floors, classrooms and offices on the second and third, while the ground floor was divided into refectory, music hall, library, and conservatory. A chapel jutted off the west end of the building, and sometime in the 1960s, the Archibald Dellecher Fine Arts Building (generally referred to as the FAB, for more than one reason) was erected on the east side of the Hall, a small courtyard and honeycomb of corbeled walkways wedged between them. The FAB was home to the Archibald Dellecher Theatre and the rehearsal hall and, ergo, was where we spent most of our time. At eight in the morning on the first day of classes, it was exceptionally quiet.

  Richard and I walked from the Castle together, though I wasn’t due to audition for another half hour.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, as we climbed the steep hill to the lawn.

  “Nervous, like I always am.” The number of auditions under my belt didn’t matter; the anxiety never really left me.

  “No need to be,” he said. “You’re never as dreadful as you think you are. Just don’t shift your weight too much. You’re most interesting when you stand still.”

  I frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean when you forget you’re onstage and forget to be nervous. You really listen to other actors, really hear the words like it’s the first time you’ve heard them. It’s wonderful to work with and marvelous to watch.” He shook his head at the look of consternation on my face. “I shouldn’t have told you. Don’t get self-conscious.” He clapped one huge hand on my shoulder, and I was so distracted I pitched forward, my fingertips brushing the dewy grass. Richard’s booming laugh echoed in the morning air, and he grabbed my arm to help me find my balance. “See?” he said. “Keep your feet planted and you’ll be fine.”

  “You suck,” I said, but with a grudging smirk. (Richard had that effect on people.)

  As soon as we reached the FAB, he gave me another cheery smack on the back and disappeared into the rehearsal hall. I paced back and forth along the crossover, puzzling over what he had said and repeating Pericles to myself like I was saying a string of Hail Marys.

  Our first semester auditions determined which parts we would play in our fall production. That year, Julius Caesar. Tragedies and histories were reserved for the fourth-years, while the third-years were relegated to romance and comedy and all the bit parts were played by the second-years. First-years were left to work backstage, slog through general education, and wonder what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. (Each year, students whose performance was deemed unsatisfactory were cut from the program—often as many as half. To survive until fourth year was proof of either talent or dumb luck. In my case, the latter.) Class photos from the past fifty years hung in two neat rows along the wall in the crossover. Ours was the last and certainly the sexiest, a publicity photo from the previous year’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We looked younger.

  It was Frederick’s idea to do Midsummer as a pajama party. James and I (Lysander and Demetrius, respectively) wore striped boxers and white undershirts and stood glaring at each other, with Wren (Hermia, in a short pink nightgown) trapped between us. Filippa stood on my left in Helena’s longer blue nightdress, clutching the pillow she and Wren had walloped each other with in Act III. In the middle of the photo, Alexander and Meredith were wrapped around each other like a pair of snakes—he a sinister and seductive Oberon in slinky silk bathrobe, she a voluptuous Titania in revealing black lace. But Richard was the most arresting, standing among the other rude mechanicals in clownish flannel pajamas, enormous donkey ears protruding from his thick black hair. His Nick Bottom was aggressive, unpredictable, and totally deranged. He terrorized the fairies, tormented the other players, scared the hell out of the audience, and—as always—stole the show.

  The seven of us had survived three yearly “purges” because we were each somehow indispensable to the playing company. In the course of four years we were transformed from a rabble of bit players to a small, meticulously trained dramatic troupe. Some of our theatrical assets were obvious: Richard was pure power, six foot three and carved from concrete, with sharp black eyes and a thrilling bass voice that flattened every other sound in a room. He played warlords and despots and anyone else the audience needed to be impressed by or afraid of. Meredith was uniquely designed for seduction, a walking daydream of supple curves and skin like satin. But there was something merciless about her sex appeal—you watched her when she moved, whatever else was happening, and whether you wanted to or not. (She and Richard had been “together” in every typical sense of the word since the spring semester of our second year.) Wren—Richard’s cousin, though you never would have guessed it by looking at them—was the ingénue, the girl next door, a waifish thing with corn silk hair and round china doll eyes. Alexander was our resident villain, thin and wiry, with long dark curls and sharp canine teeth that made him look like a vampire when he smiled.

  Filippa and I were more difficult to categorize. She was tall, olive-skinned, vaguely boyish. There was something cool and chameleonic about her that made her equally convincing as Horatio or Emilia. I, on the other hand, was average in every imaginable way: not especially handsome, not especially talented, not especially good at anything but just good enough at everything that I could pick up whatever slack the others left. I was convinced I had survived the third-year purge because James would have been moody and sullen without me.

  Fate had dealt us a good hand in our first year, when he and I found ourselves squashed together in a tiny room on the top floor of the dormitories. When I’d first opened our door, he looked up from the bag he was unpacking, held out his hand, and said, “Here comes Sir Oliver! You are well met, I hope.” He was the sort of actor everyone fell in love with as soon as he stepped onstage, and I was no exception. Even in our early days at Dellecher, I was protective and even possessive of him when other friends came too close and threatened to usurp my place as “best”—an event as rare as a meteor shower. Some people saw me as Gwendolyn always cast me: simply the loyal sidekick. James was so quintessentially a hero that this didn’t bother me. He was the handsomest of us (Meredith once compared him to a Disney prince), but more charming than that was his childlike depth of feeling, onstage and off-. For three years I enjoyed the overflow of his popularity and admired him intensely, without jealousy, even though he was Frederick’s obvious favorite in much the same way that Richard was Gwendolyn’s. Of course, James did not have Richard’s ego or temper and was liked by everyone, while Richard was hated and loved with equal ferocity.

  It was customary for us to watch whichever audition followed our own (performing unobserved was compensation for performing first), and I paced restlessly along the crossover, wishing that James could have been my audience. Even when he didn’t mean to be, Richard was an intimidating onlooker. I could hea
r his voice from the rehearsal hall, ringing off the walls.

  Richard: “Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

  How you awake our sleeping sword of war:

  We charge you, in the name of God, take heed.

  For never two such kingdoms did contend

  Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops

  Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,

  ’Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords

  That make such waste in brief mortality.”

  I’d seen him do the same speech twice before, but that made it no less impressive.

  At precisely half past eight, the door to the rehearsal hall creaked open. Frederick’s familiar face, wizened and droll, appeared in the gap. “Oliver? We’re ready for you now.”

  “Great.” My pulse quickened—a flutter, like little bird wings trapped between my lungs.

  I felt small walking into the rehearsal hall, as I always did. It was a cavernous room, with a high vaulted ceiling and long windows that gazed out on the grounds. Blue velvet curtains hung on either side of them, hems gathered in dusty piles on the hardwood floor. My voice echoed as I said, “Good morning, Gwendolyn.”

  The redheaded, stick figure woman behind the casting table glanced up at me, her presence in the room disproportionately enormous. Bold pink lipstick and a paisley head scarf made her look like some sort of gypsy. She wiggled her fingers in greeting, and the bangles on her wrist rattled. Richard sat in the chair to the left of the table, arms folded, watching me with a comfortable smile. I was not Leading Man material and therefore didn’t qualify as competition. I flashed him a grin and then tried to ignore him.

  “Oliver,” Gwendolyn said. “Lovely to see you. Have you lost weight?”

  “Gained it, actually,” I said, my face going warm. When I left for summer break she had advised me to “bulk up.” I spent hours at the gym every day of June, July, and August, hoping to impress her.

  “Hm,” she said, gaze descending slowly from the top of my head to my feet with the cold scrutiny of a slave trader at auction. “Well. Shall we get started?”

  “Sure.” Remembering Richard’s advice, I straightened my feet on the floor and resolved not to move without reason.

  Frederick eased back into his seat beside Gwendolyn, removed his glasses, and wiped the lenses on the hem of his shirt. “What do you have for us today?” he asked.

  “Pericles,” I said. He had suggested it, the previous term.

  He gave me a small, conspiratorial nod. “Perfect. Whenever you’re ready.”

  SCENE 3

  We spent the rest of the day at the bar—a dimly lit, wood-paneled hole-in-the-wall where the staff knew most Dellecher students by name, accepted as many fake IDs as real ones, and didn’t seem to find it odd that some of us had been twenty-one for three years. The fourth-years had finished auditioning by noon, but Frederick and Gwendolyn had forty-two other students to see, and—allowing for lunch and dinner breaks and deliberation—the cast lists probably wouldn’t be posted until midnight. Six of us sat in our usual booth at the Bore’s Head (as clever a joke as Broadwater was capable of), collecting empty glasses on the table. We all drank beer except Meredith, who was mainlining vodka sodas, and Alexander, who drank Scotch and drank it neat.

  It was Wren’s turn to wait at the FAB for the cast list to go up. The rest of us had taken ours already, and if she reappeared empty-handed it would be back to the beginning of the rotation. The sun had set hours before, but we weren’t finished dissecting our auditions.

  “I fucked it up completely,” Meredith said, for what might have been the tenth time. “I said ‘dismember’ instead of ‘dissemble,’ like an absolute idiot.”

  “In the context of that speech it hardly matters,” Alexander said, wearily. “Gwendolyn probably didn’t notice and Frederick probably didn’t care.”

  Before Meredith could reply, Wren burst in from outside, a single sheet of paper clutched in her hand. “It’s up!” she said, and we all leapt to our feet. Richard guided her to the table, sat her down, and snatched the list. She had already seen it and suffered herself to be shunted into a corner while the rest of us bent over the table. After a few moments’ silent, furious reading, Alexander sprang up again.

  “What did I tell you?” He slapped the list, pointed at Wren, and shouted, “Barkeep, let me buy this lady a drink!”

  “Sit down, Alexander, you preposterous ass,” Filippa said, grabbing his elbow to pull him back into the booth. “You weren’t all right!”

  “I was so.”

  “No, Oliver’s playing Octavius, but he’s also playing Casca.”

  “Am I?” I had stopped reading once I saw the line drawn between my name and Octavius’s and leaned in for a second look.

  “Yeah, and I’ve got three—Decius Brutus, Lucilius, and Titinius.” She offered a stoic smile to me, her fellow persona non grata.

  “Why would they do that?” Meredith asked, stirring what remained of her vodka and sucking the last drops off her little red straw. “They’ve got plenty of second-years to use.”

  “But the third-years are doing Shrew,” Wren said. “They’ll need all the bodies they can get.”

  “Colin’s going to be a busy boy,” James remarked. “Look, they’ve got him playing Antony and Tranio.”

  “They did the same thing to me last year,” Richard said, as if we didn’t all already know. “Nick Bottom with you all and the Player King with the fourth-years. I was in rehearsal eight hours a day.”

  Sometimes third-years were chosen to take a role in a fourth-year cast that couldn’t be trusted to a second-year. It meant classes from eight until three, then rehearsal with one cast until six thirty and rehearsal with another cast until eleven. Secretly, I didn’t envy Richard or Colin.

  “Not this time,” Alexander said, with a wicked little smirk. “You’ll only have rehearsal half the week—you die in Act III.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Filippa said.

  “How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!” Richard declared.

  “Oh, shut up,” Wren said. “Get us another round and perhaps we’ll put up with you a little while longer.”

  He rose from his seat and said, “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale!” as he made his way to the bar.

  Filippa shook her head and said, “If only.”

  SCENE 4

  We left our things in the Castle and ran wildly through the trees, down the hillside stairs to the edge of the lake. We laughed and shouted at one another, sure we wouldn’t be heard and too tipsy to care if we were. The dock stretched out into the water from the boathouse, where a collection of useless old tools crumbled and rusted. (There hadn’t been a boat kept on the south side of the lake since they turned the Castle into student housing.) We spent many warm nights and some of the cold ones smoking and drinking on the dock, dangling our feet over the water.

  Meredith, who was in by far the best shape and much faster than the rest of us, ran with her hair snapping like a flag behind her and got there first. She stopped and draped her arms over her head, a pale stripe of her back visible above her waistband. “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!” She turned and grabbed both my hands, because I was closest. “Here will we sit and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony.” I pretended to protest as she dragged me to the end of the dock and the others tumbled down the stairs to join us, one by one. Alexander brought up the rear, wheezing.

  “Let’s go skinny-dipping!” Meredith said, already kicking her shoes off. “I haven’t been swimming all summer.”

  “The chariest maid is prodigal enough,” James warned, “if she unmask her beauty to the moon.”

  “For God’s sake, James, you’re no fun.” She swatted the backs of my thighs with one of her shoes. “Oliver, won’t you come in the water with me?”

  I didn’t trust that mischievous smile of hers at all
, so I said, “Last time we went skinny-dipping I fell on the dock buck naked and spent the rest of the night facedown on the couch with Alexander pulling splinters out of my ass.”

  The others laughed exhaustively at my expense, and Richard let out a long wolf whistle.

  Meredith: “Come on, somebody swim with me!”

  Alexander: “You can’t keep your clothes on for twenty-four hours, can you?”

  Filippa: “Maybe if Rick could keep her happy she wouldn’t be such a slut around the rest of us.”

  More laughter, more whistling. Richard gave Filippa a lofty sort of look and said, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

  She rolled her eyes and sat beside Alexander, who was busy crumbling weed into a cigarette paper.

  I breathed in and held the sweet woody air in my lungs for as long as I could. A sweltering summer in suburban Ohio had made me impatient to return to Dellecher and the lake. The water was black by night, deep blue-green like jade by day. Dense forest surrounded it on all sides except one, the north shore, where the trees were thinner and a strip of sandy white beach shimmered like diamond dust in the moonlight. On the south bank we were just far enough away from the firefly lights of the Hall that there was little danger of our being seen and even less of being overheard. At the time, we liked our isolation.

  Meredith lay back, eyes closed, humming peacefully. James and Wren sat on the opposite edge of the dock, looking toward the beach. Alexander finished rolling his joint, lit it, and handed it to Filippa. “Have a hit. We’ve got nothing to do tomorrow,” he said, which wasn’t entirely true. We had our first real day of classes and convocation later in the evening. Nevertheless, she accepted the joint and took a long drag before passing it to me. (We all indulged on special occasions, except Alexander, who was at least a little bit stoned all the time.)

  Richard sighed, a sound of profound satisfaction that rumbled in his chest like a big cat’s purr. “This is going to be a good year,” he said. “I can feel it.”