The door opened.
“Kate! What are you doing here?”
She watched as the grin on his face disappeared, only to be replaced by a strangely furtive expression.
“I. Am. Working,” Kate said evenly.
The door eased open a little farther and Professoressa Marchese stepped into the room behind Kate’s father, looking cool and amused.
“How admirable,” she said. “We certainly don’t want to disturb you.” She put one slender hand on his shoulder. “Dr. Sanderson, perhaps we can continue our discussion about next year’s conference somewhere else?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.” He sounded grumpy.
“In fact, it’s such a lovely evening . . . perhaps we should sit outside with a glass of wine?”
“Oh, yes!” He sounded happier. “Excellent idea!”
“Much better than sitting inside on a night like this,” she was murmuring as she softly closed the door behind them.
And then they, too, were gone.
Kate propped her chin on her hand and looked wistfully out the windows. The last sunlight still slanted through the trees, the lazy sound of conversation and laughter could be heard in the distance, and all of Italy—Italy!—lay right outside her door, yet here she was, staring at pixels until she was about to go blind. She grumpily studied what she had written so far. One paragraph, two at most. No color, no detail, none of the “you-are-there” reporting she had sworn she would send back.
Gritting her teeth, she placed her fingers on the keyboard.
The door opened once more.
“Kate . . .”
“I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, I’m working, that’s what I’m doing!” Kate said as she turned to glare at the latest interloper.
It was Giacomo, wearing a white shirt and jeans. One last ray of sunlight turned his dark hair gold, then vanished.
“Good for you,” Giacomo said mildly. “I was just going to say that I’ve been looking for you. Do you want to go into town to get a gelato?”
“That sounds great,” she said, surprised to feel a little flutter in her stomach. “Let me just send this.”
“Lucy and Tom have already gone to meet Silvia,” he went on. “It’s the perfect chance for us to stage another little scene. This time, it will be an accidental meeting. You will look flustered, I will look annoyed, they will think they have discovered us in the midst of a secret assignation.”
“Oh.” She felt unaccountably dashed. “Right.” She cleared her throat and added, “But we did have lunch in the garden yesterday. And we walked by the river the day before that. Won’t they suspect that something’s up if we go out again tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. “They will suspect that we like each other, which is the idea. Besides,” he added persuasively, “you can’t work on a beautiful evening like this, cara mia.”
His warm voice seemed to caress the last two words. She wavered. “I really do need to send this e-mail.”
“Fine. I will wait until you finish, then we will go.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Kate made her voice brisk. As she returned to typing, the cursor seemed to blink a little faster on the screen, as if in rhythm with her pulse.
Giacomo threw himself into a chair, picked up a book and examined the title with a quizzical look. “Alchemical Symbolism in the Age of the Renaissance,” he read out loud. “Lord.” He dropped it back on the table. “Tonight is not a night for studying! It is a night for walking in the moonlight and laughing with friends and living.”
She glanced over, but the room was filling with shadows and she couldn’t see his expression. Only his shirt glowed white in the gathering dusk.
Was it her imagination or was the cursor now blinking impatiently?
She quickly typed a few words, hit send, and stepped out into the summer night with Giacomo.
Entr’acte
Sarah and Annie bent over the computer. They read Kate’s latest e-mail. Then they looked at each other and, in unison, screamed.
“I can’t believe it!” Sarah said.
“I’m going to kill her!” Annie muttered.
They turned again to the screen and read the words displayed there with disbelief.
“Oh, Giacomo just came in, hold on . . . we’re going to get gelato, trying to make everyone believe we’re in love, ha ha, I’ll let you know how it goes, ciao, Kate.”
“No punishment,” Annie pronounced solemnly, “is bad enough for our Kate.”
Act II
Scene IX
“You villainous knave!”
“You putrefied, lily-livered lout!”
“You loathsome, vile, motley-minded milksop! Have at you!” Laughing, Tom leaped at Benno, whirling his sword around his head. Then he lunged.
Benno parried with a clang of steel (or, at least, a lightweight aluminum alloy). But then he tried a cutting thrust of his own. Tom dodged it easily, and Benno only succeeded in knocking over a chair.
The crash made Lucy jump. “Are you sure,” she asked Dan, “this isn’t dangerous?”
The director was standing at the side of the room, his arms folded, watching the action closely. “Not as long as they follow the choreography,” he said absently.
He had spent the morning teaching all of them the basics of stage fighting, then had led them through the moves of a simple fight, with each move flowing logically from the previous one. Once they had learned that, he had paired them up and had them all repeat the pattern several times to get the feel of it.
“On the stage, the fight should look real,” he had said, “but in reality, the fight should always be under complete control.”
For most of the morning, they had all dutifully fought controlled fights. Then he had asked everyone to sit down and let Benno and Tom—his Mercutio and Tybalt—take the stage.
Now Dan winced as Benno swung wide with his sword. He raised his voice. “Perhaps that movement could be a little smaller!” Benno tried again, and a vase crashed to the ground.
“Let’s take a quick break,” Dan called out hastily.
As he pulled Benno and Tom aside for a private discussion, Lucy said, “I swear, this sword fighting is making me nervous as a June bug.” She cast an accusing look around the seminar table, which had been pushed against the wall to allow room for fighting. “I don’t see how y’all can just sit there writing letters when Benno and Tom are killing each other!”
Giacomo was perched on a corner of the table, one leg propped up on a chair, the other swinging lazily. “They’re using stage swords, not real ones,” he pointed out. “They won’t get hurt.”
Kate added prudently, “God willing.”
“Duels are supposed to be dangerous,” Silvia said. “They’re supposed to end in death.”
Lucy looked even more distressed at this thought, so Kate said hastily, “It’s already eleven o’clock and we haven’t answered any letters yet. Here, I’ll pick one this time.” She reached into the pile of letters, pulled one out, and read it aloud:
Dear Juliet,
I am so unhappy. The guy that I’ve known for five years is going away to college. I have always liked him, but I didn’t know I loved him until a year ago. I love him so much and I can’t bear to see him leave. The other night we were at the swimming pool and he was being so sweet to me, and I felt happy because I was with him, but I also felt like my heart was about to break. Every time I see him, I fall more madly in love with him. Then he goes home and I get so depressed because I think pretty soon he’ll go away forever and I’ll never see him again. This hurts so much that I almost wish I had never fallen in love at all. What do you think, Juliet? Would it have been better for you in the long run if you had never met Romeo? I know he was the love of your life, but if you’d never met him, you wouldn’t know what you were missing and you wouldn’t have suffered all that tragedy. You probably would have married Paris and had a pretty okay life. I would like to know what you think because I am really thinking right
now that falling in love is not worth it.
Rose K.
“This is a tough one,” Kate said. “I mean, she makes a good point.”
“What?” Lucy was shocked. “Romeo and Juliet were meant to be together!”
“They did end up dying,” Kate felt compelled to say.
“And immortal,” Giacomo pointed out.
“Yes, as characters in a play!” Kate said. “But we’re talking about real life! Why set yourself up to get your heart broken if you can avoid it?”
“Everyone’s heart gets broken,” Silvia said darkly, even as she kept her attention on the sword fight, which had started up again. “It is unavoidable.”
“But you don’t have to invite heartbreak in,” Kate argued. “And this girl, Rose, she seems to be setting herself up for unhappiness.”
“But don’t you see?” Lucy asked. “That’s the whole reason people are still writing to Juliet! Because everyone who falls in love ends up living her story.”
They all looked at her in surprise, and Lucy looked embarrassed.
“How so?” Giacomo asked, interested.
“Well, it’s just an idea of mine,” she said. “I mean, after we read the play in my English class, I started thinking about my uncle Dub and aunt Zinnia. They fell in love in seventh grade and got married right after high school and stayed married for seventy years! Then Aunt Zinnia died, and even though they’d been married for such a long time, it was just like Juliet dying for Uncle Dub. So I was kind of thinking about that, and I realized that Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love and get married and die in three days, which is like a super-condensed version of what happens to most people over their whole life. One way or the other, you end up losing the person, but you still are happy that you loved them. I mean, Uncle Dub wouldn’t have wished that he had never met Aunt Zinnia, just because he knew that one day she wouldn’t be in his life anymore.”
There was a brief silence, then Kate said, with some surprise, “That’s good.”
“Really?” Lucy asked. “I mean, it’s just a crazy idea I had.”
“It’s very good.” Kate nodded at her. “You should write that down.”
Lucy blushed. “I did, actually. That was my contest essay. I was kind of surprised that I won, even though Uncle Dub said he really liked it—”
She was interrupted by a yell from Benno. “You deceitful dog-hearted dolt!”
He lunged at Tom, who backed away. Benno, sensing victory, decided to try a thrust to the heart, missed, overbalanced and crashed to the floor.
“Ha!” Tom moved quickly to press his advantage. Benno managed to scramble to his feet and get out of the way, but not before crashing into a standing lamp. Then Tom was right on top of him again, so Benno spun out of the way, ducked under a sword thrust, and ended up by the window when—
“Gentle Mercutio,” Dan called out, moving forward to the center of the room, “put thy rapier up.”
“What?” Benno was trying to unwind the window-shade cord from around his head. “I can keep going! Don’t worry about me!”
“I’m not, believe me,” Dan said. “The furnishings, however—” He gestured to the rumpled rug, the vase lying on the floor, the chair tipped over on its side, the shade hanging askew. “Let’s start again tomorrow.”
“Oh. Sure.” Panting, Benno walked over to the table and grinned at Giacomo, Kate, Lucy, and Silvia. “Hey, were you watching us fight? I think I looked pretty good!”
Act III
Scene I
“Oh!” breathed Lucy, her eyes wide with astonishment. She had taken two steps into the costume shop before stopping dead in the middle of the floor. “Oh!”
“Wow,” Kate said, gazing around her.
Beside her, Silvia made a curious little sound in her throat. It sounded almost as if she were purring with delight.
“Doesn’t this all look just simply . . . scrumptious?” Lucy asked.
Although Kate didn’t consider herself susceptible to swooning over clothes—Sarah had often complained about her unwillingness to accompany her to the mall—she had to agree with Lucy. When they first stepped into the shop, the contrast between the bright sunshine outside and the dim, cool interior made them blink. Then their eyes adjusted, and they beheld an Aladdin’s cave of colors—scarlet, gold, midnight blue, sea green, ivory, silver, purplish black, rose. Billowing silk and taffeta dresses hung on the walls as if they were works of art in a museum. Mannequins were posed around the room wearing satin waistcoats and velvet doublets; scarves, gloves, ties, belts spilled out of drawers; jewelry was scattered inside glass cases; and the walls were lined with shoes tied with ribbon laces and high, cuffed leather boots.
“Scrumptious? What does that mean?” Silvia asked absently. Her eyes were gleaming as they took in the room, and her voice was, if not friendly, at least not scathing.
“This,” Lucy said, picking up a long cloak made of dark brown velvet, “is scrumptious.”
As definitions went, this was a long way from being complete or useful, Kate thought. But even as she thought that, she found herself drawn to a pair of high-heeled gold shoes. She picked one up and held it near the window. The buckles were encrusted with crystals that caught the light and cast rainbows on the whitewashed walls.
Lucy was right. This was just . . . scrumptious.
Silvia reached out to stroke the cloak, which Lucy had put down on a counter. Her touch was slow and careful, almost as if the cloak were a wild animal that she was trying to calm. “Bellissimo,” she murmured, sounding completely unlike the Silvia who had presented herself at the villa each morning. She moved to touch a satin dress hanging on the wall. It was the color of rubies, with an embroidered bodice edged in gold lace, a long, billowing skirt, and full sleeves. “Molto bellissimo,” she said again, sounding almost as if she were in a dream.
For a few moments, the three of them moved slowly around the room, pulling out dresses with languid gestures, speaking in hushed voices, completely and utterly entranced.
Then the door burst open and Professoressa Marchese strode inside, followed more slowly by Benno, Tom, and Giacomo.
“Ah, excellent, you are here already!” she cried. “Forgive me for being so extremely late, I had many urgent items to attend to at the villa, not to mention taking on a class for Signora Napoli, who woke up this morning with a bad head cold, and then the caterer called to say he foresees some sort of problem with the ice sculptures for the ball . . . But enough! We are all here now, ready to be made dazzling for the big night, yes?”
Lucy and Silvia were already rifling through the dresses that hung on racks in glittering rows, and Kate was inspecting a display of costume jewelry on the counter. Benno and Tom seemed less sure. They exchanged uneasy glances and didn’t move into the room. Giacomo strolled over to a mannequin, lifted the black hat from its head, and placed it on his own. He instantly looked piratical and dashing, despite the wrinkled linen shorts and faded shirt he was wearing.
“What do you think?” He smiled at Lucy, who was staring at him, then glanced in a nearby mirror. “Does it suit me?”
“It makes you look like a black-hearted scoundrel, so yes.” Silvia sounded as if she was trying to be cross, but her heart wasn’t in it. She had already moved on to a rack of dresses against the far wall and was going through them one by one. She held up a silk dress, blue shot through with threads of silver, and turned it this way and that, watching appreciatively as the silver picked up the light.
“Kate,” Professoressa Marchese said, “has anything caught your eye?” She noticed Benno and Tom, still huddled by the door. “Come, come, boys, you must pick out something as well! You mustn’t let the girls steal the show. You know, men were quite the dandies in Elizabethan times. Yes, I assure you, they were peacocks! Velvet coats, silk doublets, plumed hats—”
“But no tights,” Tom reminded Professoressa Marchese. “Remember, I asked you, did we have to wear tights, and you said no, we did not have to wear ti
ghts, and I remember it perfectly because there is no way I am ever going to wear tights.”
“Of course, of course! Not to worry, Tommaso. You will wear breeches and you will look quite gallant, I assure you.”
Tom wasn’t sure he wanted to look gallant. It sounded beyond him, somehow. “What,” he asked suspiciously, “are breeches?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, just pants,” she said. “More or less.”
Tom frowned and opened his mouth as if he wanted to question her more closely on this point, but Professoressa Marchese’s attention had been caught by something she saw through the window. A small smile curved her mouth, then she turned back to them and clapped her hands.
“Excellent! Well, I will leave you to it, while I go and deal with the florist,” Professoressa Marchese said briskly. “When Signora Ceraso returns, simply tell her to put everything on my bill and send the costumes to the villa by tomorrow morning. Ciao!”
She whirled around and went out the door, leaving only a faint trace of her perfume in the air. Lucy and Silvia barely noticed her exit; they were too deeply entranced by the dresses they were pulling off the racks.
“Well.” Giacomo looked at Benno and Tom. “You’d better find something to wear, or my mother will pick out costumes for you.”
Benno and Tom shot each other expressive glances and edged a little farther into the store.
“I just don’t want to look like an idiot,” Tom muttered. “It’s bad enough we have to dance.”
“And we need something we can fight in,” Benno pointed out. He flicked a dismissive finger at a man’s costume displayed on a mannequin. Knee-high cuffed boots, a dazzling ivory waistcoat with gold embroidery, a silk shirt with ruffles, and a large hat topped with an ostrich feather. “Pah! Anyone who tried to draw their sword wearing that would be dead within seconds!”
Silvia gave a catlike smile. “I could fight wearing that,” she said loftily. “And I would win.”
The Juliet Club Page 16
