The Juliet Club

by Suzanne Harper

  “That dress is amazing,” she said.

  To her surprise, Silvia blushed and glanced down shyly and even smiled, just a tiny bit. “Thank you,” she said. “I . . . well, I made it.”

  “You? Made that?” For a moment, Kate was too astonished to speak. Then she said, “But it’s not black!”

  Silvia waved one hand dismissively. “Black is just what I wear outside. I must, you know, warn the world that I am on my way. But on the inside—”

  She jumped up and opened the closet door. There were so much clothing packed inside that it seemed as if the closet had exploded, with a rainbow of colors spilling out. “This is me, too.”

  Kate stared, openmouthed. “You made all those dresses?”

  “Si.” Silvia shrugged, clearly trying for nonchalance, but just as clearly pleased by Kate’s admiration. “I want to be a fashion designer some day. I made that”—she nodded toward the dress on the wall—“after we visited the costume shop.” She stood still for a moment, biting her lip and looking at the dress thoughtfully. Then she turned to look at Kate.

  “And that is another problem solved!” she said triumphantly. “You will wear that dress. Try it on right now, but I’m sure it will fit you.”

  “I don’t know if I can wear that,” Kate began, stealing another glance at the dress. It was so bright, so eye-catching, so attention-grabbing!

  Silvia was still giving her that long, assessing look, her head tilted to one side. “Tomorrow,” she said, “I will take you to my hairdresser, Giulia. Your hair is too long, too heavy. I’m sure it would be curly if you cut it short.”

  “Um, well, I don’t know,” Kate began. Things seemed to be moving rather quickly here.

  Silvia ignored this. “Giulia is a genius, you will see.”

  “But I’m not even sure about the dress. Really, it’s so nice of you and the dress is completely gorgeous, but . . .” But it looked like a dress that would be, onstage, under a spotlight, the focal point for every eye in the room. “It doesn’t look like me at all.”

  “That is exactly why you must wear it,” Silvia replied. “You will look stunningly beautiful, and you will make every man at the ball fall in love with you! And that,” she finished with great satisfaction, “will show Giacomo!”

  Something about her utter certainty made Kate feel reckless and brave.

  “Okay,” she said quickly, before she could have second thoughts. “You’re right. I’ll do it.”

  Act V

  Villa Marchese seemed to vibrate with anticipation on the night of the costume ball. The air was sweetly scented with roses and lilies, freshly picked from the garden. Candle flames glowed and dipped in the warm night breeze that blew through open windows.

  Guests moved across the floor in a stately fashion, their movements made slow and graceful by the elaborate costumes they wore. Women were dressed in silk gowns; men wore doublets and plumed hats; and everyone wore jewels that winked in the soft, shimmering light. Waiters in black tie moved through the crowd, offering drinks and food. A group of musicians sat in a secluded corner and played lively music on period musical instruments. Laughter, conversation, and the expectant murmur of people having a good time rose and fell in the room like waves.

  Giacomo leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Occasionally he exchanged polite nods with one of the guests, but he was careful to keep his face expressionless. In the midst of all this celebration, his mood was black, his heart was broken, and his future empty.

  Only the sight of his grandmother cheered him. A foot shorter than anyone in the room, she stalked through the crowd, wearing a funeral black gown and striking the floor at every step with her silver-topped black cane, a small spot of spectral gloom in the middle of the night’s fizzing joy.

  As she moved out of his sight, Benno rushed up, looking so cheerful that Giacomo could have hit him. “Ciao, Giacomo! You know what I’ve discovered? Parties are fantastic when you don’t have to wait on people. I just saw Alessandro and told him to bring me a drink! Ha! Of course, he has no sense of humor so he’ll probably spill it on me, but it was worth it to see the look on his face!” He raised himself up on his toes to peer around the room. “Have you seen Lucy?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Benno’s eyes moved around the room. “What about Silvia? Or Tom?”

  “No.”

  “Well, have you seen—”

  “No!” Giacomo pushed himself away from the wall and glared at his friend, who looked back with an expression of mild surprise.

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’re attending an execution.” Benno gave Giacomo a friendly little shove with his shoulder. “Come on, cheer up! This is a party!”

  “Yes, I know,” Giacomo said, biting off each word. “But I don’t happen to feel like—”

  He stopped, his attention caught by something across the room. Benno raised his eyebrows, then turned to see what Giacomo was staring at so intently.

  It was Kate, descending the grand staircase, her head held high, her eyes sparkling. She was wearing a dress that was a swirl of fuchsia, pink, and gold. Her hair had been cut; a short bob of curls had replaced the long, serious braid.

  Benno’s eyes widened. “È bellissima! She is beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Giacomo said. “She is.”

  As she reached the floor, one of the older Shakespeare Scholars—was it Jonathan?—rushed up to greet her. She smiled at him as if she’d been waiting her whole life to see him. Giacomo couldn’t believe it. They used to joke about how serious Jonathan was! He saw Jonathan whisper something in Kate’s ear. She gave him a laughing glance from under her eyelashes and put her hand on his arm.

  Benno flicked a quick glance at his friend. “She flirts very well,” he commented.

  “Of course she does,” Giacomo said bitterly. “I taught her.”

  Before Benno could respond, a bright fanfare of trumpets sounded, and Professoressa Marchese walked to the top of the grand staircase and held up her hand for silence.

  “Dear friends, it is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight. We are celebrating the culmination of our very first Shakespeare Seminar, the first, I hope, of many.”

  There was polite applause at that. Giacomo didn’t hear it; his eyes were fixed on Kate. At that moment, Kate seemed to feel Giacomo’s steady gaze. She turned her head, her eyes met his, and she gave him one cool, proud look before turning her attention back to his mother.

  “By chance, we have chosen an especially appropriate evening for this celebration, for this is Midsummer’s Eve, the longest day of the year,” she continued. “After tonight, our days grow shorter and our nights longer. So let this night remind us to celebrate love, whenever it comes, in whatever form it appears, however enduring or fleeting it may be. For whether we search for love or are surprised by it, it always transforms us in ways we never expect.” She lifted her glass. “Salute!”

  Around the room, guests lifted their glasses and applauded.

  Giacomo, his arms crossed, muttered something under his breath. Benno couldn’t hear the words but decided it was wiser not to ask him to repeat them. Instead, he said, “We’d better find Tom. It’s almost time for our fight scene.”

  Silvia was pacing up and down the hall outside the ballroom, staring at the floor. She was wearing a long dark jacket, gold brocade vest, dark pants, and knee-high boots. Her hair was pulled back in a neat pigtail. The expression on her face was serious and intent as she muttered a line under her breath, then pulled out her sword and attacked an invisible opponent.

  Tom, who was hiding behind a particularly embarrassing statue of a naked goddess, thought Silvia looked absolutely beautiful and slightly scary. As she did a series of feints down the hall in his direction, he cleared his throat and stepped in front of her.

  “Idiot!” Silvia couldn’t believe it. What were the odds of having two people in two days step right in front of her and almost die at her hands as a result of their own carelessness? “
What are you doing?”

  “I just, um, I just wanted to say good lu—”

  Before he could finish the last word, she clapped her hand over his mouth. “Stupido!” she hissed. “Don’t say that, it’s bad luck to say that in the theater! Say ‘break a leg.’”

  “Oh, all right.” Tom nodded humbly. “I just wanted to say, ‘break a—’”

  Once again he was interrupted, this time by Dan. “Come on then, it’s your moment,” he said. “And this is your cue.”

  “By my head, here come the Capulets,” cried Benno as Benvolio.

  “By my heel, I care not,” sneered Silvia as Mercutio.

  And they were off.

  The guests chuckled at first when they saw the four swordsmen appear in the space that had just been cleared by Dan and a few waiters he had recruited to help with stage management. But after the first few lines were spoken, with an intensity that was mainly due to nerves but that was forcefully convincing nonetheless, the partygoers forgot their drinks and were caught up in the drama of the scene unfolding before them.

  Tom said his first lines perfectly and, before he knew it, he and Silvia were circling each other, trading macho gibes as Tybalt and Mercutio. When Benno stepped forward to remind his friend Mercutio that it wasn’t a great idea to get into a fight in the town square, since “here all eyes gaze on us,” Tom actually felt a spurt of real anger that the reasonable Benvolio was getting in the way of a good fight.

  Silvia seemed to have the same reaction. She spat out her next two lines: “Men’s eyes were meant to look, and let them gaze; I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.”

  But then Giacomo entered the scene, playing Romeo, and Tom knew he had to try to provoke this lover boy into a fight. Romeo, however, was not cooperating. Instead, he bleated on and on about how he had never done Tybalt any wrong, and how he really loved Tybalt, and how he thought Tybalt was great simply because his name was Capulet—until Tom felt that Tybalt would be totally justified in running Romeo through without even giving him a chance to draw his sword.

  Fortunately, at that moment, Silvia stepped forward as Mercutio. After yelling at Romeo for his “vile submission” (inwardly, Tom cheered), she drew her sword, challenged Tybalt to a fight, and threw in a few other insults just to get things going.

  Tom drew his sword. Everyone ignored Romeo, who was still trying to calm things down, and the fight began.

  For a few seconds, he could hear small cries or astonished laughs from the audience, but then Tom didn’t hear anything except his own breathing, the clang of swords, and the words that Silvia flung at him as they moved rapidly back and forth across the polished floor.

  Tom could feel his heart racing the way it did during a close and hard-fought soccer game, and every sense seemed unnaturally keen. And even though he knew he was just acting and he did every move exactly as they rehearsed it, he no longer saw Silvia, only Mercutio.

  He swung his sword. Mercutio parried it.

  He slipped to the ground. Mercutio lunged forward with a thrust to the heart, and he deflected the blow, scrambling away to safety.

  He could hear Romeo shouting something about how the prince had forbidden fighting on the Verona streets, then Romeo was yelling, “Hold, Tybalt! Hold, Mercutio!” and trying to get between them to break up the fight, and this was the moment he had to stab Mercutio. . . .

  Tom hesitated.

  Silvia made a face at him over Romeo’s shoulder.

  Still Tom didn’t move.

  “Hurry up, Tom!” Giacomo muttered. “Kill her.”

  But Silvia was Silvia again, not Mercutio, and Tom couldn’t move.

  “Imbecile!” Silvia hissed as she slipped around Giacomo and pretended to throw herself on the point of Tom’s sword.

  And then Tom was running away through the crowd until he reached the hall, where he stopped to watch Silvia saying Mercutio’s great last speech—“A plague o’ both your houses!”—and, as she had promised, dying beautifully.

  The applause was still rippling through the crowd but, as instructed by Professoressa Marchese, none of the actors stayed to acknowledge it.

  “The sense that anything can happen at any moment will be completely ruined if we keep stopping for you to take bows,” she had said. “Finish your scene and leave the stage quickly. A good motto for the theater as well as everything else in life.”

  After a hurried congratulations, Giacomo and Benno ran off to get something to eat, and Tom was left alone with Silvia.

  “You remembered all your lines,” she said as she pulled the rubber band off her pigtail and shook out her hair. “Impressive.”

  “You were great,” he said.

  “Of course,” she said. “I even saved you there at the end when you froze into a statue. What happened, did you suddenly get stage fright?”

  “No, I—” He stopped. He sensed that it would be unwise to say that he could not bear to kill her; he already knew she thought he was foolish, but that could make him look like a complete simpleton. He tried to figure out how to finish that sentence. Nothing came to mind.

  Silvia eyed him sarcastically. “Oh, no, it’s happening again. Maybe I should call a doctor. Perhaps you have contracted some rare disease that makes you lose the power of speech. Perhaps—”

  “I really like you,” he blurted out.

  It took Silvia three heartbeats to process that statement. Tom knew this because he could feel his heart thudding in his chest and, for lack of anything better to do, started counting. One. Two. Three—

  “Rrrreeeaalllly,” Silvia said in that mocking way she had, rolling her Rs and stretching out the word as far as possible.

  He took a deep breath. “Yes. Look, I can’t write poetry or sing a song to tell you how I feel. I’m not even that good at regular talking. I’m sure you think I’m just a dumb jock, but I know how I feel, even if I would rather play football than give some kind of flowery speech, and I also know that I would always treat you right and I wouldn’t flirt with other girls, and if that is the kind of guy you want, then you should have me.”

  She stared at him, one hand on her hip, her head tilted in disbelief. “I haven’t heard you say that many words all month.”

  “Yeah, well.” He looked shy. “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Hmmph.” She seemed skeptical, but she was still standing there. Tom thought that was a good sign. “So you’ve told me why I should like you, but you haven’t said what you like about me.”

  “Okay, well.” Tom stopped to consider this. “I think that you’re sweet.” He looked her over: the wild hair, the glinting eyes, the curling lip, and added, “Deep down inside, where no one can see it.”

  “Sweet,” she repeated, spitting out the word as if it tasted like castor oil.

  He took a deep breath. “And I like your ears.”

  A look of surprise flashed across her face. “My ears?”

  “Yes. They look like little shells.” Silvia was looking at him with amazement. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you have perfect ears?”

  In fact, no one ever had. But Silvia had often thought that they should. Secretly, she had always considered her ears one of her undisputed charms.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “And I like your footsteps,” he said, encouraged. “They sound so light and happy.”

  Her footsteps? Who noticed something as inconsequential about a person as her footsteps? Tom was an idiot.

  “When I heard you run down the stairs,” he went on, “I knew that you were really a cheerful person, even though you act like you’re not.”

  Tom thought she was cheerful? He was a moron.

  She opened her mouth to set him straight, but he had taken her hand in his and was looking earnestly into her eyes and babbling on about something. What was he saying?

  “—so, you see, you have to give me a chance.”

  He met her disbelieving stare and nodded firmly. “You must give me a chance,” he said. He said it
in a resounding tone, as if he were a four-star general giving her an order. “You must.”

  He was commanding her, Silvia! Clearly he was insane.

  Still, she felt dizzy. “And why is that?” she asked faintly.

  He pulled a letter from his doublet and handed it to her.

  She looked down at the envelope, which was covered with her own black scrawl.

  “Because Juliet told you to.”

  Benno frowned with concentration as he counted under his breath.

  “Step down, two, three, step up, two, three, then turn, then turn, then step to the right . . .”

  The bright sound of trumpets, horns, and drums sounded through the room as the Shakespeare Scholars moved with stately grace through an Elizabethan dance.

  So far, Benno had not tripped, stumbled, turned the wrong way or run into anyone. He was, he congratulated himself, finally getting the hang of it.

  He risked a quick glance at the others. Giacomo was staring unhappily at Kate, who was grandly ignoring him. Benno gave a mental shrug. Something had happened there, that was clear, but what had happened was a mystery.

  Now Tom—Tom was beaming as happily as if he’d just made the Milan starting lineup. Silvia was looking uncharacteristically bemused and—Benno squinted—yes, she was even smiling slightly. Before he could consider this puzzling sight, they had reached the point where the two lines of dancers faced each other and took a step to the right. He focused and . . . yes! Another hurdle overcome.

  Now he was stepping forward to clasp hands with Kate and guide her through the next steps.

  “You’re doing great,” she murmured.

  “Thank you,” he said, gratified.

  They did the little step and hop to the side that had so often foxed Benno in the past. This time, he didn’t slip or lurch off balance, so, with a great sense of achievement, he did the little skip-hop in the other direction and met Kate again. They turned and, still holding hands, moved together in that tricky one-two-three section. Benno turned his attention back to his feet.