The Juliet Club

by Suzanne Harper

  When he looked back up, they were doing that circle thing, and he and Kate were moving clockwise in the outer circle while Giacomo and Lucy moved counterclockwise in the inner circle.

  Lucy gave Benno a quick wink, and he grinned. Then it was time to take more of those tricky steps—up, two, three, down, two, three—so all he could do was glance back over his shoulder to see if he could catch her eye again.

  But instead, he saw Giacomo, his head turned to keep Kate in sight until the music ended.

  Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting had already been played three times during the evening by other Shakespeare Scholars. Now that it was Benno and Lucy’s turn, Lucy was relieved to see that most of the guests had apparently either already watched this particular scene or had no interest in it to begin with. As she approached the fountain where Professoressa Marchese had placed the scene, she saw that their audience was only a half-dozen people, all of whom seemed more focused on their plates of food than on the acting.

  A spray of roses hung down from a trellis near the fountain, where water was splashing quietly. Lanterns hung from the trees, gold against the green darkness. Fireflies flitted through the air. Lucy saw Benno waiting for her, shifting nervously from foot to foot. She managed to smile at him, but her hands were shaking and she felt as if she might faint. He gave her a ghost of a grin in return, then took her hand and said, “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

  She just had time to note with surprise that Benno had not only said the words perfectly, but that he sounded as if he actually understood them. And then it was her turn.

  She took a deep breath to calm her fluttering nerves. “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this, for saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

  Benno’s stage fright seemed to have vanished. As she finished, he was looking deeply into her eyes and smiling, ever so slightly. For the first time, she noticed that he had a dimple. How had she overlooked that during all those soccer practices?

  “Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?” he asked. Don’t saints and pilgrims have lips, too?

  And with a little shock, Lucy realized that not only did she understand the words, she was feeling them, too. She said Juliet’s next line with just a hint of teasing reproach: “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

  This was not the answer Romeo wanted. He became a little more insistent. “O, then dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.” Please kiss me, before my faith turns to despair.

  Well, sure I’ll kiss you, Lucy thought, what a great idea. Just in time, she remembered that, although she was completely sold on this notion, Juliet was not yet convinced. “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.” Even when they’re granting prayers, saints don’t move.

  How true, Lucy thought, who suddenly felt quite sorry for the saints.

  But Romeo had an answer for that. “Then move not,” Benno said, with the triumphant air of one winning an argument, “while my prayer’s effect I take.” Then don’t move while I act out my prayer.

  And he leaned forward and kissed her.

  During rehearsals, they had kissed lightly, a peck on the lips to mark the spot; then they had waited to hear Dan’s feedback on their acting. They had never really, truly kissed. And now, as Lucy closed her eyes, she thought, What a terrible, terrible waste. . . .

  Benno pulled away from her. She opened her eyes and blinked as he said, “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”

  Unbelievably, Juliet had enough presence of mind for a witty comeback. “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.” Our kiss might have purged your sin, but now the sin is on my lips.

  Benno grinned. “Sin from lips?” he asked teasingly. “O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”

  This time Lucy leaned forward and they kissed again. And this time Lucy had to pull away to say the last line: “You kiss by th’ book.” What Juliet meant, Dan had explained, was that Romeo kissed very well, as if he had studied how to do it, and now Lucy had to agree with this interpretation.

  Winnie had been assigned the task of standing under the trees all night and saying the nurse’s line that would get Juliet offstage and end the scene, a task that she did with a scowling ill grace. As Lucy and Benno stared at each other, she called out in a disgruntled voice, “Madam, your mother craves a word with you,” and Lucy ran off.

  She stopped after a few feet and heard Winnie slap her script closed and say irritably, “Well, thank goodness that’s finally over with! I’m going to get something to eat!” The few onlookers applauded politely and began drifting away. Lucy stayed in the shadows, breathless.

  How had she missed Benno? He had been right under her nose for the last four weeks! How had she not noticed his cute grin or his expressive dark eyes or—for heaven’s sake!—that dimple in his left cheek? How had she neglected all those chances she had had to kiss him?

  “You were wonderful,” he whispered in her ear.

  She jumped and turned to see Benno standing before her, as if her thoughts had conjured him.

  “No,” she said slowly. “We were wonderful.”

  His face lit up. “Lucy. When I wrote you that letter—”

  “You?” she said, astounded. “You wrote that?”

  “Well . . . I mostly wrote it,” he said, striving for honesty.

  She smiled up at him. “And here we’ve been hanging out for days and you’ve been teaching me soccer, which I never in a million, billion years thought I would play, and you’ve been so patient with me and I’ve been just going along like a silly goose, never even seeing what’s right there in front of me, clear as day and . . . Benno, I’m sorry!” She squeezed his hand even harder, too caught up in what she was saying to notice how he winced. Tears sparkled in her eyes from an excess of emotion. “Oh, that doesn’t even make any sense, does it? No, I know I’m kind of giddy and people don’t always understand what I say, but—”

  “Not to worry, amore mio,” Benno whispered as he eased his hand out of hers to touch her face. “You have always made perfect sense to me.”

  “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

  A short flight of stone steps led up from the terrace to a back door, where there was a small landing with a balustrade. This was Juliet’s balcony. Kate leaned forward as Giacomo launched into Romeo’s first long speech. She could smell the pink and white flowers that starred the ground, and the spicy scent of the red geraniums that spilled out of pots lining the stone railing. A breeze ruffled her short hair like a benediction, and Kate felt her eyes tear up because this night was so beautiful, and so sad.

  Giacomo was nearing the end of his speech. “Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek!” he said, looking up at her with longing.

  “Ay, me!” Kate sighed a very Juliet sigh, and then let her thoughts drift as Giacomo started declaiming his next seven lines.

  She had let herself believe in him, that was the problem. She thought that Jerome had cured her, but somehow, somewhere, she had lost her way. She had fallen under his spell, and she had only herself to blame.

  Ah, it was her cue.

  She leaned over the balcony and said, “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

  Her Romeo seemed stunned by this suggestion. He turned aside and said, “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?”

  Kate recited her next lines like a girl newly in love. Then she looked at Giacomo and remembered how he had pretended to be in love with her. A surge of righteous anger gave energy to her words as she looked him in the eye and said, “But fare
well compliment! Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘ay,’ and I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear’st thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries, they say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, if thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.”

  As the scene went on, Kate’s emotions made every line ring true. The memory of reading the letter he had sent to Lucy made her watch Romeo even more warily as he swore by the moon that his love was true. It sharpened her voice as she told him not to swear by the moon, since its shape and position were constantly changing. It drove her close to tears as she proclaimed, “Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract tonight. It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say ‘It lightens.’”

  And that, she thought, even as she continued saying her lines, is the real, honest-to-God truth of this love business.

  The nurse called to Juliet from inside the bedroom. Kate sighed, disappeared long enough for Romeo to worry a bit about whether she would come back, then returned to deal briskly with a few administrative details about messengers and picking the time and place to be married.

  Juliet, Kate reflected, was nothing if not practical. That, at least, she could admire.

  The last few lines sped past. The scene had barely started, and it was already coming to a close.

  She looked down as Giacomo’s face, turned up toward hers. A tear slipped down her cheek as she said her last line.

  “A thousand times good night!”

  She was running down the stairs to the terrace, barely hearing the applause, when a hand caught her wrist and swung her around.

  “Kate. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She tugged at her wrist, but he held tight. “Let me go.”

  “Not until you tell me why you are so upset.”

  Kate turned her head so that she didn’t have to look at his face. She could see dancers in the ballroom, through the glass doors, and the flickering of candlelight. It was like looking at a stage set, warm and light and welcoming. The doors opened and the sound of music and laughter spilled outside as several people came out onto the terrace. An elderly woman beamed up at Giacomo. “You did marvelously well.” She nodded at Kate. “Both of you did.”

  “Grazie,” Giacomo murmured.

  “So nice of you to say so,” Kate said.

  Before Giacomo could draw breath, a young girl poked her head outside. “Your grandmother sent me to find you. She says the caterers have made a mess of her kitchen and she needs nutmeg right now and you must come and help her find it.”

  He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, but nodded, then turned to Kate. “I have to help her, otherwise she might use the chili peppers and we will be facing a real disaster. And anyway—” Another loud group of revelers interrupted them, this time reeling up to the terrace from the rose garden. “Anyway, we can’t talk here. Will you meet me in the maze in fifteen minutes?”

  Kate hesitated.

  “Please.”

  The sight of Giacomo pleading was unexpectedly delightful. She nodded. “I’ll meet you at Portia’s statue. And if you’re late, I won’t bother waiting.”

  The sounds of the party gradually faded as Kate made her way through the dark garden, pushing aside an overgrown branch, stopping to pull a bramble that had caught her skirt. The air was cool and sweet with the scent of flowers, of damp earth, of green growing things; it was a night, she reflected bitterly, that some people would say was made for romance.

  Some people, but not her. She knew better now. Love was simply a kind of madness, fed on moonbeams, and she had no need of it.

  As if the night had heard her thought, a cloud drifted over the moon. Kate hesitated, but she could still see the path and she knew she wasn’t far from the maze. It would certainly be easier to go forward than back to the villa. So she walked on more slowly until she stepped out of the trees into a clearing. The moon came out of the clouds and she saw the tall hedges, which now looked black in the night.

  Somehow, the maze seemed more mysterious, more frightening than it had in the daylight, as if she could vanish into another world and be lost forever once she entered it.

  But this was exactly the kind of moment, she thought, where a clear, rational mind was such an asset. Obviously this was merely an elaborate system of hedges, planted to entertain and amuse. Obviously there was nothing magical about it. Obviously she would not be spirited to another world, because there was just one world, this world, and she was firmly rooted in it.

  She gave a brisk little nod of satisfaction as she worked that out in her mind. And then she stepped through the leafy opening and began walking. This time, she kept her right hand on the hedge and let it guide her as she walked, then ran, along the twisting path. Finally she burst into a clearing and stopped; her eyes closed as a wave of dizziness swept over her. After several deep breaths, she opened her eyes to see Shakespeare smiling down at her in the moonlight, and Kate realized that she had finally made it to the center of the maze.

  It was an unusual portrayal of Shakespeare. He was young, for one thing, not the pudgy, balding man whose bust sat above his grave. He was caught in the act of taking a step, perhaps the first step of his first journey to London, before he knew what he would become. There was an air of expectation in his posture, a lively and interested expression on his face, a quill stuck jauntily over his ear, and an overall attitude of good humor, as if he found the world and all the people in it completely to his liking.

  She made a face at him. “This is all your fault, you know,” she whispered.

  “Well met by moonlight, kind Kate.” Giacomo stepped out of the shadows.

  Kate turned her head at the sound of his voice, but stood absolutely still. In the darkness, she looked like a statue herself. “That’s not the quote.”

  “Yes, I know, I was just—” He took a deep breath. “So. Here we are. In the center of the maze after all.” Giacomo nodded toward the statue, but kept his eyes on her as he added lightly, “How did that happen?”

  “I don’t know!” Kate snapped. “I hate this maze! Every time I try to get anywhere I end up someplace else!”

  Giacomo chuckled. “You sound just like Lucy.”

  She glared at him. “Well, if you want to be with her so much, why don’t you just go back to the party?”

  “What?” He frowned. “I don’t want to be with her. Why in the world would you think that?”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “Because you’re in love with her.”

  “With Lucy?”

  He saw a moment of doubt in her face, then her expression hardened.

  “Oh, please,” she said. “I saw the letter.”

  Giacomo shook his head slightly in confusion. “What letter?”

  Kate raised one cynical eyebrow. “The one that quoted your favorite sonnet. The one that swore undying love. The one that was written in your own handwriting.” She stared at him challengingly. “That letter.”

  His brow cleared. Ah, yes, of course, Benno’s letter! An understandable mistake, and an easy remedy. “I can explain that.”

  “I’m sure you can,” she said in an acidly sweet voice.

  Giacomo felt a flare of resentment, which he quickly tamped down. “As a matter of fact,” he said coolly, “I wrote it for Benno. He’s the one who’s fallen for Lucy. Not me.”

  He crossed his arms and stared back at her, satisfied to see her hesitate.

  “You wrote it for Benno,” she repeated. “Benno? He’s in love with Lucy?”

  “As I said.” He waited, smug in the knowledge that he was, for once, completely in the right.

  She eyed him warily. “But you were always paying her compliments—”

  “Yes, that’s what I do.”

  “You laughed at everything she said—”

  “It’s Lucy! How can one help but laugh?”

  She gave him a narrow glance. “You couldn’t keep your eyes
off her!”

  He made an exasperated gesture. “Kate! She’s pretty, she’s sweet, she’s adorable, but . . . Lucy? Please! I was just flirting!” He smiled at her, his most charming smile. “It didn’t mean anything.”

  She tilted her head to one side and gave him a long, thoughtful look.

  “It was just a game, then,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he replied, pleased to have made his point.

  She nodded. “So when you were flirting with me—”

  Too late, he saw his mistake. “A game that you played as well,” he pointed out quickly. “And that’s not the same thing at all, because—”

  “I’m sure.” She cut him off. “Well, now that we’ve got that cleared up, let’s go back to the party. This is my last night in Italy, after all.”

  As she turned to go, her long skirt swirling around her ankles, Giacomo felt his heartbeat quicken.

  She was leaving. Tomorrow.

  “Wait.” He blocked her way.

  He had said good-bye to a lot of girls. It had never made him unhappy.

  “Why?” She pulled away.

  “Because this is our last night,” he began, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t listening.

  Instead, she was pacing around the grassy enclosure, muttering to herself. “After everything that happened, I can’t believe I actually fell—”

  She stopped.

  “What?” He moved in front of her, his gaze intent.

  Kate lifted her chin to meet his eyes, but she didn’t answer.

  He prompted her. “You can’t believe you fell . . .”

  “For your act,” she snapped.

  He felt a wave of anger wash over him. “It wasn’t an act, it was—”

  He stopped.

  “What?”

  Tell her the truth, Giacomo. He imagined Rosaline’s voice, whispering in his ear.

  He opened his mouth to speak but, at that moment, someone opened a door at the villa, releasing a swell of laughter and music. Kate turned in the direction of the noise, and there was something about the interested tilt of her head and the sight of her profile, pale against the green darkness, that silenced him.