by John Varley
The Golden Globe
John Varley
John Varley
The Golden Globe
ACT 1
"I once played Romeo and Juliet as a one-man show," I said. "Doubling with Mercutio won't be a problem."
The curtain was already up, and Dahlia Smithson—our fair sun, the snowy dove trouping with crows, the rich jewel in the Ethiop's ear—had yet to appear backstage. This was not a surprise. The last two nights we'd had to winch her loveliness into the balcony and tie her down to keep her from falling out.
"You're out of your mind," shouted Larry "The Leech" Crocker, our producer-director-stage manager: the wax in the Ethiop's ear. He was bug-eyed with fury, trembling, drenched in sweat... and the picture of calm composure next to Dee, the assistant stage manager, who kept pushing Larry's ragged script away from her as if it might bite.
There had been talk of bringing in an understudy in view of La Smithson's recent behavior, but this was not the Schubert Traveling Shows, ladies and germs, this was The Crocker Players, and if you haven't heard of them it's probably because you live within a parsec of civilization. We were chronically undercapitalized (read "dirt-poor") and it fell to the ASM to understudy all the female roles. And while I'm sure Dee would have provided yeoman service as Ladies Montague or Capulet, and could probably have taken a creditable swing at the Nurse, the prospect of Juliet had turned her pale green.
"I don't know all the lines," Dee wailed.
"See?" I said. "She doesn't know the part."
"You're crazy," Larry exploded. "Aren't they onstage at the same time?"
"Mercutio and Juliet never meet," I said. "I know you've put Mercutio at the Capulets' party, but the Bard doesn't demand it, and it can be solved by letting the Prince wear my costume in the scene. Mercutio is masked, and has no lines. However"—and I cupped my ear to the stage—"you'd better make up your mind. Scene two is about to begin, and Juliet is in three. I'll need a little time."
"You're crazy," Larry the Leech muttered again, then jerked his head toward the dressing rooms.
"You'll never regret this," I said.
"I regret it already."
* * *
This being a Crocker show, it goes without saying that we were a lot more than forty-five minutes from Broadway. Hell, we were just about forty-five hours from Pluto. That's how long it had taken my last message to my agent to reach the System, and an equal time for the news to reach me that he wasn't answering his phone. No big surprise there; I'd been "on the road," as it were, for almost ten years now, and my agent hadn't been answering when I left. (The question I'd wanted him to answer? Simple, really: "Who booked me into this toilet?")
The plumbing fixture in question was know as Brementon. Who knows why? Humans have this need to name everything, no matter how little that thing may deserve it. When I saw the name on the travel itinerary it brought to mind a peaceful little hamlet. German, perhaps. Happy burghers in lederhosen, smiling frauleins in dirndls and pigtails and wooden shoes, cottages draped in swastika bunting. In reality, if they'd added "Maximum Security Prison" to the place's name they'd have been closer to the truth. About a quarter of it was a prison. We hadn't seen that part as yet, but if it was worse than the rest of the place, the mind reeled. B-town, as the players came to call it, could have provided the very definition of the word "boondock," except that the stop before B-town had actually been called Boondocks.
Brementon was a random collection of junk, natural and artificial, welded together in the cometary zone and pressed into service as a "City" by the escaped criminals, madmen, perverts, and other misfits who liked to call themselves Outlanders. Brementon, Boondocks, and ten thousand other similar wandering junkyards constituted the most far-flung "community" humanity had ever known.
As to where it was, that was something that could have mattered only to a celestial navigator. Upon arrival I'd looked for the Sun, and it took a while to find it. We were due to pass within ten billion miles of it in only four thousand years; to an Outlander, that qualified as a near miss.
It was tough to say how big Brementon was. Much of it was tied together with cables and hoses and it tended to drift around. If you'd grabbed two ends and yanked hard you might have stretched it out twenty kilometers or more, but you'd never get it unsnarled again. When I first saw it from the ship it presented a rude circular form about five kay across, like some demented globular cluster, or a picture of a spaceship a few seconds after a disastrous explosion.
One small part of this orbiting traffic-accident-in-progress was a silvery sphere called the Brementon Playhouse. It was tied to a counterbalancing ball containing the municipal sewer works, which gives a fair idea of the high esteem Outlanders held for The Arts. The balls rotated around a common center of gravity. The result was that we didn't have to play Shakespeare in free fall, as we'd done at Boondocks and several previous engagements. Friends, Romans, countrymen, throw me a tie-down! Talk about your theater in the round.
But enough about Brementon. Let's talk about me.
I raced up the spiral stairs in the wings and slammed into Dahlia's dressing room. I paused for just a second there, breathing the intoxicating air of the headliner. I'd hate to say how long it had been since I'd rated a private dressing room. I caressed the back of Juliet's chair, then pulled it back and sat in front of the light-girdled mirror and gazed into my face and centered myself.
I'd never actually done Juliet before. No point in telling Larry that. (The one-man show? A comic skit, really, with quick changes, slapstick, clown faces, and japery, lasting twenty minutes when I was really rolling.) No point in worrying him; I knew the part. But line reading is just the starting point, of course. You must get inside the character. All good acting is played from within. I had about five minutes.
It's not enough time, of course. It wouldn't have been enough even if I'd been able to use it to do nothing but think about the part. As it was, I'd need every minute to accomplish the physical transformation. But I did use the mental time to go back over the many, many performances of Juliet I had seen, going right back to Norma Shearer in 1936. As my mind ranged back over Juliets of the past, taking a bit of business here, a word emphasis there, my hands were busy changing hatchet-faced Mercutio into a visage with cheek to shame the fairest stars in all the heavens.
Once I had my own face. Well, I still have it, of course, the specs are somewhere in my trunk, the copyright number SSCO-5-441-J54902. It's a good face, and served me well in the trade for almost thirty years. But it became the wisest course not to use it.
Thirty years ago, with unaccustomed money in my pocket following a long and successful run, I invested in every makeup gadget then known to mankind. This required, among other things, that my entire head be taken apart and rebuilt. My body harbors enough tech wizardry to qualify as a public nuisance. Radios spit static when I walk by. Compasses are thrown off true. But when the part calls for a full-body alteration in a hurry, I'm your guy. Or gal, as the case may be.
My first appearance was a logistical nuisance, really. Juliet says, "It is an honor that I dream not" when asked if she wants to be married. To which the nurse hoots, "An honour! Were not I thine only nurse, I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat." A guaranteed laugh line, which dear sweet Angeline Atkins vamped outrageously, as she did the entire role.
The problem was that the next scene, Act One, scene four, was Mercutio's chance to shine. What to do, what to do?
First things first. I struggled into the costume, stuffing padding in the appropriate places. Luckily, the skirt reached all the way to the floor.
I pulled on a black wig, quickly combed it out, and then picked up the Masque-Aid. It's a nice little gadget consisting of two parts. The first is
a thin plastic tube with a snap connector on the end. I fastened this to a matching connector hidden behind my left ear, turned it on, and heard the high hiss as air began to flow through it. The second part is a styling wand, which looks like a pencil with a broad, flat head. Both units are connected to a control console and a switching system buried in my cheekbone. I pressed the flat end of the wand to my face and got to work.
There's nothing real fancy about the wand itself. It contains a powerful magnet that rotates when I press a button with my thumb. When I put it in the right position it causes surgically implanted magnets to turn, which then turn screws... which slowly cause various bones or groups of bones to move apart or closer together.
I can vary the distance between my eyes. I can lengthen my jawbone, raise and lower my cheekbones. I can create a brow ridge. In five minutes I can be Quasimodo or Marilyn Monroe.
That's the base. The air hose was taking care of the rest. There are twenty little air bags embedded in my facial skin. Suck them all dry and I look like Death. Fill them up: Fatty Arbuckle.
The only problem with all this stage magic is it can hurt if done rapidly. Depending on how much I had to do, the pain could be like a mild toothache or a severe beating.
No one ever told me art would be painless.
* * *
I was brushing pink spots onto my cheeks when someone began frantically pounding on the dressing room door. "One minute!" Dee called.
"I'll be there." I slashed two bold eyebrows with strokes of a pencil, looked at myself critically one last time. I tasted blood, dabbed at a tooth with a towel, smiled broadly at myself in the mirror.
Larry was waiting for me in the wings, and I savored the expression of bafflement as I approached him. Beyond, Romeo and Benvolio were onstage, the curtain about to come down on the scene. Larry grabbed my arm.
"Listen, babe," he whispered, staring intently into my eyes. "You can't let us down. We're all counting on you, every last one of us. I know it's been a tough road. I know I've been hard on you, but I did it because I knew you had something, darling, some magical quality you can't buy in a store. I want you to go out there and knock 'em dead. When you come back, I want you to come back a star!"
"For pity's sake, Larry, get a grip on yourself." He stood there blinking for a moment.
"Sorry. I just always wanted to say that, that's all."
"Well, I'm glad it's out of your system."
From the stage: "What, lamb! What ladybird! God forbid!—where's this girl?—what, Juliet!"
Christ, that was my cue!
"How now, who calls?" It came out in a kind of croak, but at least it was a high-pitched croak. Lady Capulet and the Nurse looked at me strangely, but soldiered bravely on through one of the less interesting scenes in Shakespeare, all about Lammas-eve and other things of minimal importance to a modern audience. I let it all drone over me and concentrated on my vocal cords, which, in the rush, I had neglected to tune. I hummed softly to myself, earning a few sharp looks from Angeline. Finally I thought I had it, and just in time, too.
"It is an honour that I dream not of." Strange. I was sure I'd heard that voice before. Lady Capulet had her back to the audience... my god, she was stifling a laugh! I played the line back in my head. Blanche DuBois! I was using the same voice I'd last employed in our production of Streetcar.
I frantically cast back through the female roles of my career, looking for something I could slip on like a comfortable shoe. A voice, a voice. My kingdom for a voice!
"Speak briefly, can you like of Paris' love?"
And I said, "I'll look to like, if looking liking move." Damn, that one sounded familiar, too. "But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly." Great Caesar's ghost! That was Natalie Wood with a bad Puerto Rican accent! My review of Juliets past had led me down a cinematic byway.
Maybe if I broke into a chorus of "I Feel Pretty" no one would notice.
* * *
I had no time to lose. Exeunt all, curtain down, curtain up, enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, Maskers, Torchbearers, and others. I stood in the wings and went through a transmogrification that would have had Henry Jekyll green with envy while the company entered and stalled, as they'd been warned to do, until I was ready for my entrance.
Off with the dress. Off with the wig. And no time at all for a session in front of the mirror, this has to be quick, so with a wince very like a man in front of a firing squad, I jammed my face into a plastic mask and pressed the reset button on the Masque-Aid control console.
I don't recommend this. What happened next felt like I imagine having all your teeth removed at once might feel—if you had five hundred teeth.
The machine went back to square one, at warp speed. In ten seconds I was Mercutio.
The scene went well. In it, I wax fey about Queen Mab, the fairies' midwife. Somehow my pain and disorientation made the lines less stilted than they usually seemed, less a flight of fancy and more an oration of deep meaning to Mercutio, a complex and difficult character. By the end of it, when Romeo calms me down, I was weeping unfeigned tears, shaking with emotion.
It is Larry's theory that Romeo and Mercutio were homosexual lovers. He makes it explicit by having Mercutio kiss Romeo after the line "Turning his face to the dew-dropped south." It is a good-bye kiss, presaging the upcoming assault on Romeo's heart by fair Juliet, and a prescient surrender at the same time. Myself, I have no opinions in the matter. I think it's too tough for a person of our age to really imagine what homosexuality was like in a pre-Changing time. But the scene played well. The curtain rang down to long applause.
And thank god for that, because I don't know if I could have faced the retransformation ahead of me without that sound to buoy me up.
Dee and Larry were arguing about something as I came off. Dee shouted at Larry to shut up—which turned a few heads—and grabbed my arm and pulled me to the stairs.
"I've got you five minutes to change," she said, hauling me along. "I'm replacing you in the dance, and we're doing two choruses. You'll enter, stage left, across from Romeo, while Capulet is talking. I'll cue you."
"I know the spot," I said. "Thanks." I kissed her forehead and entered my dressing room. Elwood was there waiting for me. I nodded to him and collapsed in my chair.
"There's talk of deleting the first scene in the second act," he said. Elwood is a tall man who likes to wear period clothing that hangs on his lanky body like billowing sails. He looks just like Jimmy Stewart.
"That would help a lot," I said. The styling wand was whirring quietly in my hand and Juliet's face was taking shape in the mirror. Elwood sat in a chair beside me and stretched out.
"Yeah, but it sort of cuts the legs out from under Mercutio."
Of course it did, and I didn't need Elwood to tell me. The scene had Mercutio growing increasingly frantic in his search for Romeo, who, we all know, was by then deep in enemy territory and ready to deny his father and refuse his name. Cut it, and Mercutio would look silly in scene four.
"This talk," I said, shrugging Juliet's costume over my clothes. "Who's saying it?"
"Oh, I hear things," Elwood said, with a shrug. Which is all I'd ever get out of him.
I didn't want to cut it. I'd hired on to play Mercutio, and I meant to play him well. And I'd promised Larry I could double the parts, and I meant to do that, too. But Mercutio exits at the very end of scene one and Juliet appears on the balcony at the very start of scene two. If it was only a matter of more pain I'd do it willingly, but for this appearance of Juliet I had to have the whole change and I just didn't know if it could be done in a minute.
There are air bladders in my body, too. I plugged the hose fitting from the Masque-Aid into a socket (never mind where; you could search me pretty thoroughly and probably not find it), and warm saline began pumping.
Juliet was thirteen. She had to be covered in baby fat. She needed a slim waist. She needed boobs, and a bottom.
Those last two wo
uld have to wait, as they'd look passing strange under Mercutio's tights and jerkin.
Dee was knocking on my door.
* * *
I got through the dance without mishap, and without the voice of Blanche, praise all the muses. I don't know where the voice I used came from, but it was suitable to a love-struck teenager.
Then off and wrench my face back during the short intermission between acts, then Mercutio's plaintive search for Romeo... then I was tearing backstage, tearing off Mercutio's clothes, slapping my face into the Masque-Aid while Dee plugged in the saline hose... and she was the only witness to what may have been the fastest sex change since Roy Rogers gelded Trigger.
A couple of pints quickly produced a pair of breasts fit for peace to dwell in. Ditto the behind; no sense overdoing it in either place. Suck out a little more juice from the waist, swell the hip, and voila!
Only one small detail to attend to. Well, not that small.
The penis is just skin covering two blood-filled chambers. With the proper operation those chambers can be pulled back into the body, sort of like pulling a sock inside out. Extrude it and you're the leading man. Pull it back in for the ingenue effect. Do it several times quickly and you'll be popular at your next orgy.
My father would have been proud. I came off that stage Mercutio, and appeared sixty seconds later on the balcony, Juliet.
* * *
"With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls," said Romeo, tearing off his shirt. "For stony limits cannot hold love out: And what love can do, that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me." He kissed me as I shrugged out of my own shirt.
"If they do see thee, they will murder thee." I was breathing hard now. "Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity." Dropping the Montague britches as he spoke to reveal not hand, not foot, nor arm nor face, but another part belonging to a man. A fair sun, arising! He came into my arms and we fell back together on the bed.
