Relatively Honest Read online

  “How could it be gay?”

  “Have you seen the clothes they wore in France back then?”

  “Oh. Good point.” I hauled my desk chair over and straddled it. “So are you trying out for the lead? Cyrano?”

  “Well, that would be nice. But I’m pathetic and would take any role they offered me.”

  “Hm. Campus production, I assume?”

  “Yep. Auditions start Monday.”

  “You ought to do it. Theater major and all.”

  He nodded, reading more lines. “I will. Just have to wig out a little with stage fright first.”

  I settled my chin on the back of the chair and gazed out the window. I had seen Julie walking to class earlier today. My heart rate had “wigged out” merely from glimpsing her at a distance of fifty yards. How long could I live like this? I would have to get used to her presence again someday, wouldn’t I?

  “I need a new hobby,” I said.

  “Mm,” Sinter grunted, still studying Cyrano.

  I looked at him, and tried to picture him got up in French Renaissance costume. (Was it Renaissance? Couldn’t recall.) “Think they’ll want any help backstage?” I asked.

  “Probably. You could come along and ask.”

  “Think I will do. Moral support for you, at least.”

  He glanced at me. “You could probably even try out for Christian.”

  “Which one was he?”

  “Young good-looking guy who gets Roxane. With Cyrano’s help. Even though Cyrano loves her too.”

  I shrugged. I was feeling oddly indifferent to getting the girl, unless it was one certain girl. “I’ll come along, in any case.”

  He leafed a few pages back. “By the way, thought you might be interested in this.”

  “What?”

  Sinter shook a lock of hair out of his eyes, lifted the book, and quoted from it: “‘Roxane…an orphan…cousin to Cyrano of whom we spoke just now.’”

  That did indeed snag my attention. “Roxane is Cyrano’s cousin?”

  “Yep.”

  “Didn’t you say he was in love with her?”

  “Yep.” Sinter started turning pages again. “And her with him, in the end. Nothing unusual about it back then.”

  I grimaced, annoyed I had been born into a less permissive time when it came to lusting after your cousin. “Well, they were French,” I said. “No standards whatsoever.”

  He grinned. “I love it when you get all English.” He rolled off his bed and stood up. “Think I’ll go see Clare.”

  “All right.”

  He went out, taking the book with him, which was a shame since now I had got rather interested.

  Luckily everything is online. It took maybe one minute to find a webpage with the full text (English translation) of Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. An hour later, having skimmed the whole thing, I had the picture.

  Cyrano is this French guy in 1640 – I was right: Renaissance – and because he’s got an enormous nose, all his life he’s had to be a good fighter and a sharp wit, to show up the blokes who pick on him. He’s become completely fearless, a legend in his own time. But he’s got one weakness: he’s in love with the most beautiful girl around, his cousin Roxane. They get along fine, but he figures he doesn’t have a chance, since she could have anyone. Besides, he finds out she’s got a crush on this cadet named Christian. Naturally Christian has a crush on her too, so Cyrano decides he’ll do some matchmaking and put them together.

  Thing is, Christian’s a good fellow but not too bright, and needs Cyrano’s help in writing love notes. Together they win Roxane by using Christian’s good looks and Cyrano’s wit, and Roxane drops everything and marries Christian. But about five minutes later the men get called off to war with Spain, and Christian gets killed. Roxane mourns him for ages, till finally learning at the last possible hour that Cyrano was really the one writing the letters back then, and it’s him she loves. Which of course is the signal for Cyrano to drop dead himself, but at least in a good mood.

  I liked the play. It was both tragic and comic, and looked like tremendous fun to act out. But most of all I noticed that Sinter had been right: no one, anywhere in the whole story, seemed to think it strange that first cousins should be in love. It barely even mattered to the plot, except to give Cyrano and Roxane an excuse to visit each other often. And this play wasn’t written back in the Renaissance: it was written in 1897, not nearly so long ago. (Fine, my grandparents weren’t born yet in 1897, but I would grab any bit of hope I saw these days.)

  I decided I would come along and offer my assistance in the production. It would give me something to do, and possibly even ammunition to use in my pursuit of Julie. (“Cyrano de Bergerac did it; how bad could it be?”) At the same time, I hoped it would take my mind off Julie, but I didn’t have much faith that anything could do that.

  Monday, then. A hobby. Good. A cousin-related hobby, of course, but one step at a time is the only way any of us can make progress.

  ON MONDAY, upon returning to our room after lunch, I found an almost unrecognizable Sinter. For one thing, he was wearing a white shirt, buttoned neatly and tucked into his trousers. For another, no makeup.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said.

  He glanced at me with clean-washed blue eyes, from where he sat trying to detangle his wet hair with a comb. “Ha ha.”

  I sat in my desk chair, grinning. “Well, don’t you scrub up nicely. What’s the occasion?”

  “The audition. I can hardly try out for Cyrano looking like an ’80s goth.” He grimaced as he tugged the comb through a knot.

  “True.” His hair, though still unruly, was no longer its tumbleweed shape. It was starting to look shoulder-length and choppy – almost romantically rugged, you could say. “Now it’s more like ’90s Britpop,” I observed.

  “You can shut up anytime.”

  “Have you tried conditioner?”

  “Yes, I’ve tried conditioner.”

  “But you have to leave it in. Smooth it through to the ends.”

  “Could this conversation get any gayer?” he asked. But now I’d made him laugh, which was all I wanted, to ease his nerves about the auditions.

  As for myself, I didn’t care. I had no particular interest in a future in the theater. I was just going along on a lark.

  So imagine how discombobulated I became when Julie turned up for auditions too.

  I was sitting beside Sinter in the seats of Robinson Theater, filling out an audition form (I thought I might be able to snag a role with a few lines; why not?), when a familiar voice said, “Hi, guys.” The scent of flowers and apples swept my nose as she sat beside Sinter. I nearly misspelled my own name.

  Luckily, Sinter’s new look took the limelight for the moment.

  “Sinter!” she said. “You look great! You’re all GQ now.” She reached out to play with his hair.

  He smirked. “You guys are having way too much fun with this.”

  “Hi Julie,” I said.

  “Hiya.” She clicked a ballpoint and started filling out her own audition application. “Didn’t know you were trying out.”

  “No, I, uh…didn’t know you were, either.”

  As she wrote something down on the form, I took the opportunity to catch Sinter’s eye and give him a silent What the hell? look.

  He seemed guilty. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I was talking about it, down in their room, and Julie said she wanted to come too.”

  “Oh. Uh, great.” I looked at the form and tried to remember details like my name. My mind was scattered. I glanced once more at Sinter, who mouthed, “Sorry.” I shrugged, resigned. What could he have done? Told her she wasn’t allowed to try out?

  “Which character are you auditioning for?” I asked her.

  “Roxane,” she answered, “but I’ll take anything. You?”

  “Same. Er, anything, I mean. Not Roxane.”

  They both chuckled. My blood had started thundering in my ears. A very wrong idea
had occurred to me: if she were Roxane, and I were Christian, we would get to kiss. We would have to kiss. Lots of times. With impunity.

  I lowered the pen to the page. Which role are you auditioning for? asked the form. Any, I had written. Now I added, shaky and quick, pref. Christian. Before I could come to my senses, I jumped up and turned in the form to the director.

  He was a wiry gray-haired man named Bob, with huge brown-rimmed glasses he put on when reading our applications. Near him milled a handful of confident, sleek people who all seemed to know each other – theater majors, most likely. Sinter eyed them distrustfully. “Do you think it’s totally obvious we’re just a bunch of clueless freshmen?” he muttered.

  “Maybe,” Julie said, rising to turn in her form. “But if you let that stop you, I’ll be very disappointed in you.” She ruffled his hair again on her way by.

  “I’m sure it won’t be too bad,” I said, though I was dizzy with nerves now.

  Flat laugh from Sinter. “Don’t you know what they say about auditions?”

  “No. What?”

  “‘Life is unfair. Theater is less fair than life. Acting is the least fair part of theater. The audition is the most unfair thing a human being can subject himself to on Earth.’”

  “Oh,” I said. “Brilliant. Tally ho, then.”

  Bob started off our torture session with monologues. He shuffled the papers and called names, one at a time, and each person hopped up there alone, on the scuffed black-painted stage, to speak for two minutes. This, at least, wasn’t a problem for me. In secondary school we had to do the same. I had three speeches burned into my memory: two Shakespeare and one from a 1950s short story. Since the first five people in a row today did Shakespeare, I decided I’d do the short story.

  Bob called my name as the sixth. With shaky limbs, I climbed the steps to the stage. Fortunately, once you were up there, the lights in your eyes made it hard to see the people staring at you from the house. Project from the diaphragm, some former teacher’s voice reminded me, and so from my diaphragm (or somewhere around there) I announced the piece, and began. It was an “eyewitness account” of the London Blitz, alternately funny and sobering, as told by a working-class Cockney fellow, which is an accent I find easy enough to do. The two minutes sped by. Bob thanked me, and as I returned to my seat, Sinter and Julie beamed at me.

  “Good job,” they both whispered.

  “Cheers,” I whispered back, and, in my flush of pride, winked at Julie, who was kind enough to look girlishly flattered.

  When it came their turn, they each did fine – better than me, actually. Julie, too, had chosen something modern: a clever ramble from some play I had never heard of, about why a girl would choose to study mathematics. She absolutely sparkled up there. None of the other females compared. (All right, so I was biased.)

  Sinter went up and performed a piece of glibness from Molière. Good thinking, that: using another French writer.

  Next up were readings from Cyrano itself. People went up in all sorts of combinations, twos and threes and fours, to read scenes Bob indicated, all of us carrying the same edition of Cyrano sold at the university bookshop. I acted as Cyrano once, while some bloke stood in for his friend Le Bret. I got swapped and read Le Bret’s part another time, then read for Christian while someone else was Cyrano. Then I sat in the house and watched while Julie charmed everyone to pieces as Roxane, and while Sinter delivered Cyrano’s elegant lines, and Christian’s despairing ones, both equally well.

  The three of us walked back to the dorms together that evening. I had temporarily lost my fears around Julie after going through all that.

  “No, you were excellent,” I told her in honesty, when she moaned she had been awful.

  “You were great,” Sinter assured her. Then he sighed. “But I’m not getting called back.”

  “Of course you are,” she said.

  “You are, absolutely,” I told him.

  “I won’t get Cyrano, though. That Blaine guy totally has it in the bag.”

  “He did seem pretty chummy with Bob,” Julie said.

  “Wanker,” I sympathized.

  Blaine was a tall, robust fellow, built like a lumberjack, with floppy golden hair and an unfairly well-trained voice. He had “projecting from the diaphragm” down pat. Even his whispers could be heard at the back of the house.

  “Suppose it helps that he looks like a grown-up,” Sinter said.

  “No kidding,” said Julie. “He looks about twenty-six. He’s probably a senior.”

  “Even if only one or two of us get called back,” I proposed, “I say we all go to auditions, all the way to the end. Moral support for the others.”

  “I’m there,” Julie agreed. “I’ll even volunteer to help with costumes.”

  “Same here,” said Sinter. “Though maybe the props department, for me.”

  Distracted by the idea of Julie sliding a measuring tape up my thigh, I did nothing but hum a sound of approval.

  No need to worry, as it turned out: we were all three called back. The numbers had been pared dramatically for the women, as there were few parts for them other than Roxane. But Julie was among them, and Bob kept calling her up to read with us lads, in some combination or another. She did fine with Sinter, she did fine with Blaine, she did fine with everyone.

  As for me, I did fine until I got paired with her.

  “Okay,” Bob called, “the same scene, Christian and Roxane, with Daniel and Julie.”

  Gulp.

  The confidence flooded out of me as Julie and I faced one another under the lights, playbooks in our hands.

  “‘Is that you, Christian?’” she said, low-pitched and fetching. “‘Let’s stay here in the twilight. Sit down. Now…tell me things.’”

  My throat was dry. The words, which I knew well enough from watching the others do this scene, seemed to melt before my eyes. “‘I love you,’” I croaked. Not projecting well at all. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “‘Yes, speak to me of love.’” She leaned toward me.

  I leaned back – didn’t even mean to. “‘I love you.’”

  “‘You have your theme. Improvise! Rhapsodize!’”

  “‘I…I love you so.’” Christ, this was awful. Making me say it for the first time, like this? And how was I supposed to play Christian if I fell to pieces now?

  “‘Oh, tell me how you feel!’” she said, perfectly petulant.

  Was this God’s idea of a joke?

  I fumbled through the scene, sweating and miserable. Julie sailed through it, making everyone chuckle. Finally I was sent back to the house with a “Thank you” from Bob, while another fellow was sent up to do the same scene with her.

  I fell into the seat beside Sinter. “Bloody hell,” I whispered.

  “Must have been a little awkward.”

  “Well, there goes that role. Or any role.”

  “You weren’t so bad. But I know how you feel. Blaine’s getting Cyrano, I just know it.”

  SINTER WAS right.

  Julie, Sinter, and I made a special trip across campus on the third evening to view the final cast list, which was to be posted on the bulletin board at five o’clock. We joined the group of anxious actors already waiting there. Blaine, apparently either busy or very confident, was not present. Right on time, Bob strolled out and tacked the list up, saluted us all, and returned to his office.

  We clustered around.

  Cyrano de Bergerac -- Blaine Rice

  Roxane -- Julie French

  Christian -- Sinter Blackwell

  And, further down, among a slew of males:

  Carbon de Castel-Jaloux -- Daniel Revelstoke

  Captain of the Guards. Who bloody cared? My balance had started wobbling with the implications of the more important casting. Christian and Roxane.

  Cries of approval and good-natured regret filled the air. Julie shrieked and covered her mouth. People began congratulating her.

  Sinter staggered back from the board, wide-eyed. “C
hristian? Are they sure? There must be some mistake.”

  “No, dude, you were the best Christian,” one of the other actors said.

  “I…I didn’t think I was, you know, that type of character.”

  “You were adorable,” a girl told him. “It was perfect.”

  His gaze, bewildered but happy, wandered to mine. He shrugged helplessly.

  He would get to kiss Julie. My roommate, Julie’s roommate’s boyfriend, would get to kiss Julie. I found a smile for him – best acting I’d ever done. “Congrats, mate.” My eyes moved to the trembling, elated Miss French. “And to you, of course, Jules.”

  “But you too, Dan,” she said. “Captain of the guards! That’s pretty good.”

  I waved it off. “Eh, another man in uniform.”

  Even if I had been cast as Cyrano I would have been blinded with jealousy at this moment. Someone else – Sinter, no less – was going to be kissing Julie. Fuck it all to hell.

  Finally Sinter and Julie looked at each other and broke into breathless laughter.

  “People will say we’re in love,” she told him.

  Oh, yes. I hated life all right.

  Chapter 15: Playing at Love

  THE THREE of us walked into Clare and Julie’s room, where Clare lay across her bed, reading with the radio turned up. “Hey,” Sinter greeted. “I’ll be making out with your roommate for a couple months in front of an audience. Hope that’s okay.”

  She squinted at him. “Holy shit. Did you both get leads?”

  “Yep. Christian and Roxane.” He slung himself down beside her.

  “All right! You stud.” She thumped him on the back. “Does this mean you have to keep combing your hair?”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “They cast me looking like this, so I guess they like me this way.”

  “I like you that way too,” Julie said. “You can see your eyes.”

  “Cheers, babe,” he answered playfully. Then, with a startled glance in my direction, as if he had just realized he was imitating me, he blushed and changed the subject.

  THE WHOLE company attended the first rehearsal, in which Bob had us sit in a circle on the stage and go round and introduce ourselves. He gave us the photocopied rehearsal schedule, listing who was to be where, when. Plenty of days I would not be required. At least half the days, Sinter would be. Three-quarters of the time, Julie would have to be there. And every single day, Blaine was essential.