Relatively Honest Page 12

  To my mixed relief and resentment, Blaine turned out to be likeable. Despite his intimidating talent and his towering flannel-shirted presence (he even dressed like a lumberjack), he was self-effacing and relaxed. He went out of his way to make friends with the rest of us, Sinter and Julie especially. But then, as Bob said that first day:

  “Get to know each other. Get comfortable with the people you’ll be acting with. You rely on each other so much when you’re performing. You have to feel connected. You have to trust. Theatergoers can tell when the trust isn’t there.”

  Bob always said “theatergoers” rather than “the audience.”

  Starting the second day, and continuing for three weeks, we met in small groups. We soldiers got put into a classroom with the fight choreographer, pushed all the chairs against the walls, and learned to act military. At least fifteen minutes were spent on the perfect salute, ten on the walk and the bow, and hours and hours on fighting and swordplay most of us would never get to use on stage. I, as the captain, got to practice shouting at the cadets to form ranks, and strutting alongside them to make sure they did it.

  Big deal. While I did that, Blaine and Sinter were wooing Julie on the main stage. Some days, our storylines crossed and we would all get to be there together. Even if I didn’t have to be at a rehearsal, I usually attended if Julie or Sinter was going, just to watch.

  They still weren’t kissing by the third week of rehearsals. They still only pantomimed it, and Bob was letting it slide for now. I didn’t want to think about it, and Sinter never mentioned it. (Except the very first night, the night the cast list went up – then he had said to me, “I’m sorry. Honest.” I told him to stop being ridiculous; I knew it was only acting. That was the end of it.)

  When I found myself alone with Julie, which happened now and then as we walked to classes or rehearsals, I still got nervous. My mind yelped, Cousin! Love! Lust! Laws! Genetics! Patrick! Mum, Dad! Aunts, uncles! Liar, liar, liar! and my tongue got confused, and the conversation wouldn’t flow. She seemed preoccupied too, either because of my weird behavior or for reasons I couldn’t guess.

  But we had our moments. One day during that third week, she and I lounged near each other (one empty seat between us) in the middle of the house, while Sinter and Blaine worked through the scene in which they strike the deal about Roxane.

  Julie chuckled. “I love the look on Sinter’s face there.”

  “He plays young and clueless better than I expected,” I said.

  We went on watching. I don’t know what prompted me, what gave me the courage – maybe the darkness of the house, maybe Cyrano announcing he was Roxane’s cousin, maybe Julie’s smile in the soft reflected stage-light – but I heard myself say, “When they updated the story for the film Roxanne, I notice they didn’t make them cousins anymore.”

  She put one foot up on the seat in front of her. A pink ballet slipper poked its toe into my field of vision. Ballet slippers were what she would wear in costume, so she was getting used to them. “Mm,” she agreed. “Would have weirded people out, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” Could you pass out from your heart beating too quickly, at the age of nineteen? Hoped not.

  “I don’t think it’s such a big deal, though,” she added. “As long as your family doesn’t make a habit of it.”

  Surely she could hear my heart beating, now. “Yeah,” I said again.

  Then, while I worked up the nerve to add, So listen, speaking of cousins…, a woman said, “Julie?” It was Bev, the costume mistress. “Come with me for a minute. Got to try a couple old dresses on you and see if we can alter them.”

  “Okay.” Julie jumped up and went with her, without a glance at me.

  I, meanwhile, took the next hour to get my pulse and sweating under control. She hadn’t seemed to suspect anything from that bit of conversation. And I probably couldn’t bring it up again now without her getting suspicious. I had promised Mum I wouldn’t, anyway. But: Julie didn’t think it was a big deal.

  Sleeping with your cousin not such a problem in the head of the cousin I loved. This was fantastic. No, wait, it was dangerous. Wasn’t it?

  Well, not as bad as it had been. The thorn in my conscience had its point blunted now, and my old lustful thoughts were reawakening. I confess the change was a pleasant one.

  Thus it was a nasty slap when Sinter said at lunch the next day, “Too bad she’s probably moving to Boston.”

  “What?” We had only been talking about how well Julie was doing in the play. I hadn’t said anything about her “no big deal” comment.

  Sinter shrugged. “The other day, when I was in their room, she said she was looking into transferring to Boston U next year.”

  “For Patrick?” Without intending to, I pronounced his name the way you might say “The Elephant Man.”

  “Women are unpredictable,” Sinter said.

  “Or bloody insane.”

  He glanced at me and didn’t push the subject of just who was insane around here. Too tactful, that roommate of mine.

  That afternoon, I ended up sitting next to Julie again after one of my scenes. We were in the shadows backstage this time, on a movable block of stairs that was soon to be painted a different color and transformed into a set piece. “Hear you’re thinking of going to Boston next year,” I said, watching the stage where Blaine was delivering a monologue.

  Took her a while to respond. “Looking into it. I promised I would.”

  “Promised Patrick?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  I went quiet. But when I scraped up the courage to glance aside at her, I found her looking solemn, sad, nearly depressed. “Is it really what you want to do?” I whispered.

  She glanced at me, then let her gaze slide away. Slowly, she shook her head.

  “Then…” All I had to add was Stay, please stay, but once again, the show intervened.

  “Next scene,” Bob shouted. “Roxane and Cyrano, you’re up.”

  She glanced at me once more, then hopped down and padded onstage, a Roxane in jeans and ballet shoes. I watched her confess her love for Christian to her miserable cousin Cyrano, and all the while I tried to send brain waves to her. Stay here, stay with me, you don’t love Patrick, stay, stay, stay.

  Maybe it worked. Maybe that was why she came back to me when the scene ended, and sat on the step below me, and leaned sideways against my leg. I firmed it up for her, gave a little press into her, to let her know I wasn’t blaming her, was welcoming her to rest on me, something. Blaine was orating onstage. The actor playing Le Bret strolled around him, shaking his head and reasoning with him. Julie and I watched. She let her head come to rest on my leg, above my knee.

  I was almost trembling. Contact like this was practically nothing, compared to what I had done with dozens of girls. But now it mattered. I stroked my knuckles across her hair. Without looking back, she nudged her head upward so it touched my hand again, like a cat pleased with being petted. I opened my palm. My fingers found stray dry wisps with silky waves beneath; and the edge of her right ear, hot and fleshy, for one second. Back to the crown I went, and down again, over and over. The scent of her hair filled my nose, mixed with the dusty backstage theater scent.

  Sinter paced into our line of sight at the side of the stage. His hands were folded behind his back; he was likely going over lines in his head. When he lifted his face and saw us, he stopped, one shoe in the air. Julie raised a hand in greeting. Sinter smiled a little, looked me in the eye, and swiveled away. Poor bloke. Couldn’t have been easy having a sick bastard for a roommate.

  On the walk home, neither Julie nor I said much. Sinter, usually the quiet one, had to carry the conversation. In our room later, he didn’t say anything to me about the backstage caressing he had witnessed, either. Oh well, it wasn’t much. Wasn’t as if we were snogging. But if it wasn’t much, why did I think about it so obsessively?

  They ran the balcony scene the next day. Although the scene only required the presence of Blaine, Sinter
, and Julie, I went along too, drawn by a mix of voyeurism and masochism. A few other actors and crew members hung about as well. In the house, a dozen rows back, I scrunched down in a seat and chewed on a pencil while the three principals repeated desirous things to one another under Bob’s guidance. Making things worse, they were using that same set of stairs today as their balcony: Julie stood on it, six feet up, while Sinter and Blaine lurked below.

  Sinter-as-Christian, script in his hand, leaped up the side of those stairs as if scaling a balcony, and caught Julie’s hand. “‘Roxane!’” They drew close and stopped, the way they had always done so far. Script called for a kiss, but they hadn’t got up the nerve. Blaine began his melancholy speech below, but Bob cut in.

  “Hold on, please. The kiss, children? When are we doing that?”

  Ripple of giggles from the others watching.

  Sinter and Julie smiled bashfully. “We can start,” Julie said.

  “No problem,” Sinter said.

  “Then let’s start,” Bob said. “Sooner you do, sooner you get used to it. All right – you’re kissing throughout Cyrano’s whole speech here, until the friar comes on.”

  “Okay,” Julie said.

  “Sure,” said Sinter. They made a serious study of their scripts.

  “All right,” said Bob. “From ‘Your moment made immortal.’”

  Sinter hopped back down and stood ready.

  “Action!”

  “‘Your moment made immortal…’” Julie said.

  Blaine shoved Sinter toward her. “‘Climb up, idiot!’”

  Sinter scrambled up the steps again. Julie turned to him. “‘Roxane!’” he said. She stepped toward him. And before my eyes, my roommate took my cousin into his arms, bent over her, and kissed her.

  The pencil snapped between my fingers. Gripped by jealousy and vicarious thrill, I watched as their lips moved slowly against each other while Blaine delivered his thirty-second monologue. Never in my life had thirty seconds felt so long.

  As the monologue ended they broke apart; but before letting her go, Sinter murmured something apologetic to her, grinning shyly. She smiled and murmured back, then jumped into character and delivered her lines. It was cute enough to make you sick.

  They went through the scene once more, kisses and all, then Bob announced he wanted to skip to another scene. Sinter came down from the stage and dropped into the seat beside me. As Julie and Blaine began the new scene, Sinter covered his eyes. “God, that was awful.”

  I glanced at him. “Looked all right from here.”

  “So awkward. Having to make out with someone on command like that, someone you know but you don’t really know…”

  What’s it like to kiss her? I was dying to ask. “It looked fine. You don’t have to worry.”

  “Well, it felt weird.” After a few seconds, he added, “It was probably weird for you to watch, too.”

  “Oh, I knew it would come to this, one of these days,” I said dryly. “Just watch it, Blackwell. I’m a very protective cousin.”

  He laughed a bit, deciding I was kidding. Which I was. Sort of.

  OVER THE next week Bob had them do kisses. A lot. He added three that weren’t in the script, for reasons like, “Roxane, you’ve just risked your life to see your husband again, who’s been starving on a battlefield. Let’s have a kiss, a real show of passion. Oh, and you soldiers watching,” gesturing to the rest of us, who were onstage during this scene, “how about some grins and whistles? This is France, guys.”

  In an earlier scene, when Christian is being called to war, he and Roxane were supposed to cling to each other like Miriam clung to me at Heathrow. (Not how Bob put it, of course, but it resembled that.) Julie did such a good job I got jealous every time; she wept, she locked her arms around his neck, she pressed kisses on his lips. I could tell it flustered Sinter. Bob could tell too. “Sinter,” he chided, “don’t hold back. This is the woman you love! This is the number one thing you want most in the world! You might never see her again! Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  Sinter smiled his shy smile, while everyone else laughed; and on the next attempt, he dropped his restraint like an invisible veil. He clutched her so tight he lifted her off the ground, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her between fervent words, he pressed his forehead to hers and didn’t let go of her hand until his fellow soldiers dragged him away. I, watching from the front row, felt my mouth hanging open.

  “There we go!” shouted Bob.

  Julie sauntered offstage as they moved into another scene, and came to sit beside me.

  I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Good show,” I said.

  She laughed, sounding embarrassed. “He’s getting the hang of it.”

  “You’ve had the hang of it all along.”

  “Cheers.” She slid down in her seat, and rested her head on my shoulder. We watched Blaine practice one of his many swordfights with a crowd of ruffians. A minute or so later, I rested my cheek on her hair. There we stayed until it was time for me to take my place with the cadets.

  The last week of January and first week of February moved in a cycle, ever faster, of tantalizing frustration. Julie and Sinter snogged on stage, more realistically each time. Offstage, he grew easier with her; I saw them laughing and whispering to one another. Then sometimes when Julie was free she came and sat beside me, and leaned on me. Our conversations were fitful at best, but it didn’t matter. As I had long known, there were other ways to communicate with girls. She played with my hand one day, fitting her fingers against mine; they weren’t all that much smaller. (Must have been in the genes.) Sometimes she sat on the floor at my feet, so I could play with her hair.

  I studied her when her attention was elsewhere, trying to find physical resemblances between us. One day I was convinced we had the same lips. Another day I decided our skin color was an exact match. Most days I saw nothing definite, except that she was even more beautiful than I had found her last summer.

  Meanwhile, on stage, the word “cousin” flew back and forth a dozen times a day as an endearment between Cyrano and Roxane, and every time it wore down a little more of the block in my mind. In one scene, my character stood next to her on the battlefield, and Cyrano complimented her on her bravery for visiting the soldiers in such a dangerous place. To that, Roxane answered playfully, “Monsieur de Bergerac, I am your cousin.”

  All it meant, naturally, was, “Of course I’m brave! I’ve got de Bergerac blood in me!” But hearing her say “I am your cousin,” two feet away from me, took some getting used to, let me bloody tell you. It sent my pulse skyrocketing the first several times. I thought everyone must have been staring at me. But of course they weren’t, and eventually I did get used to it. It even started to sound normal, less taboo.

  One evening, sitting in the auditorium with her head on my shoulder, I got bold and put my arm round her. She snuggled closer. A cadet walking by said, “Uh-oh! Roxane’s running off with our captain!”

  She giggled. I hoped I didn’t stink of sweat. Evidently not, for she turned (in a moment I would daydream about for the next week) and pushed the tip of her warm nose against my collarbone. “You smell good,” she told me.

  The next day she strolled up and latched her arm round my waist, and stayed there while Bob delivered a speech about costumes to the whole company. Sinter gazed steadily at us from across the circle.

  In all this time, he had not commented on what he had obviously seen. But that night in our room, while sorting his laundry, he said, “You and Julie seem cozy.”

  “I suppose so.” My attention drifted away from the biology textbook I was trying to read.

  “I assume she doesn’t know.”

  “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Then is that…wise?”

  “Probably not,” I retorted. “But when are we ever ‘wise’ around women? You seem cozy with her too.”

  Sinter put down the pair of black socks he had folded. “That’s acting. Anyhow,
I’m not trying to get on your case. I just don’t want either of you to…” He grimaced, and grabbed a shirt from the basket. “Get hurt, or something like that.”

  “I know. And it’s a difficult subject, and I don’t mean to snap at you. But look, what can I do? I want this. I don’t think it’s so awful. I don’t think she thinks it’s so awful, either.”

  “But she doesn’t know!”

  “She doesn’t have a problem with it in theory. She said so, once.”

  “Theories are a lot easier than reality.”

  “I can’t tell her yet. There’s my parents, and – look, these things take time.”

  He went to his closet, and yanked down a hanger for the shirt. “Yeah, time for you to work on her until it’s too late, until she likes you too much to get out.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Are you and Clare all right?”

  “When did this become about me and Clare?”

  “I’m sorry, but you don’t stay down there as often lately, and she doesn’t stay up here…”

  “You’re changing the subject.” Which was true, though it was also true he and Clare hooked up less frequently these days. He shut his closet door and looked at me. “I’m not trying to argue. But really, I have to say, I think you should tell Julie. I think someone should.”

  Seized with panic, I did what any responsible adult would do: I flung the textbook away, threw myself on the floor in front of him, and hugged his legs. “Don’t! Don’t tell. Please, please, please, Sinter, Sinter, Sinter…”

  “Dan. Stop kissing my knees.”

  “Don’t tell. I’m sorry I’m being snappish and perverted and sick. I’ll do anything you like. But let me handle it, please.”

  “Why? Why are you so set on bagging this one girl? You know you could get anyone.”

  “Because I love her.”

  Silence as his eyes widened. I let my hold on his knees go slack.