“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, and stepped back. “Take your time.”
We stood there, motionless, staring at each other. James’s eyes were keen bright gray, but standing so close I could see a little ring of gold around each pupil. Something was moving, working, in his mind—accompanied by a tightening at the corners of his jaw, a nervous twitch of his lower lip. James had never really been angry with me, to my knowledge. Transfixed by the strangeness of it, I completely forgot my own part of the exercise and simply watched the pressure build, his shoulders rising, fists clenched tight at his sides. He gave me a small, curt nod. I knew what was coming, but some incongruous reflex made me lean forward, tilt toward him. His hand slashed up toward my head, but I didn’t react, didn’t do the nap or the turn, just flinched as something sharp flicked across my cheek.
It was weirdly still and quiet in the room. James frowned at me, the spell of animosity broken. “Oliver? You didn’t— Oh!” He took my chin in one hand and turned my head, brushed the side of my face. Blood. “God, I’m sorry.”
I grabbed his elbow to steady myself. “No, it’s all right. Is it bad?”
Camilo edged James out of the way. “Let’s see,” he said. “No, just a scratch, caught the corner of his watch. You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, I just spaced out and leaned into it.” I gave him an awkward shrug, suddenly aware that he and the four classmates I’d forgotten about were all staring at me. “It’s my fault. I wasn’t ready.” James, not forgotten—how could he be?—stood watching me with such profound concern that I almost laughed. “Really,” I said. “I’m fine.”
But when I went back to my seat I nearly staggered, as dizzy as if he really had hit me.
SCENE 10
Our first off-book rehearsal did not go well.
It was also our first rehearsal in the space. The Archibald Dellecher Theatre sat five hundred people and was decorated with all the modesty of a baroque opera house. The seats were upholstered in the same blue velvet as the grand drape, and the chandelier was so impressive that some people seated in the balcony spent more time staring at it than watching whatever play they’d come to see. With six weeks of rehearsal left, none of the actual platforms or set pieces had been built, but they were all taped out on the stage. It felt like standing on a giant jigsaw puzzle.
I knew my Casca lines, but I hadn’t spent as much time on Octavius, since he didn’t enter until Act IV. I crouched in a third-row seat, furiously rereading my upcoming speeches as Alexander and James faltered through what we had started calling the Tent Scene, which by that point was one part martial strategy dispute, one part lovers’ tiff.
James: “Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous
To lock such rascal counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
Dash him to pieces!”
Alexander: “I denied you not!”
James: “You did!”
Alexander: “I did not: he was but a fool that brought
My answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.
A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,
But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.”
They glared at each other for so long that I glanced toward the prompt table before James blinked and said, “Line.”
I felt a sympathetic twinge of embarrassment. Richard, waiting in the wings to enter as Caesar’s ghost, shifted his weight, arms folded tightly.
“I do not, ’til you practice them on me,” Gwendolyn called from the back of the house. I could tell from her exaggerated emphasis on the meter that she was getting tired of delays.
James: “I do not, ’til you practice them on me.”
Alexander: “You love me not.”
James: “I do not like your faults.”
Alexander: “A friendly eye could never see such faults.”
James: “A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear
As huge as high Olympus!”
Alexander: “Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,
For Cassius is aweary of the world … Line?”
Gwendolyn: “Hated by one he loves—”
Alexander: “Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;
Cheque’d like a bondman; all his faults observed,
Set in a note-book … Damn. Line?”
Gwendolyn: “—learn’d and conn’d by rote—”
Alexander: “Right, sorry, learn’d and conn’d by rote,
To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep
My spirit from mine eyes!”
Alexander proffered an imaginary blade (we didn’t have props yet) and tore the neck of his shirt open. “There is my dagger,” he exclaimed, “And here my naked breast; within, a heart / Dearer than Pluto’s—No, sorry—Plutus’ mine. Is that right? Fuck me. Line?” He looked toward the prompt table, but before Gwendolyn could feed him the text, Richard emerged into the work lights from the stage left wing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, deep voice ringing in the mostly empty auditorium. “Are we going to spend the whole night on this scene? Clearly they don’t know the lines.”
In the answering silence I stared at James, openmouthed, afraid to turn around. He and Alexander both glowered at Richard like he’d said something obscene, while Meredith had frozen where she sat on the floor in the aisle, one leg extended to stretch out a kink in her hamstring. Wren and Filippa craned their necks to peer into the darkness over my shoulder. I risked glancing behind me. Gwendolyn was on her feet; Frederick sat beside her with his hands folded, frowning down at the floor.
“Richard, that’s enough,” Gwendolyn said, sharply. “Take five and don’t come back until you’ve cooled off.”