He turned his back to me as he unbuttoned his jeans and let them slide to the floor. “I’m fine.” His voice sounded flat, wrong, as if someone had struck a false note on the piano. I pushed myself off the bed and crossed slowly to his side of the room.
“James,” I said, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I kind of don’t believe you.”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I never in my life / Did hear a challenge urged more modestly. You know me too well.” He folded his jeans and dropped them on the foot of his bed.
“So tell me what’s wrong.”
He hesitated. “You have to promise me you’re going to keep it to yourself.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You won’t want to,” he warned.
“James,” I said, more urgently, “what are you talking about?”
He didn’t answer—he just pulled his shirt off and stood there in his underwear without speaking. I stared at him, bewildered and inexplicably anxious. A dozen different questions tangled together in my mouth before my own awkwardness made me glance down and I realized what he was trying to show me.
“Oh my God.” I seized both his wrists and pulled him toward me, the abashment of the previous moment forgotten. Bruises in raw, vivid blue spotted the undersides of his arms, all the way to his elbows. “James, what is this?”
“Finger marks.”
I let go of his left arm like I’d been electrocuted. “What?”
“The assassination scene,” he said. “When I stab him the last time, he goes down on his knees and grabs my arms and … well.”
“Has he seen this?”
“Of course not.”
“You have to show him,” I said. “He might not even know he’s hurting you.”
He looked up at me with a flash of annoyance. “When was the last time you left a mark like this on someone and didn’t know you were doing it?”
“I’ve never left a mark like that on anyone, ever.”
“Exactly. You’d know if you had.”
I realized I was still holding his other wrist and abruptly let go. He rocked backward, unbalanced, as if I’d been pulling him forward before. He brushed his fingers along the inside of his arm, biting hard on his bottom lip like he was afraid to open his mouth, afraid of what might come out.
Suddenly I was furious, my pulse throbbing softly in my ears. I wanted to give Richard ten bruises for every one he’d put on James, but I could never hope to hurt him, not like that, and my own inefficacy made me angrier than anything else.
“You have to tell Frederick and Gwendolyn that he’s doing this,” I said, more loudly than I meant to.
“Like a snitch?” James said. “No, thank you.”
“Just Frederick then.”
“No.”
“You have to say something!”
He pushed me back a step. “No, Oliver!” He glanced away, into some empty corner of the room. “You promised me you wouldn’t say a word, so don’t.”
I felt a little prick of pain, as if something had stung me. “Tell me why.”
“Because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction,” he said. “If he knows how easily he can hurt me, what’s going to make him stop?” His eyes darted back to my face, a glint of gray. Imploring and apprehensive. “He’ll give up if he doesn’t think it’s working. So promise me you’re not going to say anything.”
My guts clenched like someone had kicked me in the stomach. What I wanted to say was elusive, inapproachable, just out of reach. I grasped the nearest bedpost and leaned on it. My head was heavy with confusion, fury, and some other fierce thing I couldn’t identify.
“James, this is so fucked up.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Nothing. Not yet.”
SCENE 3
During dress rehearsal the following night I didn’t take my eyes off Richard, but as it happened, when he went too far I wasn’t the only one watching.
We had just finished Act II, Scene 1, which included Brutus’s conference with the conspirators, his conference with Portia, and his conference with Ligarius. (How on earth James kept all of his lines straight, I had no idea.) Wren and Filippa had exited stage right and were peering curiously around the curtain. James and Alexander and I had exited stage left and waited restlessly in the dense darkness of the wings for our next entrance: Three-One, the assassination scene.
“How much time do you think I have?” Alexander asked, a hoarse whisper over his shoulder.
“For a smoke?” I said. “Enough, if you go now.”
“If I’m late coming back, stall for me.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Pretend you’ve forgotten a line or something.”
“And invoke the wrath of Gwendolyn? No.”
Wren put her finger to her lips on the opposite side of the stage, and James nudged Alexander with one elbow. “Stop talking. They can hear you on the other side.”
“What scene is this?” Alexander asked, in a lower voice.
Richard had already entered—tieless and coatless—and was talking with a servant, played by one of our inexhaustible second-years.
“Calpurnia,” I murmured.
As if I had somehow summoned her, Meredith appeared between the two center columns, barefoot and wearing a short silk bathrobe, arms tightly folded.
Alexander whistled under his breath. “Would you look at her legs? I guess that’s one way to sell tickets.”
“You know,” James said, “for a boy who likes other boys, you provide a lot of heterosexual commentary.”
Alexander: “I might make an exception for Meredith, but she’d have to be wearing that robe.”
James: “You’re disgusting.”
Alexander: “I’m adaptable.”
Me: “Shut up, I want to hear this.”
James and Alexander exchanged a look, which I didn’t understand and chose to ignore.
“What mean you, Caesar? Think you to walk forth?” Meredith asked, when the servant had exited. “You shall not stir out of your house today.” She stood with one hand on her hip, expression dark and judgmental. The scene had changed since last I saw it; Meredith descended into the Bowl, and as she described her dream it sounded more like a threat than a warning. Richard, judging by the look on his face, was having none of it.