SCENE 3
We spent the rest of the day at the bar—a dimly lit, wood-paneled hole-in-the-wall where the staff knew most Dellecher students by name, accepted as many fake IDs as real ones, and didn’t seem to find it odd that some of us had been twenty-one for three years. The fourth-years had finished auditioning by noon, but Frederick and Gwendolyn had forty-two other students to see, and—allowing for lunch and dinner breaks and deliberation—the cast lists probably wouldn’t be posted until midnight. Six of us sat in our usual booth at the Bore’s Head (as clever a joke as Broadwater was capable of), collecting empty glasses on the table. We all drank beer except Meredith, who was mainlining vodka sodas, and Alexander, who drank Scotch and drank it neat.
It was Wren’s turn to wait at the FAB for the cast list to go up. The rest of us had taken ours already, and if she reappeared empty-handed it would be back to the beginning of the rotation. The sun had set hours before, but we weren’t finished dissecting our auditions.
“I fucked it up completely,” Meredith said, for what might have been the tenth time. “I said ‘dismember’ instead of ‘dissemble,’ like an absolute idiot.”
“In the context of that speech it hardly matters,” Alexander said, wearily. “Gwendolyn probably didn’t notice and Frederick probably didn’t care.”
Before Meredith could reply, Wren burst in from outside, a single sheet of paper clutched in her hand. “It’s up!” she said, and we all leapt to our feet. Richard guided her to the table, sat her down, and snatched the list. She had already seen it and suffered herself to be shunted into a corner while the rest of us bent over the table. After a few moments’ silent, furious reading, Alexander sprang up again.
“What did I tell you?” He slapped the list, pointed at Wren, and shouted, “Barkeep, let me buy this lady a drink!”
“Sit down, Alexander, you preposterous ass,” Filippa said, grabbing his elbow to pull him back into the booth. “You weren’t all right!”
“I was so.”
“No, Oliver’s playing Octavius, but he’s also playing Casca.”
“Am I?” I had stopped reading once I saw the line drawn between my name and Octavius’s and leaned in for a second look.
“Yeah, and I’ve got three—Decius Brutus, Lucilius, and Titinius.” She offered a stoic smile to me, her fellow persona non grata.
“Why would they do that?” Meredith asked, stirring what remained of her vodka and sucking the last drops off her little red straw. “They’ve got plenty of second-years to use.”
“But the third-years are doing Shrew,” Wren said. “They’ll need all the bodies they can get.”
“Colin’s going to be a busy boy,” James remarked. “Look, they’ve got him playing Antony and Tranio.”
“They did the same thing to me last year,” Richard said, as if we didn’t all already know. “Nick Bottom with you all and the Player King with the fourth-years. I was in rehearsal eight hours a day.”
Sometimes third-years were chosen to take a role in a fourth-year cast that couldn’t be trusted to a second-year. It meant classes from eight until three, then rehearsal with one cast until six thirty and rehearsal with another cast until eleven. Secretly, I didn’t envy Richard or Colin.
“Not this time,” Alexander said, with a wicked little smirk. “You’ll only have rehearsal half the week—you die in Act III.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Filippa said.
“How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!” Richard declared.
“Oh, shut up,” Wren said. “Get us another round and perhaps we’ll put up with you a little while longer.”
He rose from his seat and said, “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale!” as he made his way to the bar.
Filippa shook her head and said, “If only.”
SCENE 4
We left our things in the Castle and ran wildly through the trees, down the hillside stairs to the edge of the lake. We laughed and shouted at one another, sure we wouldn’t be heard and too tipsy to care if we were. The dock stretched out into the water from the boathouse, where a collection of useless old tools crumbled and rusted. (There hadn’t been a boat kept on the south side of the lake since they turned the Castle into student housing.) We spent many warm nights and some of the cold ones smoking and drinking on the dock, dangling our feet over the water.
Meredith, who was in by far the best shape and much faster than the rest of us, ran with her hair snapping like a flag behind her and got there first. She stopped and draped her arms over her head, a pale stripe of her back visible above her waistband. “How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!” She turned and grabbed both my hands, because I was closest. “Here will we sit and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony.” I pretended to protest as she dragged me to the end of the dock and the others tumbled down the stairs to join us, one by one. Alexander brought up the rear, wheezing.
“Let’s go skinny-dipping!” Meredith said, already kicking her shoes off. “I haven’t been swimming all summer.”
“The chariest maid is prodigal enough,” James warned, “if she unmask her beauty to the moon.”
“For God’s sake, James, you’re no fun.” She swatted the backs of my thighs with one of her shoes. “Oliver, won’t you come in the water with me?”
I didn’t trust that mischievous smile of hers at all, so I said, “Last time we went skinny-dipping I fell on the dock buck naked and spent the rest of the night facedown on the couch with Alexander pulling splinters out of my ass.”
The others laughed exhaustively at my expense, and Richard let out a long wolf whistle.
Meredith: “Come on, somebody swim with me!”
Alexander: “You can’t keep your clothes on for twenty-four hours, can you?”