His mouth twitched, as if there were a genuine smile hiding under the superficial one. “I never thought Dellecher students the sort who did their own cleaning.”
“We don’t, usually. I’m on scholarship.” Five beats to breathe out.
He chuckled, like he couldn’t quite believe it. “So they’ve got you cleaning this place?”
“Among other things.” My pulse began to slow. “I don’t mind.”
“You’re from Ohio, is that right?”
“You’ve got a good memory. Or have you got a file on me somewhere?”
“Both, maybe.”
“Should I be nervous?” I asked, but I felt markedly less so. Colborne was a more discerning audience than I was used to, but an audience nonetheless.
“Well, you’d know that better than I would.”
We stared at each other. He still had that two-layer smile on, and it occurred to me that under any other circumstances I would have liked him.
“Hard not to be nervous when the police are in and out of your house so often,” I said, without thinking. He didn’t know I’d overheard his conversation with Walton a month before. If he noticed my blunder, he didn’t let on.
“Fair enough.” He glanced out the window once more, then crossed the room and sat down on the couch in front of me. “You all read a lot, or are these just for decoration?” He pointed at the nearest bookshelf.
“We read.”
“You read anything besides Shakespeare?”
“Sure. Shakespeare doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”
“How so?”
I couldn’t tell if he was truly interested or if it was some kind of ploy.
“Well, take Caesar,” I said, unsure what sort of incriminating information he might hope to get from the question. “Ostensibly it’s all about the fall of the Roman Republic, but it’s also all about the politics of early modern England. In the first scene, the tribunes and the revelers talk about trades and holidays like it’s London in 1599, even though it’s supposed to be 44 BC. There are a few anachronisms—like the clock in Act II—but for the most part it works both ways.”
“Clever man,” Colborne said, after a moment’s consideration. “You know, I remember reading Caesar in school. They never told us any of that, just dragged us through it. I must have been about fifteen and I thought I was being punished for something.”
“Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.”
“True. I guess I’m just wondering what makes a kid about that age decide to devote his whole life to Shakespeare.”
“Are you asking me?”
“Yeah. I’m intrigued.”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was easier to keep talking than to stop. “I got hooked early. The high school needed a kid for Henry V when I was about eleven, so my English teacher took me to the audition—she thought it might make me less shy, I guess—and somehow I wound up onstage with all these boys with swords and armor, who were all twice my size. And there I was, shouting, ‘As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers,’ just hoping people would hear me. I was terrified until opening night, but after that it was all I wanted to do. It’s a kind of addiction.”
He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Does it make you happy?”
“Sorry?”
“Does it make you happy?”
I opened my mouth to respond—yes seemed the only possible answer—but then I closed it again, uncertain. I cleared my throat and spoke more cautiously. “I won’t pretend it’s not difficult. We’re always working and we don’t sleep much and it’s hard to have normal friendships outside of our sphere, but it’s worth it just for the rush we get, being onstage and speaking Shakespeare’s words. It’s like we’re not really alive until then, and then everything just lights up and the bad stuff disappears and we don’t want to be anywhere else.”
He sat inhumanly still, keen gray eyes fixed on mine. “You paint a very good picture of addiction.”
I tried to backtrack. “It sounds overdramatic, but that’s just how we’re wired. It’s how we feel everything.”
“Fascinating.” Colborne watched me, his fingers laced between his knees, the pose casual but every muscle in his body taut with expectation. The ticking of the mantel clock was enormously loud, beating directly against my eardrums. The scrap from the fireplace felt like a ball of lead in my pocket.
“So,” I continued, anxious to change the subject, divert it away from what I had just said. “What brings you back down here?”
He leaned back, more relaxed. “Sometimes I get curious.”
“About what?”
“About Richard,” he said, and it was jarring to hear him say it so easily, the name we all avoided like a curse word, something even more profane than the oaths and obscenities we used so liberally. “Don’t you?”
“Mostly I try not to think about it.”
Colborne’s eyes flicked from my feet to my face and back. An evaluative look. Measuring the depth of my honesty. “I can’t help but wonder what happened that night,” he said, one hand drumming idly on the arm of the sofa. “Everyone seems to remember it differently.” There was a subtle, cloying challenge in his voice. Answer if you dare.
“Everyone experienced it differently, I think.” My own voice was cool and flat, my nerves settled again by the fact that he’d given me a part to play, and as a casting director he was no more imaginative than Gwendolyn. I was peripheral, a bystander, an unwilling witness who just might be won over. “It’s like watching the news. When there’s a disaster, does anyone really remember it the same way? We all saw it from different angles, different vantage points.”
He nodded slowly, considering my rebuttal. “I suppose I can’t argue with that.” He pushed himself to his feet. When he was upright again he rocked back on his heels, looked up at the ceiling. “Here’s what I struggle with, Oliver,” he said, speaking more to the light fixture than to me. “Mathematically, it doesn’t make sense.”