The old familiar line from Pericles shot through my head. “Lust?” I said, wary of the word, as afraid of being right as I was of being wrong.
“Lust!” she barked, and shook her fist at James and Meredith. “Passion! If you just play the logic and not the feelings, the scene doesn’t work!” She waved at the two of them again. “Clearly you two don’t feel it, so we’re going to have to fix that. How? First, we stand facing each other.” She took James by the shoulders and turned him sharply, so he and Meredith were almost nose to nose. “Now, we dispense with all the he/she nonsense and start talking like real people. Stop saying ‘Edmund’ like he’s some guy you met at a party. It’s not about him, it’s about you.”
They were both watching her blankly.
“No,” she said. “No. Don’t look at me.” They turned and glowered at each other until she added, “It’s not a staring contest.”
“This isn’t working,” Meredith snapped.
“And why not?” Gwendolyn said. “You two don’t like each other right now? That’s too damn bad.” She stopped, sighed. “Here’s the thing, kids—and I know this because I’ve lived a long and scandalous life—here’s the thing about lust: you don’t have to like each other. Ever heard of hate sex?”
Filippa made a small gagging noise, and I swallowed a nervous laugh.
“Keep looking at each other, but stop me if I’m wrong,” Gwendolyn continued. “James, you don’t like Meredith. Why not? She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent. She’s fiery. I think she intimidates you, and you don’t like to be intimidated. But there’s more than that, isn’t there?” She began to walk a slow circle around the pair of them, like a prowling jungle cat. “You look at her like she disgusts you, but I don’t think that’s it. I think she distracts you, like she distracts every other man with a pulse. When you look at her, you can’t help having filthy, sexy thoughts, and then you’re disgusted with yourself.”
James’s hands curled into fists at his sides. I could see how carefully he was breathing—his chest rising and falling in perfect clockwork time.
“And then there’s Miss Meredith,” Gwendolyn purred. “You’re not afraid to get filthy and sexy, so what is it? You’re used to everyone you walk past looking at you like you’re a goddess, and I think you’re offended by the fact that James resists you. He’s the only boy here you can’t have. How badly does that make you want him?”
Unlike James, Meredith seemed not to be breathing at all. She stood perfectly still, lips barely parted, a vivid dart of pink on each cheek. I knew that look—it was the same reckless, burning look she’d given me in the stairwell during the Caesar party. Something squirmed under my lungs.
“Now,” Gwendolyn instructed, “for once I want you to forget about eye contact and look at every other inch of each other. Do it. Don’t rush.”
They obeyed. They looked at each other, stared, indulged, and I followed their eyes, saw what they saw—the line of James’s jaw, the triangle of smooth skin visible in the V of his collar. The backs of his hands, the delicate bones, precise as lines carved by Michelangelo. And Meredith—the soft clamshell pink of her mouth, the curve of her throat, the slope of her shoulders. The tiny mark I’d left with my teeth on the heel of her palm. Anxiety flickered through every nerve in my body.
“Now look each other in the eyes,” Gwendolyn said. “And do this like you mean it. Filippa?”
Filippa glanced down at the script in her hand and said Oswald’s last line. “What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him; / What like, offensive.”
Meredith inhaled in a rush, like someone waking up. Her hand landed on James’s chest before he could move, held him at arm’s length.
Meredith: “Then shall you go no further.
It is the cowish terror of his spirit,
That dares not undertake. He’ll not feel wrongs
Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way
May prove effects.”
She toyed with the collar of his shirt, perhaps distracted by the warmth underneath the fabric. He reached up to find her wrist, traced the blue lace veins there with his fingertips.
Meredith: “Back, Edmund, to my brother.
Hasten his musters and conduct his pow’rs.
I must change arms at home and give the distaff
Into my husband’s hands.”
He watched her mouth as she spoke, and she let her arm bend at the elbow, inviting him closer, as if she’d forgotten why he ought to be kept at a distance.
Meredith: $$“This trusty servant
Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear
(If you dare venture in your own behalf)
A mistress’s command.”
Her hand moved toward the neck of her sweater and his moved with it, hovering a hairsbreadth from her skin as she found her handkerchief and drew it out.
“Wear this,” she said. “Spare speech. / Decline your head—”
In one sudden motion he snatched the handkerchief and kissed her so hard he nearly knocked her over. She seized his shirt in both fists like she wanted to choke him, and I heard the hitch in his breath, the little answering gasp. It was violent, aggressive, the handkerchief and its delicate seduction crushed and forgotten. If they’d had claws they would have mauled each other. I felt hot, sick, light-headed. I wanted to look away but couldn’t—it was like watching a car crash. I clenched my teeth so hard my vision started to swim.
Meredith broke loose, thrust James back a step. They stood four feet apart, staring at each other, disheveled and breathless.
Meredith: “This kiss, if it durst speak,
Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.
Conceive, and fare thee well.”
James: “Yours, in the ranks of death.”