That was when Lisa told him that not only was I an accomplished actor, but that I’d already played Romeo, so I’d just need to brush up on my lines.
Lisa was a really good actress, so of course he believed her.
I told her I wasn’t willing to lie, and she said, “It’s not lying, it’s just bending the truth. Stretching it.”
“That I’m qualified because I’ve read some Shakespeare…?”
“No, because I’m going to meet you over at Hiroko’s right now, and we’re gonna rehearse the crap out of the audition scene. That way, you won’t be home when Mr. Jimenez calls, so when you do talk to him, in school tomorrow, you won’t be lying when you say you know the part inside and out.”
“Audition scene?” I was not happy about that. “There’s an audition?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” she told me. “It’s Friday, so that gives us the entire weekend for you to learn the rest of the play.”
First it was I’d have nine days to learn lines that were in iambic pentameter, and now it was the weekend? Except, the way she’d said it, we’d be spending that time together. I was slowly warming to the idea.
“The audition scene is Act One, Scene Five,” Lisa told me. “Where Romeo and Juliet meet.”
“Wherefore art thou Romeo?” I asked. “The scene with the balcony?” I’d seen the Bugs Bunny version, at least.
“Nope,” she said. “The scene at the party. With the kisses. There are two. Kisses.”
She knew damn well what she was doing when she dropped that statement there. I’m pretty sure she was the one who picked that scene as the official audition, because yeah, Shakespeare wrote some kisses into R&J’s flirty first encounter.
And since I was already madly in love with Lisa…
I met her at Hiroko’s and we rehearsed the scene, kisses included. And I auditioned for Mr. Jimenez without actually directly lying to him, which was good, because I’m not sure I could’ve done it, even with all of those ongoing promised liplocks.
In short, I played Romeo to Lisa’s Juliet in high school. And I kissed her about four thousand times which was really nice, but sadly didn’t magically turn me into her boyfriend, the way I’d hoped it would.
Throughout the run of the play, she continued to date her douchebag sports hero boyfriend. In fact, she stayed with him—Brad—until graduation, when he broke up with her in a spectacularly douchie way.
That’ll be Chapter Three.
Here’s a link to that scene from R&J. It’s pretty fun. Lisa killed it. I was okay, but only because she was so good.
Please be safe.
“I love it—it’s a poem,” Dingo said as Maddie finished reading aloud the scene in question. “A sonnet—it rhymed. Did you notice?”
Maddie looked up from the screen of her phone and over at him. “Yes. Did you not just hear me reading it? And rhyming?”
“Yeah, but some people who shall remain unnamed—Fiona—didn’t appreciate literature. Did you know that I ended up writing a paper for her on Romeo and Juliet, because she didn’t seem to notice or care just how much Shakespeare had it going on.”
“Romeo and Juliet is massively stupid—they were both idiots. And Fiona’s an idiot, too. I read that paper—and I definitely wondered who wrote it because I knew she didn’t. I’m impressed, but only because I didn’t know you could even read.”
“Ha-ha, you’re so funny.”
“Ha-ha, you’re not.” Maddie shut off her phone, plunging Dingo’s car into semi-darkness in the lot of the truck stop just north of the San Diego city line, where they’d stopped for the night.
It had taken far too long today to cash that check Hiroko had given them, since the bank where Ding had been certain he’d be able to cash it had flatly refused to accept his ID.
They’d wasted a shitload of time arguing about using a payday loan place—which ended up also not cashing it.
Plan C involved them driving around and trying to find Dingo’s stupid friend Daryl, so they could ask him to cash the check for them.
They’d finally found Daryl, and then began a search for an ATM, because it was already dark and his bank was closed.
But they’d finally—finally—gotten the money, minus five bucks for Daryl’s help, and instead of immediately hitting the road, they spent a few dollars on a bag of potatoes, and then had to drive around to find a Whole Foods with a café microwave that actually worked. It was The Martian diet—several microwaved potatoes, plus a package of overripe cherry tomatoes that had been marked down to 43 cents. Half were rotten, but the other half were delicious, and with the potatoes, Maddie’s stomach finally stopped grumbling and growling.
It was only then, after dinner, that they’d hit the road. Only to have extreme fatigue set in, because they’d been up since dawn.
“Maybe you should drop ’em a quick text,” Dingo said quietly now. “Your da and his girlfriend.”
“My mother showed me pictures,” Maddie told him. “Of Romeo and Juliet. From high school. We talked—at length—about the fact that schools never do the good Shakespeare plays, they always do the same old stupid ones. And she never told me—ever—that the kid in those photos, playing Romeo, was my father.”
“That’s…weird,” he said.
She turned to look at the outline of his profile in the dim parking lot light. He’d built another wall with piles of stuff between them, but she still had a clear shot of his face. “What if he’s lying?”
Dingo turned to look at her. “Seems unlikely. Especially since GAH can corroborate the story.”
“How would I know that she wouldn’t lie, too. For him.” Great-Aunt Hiroko had obviously liked Maddie’s father more than she’d liked Lisa.
Dingo sighed. “You know, love, it’s all right to be mad at your ma. Not telling you that your father was right there in the pictures she was showing you is pretty mean. Selfish-like. Like, she didn’t want to tell you anything good about him at all, so she just didn’t tell you anything. That’s not fair. I know I’d be mad.”
“I always thought that she loved him, but that he didn’t love her—us—back,” Maddie said. “But what if he was the one who loved her? What if she just kept using him, the way she used him in today’s story, so she could do that play? What if she was the terrible one?”
“Your dad seems pretty smart,” Dingo said. “Self-aware. Like, yeah, okay, he caved to the pressure and played Romeo, but he knew exactly what was going on. And, you know, they say love is blind, but it’s hard to imagine someone as smart as him falling in love with someone truly terrible.”
Maddie shot him a look. “Like you with Fiona?”
“Me and Fee,” Dingo said with another heavy sigh, “was never my proudest moment. A perfect example of the flesh being weak. Thanks ever so much for bringing that up.”
Maddie laughed. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you—like tear off your head and devour you after sex.”