If We Were Villains: A Novel

There were only four of us in class on Tuesday morning: James, Filippa, Meredith, and me. Alexander hadn’t yet come back from Broadwater’s emergency clinic—though he was stable by then, or so we’d been told. The rest of us were pulled from class one by one on Monday to undergo psychiatric evaluation. The school shrink and a doctor from Broadwater took turns asking us invasive questions about ourselves, one another, and our collectively bad track record with substance abuse. (We each left with a pamphlet on the dangers of drug use and a stern reminder that attendance of the upcoming alcohol awareness seminar was mandatory.) Beyond the obvious problems of stress and exhaustion, both James and Wren, from what I’d overheard outside Holinshed’s office on my way to the bathroom, were exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She’d taken an additional day off class to rest, but when I suggested that James do the same, he said, “If I’m shut up in the Castle by myself all day, I’ll lose my mind.” I didn’t argue with that, but as it turned out, he wasn’t much better off in Studio Five.

“Well,” Gwendolyn said as soon as we sat down, “I don’t think anyone’s up for new material today, and besides there aren’t enough of you. I’d be teaching the same lesson tomorrow.” Her solution was to work problem scenes from Lear that couldn’t be more thoroughly dissected during rehearsal for the sake of time.

James and I watched for an hour while Gwendolyn dug her nails into Meredith and Filippa, searching for sparks of real-life sibling rivalry to fan into a flame for the stage. She had her work cut out for her; Meredith barely knew her own brothers, and Filippa claimed not to have any siblings. (I still don’t know whether this is true.) Gwendolyn startled me out of a stupor by asking about my sisters, a subject I was not then—nor ever had been—fond of. She stopped just short of outing me as the Castle’s new custodian and mercifully moved on. When she’d hassled the girls to distraction, she gave us a five-minute water break and instructed James and Meredith to come back prepared for Act IV, Scene 2.

When we returned, Gwendolyn opened the scene work with a lecture on the last week’s lackluster performance. “I mean, really,” she said. “This is one of the most passionate moments of the play, between two of the most powerful people in it. The stakes are as high as they can be, so I don’t want to feel like I’m watching a bad pickup at the bar.” Meredith and James listened without comment and, when she finished, took their places without so much as acknowledging each other. (After James had broken my nose, Meredith’s attitude toward him went from lukewarm to icy, which undoubtedly contributed to their complete lack of chemistry onstage.)

Filippa fed them a cue line—it wasn’t hers, but Gwendolyn couldn’t be bothered—and they went through the motions with a woodenness that made me cringe. Their words fell flat; their touches were forced and awkward. Beside me, Filippa watched the scene collapse with a grim, pained expression, like she was being tortured.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Gwendolyn said, waving one hand at James and Meredith. “Stop.” They moved gratefully apart, like magnets with the same polarity. Meredith folded her arms; James scowled at the floor. Gwendolyn glanced from one of them to the other and said, “What on earth is the matter with you two?” Meredith stiffened. James sensed it and tensed to match but didn’t look at her. Gwendolyn put her hands on her hips and studied them shrewdly. “I’ll get to the bottom of it, whatever it is,” she said, “but let’s talk about the scene first. What’s happening here? Meredith?”

“Goneril needs Edmund’s help, so she bribes him the only way she knows how.” She sounded utterly bored by it.

“Sure,” Gwendolyn said. “That’s a fine answer, if you’re dead from the neck down. James? Let’s hear from you. What’s happening with Edmund?”

“He sees another way to get what he wants and he plays the hand she gives him,” he said, in a toneless, automatic sort of way.

“That’s interesting. It’s also bullshit,” Gwendolyn said, and I looked up from my knees in surprise. “Something huge is missing from this scene, and it’s staring you in the face,” she went on. “Goneril’s not going to kill her husband just so she can have a new captain in the field, and Edmund’s not going to risk losing Regan’s title unless there’s a more compelling offer on the table. So why do they do this?”

Nobody spoke. Gwendolyn whirled around and said, “Oh, for God’s sake—Oliver!” so loudly that I jumped. “I know you know—Murder’s as near to what as flame to smoke?”

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.”

He turned, exited the wrong way, walked right out of the room. As soon as he was gone Meredith turned away from the place where he’d stood, and her words were sharp and furious as she said, “O, the difference of man and man! / To thee a woman’s services are due; / My fool usurps my body.”

The bell rang, not a moment too soon. I bolted for the hall, skin crawling with the hideous feeling of all their eyes on me.