Monday, April 18, 2011

All the World's a Stage

Inspired by an idea I've had bouncing around in my head for probably two years now.  Finally written out for class, then revised (this is the revised version) to be presented as my final in my Intro to Fiction class on Wednesday (esh).  I'm also thinking of submitting it to a contest, if I find the time to edit again, print it, and send it off in between all the send of semester nonsense.  Enjoy it ;]


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All the World’s a Stage

Juliet sat up on the prop couch and pulled her shirt on over her head.  She tugged the hem down and smoothed her hair, looking around for signs of life.  She was almost sure they were alone – it was way past quitting time, after all – but the silent theater could be filled with peeping toms and eavesdropping gossips, for all she knew.  It didn’t help that she was jittery, after spending part of the evening pinned to sagging cushions by one of the best known Broadway-turned-film stars in America.

In the flickering glow of the ghost light, the stage looked shadowed and forbidding.  “This shouldn’t have happened,” she said, leaning over and groping on the floor for her jeans and socks.  She wouldn’t look at Cal.





“A lot shouldn’t happen in the world,” her co-star replied.  He felt dumb, still riding the high of good sex in a dangerous place, and the creeping sensation of fear and doubt didn’t compute.  “But not everything that shouldn’t happen is terrible.  This wasn’t a war, or terrorism, or genocide.  It was just two people, giving into something greater than themselves.  People restrain themselves every day, keep all their emotions pent up inside themselves.  That’s wrong.”

There was a faint smirk on Juliet’s face – a little sadness, a little understanding.  They’d only been rehearsing together for three months, but she’d been a rabid fan for years.  She felt like she knew him.  “You’re in actor mode.”

“This isn’t an act,” Cal said firmly.

“Not all of it, no,” she said, as she carefully re-laced her sneakers to avoid looking at him.  “None of…before was an act.  But that little speech of yours…”  She glanced at him over her shoulder, playing it coy to hide the beating heart betrayed by her wide eyes and shaking hands, the heart that raced at the sight of the uncovered athletic build and boyish good looks that had made him a star in the first place.  She shook her head.  “I’m pretty sure you stole that from one of your dad’s movies.”  She turned back to her shoes.  “Or one of Roxanne’s.”

“Don’t bring her into this.”

“She’s always been a part of it.  Graham, too.”

Juliet waited.  She had to sneak another look at Cal when he didn’t immediately speak up to defend himself.  Quietly, she watched as Cal stood and went about seeking his underwear and T-shirt from the scuffed stage floor.  He cursed under his breath, though Juliet didn’t know if he’d run into something or if the whole situation just made him passive-aggressive.  Only when he had ducked behind the couch for a shoe did he say, “I never wanted it to be like this.  We – you – this just isn’t right.”  He paused, frustrated.  “I didn’t think it was really like this.  This isn’t what reality is like, the sneaking around and the guilt.  This is like some damn melodrama.”

Juliet peeked over the back of the couch.  “You’re not an adulterer, you just play one in the movies?” she quipped.

He looked at her – just met her eyes and wouldn’t look away.

“Right.  Sorry.”  She sunk back into the sagging cushions.  She ran a hand over the fabric and wondered who else had sat here, sang here.  Had anyone else ever engaged in an illicit affair with her older co-star before?  Juliet liked to think she was the first, but she wasn’t as naïve as she’d been when she’d first set foot on this stage.  Cal stood up and tugged on his jeans, then dropped onto the couch beside her to pull on his socks and shoes.  Juliet gnawed on the inside of her lower lip.  “Will you tell her?”

Cal stopped, sighed.  He looked at her.  He wasn’t playing for an audience anymore.  “Will you tell him?”

Break the news to the tabloid darling?  Tell the lovesick pianist?  Never.  Juliet could see it now, her entire career spent persuading the public that she hadn’t broken up the number one Hollywood It Couple.  Cal came from Broadway stock; Roxanne had a lucky break on some medical drama that landed her in the hearts of fans the world over.  They were the couple everyone wanted to see together, the star quarterback and the head cheerleader falling in love and riding off into the sunset, before things like that came off sounding trite.

Cal pulled on his shirt, then socks.  Juliet pretended to search her bag for her phone, while actually torturing herself with images of Roxanne on the cover of Modern Bride.  The actress was fifteen years older.  She had fifteen years longer to prepare for the spotlight and sink her talons into this generation’s hottest leading man.  What did Juliet have?  A little thing called talent, sure – and nothing else.  Unless twenty minutes of fun on a prop couch with Cal Purser would help her career.  Juliet felt woozy.

Without even so much as a romantic, fleeting embrace, they stood and parted ways and went out into the night alone.  They wouldn’t tell a soul.  The silence had merely been the absence of having to admit that.

Juliet made her way down the street, headed towards Eighth Avenue.  She wanted to walk around with all those other sleepless sinners.  She had to wonder at what her life had become, since getting herself into this mess known as a Broadway musical.  She’d never known that the drama playing out behind the curtain could be worse than what happened on stage.  Rather, she had never let herself believe that was the truth.  And look where her naiveté had gotten her – a college dropout in her senior year, pursuing the career of her dreams while both living the life she’d always wanted and working towards her own ruin.

She couldn’t have had a cheerier namesake?  She couldn’t have been a veterinarian, or a farmer, or a housewife?  No.  She’d always wanted drama.  You got it now, honey.

She took her cell phone from her bag to check the time.  Juliet saw that she had seven waiting text messages, three missed calls, and one panicked voicemail.  From Graham – all from Graham.  Of course.  She counted to five and then dialed his number.  It was nearly midnight, but he would be awake and waiting for her.  He picked up on the first ring, sounding like he was working hard at keeping his frenzied concern at bay.

“I’ll come to you,” Juliet said into the phone.  It was easier to act when you couldn’t see the audience.  She liked to think that was why the spotlights were always so bright.  “Yeah, I just got out.  I’m heading for the subway now.  No, it’s fine, I’m already out and about.  See you soon.”

When she arrived at his building, Graham was waiting outside on the sidewalk for her.  He greeted her warmly and apparently didn’t notice her lackluster kiss, her distracted eyes, her perfume mingling with the scent of Cal Purser.  They rode the elevator up to the fifth floor and Juliet was comforted at the sight of her boyfriend’s familiar studio apartment.  The windows were huge, letting in all the synthetic light of Manhattan.  It was impossible to see the stars through the pollution.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Graham said, as he directed Juliet to the couch.  “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into leaving after Noelle ripped into you like that.  But, maybe, this will make you feel better?”  He brought a pizza box in from the kitchen and set it on the coffee table, then offered her an array of sci-fi classics on remastered DVDs.  “Half meatball, half broccoli,” he told her, grinning.  “And the movie’s your choice tonight.”

Juliet looked at the pizza, at Jeff Bridges on the cover of the original Tron, at the adoring boyfriend she’d betrayed not half an hour earlier.  She’d had sex with her co-star before she’d even had sex with Graham, for Christ’s sake!  She looked up into Graham’s grinning face and knew that she was the lowest of the low, the scum of the Earth.  “I have to go.”  She stood abruptly and hurried away from a perfect Friday night.

“Wait, Juliet!”  Graham stood and jogged after her, catching up with her at the door.  “What’s up?  Talk to me.  Is this about Noelle?”

If only.  Missing a few steps in the big dance number at the end of act one during rehearsal today hadn’t gone over well with Noelle, their manic perfectionist of a choreographer.  It was their third time running through the act and Juliet had been hit with physical and mental exhaustion in the middle of the second verse.  After getting reamed for almost an hour about her shoddy work on the show, rehearsal had finally ended and everyone had gone home.  Juliet had stayed behind to practice, running the number again and again, shooing Graham away and begging with the custodial staff not to shut off the house lights on her yet.  It was around that time that Cal had been wandering out of the theater after a late meeting with the director, stopping by the stage to offer some friendly advice and getting caught up in what he had so brilliantly called “something greater than himself.”

Juliet could only shake her head.  “I can’t do this,” she told Graham, the closest she could come to an explanation.  Before he could convince her to stay, she hurried to the elevator and left the building, alone.

She wanted to tell herself she had no idea where she was going.  But when she got on the subway and headed back to Times Square under the guise of walking around and clearing her head, Juliet wasn’t even a good enough actress to fool herself.  She didn’t need time to think things over – she needed to build the confidence to admit what she had been planning since leaving the theater earlier.  And it had never been to return to Graham’s apartment.

Her heart started pounding again, in the flashing lights of stifling tourism.  Juliet dodged an oncoming crowd wandering Bloomberg’s promenade on Broadway by ducking into the nearest door.  She found herself in the Hard Rock Café, the Mecca of sell-outs and Bohemian wannabes, and groaned.  She’d been here just once before, on her twelfth birthday, when Mom had gotten her tickets to see a revival of something by Noël Coward – the name of the play escaped her now, shockingly – because she’d begged to see her favorite actor onstage.

Juliet had also demanded coming here for dinner.  She remembered her mother muttering the entire time about the false décor, the chipper waitress, the souvenir hurricane glasses you could keep, for just an extra seven dollars.  Juliet, however, had done her best to tune her mother out and enjoy her fifteen dollar cheeseburger.  Her mind had been on only one thing, and it wasn’t the past – she’d been thinking about Cal Purser’s stellar performance.

Juliet felt like she was going to vomit.  She hurried to the cashier and was directed to the bathrooms downstairs, where she ran into the first open stall and locked the door after her.  She crouched and dry-heaved over the porcelain bowl, but nothing came up but rancid breath tinged with an unbecoming mixture of guilt and giddiness.

I slept with Cal Purser.  It was an intoxicating thought, one Juliet never wanted to let go.  That one statement changed everything.  She had known from the very first day of rehearsal, when she was fawning over an all-star cast and feeling that, maybe, being a fan was all she was good for.  She had idolized Roxanne Beck, until she got to see her full-on dragon lady persona unleashed.  She had taken Graham’s sweet smile as a sign of something good, until she’d realized he was too far from the spotlight than she was comfortable with being.  And she had been in love with Cal, until she’d had sex with him on a dirty old sofa and realized she had never really meant that, until tonight

This time, as she choked on months of rehearsals and song lyrics stolen from pop songs, Juliet was, at the very least, rewarded with the satisfying upheaval of her last meal.

After about half an hour, there came a knock at the door.  Juliet could see a pair of squeaky sneakers and a broom under the door, as a disembodied voice informed her that the Hard Rock Café was closing down for the night, but they would be glad to welcome her back tomorrow at eleven for lunch.  Juliet picked up her bag from the floor, unlocked the door, and eased it open, an apologetic smile on her lips as she slipped out of the room and back up the stairs without a word.  In the mess of T-shirts and music videos, no one noticed her leave.

It was now one-fifteen on a New York Saturday morning and Juliet knew exactly where she shouldn’t be going.  But she got on the subway and then marched along Central Park West, until she reached the swanky apartment building.  She paused on the sidewalk, just outside the cover of the awning and the warm glow of the lobby lights, and raised her head to stare at the building.  Which window was Cal’s?  Which apartment did he share with Roxanne?  Was he as confused as she was about all of this?

A taxi pulled up to the curb and Juliet turned in time to see Roxanne Beck climbing out, clearly intoxicated and belligerent.  The older actress tossed money at the driver and slammed the door shut, then started walking towards her front door.  Juliet considered leaping into the bushes to avoid her, but just a moment too late.  Roxanne caught sight of her standing there and narrowed her eyes.  “What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded to know.

Juliet knew she had about fifteen seconds to come up with a plausible reason to be standing outside Cal and Roxanne’s building at this hour, before Roxanne pounced.  The older woman was incredibly territorial and plagued with paranoid jealousy to the point of insanity.  It was maddening, trying to build a working relationship with Cal without finding your way onto Roxanne’s hit list.  The older actress had been sure of an affair between Cal and Juliet from day one, and she’d made it clear to anyone who would listen.  It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Cal.  It was because Roxanne only trusted Cal.

“I was here to drop something off.”  Juliet winced.  You call yourself an actress?

Roxanne took a small step closer, one hand raised menacingly.  “You’re here looking for Cal,” she said, swaying a little on unsteady feet.  Her face was flushed, a healthy shade of red that went nicely with the dark shade of her hair.  “I knew it from the start.  You’ve wanted to screw him since auditions.  Do you want him to jumpstart your career, you slut?  You want to use him to fulfill your sad little fantasies?  You whore – !”

“Ms. Beck, please, you’re wrong,” Juliet said, trying to subdue the coming wrath.  She noted the disheveled appearance of a woman she had once called her idol, the dress that was about five years too short and ten too tight and the messy hair, knotted tendrils twirling in the light breeze.  “You’re jumping to conclusions, here.”

Roxanne gave a bitter laugh, teetering drunkenly on three-inch heels.  “Honey, I see things perfectly.”

The fist was surprisingly fast, connecting painfully with Juliet’s left cheek.  Juliet had time for the single rational thought that she was glad Roxie was mildly intoxicated before raising her arms to defend herself.  Otherwise, Juliet would be dead by now.  She’d never been in a fight before, while Roxanne could make Naomi Campbell look downright cuddly.  Juliet watched Roxanne stumble forward and hoped the woman would tire herself out soon enough, or maybe burst into theatrical sobs.  When neither option presented itself, the young actress knew she had no choice but to retaliate.

The first hit was lame and squishy, landing somewhere on Roxanne’s upper arm.  In the confusion of limbs that ensued, with clenched hands raising bruises and open palms leaving welts across cheeks, the two women ended up on the cold New York pavement.  Roxanne had gone primal, snapping at Juliet with fearsome teeth and trying to dig her French manicure as far into Juliet’s skin as she could get it.  Juliet fought for her life, tugging Roxanne’s hair and relying on her shockingly good left jab to keep the other woman occupied.

There was blood and hair everywhere.  Juliet suspected that she’d broken Roxanne’s nose; she exploited this by hitting Roxanne in the face repeatedly.  She was a little distracted by the stinging pain on the left side of her own face, where Roxanne’s claws had left four nasty, perfectly parallel scratches.  It occurred to Juliet, as she gained the upper hand and began to unceremoniously pound America’s favorite TV actress’ face into a disfigured mess, that she might carry that scar for the rest of her life.  It was worth it.

Roxanne managed to roll over and pin Juliet to the sidewalk, laying into her with shaking hands.  Spit and blood flew from her mouth.  Someone called out Juliet’s name in concern, a voice she would never be able to forget.

And then, two guardian angels in navy blue were lifting Roxanne off her victim.  A third police officer helped Juliet to her feet.  Cal appeared on the sidewalk, hesitating as he exited the building and looked between Roxanne and Juliet.  Juliet watched, emotionless, as he crossed to Roxanne and let her collapse into his arms.  That was love.  That was putting up with temper tantrums and sharing space with a woman for seven years.  That was seeing what no one else on the planet could see, fighting to ignore what the gossip rags said and pledging to love her anyway.  That was turning your back on one night on a prop couch.  Love was a learned habit and he’d learned all he knew from Roxanne.

A wailing ambulance came to a screeching halt at the curb and the two paramedics within rushed onto the scene and descended upon Roxanne.  As they lifted her onto a stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance, the last thing Juliet heard Roxanne wail into the night was, “It was her!  She’s after me!  She attacked me!”  Cal turned his head and locked eyes with Juliet, a pained expression on his face.  The paramedics slammed the doors on the image of Roxanne’s raised, trembling finger, pointing directly at Juliet.

Juliet, suffering only from superficial wounds, was taken to another area hospital to get her various scratches and bruises checked out.  Sitting in the ER as a doctor applied a bandage to the clear outline of Roxanne’s expensive overbite on Juliet’s right forearm, a cop standing at her side, she probably shouldn’t have demanded a rabies shot to keep her from being contaminated by whatever bugs Roxie was carrying.  It didn’t show enough remorse.  Once he was given the okay, the police officer helped her into his car (none too gently) and delivered her to the local precinct’s holding cell.

Juliet slept on a flat board that night, barely large enough for her even when she curled into a tiny ball and tried to be invisible.  She was still awake five hours later, when they dragged her to the courthouse for her bail hearing.  Her public defender got bail set at ten thousand dollars.  She winced when he asked if there was anyone she could call to get herself out of jail.  There was only one answer to that question.

And Graham appeared just after two in the afternoon.  Juliet first saw him when the officer, a firm grip on her upper arm, guided her to the precinct’s lobby.  Graham was shifting from one foot to the other, agitated, as he picked at the fuzz on Juliet’s favorite sweater.  He grinned brightly when the officer handed over her stuff and released her without so much as a gruff farewell, and Juliet moved from one trap to the next as he enveloped her in his arms and tried to wrestle her into the ugly thing she never wore in public.         

“Are you okay?  Did they treat you all right?  Does that still hurt?”

She swatted away his probing hand, as it moved closer to the covered scratch on her face, and shook her head.  “They treated me like crap.  It was jail, Graham, not the Ritz.”

He stopped talking and adopted his preferred wounded kitten look.  He draped the sweater carefully around Juliet’s shoulders and ignored her exasperated stare.  “You should get home and get some rest,” he said softly.  “You look awful.”

Juliet laughed, wry as she replied, “You should see the other guy.”

“Jules, this isn’t funny.”

“Really?  I find the whole thing rather humorously ironic.”  But maybe that was just because she had all the facts, and Graham didn’t.  She had told him she’d gotten into a fight with Roxanne and alluded, vaguely, to the fact that she might have been standing outside the apartment building Cal and Roxie called home.  She had asked for money, without really promising to pay it back, and she hadn’t breathed a word about anything else, just the way she and Cal had silently pledged not to.  It had all been surprisingly easy.  After all, darling, she’d told herself as she stood at the payphone, you are an actress.  She tried reminding herself of that now, but it wasn’t comforting.  It was sickening.

“I’ll take the train with you,” Graham offered.  Juliet allowed him to rest a hand on her shoulder, turning when his gentle hand guided her towards the precinct’s doors.  She’d tell him to go home as soon as they got through the doors.  He’d understand and he’d leave her in peace – he always did.  And then he’d come back.  And she’d have to let him into her apartment, let him buy her get well junk food, let him brush his lips over the bandage on her cheek and tell her everything was going to be okay.  All the things she knew they both needed, but she didn’t want.  Not now that she understood what it meant to touch infamy and come away alive, proudly displaying the scars to prove your brush with stardom and hiding the ones that showed what a lowlife it had made you.

She wasn’t proud.

Graham’s grip tightened on her shoulder and Juliet blinked to bring Cal standing in the doorway into sharper focus.  “Hey, Mr. Purser,” Graham said, politely enough, the way a teenage boy would greet his prom date’s father.

“Afternoon, Graham.”  Cal stepped through the doors and paused before Juliet, reaching into his coat and pulling out his checkbook.  “I was coming here to help you out,” he said, “but I guess you’re in good hands.”

“I’m fine,” Juliet replied, trying not to sound ungrateful.  Instinctively, she took half a step away from both of them.

“Yeah.  The police came to talk to Roxie.  They said you were going to be okay.”  He cleared his throat.  “Listen, Juliet, I also wanted to let you know that I’ll take care of the tabloids.  And I’ll make sure Roxie drops the charges against you.  I know she can be a little much to handle sometimes, but I think she’s sorry.  You had to defend yourself; I get it.”  He looked to Graham for confirmation, and the younger man nodded along.

“Juliet didn’t do anything wrong,” he agreed.  He put an arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her, then turned back to Cal.  “I was just going to get her home to rest.  But thank you for your concern, Mr. Purser.”

Juliet shook Graham off before Cal could respond to his pleasantries.  She couldn’t take either of them right now: Graham speaking for her, as if they were an old married couple when, in reality, they’d been dating a grand total of three months, and Cal, making excuses for Roxanne and pretending he could fix everything with a grin and a good word.   “I’m done,” she said, handing the sweater to Graham, whose face crumbled with anguish.  Cal’s eyes sparkled with the same handsome concern his acting coach had helped him hone before he could drive a car.  Juliet didn’t need any of this.  She didn’t need an overprotective boyfriend or a delusional established actor breathing down her neck; she didn’t need to deal with show business politics and publicists hurrying to cover up every celebrity faux pas.  Since she was five years old, Juliet had wanted to act for the thrill, for the craft, for the façade.  She wanted a Broadway and a Hollywood that didn’t exist anywhere but in the minds of young hopefuls, places that didn’t threaten to end you before you’d really had a chance to experience them

“I have some rehearsing to do,” she said, instead of bothering to try and explain everything else to them.  Juliet pulled her bag up higher on her shoulder, ignored Graham’s quivering lower lip, pushed past Cal, and walked, alone, out onto the sidewalk. 

Maybe the places she wanted to be didn’t exist, but if she could focus on the things that mattered, maybe she could pretend they did.  As she took long strides away from what she’d been swept up in, Juliet resolved to dance, to sing, and to act like she hadn’t been disillusioned, in hopes of finding the true essence she would forever be searching for upon the stage.  She wanted to be famous, but she wanted to be an actress more.  She smiled.  Juliet had nothing to offer the world, if not her overly active imagination.

That, and the left jab that had broken Roxanne Beck’s nose.

3 comments:

  1. Oh man. If this is how Dramatis was supposed to go, this is awesome. :3

    "Once he was given the okay,"<---- "he" is probably supposed to be "she" right?

    Other than that, this is incredibly fantastic. I hope you get a super!awesome grade on your final, because this makes me happy. ^_^

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  2. It wasn't supposed to be entirely like this, but the sidewalk brawl idea popped into my head and I had to write it out hahaha

    And the "he" is actually right - it refers to the police officer. He got the okay to take Juliet off to jail.

    I'm glad you liked it! And thanks for the good thoughts :D

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  3. Sidewalk brawl was EPIC. It was a fantastic idea.

    Now that I've reread that, it makes sense.

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