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Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious, and any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintended by the author. "The Pretender" is a protected trademark of MTM Television and NBC and the characters of that series are used herein with no mean intent or desire for remuneration. It is, instead, a tribute to innovative television, that rare and welcome phenomenon.
The Third Highway Series Part 18:
Star Crossed
Chapter 1
Witch1
McCarter Theater
Princeton, New Jersey
"OK, run this by me again, man: you want me to grab you WHERE while I do this line?"
Jarod sighed. He was finding it increasingly difficult to have patience with this young man, who, he suspected, had gotten as far as he had on good looks alone. He was certainly sparse on talent, and equally so on brains.
"In the crotch, Romeo," Jarod explained again. "Like this." He reached out and put his hand flat against the other man's body, the heel of his hand nestled against the warm mound of his balls, his fingers defining the bulge of his penis. He took his hand away after a long moment, noting the younger man's bright pink blush and the sharp inward gasp of his breath. He had felt just the first twitch of an erection blossoming before he'd removed his hand, as well.
The young man playing Romeo simply stared at him with wide-open mouth.
"See, the line is: 'Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like a thorn.' What Romeo and Mercutio are doing is playing with the concept--and the words--and, basically, doing what I believe is called 'dumping' on the idea of love. So, when Romeo says that love 'pricks like a thorn', I want him to reach out and tweak Mercutio. A friendly little tweak. It's a joke. It's intended to underscore what is implied by the language: that 'love' is actually about sex. That it's about Mercutio's cock--and Romeo's--and they both really know that."
Romeo puckered his brow in evident deep thought. "Are they gay?"
Jarod sighed. "It's playfulness. It's two guys joking around. It's not about them having sex, it's about the societally imposed romanticism surrounding the basic biological function of sex."
Romeo looked even more lost. He was clearly struggling to keep up with Jarod thoughts. "So," he finally, tentatively began, "they're just, like, screwing off about love and all that bullshit, saying it's really about fucking, and then Romeo grabs him by the . . . did guys, like, DO that, you know, way back then?"
"Who knows?" Jarod responded. "About this, Shakespeare makes no comment. But in my version of the play, guys do. Do you have a problem with that?"
Romeo gulped. No one had quite figured out exactly who Jarod was, yet, or where he had materialized from, but the entire cast knew he had to had some massive connections with the theater in order to step into both the role of Mercutio and the director's chair. And they all understood that without him--and with the suicide having happened so close to the play's opening--McCarter's spring production of "Romeo and Juliet" would no doubt simply be canceled.
Besides, Jarod had an oddly intimidating manner. He was nice enough, mostly, but seemed not only impatient but often simply perplexed by the cast's short-comings. He seemed to simply expect they would not only know their lines and hit their marks, but deliver absolutely perfect, unchanging renditions at each and every run-through. The normal banter and silliness that tended to slowly weave itself into rehearsals was lost on him, and his utter and unrelieved seriousness had a way of inspiring sheer terror in the cast. Not that anyone had ever seen him actually angry. But his lack of a definable sense of humor combined with his obsessive attention to detail had slowly transfixed the cast with an almost palpable discomfort around him.
Of which Jarod was, of course, blithely unaware. The play was incidental to his real motives, but--if he had to direct it--then it would be done to his own personal specifications, and the actors would do as he wished. As far as he could tell, that is what directors did. And he'd seen Romeo and Mercutio's playful exchange as having distinctly homoerotic undertones, and therefore that should clearly be incorporated into his stage direction. And there was another motive, as well, one having to do with the sting he was planning.
Besides, Jarod liked this part of the play: he especially liked Mercutio's next line: "If love be rough with you, be rough with love." It sounded almost exactly like something Laura would say and it amused him immensely to find it tucked away inside Shakespeare's words, which were so often the opposite of her direct and bluntly realistic approach to the subjects of love and sex.
And he was also rather looking forward to having dim but beautiful Joey Constantino, who had gotten the role of Romeo because of how he looked in tights, grab him--on stage, in front of an audience--by the dick. Because Jarod DID have a sense of humor, just a rather twisted one. Laura would see the humor in it, even if no one else did, and he could almost hear her derisive comment on his exhibitionism as he started the scene once again.
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The Weathered Wall
Seattle, Washington
Laura looked down into the eyes of the man who had just asked her to dance--beady eyes, she immediately thought, and shifty, as well--and gave him a slight, condescending smile.
"No--you don't actually want to dance with me," she assured him. "What you really want is to touch my tits. And it ain't happening."
He gulped and look truly frightened, backing away from her and colliding with a couple on the dance floor doing what Laura guessed might be the Cha Cha. Whatever it was, it looked like way too much work to be dancing, in her estimation, and would have required that she think and dance at the same time, which she found defeated the entire purpose of dancing in the first place. It's about freedom, she thought, and spontaneity. Or should be. Like sex, it should simply happen. Still, she watched the Cha Cha-ing couple move with seeming effortlessness across the floor, their eyes locked on each other's, their steps so fluid they seemed to literally not be dancing at all, but gliding or skating or something, and felt a twinge of something like envy.
And she remembered one night of waltzes with Jarod, who had cursed at her under his breath for trying to lead, told her to shut up and then made her have one of the best and certainly most romantic experiences of her entire life.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice at her side:
"Why'd you chase him away?" her companion for the evening asked. "He's a terrific dancer--comes here all the time. A little on the short side, but who isn't for you? See--I told you not to wear those heels--you should only wear flats, Laura, you scare men off by towering over them that way. Much less turning them down like that. Honey, you keep driving guys away, there'll all stop asking."
"Well, better that than have to threaten them. I mean, why is 'If you touch me there again I'll be forced to rip off your arm and beat you unconscious with it?' such a negative thing to say? What ever happened to honesty?"
Janice just grimaced and patted Laura's arm. "It's OK--when Mr. Right comes along, all that attitude of yours will change. You'll feel like a little girl again and want him to just sweep you away and take care of you!"
Laura looked down at her shoes and wondered what the hell she could possibly say to this woman to explain how far from wanting to dance with any of these men she was, much less how little she wanted to be either swept away or taken care of. Janice babbled on--in a way Laura understood to be both characteristic and harmless--and then instantly disappeared when she was asked to dance by another man, this one rapidly balding but neatly, expensively dressed and oozing what Laura sensed was carefully-crafted mock-sensitivity.
That was part of the problem, of course: she could sense what the men were thinking, and it had nothing at all to do with her as a person, or even with a realistic view of their odds at getting more than a fleeting, dance-floor taste of her body. There seemed to be a futility to all of it, to the rituals and the denial of the desperation that drove them, that she found infinitely sad. She understood the dance clubs she normally frequented much more: they were about sex, completely and entirely. Not about the impossible quest for this Grail of love, companionship, domesticity and quiet bliss that was motivating the distinctly middle-aged crowd at The Weathered Wall. It was, she knew, the difference between twenty-five and forty-five. And since she was now much closer in age to the latter than the former, she also understood that she should bite the bullet and make at least some feeble attempt to fit into this particular ritual, even if it meant being stuck in a place she increasingly thought of as The Geezer bar. Instead, she prayed that the DJ would play any of the music she had requested, so that she could take to the dance floor and enjoy herself, letting the music flow inside her and out again, and showing these up-tight, repressed little yuppie losers what dancing WAS.
Instead, he launched into what would prove to be a nearly interminable set of disco classics, resulting in Laura retreating to hide at the bar until it was mercifully put to rest.
She nursed a Tanqueray and Schweps and pondered whatever bizarre set of circumstances had brought her to this hell-hole. Meanwhile, Janice blithely danced with whatever man asked and appeared to be having a genuinely good time.
They'd met while having their hair done. Laura had struck up a light conversation with the woman in the chair next to her, and they'd exchanged phone numbers, promising to have lunch one day. And Laura had been amazed when Janice had actually called: they'd met at the big mall in Bellingham, had lunch at a trendy franchise there, bought shoes, tried on clothes they knew they didn't really want, and talked. Or--more correctly--Janice had talked, and Laura had listened.
And it had been fascinating for her, it had been so long since she'd had a female friend on that simple, uncomplicated basis. She'd had a very enjoyable day, actually. It had been so normal and refreshingly bland and easy.
But then she'd gone home and written passionate, nearly pleading email to Jarod, asking him to get in touch. And heard nothing at all from him: not unusual, of course, if he was in the middle of a pretend he never answered her.
Which was how she'd ended up at The Weathered Wall, feeling too out of place for words.
She heard the distinctive thump of subwoofers calling her: the DJ was--no doubt with very mixed emotions--actually playing one of The Crystal Method cuts she'd requested. She abandoned her drink and headed straight for the dance floor. She didn't care if she would be the only one dancing, she needed to get back in touch with who she really was.
Whoever that was.
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Suquamish Island
Off the coast of Washington State
It was six in the morning when the phone rang, and as she groped for it in dark she knew full well who it had to be. And it irritated her that in spite of her anger at being awakened that she was thrilled he had finally called.
"I need you to help me with this one," he began the conversation, skipping any preamble at all.
Laura sighed. She kept hoping that he'd call because he wanted to talk to her, not because he wanted her to help him with one of his stings. Of course, the only time he'd ever done that, he'd promptly dumped her, so she supposed the status quo would have to do.
"Where are you, Jarod?" she asked with a stifled yawn.
"Princeton, New Jersey," he replied. "There's a summer stock theater company here and . . . "
"You're calling from the East Coast?" she demanded. "Where it's three A.M.?"
"Right," he answered, as if that needed no explanation. "Anyway, what I need is someone to play the Nurse in 'Romeo and Juliet' because I had a small . . . problem with the actress we had and . . . "
"Hold your freaking horses," Laura interjected impatiently. "Why the hell do you think I could do that? Has it really never occurred to you that I'm not like you--not at all--and . . . "
"You're perfect for the part," he answered. "Trust me."
"Oh--this just keeps getting better! I've seen the play, Jarod: the nurse is this, like, wizened old crone . . . "
"Not in my version," he replied smoothly. "That's simply a casting cliché. It makes no sense within the context of the play. Mercutio and the nurse flirt with each other outrageously. Why would he flirt with her if she's an old woman? The jokes about her age come from ROMEO, who is--what--seventeen? She seems ancient to HIM, but . . . "
"This still side-steps the entire issue of my being able to ACT, Jarod. I never have, nor wanted to. I mean, it seems so phony and . . . "
"You'll do fine," he assured her. "I've reduced her lines down to the core of the role and . . . "
"You did WHAT? You can't fuck around with the play like that--it's Shakespeare, for god's sake!"
"I had to. First of all, I changed it so that she has this rather graphic sex scene with Mercutio, which is what happened with my original Nurse--for some reason she refused to bare her breasts on stage . . . "
"Hold on a minute," Laura insisted. She ran a hand over her forehead, noticing a headache coming on. Jarod did that to her sometimes. "First of all, doesn't Mercutio die pretty early on? I mean, that loser Tybalt, like, 'runs him through' and kills him, right?"
"Not in my version, he doesn't," Jarod assured her.
"You can't DO that! I mean, you can't change the entire plot just to suit yourself!"
"Why not?" he asked seriously. "I'm the director. Shakespeare is merely the writer."
"I can't believe we're having this conversation!" Laura said, shaking her head and beginning to wish she'd slept through the phone ringing.
"I did some work in Hollywood as research before taking on this pretend, Laura, on a TV show. And the first piece of advice I got from other directors was that all writers are idiots."
Laura signed and looked at the phone receiver in increasingly disbelief. "What TV show?" she asked, finally.
"Well, actually," Jarod explained, "it was a pilot, which I co-produced as well as directed. About this guy who travels around, trying to right the world's wrongs. He's very moral and brings the bad guys to justice, but first forces them to confront their own mistakes in ways that might appear sadistic at first glance, but on further reflection are actually entirely justified."
"You're kidding, right?" she asked.
"Oh, no, not at all," he told her. "I thought it was a killer concept--with legs. Could'a been massive. Unfortunately, those idiot suits at the WB walked on it. Too bad--their loss, of course, the total pin-heads."
Laura sat there stunned for a moment, at Jarod gone Hollywood. "You know, it IS a great idea for a TV show," she offered after a bit of reflection.
"So--should I expect you this afternoon?"
"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "Jarod does Shakespeare--this I gotta see!"
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McCarter Theater
Princeton, New Jersey
"Yo--Jarod! Are we, like, ever going to actually DO this scene, or should I just go back to the hotel and get bombed?"
"Ohmygawd!" the young girl playing Juliet whispered to Laura, "you can't talk to him like that! He's the DIRECTOR--you have to act, you know, respectful."
Laura just gave her what she hoped was a withering stare. She still hadn't gotten over the girl's name--'Feather Stone'--which she insisted was her actual name, leading Laura to speculate on just how sadistic her parents had been.
"I need to run through this scene with Romeo one more time--" Jarod began explaining from the center of the stage.
"Fuck it, Jarod--you've done it fifteen times, already! How many variations on Romeo grabbing your crotch are there, anyway? However much you might be getting off on this--"
Jarod was at her side instantly, propelling her further into the stage's wings by an elbow. He had that impatient little frown on his face that she recognized all too well: he was about to launch into some lame lecture about her 'attitude', she knew.
"Romeo," he said insistently, "may be a murderer. Can't you see what I'm doing, here? It's about testing him, seeing what he's thinking, getting inside his head."
For once, he'd completely surprised her. She looked at him with wide eyes. "You're kidding, right? That kid . . . geez, Jarod, why didn't you say something sooner?"
"For the same reason," he explained, "that I probably shouldn't have said anything now. I don't confide these details to other people because I haven't found that they can be trusted--"
"Hold it right there, pal!" she hissed. "'Other people'? As though I'm some clueless stranger off the street? Don't you know me well enough by now to trust me?"
There was a pained silence. Laura took a quick, deep breath and felt tears, awfully enough, in her eyes.
"You always push," Jarod said quietly, slowly. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
She simply looked at him, feeling quite lost. It's seemed the perfect metaphor for their entire relationship, somehow: that when it came down to it, he was able to hold her so completely at arm's length, treating her exactly like that, like a stranger.
"I'm going back to the hotel to pack . . . " she began.
"No!" he blurted out. He looked angry, suddenly. "I need you here. For this pretend to work, the play needs to actually get staged. And I need a Nurse."
She could feel him groping for the right thing to say and felt sympathy, in spite of her anger. After all, he really didn't understand--not how she felt, not how cold his words sounded, not how much she wanted something else entirely from him, something he seemed unable to give.
It was ironic, she knew, that as she'd fallen in love with him and wanted all those romantic cliches, he'd simultaneously been disengaging himself, emotionally, from her. It hadn't been the same since the first time she'd left him, running away literally in the middle of the night, while he slept, without even leaving a note to explain. He'd been loving, before that, he'd told her he loved her every five minutes and been so clearly smitten . . .but that's when it had all changed. When he'd gone to see his damned Miss Parker, when they had become whatever it was they were: lovers? It made Laura choke on the word to use it in that context. It was sick, and she was sick of it--sick of his truly weird romantic longing for a woman who still, after everything, was trying to lock him up for the rest of his life.
"I had the dream again last night," she said, unexpectedly.
He looked startled. "The same one?" he asked.
"Yeah--same bullshit. A hallway, in the Centre. Sydney, Miss Parker, you, a few other men. Lots of anger. You and Parker--something new there, some sort of new animosity. As if there's not enough already. About the past, maybe not even your own pasts . . . I don't know, it's vague. Then a sort of stunned silence. Everyone looks the same way, down one of those long corridors. And then this flash, heat: an explosion . . . Jarod, you have to promise me you'll never, never go back there! That you'll never set foot in the Centre again."
He sighed, then took her chin lightly in his hand and tilted her head up, finding her eyes with his. "It's only a dream, Laura," he told her.
"Yeah, right: 'only a dream'! That's horseshit, Jarod, and you know it. you know me, you know what I am. I don't have the same stinking dream over and over and over again without it being a hell of a lot more than 'only a dream'!"
"Look," he said seriously, "I can't promise that. If for no other reason that than I might be TAKEN back there, someday--"
"Then promise me you'll never go there voluntarily. That you'll never willingly go back inside that place. because, Jarod, if you do and this dream isn't 'only a dream' . . . "
He was thinking, clearly. she knew he hated to be pinned down on things, and that he wanted a life that was separate and private from her, a life in which he could do whatever he wished. He sighed, again.
"I'll do that, for you, Laura: I promise I'll never voluntarily go back inside the Centre."
She reached out and hugged him. "You know I love you," she told him.
"Sometimes," he answered, "sometimes I know that."
Star Crossed
Chapter 1
Witch1
McCarter Theater
Princeton, New Jersey
"OK, run this by me again, man: you want me to grab you WHERE while I do this line?"
Jarod sighed. He was finding it increasingly difficult to have patience with this young man, who, he suspected, had gotten as far as he had on good looks alone. He was certainly sparse on talent, and equally so on brains.
"In the crotch, Romeo," Jarod explained again. "Like this." He reached out and put his hand flat against the other man's body, the heel of his hand nestled against the warm mound of his balls, his fingers defining the bulge of his penis. He took his hand away after a long moment, noting the younger man's bright pink blush and the sharp inward gasp of his breath. He had felt just the first twitch of an erection blossoming before he'd removed his hand, as well.
The young man playing Romeo simply stared at him with wide-open mouth.
"See, the line is: 'Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like a thorn.' What Romeo and Mercutio are doing is playing with the concept--and the words--and, basically, doing what I believe is called 'dumping' on the idea of love. So, when Romeo says that love 'pricks like a thorn', I want him to reach out and tweak Mercutio. A friendly little tweak. It's a joke. It's intended to underscore what is implied by the language: that 'love' is actually about sex. That it's about Mercutio's cock--and Romeo's--and they both really know that."
Romeo puckered his brow in evident deep thought. "Are they gay?"
Jarod sighed. "It's playfulness. It's two guys joking around. It's not about them having sex, it's about the societally imposed romanticism surrounding the basic biological function of sex."
Romeo looked even more lost. He was clearly struggling to keep up with Jarod thoughts. "So," he finally, tentatively began, "they're just, like, screwing off about love and all that bullshit, saying it's really about fucking, and then Romeo grabs him by the . . . did guys, like, DO that, you know, way back then?"
"Who knows?" Jarod responded. "About this, Shakespeare makes no comment. But in my version of the play, guys do. Do you have a problem with that?"
Romeo gulped. No one had quite figured out exactly who Jarod was, yet, or where he had materialized from, but the entire cast knew he had to had some massive connections with the theater in order to step into both the role of Mercutio and the director's chair. And they all understood that without him--and with the suicide having happened so close to the play's opening--McCarter's spring production of "Romeo and Juliet" would no doubt simply be canceled.
Besides, Jarod had an oddly intimidating manner. He was nice enough, mostly, but seemed not only impatient but often simply perplexed by the cast's short-comings. He seemed to simply expect they would not only know their lines and hit their marks, but deliver absolutely perfect, unchanging renditions at each and every run-through. The normal banter and silliness that tended to slowly weave itself into rehearsals was lost on him, and his utter and unrelieved seriousness had a way of inspiring sheer terror in the cast. Not that anyone had ever seen him actually angry. But his lack of a definable sense of humor combined with his obsessive attention to detail had slowly transfixed the cast with an almost palpable discomfort around him.
Of which Jarod was, of course, blithely unaware. The play was incidental to his real motives, but--if he had to direct it--then it would be done to his own personal specifications, and the actors would do as he wished. As far as he could tell, that is what directors did. And he'd seen Romeo and Mercutio's playful exchange as having distinctly homoerotic undertones, and therefore that should clearly be incorporated into his stage direction. And there was another motive, as well, one having to do with the sting he was planning.
Besides, Jarod liked this part of the play: he especially liked Mercutio's next line: "If love be rough with you, be rough with love." It sounded almost exactly like something Laura would say and it amused him immensely to find it tucked away inside Shakespeare's words, which were so often the opposite of her direct and bluntly realistic approach to the subjects of love and sex.
And he was also rather looking forward to having dim but beautiful Joey Constantino, who had gotten the role of Romeo because of how he looked in tights, grab him--on stage, in front of an audience--by the dick. Because Jarod DID have a sense of humor, just a rather twisted one. Laura would see the humor in it, even if no one else did, and he could almost hear her derisive comment on his exhibitionism as he started the scene once again.
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The Weathered Wall
Seattle, Washington
Laura looked down into the eyes of the man who had just asked her to dance--beady eyes, she immediately thought, and shifty, as well--and gave him a slight, condescending smile.
"No--you don't actually want to dance with me," she assured him. "What you really want is to touch my tits. And it ain't happening."
He gulped and look truly frightened, backing away from her and colliding with a couple on the dance floor doing what Laura guessed might be the Cha Cha. Whatever it was, it looked like way too much work to be dancing, in her estimation, and would have required that she think and dance at the same time, which she found defeated the entire purpose of dancing in the first place. It's about freedom, she thought, and spontaneity. Or should be. Like sex, it should simply happen. Still, she watched the Cha Cha-ing couple move with seeming effortlessness across the floor, their eyes locked on each other's, their steps so fluid they seemed to literally not be dancing at all, but gliding or skating or something, and felt a twinge of something like envy.
And she remembered one night of waltzes with Jarod, who had cursed at her under his breath for trying to lead, told her to shut up and then made her have one of the best and certainly most romantic experiences of her entire life.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice at her side:
"Why'd you chase him away?" her companion for the evening asked. "He's a terrific dancer--comes here all the time. A little on the short side, but who isn't for you? See--I told you not to wear those heels--you should only wear flats, Laura, you scare men off by towering over them that way. Much less turning them down like that. Honey, you keep driving guys away, there'll all stop asking."
"Well, better that than have to threaten them. I mean, why is 'If you touch me there again I'll be forced to rip off your arm and beat you unconscious with it?' such a negative thing to say? What ever happened to honesty?"
Janice just grimaced and patted Laura's arm. "It's OK--when Mr. Right comes along, all that attitude of yours will change. You'll feel like a little girl again and want him to just sweep you away and take care of you!"
Laura looked down at her shoes and wondered what the hell she could possibly say to this woman to explain how far from wanting to dance with any of these men she was, much less how little she wanted to be either swept away or taken care of. Janice babbled on--in a way Laura understood to be both characteristic and harmless--and then instantly disappeared when she was asked to dance by another man, this one rapidly balding but neatly, expensively dressed and oozing what Laura sensed was carefully-crafted mock-sensitivity.
That was part of the problem, of course: she could sense what the men were thinking, and it had nothing at all to do with her as a person, or even with a realistic view of their odds at getting more than a fleeting, dance-floor taste of her body. There seemed to be a futility to all of it, to the rituals and the denial of the desperation that drove them, that she found infinitely sad. She understood the dance clubs she normally frequented much more: they were about sex, completely and entirely. Not about the impossible quest for this Grail of love, companionship, domesticity and quiet bliss that was motivating the distinctly middle-aged crowd at The Weathered Wall. It was, she knew, the difference between twenty-five and forty-five. And since she was now much closer in age to the latter than the former, she also understood that she should bite the bullet and make at least some feeble attempt to fit into this particular ritual, even if it meant being stuck in a place she increasingly thought of as The Geezer bar. Instead, she prayed that the DJ would play any of the music she had requested, so that she could take to the dance floor and enjoy herself, letting the music flow inside her and out again, and showing these up-tight, repressed little yuppie losers what dancing WAS.
Instead, he launched into what would prove to be a nearly interminable set of disco classics, resulting in Laura retreating to hide at the bar until it was mercifully put to rest.
She nursed a Tanqueray and Schweps and pondered whatever bizarre set of circumstances had brought her to this hell-hole. Meanwhile, Janice blithely danced with whatever man asked and appeared to be having a genuinely good time.
They'd met while having their hair done. Laura had struck up a light conversation with the woman in the chair next to her, and they'd exchanged phone numbers, promising to have lunch one day. And Laura had been amazed when Janice had actually called: they'd met at the big mall in Bellingham, had lunch at a trendy franchise there, bought shoes, tried on clothes they knew they didn't really want, and talked. Or--more correctly--Janice had talked, and Laura had listened.
And it had been fascinating for her, it had been so long since she'd had a female friend on that simple, uncomplicated basis. She'd had a very enjoyable day, actually. It had been so normal and refreshingly bland and easy.
But then she'd gone home and written passionate, nearly pleading email to Jarod, asking him to get in touch. And heard nothing at all from him: not unusual, of course, if he was in the middle of a pretend he never answered her.
Which was how she'd ended up at The Weathered Wall, feeling too out of place for words.
She heard the distinctive thump of subwoofers calling her: the DJ was--no doubt with very mixed emotions--actually playing one of The Crystal Method cuts she'd requested. She abandoned her drink and headed straight for the dance floor. She didn't care if she would be the only one dancing, she needed to get back in touch with who she really was.
Whoever that was.
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Suquamish Island
Off the coast of Washington State
It was six in the morning when the phone rang, and as she groped for it in dark she knew full well who it had to be. And it irritated her that in spite of her anger at being awakened that she was thrilled he had finally called.
"I need you to help me with this one," he began the conversation, skipping any preamble at all.
Laura sighed. She kept hoping that he'd call because he wanted to talk to her, not because he wanted her to help him with one of his stings. Of course, the only time he'd ever done that, he'd promptly dumped her, so she supposed the status quo would have to do.
"Where are you, Jarod?" she asked with a stifled yawn.
"Princeton, New Jersey," he replied. "There's a summer stock theater company here and . . . "
"You're calling from the East Coast?" she demanded. "Where it's three A.M.?"
"Right," he answered, as if that needed no explanation. "Anyway, what I need is someone to play the Nurse in 'Romeo and Juliet' because I had a small . . . problem with the actress we had and . . . "
"Hold your freaking horses," Laura interjected impatiently. "Why the hell do you think I could do that? Has it really never occurred to you that I'm not like you--not at all--and . . . "
"You're perfect for the part," he answered. "Trust me."
"Oh--this just keeps getting better! I've seen the play, Jarod: the nurse is this, like, wizened old crone . . . "
"Not in my version," he replied smoothly. "That's simply a casting cliché. It makes no sense within the context of the play. Mercutio and the nurse flirt with each other outrageously. Why would he flirt with her if she's an old woman? The jokes about her age come from ROMEO, who is--what--seventeen? She seems ancient to HIM, but . . . "
"This still side-steps the entire issue of my being able to ACT, Jarod. I never have, nor wanted to. I mean, it seems so phony and . . . "
"You'll do fine," he assured her. "I've reduced her lines down to the core of the role and . . . "
"You did WHAT? You can't fuck around with the play like that--it's Shakespeare, for god's sake!"
"I had to. First of all, I changed it so that she has this rather graphic sex scene with Mercutio, which is what happened with my original Nurse--for some reason she refused to bare her breasts on stage . . . "
"Hold on a minute," Laura insisted. She ran a hand over her forehead, noticing a headache coming on. Jarod did that to her sometimes. "First of all, doesn't Mercutio die pretty early on? I mean, that loser Tybalt, like, 'runs him through' and kills him, right?"
"Not in my version, he doesn't," Jarod assured her.
"You can't DO that! I mean, you can't change the entire plot just to suit yourself!"
"Why not?" he asked seriously. "I'm the director. Shakespeare is merely the writer."
"I can't believe we're having this conversation!" Laura said, shaking her head and beginning to wish she'd slept through the phone ringing.
"I did some work in Hollywood as research before taking on this pretend, Laura, on a TV show. And the first piece of advice I got from other directors was that all writers are idiots."
Laura signed and looked at the phone receiver in increasingly disbelief. "What TV show?" she asked, finally.
"Well, actually," Jarod explained, "it was a pilot, which I co-produced as well as directed. About this guy who travels around, trying to right the world's wrongs. He's very moral and brings the bad guys to justice, but first forces them to confront their own mistakes in ways that might appear sadistic at first glance, but on further reflection are actually entirely justified."
"You're kidding, right?" she asked.
"Oh, no, not at all," he told her. "I thought it was a killer concept--with legs. Could'a been massive. Unfortunately, those idiot suits at the WB walked on it. Too bad--their loss, of course, the total pin-heads."
Laura sat there stunned for a moment, at Jarod gone Hollywood. "You know, it IS a great idea for a TV show," she offered after a bit of reflection.
"So--should I expect you this afternoon?"
"Yeah," she said with a sigh. "Jarod does Shakespeare--this I gotta see!"
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McCarter Theater
Princeton, New Jersey
"Yo--Jarod! Are we, like, ever going to actually DO this scene, or should I just go back to the hotel and get bombed?"
"Ohmygawd!" the young girl playing Juliet whispered to Laura, "you can't talk to him like that! He's the DIRECTOR--you have to act, you know, respectful."
Laura just gave her what she hoped was a withering stare. She still hadn't gotten over the girl's name--'Feather Stone'--which she insisted was her actual name, leading Laura to speculate on just how sadistic her parents had been.
"I need to run through this scene with Romeo one more time--" Jarod began explaining from the center of the stage.
"Fuck it, Jarod--you've done it fifteen times, already! How many variations on Romeo grabbing your crotch are there, anyway? However much you might be getting off on this--"
Jarod was at her side instantly, propelling her further into the stage's wings by an elbow. He had that impatient little frown on his face that she recognized all too well: he was about to launch into some lame lecture about her 'attitude', she knew.
"Romeo," he said insistently, "may be a murderer. Can't you see what I'm doing, here? It's about testing him, seeing what he's thinking, getting inside his head."
For once, he'd completely surprised her. She looked at him with wide eyes. "You're kidding, right? That kid . . . geez, Jarod, why didn't you say something sooner?"
"For the same reason," he explained, "that I probably shouldn't have said anything now. I don't confide these details to other people because I haven't found that they can be trusted--"
"Hold it right there, pal!" she hissed. "'Other people'? As though I'm some clueless stranger off the street? Don't you know me well enough by now to trust me?"
There was a pained silence. Laura took a quick, deep breath and felt tears, awfully enough, in her eyes.
"You always push," Jarod said quietly, slowly. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
She simply looked at him, feeling quite lost. It's seemed the perfect metaphor for their entire relationship, somehow: that when it came down to it, he was able to hold her so completely at arm's length, treating her exactly like that, like a stranger.
"I'm going back to the hotel to pack . . . " she began.
"No!" he blurted out. He looked angry, suddenly. "I need you here. For this pretend to work, the play needs to actually get staged. And I need a Nurse."
She could feel him groping for the right thing to say and felt sympathy, in spite of her anger. After all, he really didn't understand--not how she felt, not how cold his words sounded, not how much she wanted something else entirely from him, something he seemed unable to give.
It was ironic, she knew, that as she'd fallen in love with him and wanted all those romantic cliches, he'd simultaneously been disengaging himself, emotionally, from her. It hadn't been the same since the first time she'd left him, running away literally in the middle of the night, while he slept, without even leaving a note to explain. He'd been loving, before that, he'd told her he loved her every five minutes and been so clearly smitten . . .but that's when it had all changed. When he'd gone to see his damned Miss Parker, when they had become whatever it was they were: lovers? It made Laura choke on the word to use it in that context. It was sick, and she was sick of it--sick of his truly weird romantic longing for a woman who still, after everything, was trying to lock him up for the rest of his life.
"I had the dream again last night," she said, unexpectedly.
He looked startled. "The same one?" he asked.
"Yeah--same bullshit. A hallway, in the Centre. Sydney, Miss Parker, you, a few other men. Lots of anger. You and Parker--something new there, some sort of new animosity. As if there's not enough already. About the past, maybe not even your own pasts . . . I don't know, it's vague. Then a sort of stunned silence. Everyone looks the same way, down one of those long corridors. And then this flash, heat: an explosion . . . Jarod, you have to promise me you'll never, never go back there! That you'll never set foot in the Centre again."
He sighed, then took her chin lightly in his hand and tilted her head up, finding her eyes with his. "It's only a dream, Laura," he told her.
"Yeah, right: 'only a dream'! That's horseshit, Jarod, and you know it. you know me, you know what I am. I don't have the same stinking dream over and over and over again without it being a hell of a lot more than 'only a dream'!"
"Look," he said seriously, "I can't promise that. If for no other reason that than I might be TAKEN back there, someday--"
"Then promise me you'll never go there voluntarily. That you'll never willingly go back inside that place. because, Jarod, if you do and this dream isn't 'only a dream' . . . "
He was thinking, clearly. she knew he hated to be pinned down on things, and that he wanted a life that was separate and private from her, a life in which he could do whatever he wished. He sighed, again.
"I'll do that, for you, Laura: I promise I'll never voluntarily go back inside the Centre."
She reached out and hugged him. "You know I love you," she told him.
"Sometimes," he answered, "sometimes I know that."
