Juliet’s Street-Side Serenade
by Joshua Begley
Part 1 appears
in this issue.
conclusion
In August, two months after we start, I cut Vince off.
Fucking is fun, but not when it’s all the time. Every now and then I’d like a little lovemaking, too. And yes, I am quite aware of my hypocrisy. It’s what makes me interesting.
He takes it about as well as I thought, which is not well at all. He pouts like a little kid. He comes in late for work and snaps at the customers. Venus tries to console him, but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. Whenever she comes around to get him to open up, he just glares at me over her shoulder, like I’m supposed to be the one over there instead of her.
And then I have to deal with Venus who pines away and can’t understand why Vince treats her so badly. She’s jealous of me even though she doesn’t know it. I wonder if I was that naïve when I was her age.
I wish I could tell her that it doesn’t matter, that Vinces come and go and aren’t worth a damn beyond a good time every now and again, but Venus won’t listen. I know I wouldn’t — didn’t — when I was her age. At that time lust seems like love and the real thing looks too boring to fool with.
If I’m lucky this’ll all blow over. Vince will simply stop coming to work, then I’ll fire him and hire some new eye candy for Venus to play with. And this time I promise I won’t dip my hand in the cookie jar, or honeypot, or whatever the hell the euphemism is.
* * *
I’m not lucky.
Worse, I’m not bright, either.
I mean, I should have seen it coming. All the signs were there, and it wasn’t anything I hadn’t dealt with before. I suppose I just got lazy, or complacent. Whatever the reason, I was completely sideswiped by what happened next.
Venus hadn’t shown up for nearly a week. She called on Monday saying she had the flu. I knew she didn’t have it — she didn’t even try to sound sick — I just figured she was being a little petulant, and I indulged it. After all, I did steal her boy toy right out from under her nose.
Vince had already stopped coming to work, which at the time I thought was a godsend, or at the very least a minor miracle. But, like Venus, I couldn’t see what was happening right in front of me.
With Venus gone, I ended up closing shop on Wednesday and didn’t open it for the rest of the week. I went to the movies, a few off-Broadway shows, and visited a couple of museums I hadn’t been to in years. It wasn’t necessarily fun, but it sure beat sitting and smoking in the apartment.
That Friday I checked out a special Salvador Dali exhibit. Dali was never one of my favorites, but I could appreciate what he was trying to do. When I returned home that evening, I heard Venus’s voice through the door.
“Such a bitch! You knew I wanted Vince, but you had to snatch him up. Well, you should’ve taken better care of him, honey, because he’s mine now, and WE QUIT!”
I threw open the door and found Romeo standing in the living room, his finger still on the PLAY button on the answering machine, his face completely slack. He stares at me with dead eyes that lit a fire in my chest.
“Oh, don’t even try it,” I tell him. “Don’t you even. It’s not like you haven’t done the same damn thing, or even like this is my first.”
He doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me with that dead mackerel look. The fire in my chest flares, and I’m actually sweating. My scar itches. “Are you really going to go, or are you old enough to stay and talk?” I say.
Romeo shuffles past me and out the door, not even bothering to close it.
“That’s what I thought,” I say to the empty doorway.
* * *
At first, I felt like a girl whose parents had left for the weekend. I had the place all to myself and could do anything I wanted. I could spread out on the bed; watch whatever the hell I wanted to without fear of interrupting Romeo’s precious work. I used obscene amounts of onions in my cooking and drank like a frat girl.
The fun lasted two, maybe three days.
Soon, the bed felt cavernous and cold and I realized that I didn’t like 90% of what was on television. I also realized that onions gave me gas and that hangovers were about as much fun as I remembered.
Once I quit drinking, I found sleep elusive. I took to cuddling with a pillow at night and sleeping with the television on for noise.
After the first week, I began spending more time at the bookstore. Unfortunately, with Venus gone, the place ended up being quiet, lonely, and depressing. I took to cursing her and Vince in my off-time. I even remembered some nice Italian words I hadn’t thought of in years. It grew so bad I was actually wishing for customers.
Still, the emptiness of the bookstore was much more tolerable than the emptiness at home. I started keeping the store open later and later, sometimes closing at one o’clock in the morning. One night I actually fell asleep behind the counter with the radio playing Beethoven above me.
I knew it was bad when I started chain smoking.
The sonofabitch actually had me chain smoking.
I hated him then. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I felt it curl in my belly like a cold worm. It was nauseating, infuriating, yet empowering. I sat on the fire escape, smoking, scratching the scar between my breasts, almost luxuriating in my hate.
It was seductive and dangerous in ways Vince or any other man could never be. I mean, I was never supposed to hate Romeo. We were supposed to have the perfect love. We were what everybody always dreamed of but could never reach.
I could see people moving below me. Even at three in the morning the Village still held life. I see a couple walking hand in hand, whispering and giggling and standing as close to each other as possible. Of course, it made me think of Romeo and me. It was hard to remember the kids we were; hard to sift through all of the time and experiences to go back to those people we had been once upon a time. I remember us being stupid, and passionate, and immortal. Not the tired immortality I feel everyday, but the blazing endlessness of youth.
Maybe our lives would have been better if they’d ended like in the play. The daggers drop, the curtains fall, and that moment of pure, blind love/lust lasts forever. We’d never have to deal with the boredom of familiarity, the life-stealing pricks of everyday worries. We’d be dead and happy in our ignorance.
But that’s a child’s thinking, and I’m too old to indulge that much. The woman I am knows that’s nothing but romantic bullshit born out of fear.
I take one last drag off my Marlboro then toss it over the railing.
* * *
The English Department secretary tells me the hotel and room number where Romeo is staying.
“Good luck,” she says before hanging up.
Like our apartment, the Hyperion hotel wasn’t much. It sprawled a couple of blocks away from NYU, had small balconies, and a busted neon sign that could only be read in the daylight.
The only thing the hotel had going for it — other than cheap rates, I’m sure — was its view of a small park just across the street.
I was freezing my nips off. I only took a light trench coat to wear, and the cold snuck up on me. It looked like we were in for an early fall. College kids sat on benches, picnic blankets, or just on the grass around me. I heard them talk and laugh, and I knew more than a few were staring at me. Hell, most of them didn’t even try to hide it.
I couldn’t blame them. After all, I pretty much planted myself in the middle of the park, watching the window to Romeo’s room.
Romeo arrived at the same time I decided to go home to get a warmer coat. I saw him round the corner with his head down, muttering to himself, his satchel bumping against his hip as he loosely held a McDonald’s bag. He sported a scraggly beard and his clothes looked like he’d slept in them for the past few nights.
I try to move to him, but by this time I really feel planted. Roots sprout from the soles of my feet through shoe leather and into the ground. I open my mouth to call to him, but I don’t have the heart to make the noise. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I already have.
Romeo shuffles into the Hyperion, bumping into a couple exiting without breaking stride. Two minutes later he steps out onto his balcony, munching on a Big Mac and staring off into space.
I break the roots under my feet and walk to the edge of the sidewalk. Romeo is deep in thought. He doesn’t even notice me. For a moment I actually consider yelling up to him.
“The hell with that,” I say. I can’t help but smile a little, though.
Instead of soliloquizing, I jaywalk across the street and into the Hyperion.
Romeo answers by the fifth knock.
“Peggy told you where I am, didn’t she?” he asks. He steps aside to let me in.
It looked like a textbook had exploded in his room. Papers were everywhere except the ceiling, and I think it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to stick up there, too. I step on a couple of paperbacks on my way to the only free chair. My heels punch holes in notebook pages.
Romeo knocks books off of the bed to make a space for him to sit. He scratches his beard and looks at everything in the room twice before settling his eyes on me. “You look good,” he says.
“You too,” I lie. “It looks like you’ve settled in well.”
He shrugs. “I don’t have much time to pick up.”
“Classes keeping you busy?”
Romeo nods. “It’s near finals and they’re all freaking out over their big assignments. They’re driving me crazy with questions.”
“I can imagine.” I scratch my head. We both look away. Finally, I burst out laughing.
“You know,” I say, “we used to be a lot better with words.”
Romeo shrugs again, but I see his lips curl into a small smile. “Nobody’s as good with words as the us in the play, but we were okay. Of course, I was pretty horny. That’s a good motivator.”
“You were very sweet and charming.”
“That’s because I was trying to get into your pants — well — dress.”
“So it wasn’t love at first sight?”
His smile widens. “It was something at first sight, that’s for sure. I just don’t think it was love.”
I smile back, and this time our eyes stay on each other.
“You know,” I say, “I almost ended up yelling up at you from the street.”
He laughs. “It would have been nice to have been the one romanced for a change.”
“You know I don’t do soliloquies.”
“Well, this is life, not a play.”
“But I can romance you, if you’d like.”
Romeo sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m being a hypocrite, but it hit me harder than I thought.”
“It did me, too.”
“Will it work out this time?” he asks.
I spread my hands. “I don’t know,” I say. “All I can do is promise to try.”
“I guess that’s all I can ask,” he says. He stares down at his shoes, and for a moment I’m struck by how much he still looks like a boy. I walk over to him and tilt his chin up so we’re looking into each other’s eyes.
Words stick in my throat. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. Romeo and I were never poetic, at least not like the play; any poetry we possessed came out in other ways. In the end, all I could say was, “Let’s go home.” I hoped it was enough.
We sleep together in our bed that night, but we don’t make love. He holds me and it feels warm and strong. I bury my face into his chest and breathe him in. When we wake up the next morning, he helps me make breakfast, and I help him with his notes.
Sometimes it’s the little things that say, “I love you.”
And life, unlike plays, goes on with no curtain call in sight.
Copyright © 2018 by Joshua Begley
