The Juliet Club Read online

  Benno couldn’t let that go. “He has only been accused of liking two girls at the same time,” he offered humbly, and then wished he hadn’t.

  “Only? Only accused of—!” Lucy couldn’t even finish her sentence, she was so astounded by this reaction.

  Silvia narrowed her eyes dangerously. “If she loves this James, he is worth fighting for!”

  “You’re not saying she should hurt Alice,” Lucy asked, impressed by her vindictive tone.

  “Not Alice, no,” Silvia conceded. After a moment, she added darkly, “But as for this James—”

  “Silvia doesn’t believe love is real unless someone has to go to hospital for at least five stitches,” Giacomo said. “‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’”

  Silvia managed to both scowl and look gratified at this assessment of her character. She shoved his chair with her dangling foot and said, “Pah! Five stitches is calf love. True passion requires at least ten.” The mere thought seemed to put her in a better humor. She added, “And a lasting scar.”

  Lucy gazed at them with round eyes. “I really don’t think that violence is ever the answer,” she said solemnly.

  Silvia bit back a sarcastic remark—why did Americans always take everything so seriously?—and asked, “And so what would you suggest?”

  “Well, I think she should just sit down with James and have a heart-to-heart talk with him,” Lucy said. “Tell him that he has to choose. It’s either her or Alice.”

  “Why should he get to choose?” Silvia snapped.

  “And why should she trust what he says?” Kate added. “He’s already shown that he has a duplicitous nature.”

  “We don’t know that,” Giacomo protested.

  “Of course we do.” Kate waved the letter in the air. “The evidence is right here.”

  “Based on what line?” Giacomo took the letter from her and made a great show of frowning at it in puzzlement. “Based on what example?”

  Kate crossed her arms and lifted her chin a defiant half-inch, a sure sign to those who knew her that she was about to defend her position with the enthusiasm of a centurion repulsing the barbarians at the gates.

  “Not all evidence needs to be explicitly stated,” she said. “Especially given that the letter writer, in this case, sounds, well . . . shall we say, less than self-aware. Under the circumstances, I think we should be allowed to consider subtext, to examine what is implied as well as what is declared.”

  “We should also consider the possibility of an unreliable narrator,” Giacomo pointed out as his mother gave a nod of surprised approval. “After all, we’ve only heard the girl’s side of the story.”

  “Are you saying she’s lying?” Silvia asked heatedly.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “But perhaps she has misread the situation? Perhaps she’s reading more into his declarations of love than are really there? Perhaps her interpretation is flawed?”

  There was a shocked silence. “Well?” Professoressa Marchese asked smoothly. “What does everyone think of that theory?”

  Kate, Silvia, and Lucy looked at one another, united in disgust.

  “He said he loved her!” Lucy cried. “There’s only one way to interpret that!”

  “I agree,” Silvia said. “And if he has told her that he loves her and is still seeing this other girl—”

  “Maybe more than one,” Lucy reminded her.

  “Girls, yes,” Silvia amended, with a nod of thanks. “Then he clearly has an evil heart. Jill should exact retribution!”

  Giacomo opened his mouth as if to speak, but Benno got there first.

  “No, I think Giacamo is right,” Benno said. “This girl is clearly crazy.”

  There was a moment of outraged silence, broken finally by Kate.

  “Not really,” she said to Benno. “You don’t really think that?”

  “There are many crazy girls in the world,” he said defensively. “Believe me.”

  “Of course, you are an expert on that subject,” Silvia murmured.

  “I have had some distasteful experiences,” Benno said with dignity, “which I’d rather not discuss.”

  “I’m merely saying it’s one possibility,” Giacomo said to Kate, ignoring Benno.

  Tom was examining the letter intently. “Don’t crazy people usually have really bad penmanship, all scrawly and everything? Her handwriting looks pretty neat.” He looked more closely. “She does dot her Is with hearts, though.”

  “She is not crazy,” Lucy said. “For heaven’s sake.”

  “Why is it girls are always right and guys are always wrong?” Tom asked the air.

  “No one is saying that!” Kate was exasperated. “But you have to admit that in this particular case the evidence seems to indicate that Jill is the wronged party.”

  “By her own account!” Giacomo pointed out, raising his voice to be heard over the others. “By her own hand!”

  “Yes!” Kate shot back. “Because she is the one who cared enough to write, while this James person is obviously going on his merry way, not giving a thought to the girl he’s left behind, the girl he has grievously wronged, the girl he said he loved—”

  “Yes, that’s your interpretation, but where is the evidence? Where are the facts to support it?” asked Giacomo, becoming even more heated.

  “Just look at the letter!” Kate was close to yelling, herself, as she picked up the paper and waved it in the air for emphasis. “It’s all right there in the text!”

  “Excuse me. Excuse me! Excuse me!”

  The din of battle was abruptly silenced as everyone turned to see Kate’s father, looming in the doorway, his hair standing on end as if he had been running his hands through it.

  “Professoressa Marchese,” he said in a tight, controlled voice. “If I might have a word?”

  “But of course, Professore Sanderson,” she said, flashing a brilliant smile. “Is there a problem?”

  “A problem? A problem?” Kate’s father sputtered. “Yes, I would say so. I would indeed say so!”

  She arched one elegant eyebrow. “And what, please, is the nature of that problem? Please, do not hold back. I believe in open, honest discussion.”

  “Yes, I can tell,” he said. “Because your class’s open, honest discussion is becoming so noisy that it is quite impossible for my class to think! We can barely hear one another speak!”

  “Ah, passion! A wonderful quality, and one that I believe should be encouraged in the classroom. And, of course,” she purred, “in all other areas of life as well.”

  “Yes, well, er . . .” That seemed to stop him, but he recovered quickly. “Yes, yes, I would be the last person to quell an interesting discussion, but we have already begun a very intricate textual analysis.”

  “Oh, indeed. I am sure we would not wish to deprive you or your students of the heady joys of textual analysis,” she murmured, making the last two words sound as dusty as a shelf of ancient Latin texts. “I believe I heard you explaining that technique a little earlier, through the wall that we share between our classrooms?”

  He flushed. “I apologize if my, er, passion for the subject disturbed you,” he said stiffly. “But now that we have begun to really delve into the play . . . Well. It requires great concentration.”

  Professoressa Marchese glanced at her class, then strolled over to put a hand on his arm. “My students are doing so well, I feel quite confident leaving them to continue on their own. Perhaps we should continue this conversation in the hall? In private?”

  “Oh, ah, er . . .”

  Kate had never seen her father at a loss for words. She found it a rather disturbing sight.

  The door closed behind them. The newest members of the Juliet Club looked at one another for a long moment, trying to recall where they had left off.

  “It’s too limiting to debate whether Jill is crazy or not when, of course, there is another possibility,” Kate said, heading back into the fray.

  Giacomo gave her a cool look
. “And that is?”

  “That is, that she’s misreading the situation, but she’s misreading it in his favor, assuming that he has honorable intentions.”

  “But just because she thinks he has good intentions doesn’t mean that he does.” Lucy picked up the point. “I remember this one time when I was in the third grade? And Jesse Cantu decided that he liked me? But I didn’t like him? So he decided that I would fall in love with him if he rescued me from some kind of danger, because that’s what always happens in the movies? So one day he told me that there was a surprise waiting for me in the cupboard at the back of the classroom and all I had to do was go in at recess and open the cupboard door—”

  “And you believed him?” Benno interrupted, aghast.

  “Of course!” Lucy said indignantly. “Because I’m from Mississippi! Where we believe people! So anyway, when I opened the cupboard there was a whole mess of spiders in there and I know people say that spiders scuttle away when they see you coming, but these spiders jumped out at me like they were rabid or something and Jesse ran into the room to save me but I was screaming so much that the principal called 911!” She paused for breath. “And the only good thing that happened was that we all got out of school for the rest of the day.”

  There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed this. Finally Silvia muttered, “Men are pigs.”

  Giacomo sighed. “How old was this boy with the spiders?” he asked Lucy in a patient voice, as if they had all gone off the rails but were fortunate that he was there to put them right.

  She frowned, as if suspecting a trick, but finally answered, “Eight.”

  “As I thought! Far too young to realize what a mistake he was making,” he said triumphantly. “But I’m sure he learned from this sad experience, yes? He didn’t keep trying to attract women with spiders?”

  “Well, no, of course not,” Lucy said. “Jesse’s still real immature, but he’s not an idiot.”

  “There you are, then.” Giacomo leaned his chair back, teetering on the back two legs, looking pleased with himself. “Everyone makes mistakes in love. The point is to learn from them. For example, Jesse learned—”

  “What?” Kate scoffed. “That attacking a girl with spiders isn’t a good way to say ‘I love you’? That should have been obvious from the start.”

  “Well, yes.” He nodded, as if conceding the point, but then added, “Of course, all knowledge is useful.”

  “But not all knowledge is worth the cost.”

  “And what cost is that?” Giacomo’s deep brown eyes were alight with enjoyment.

  “Looking like a fool.”

  “Oh, that.” He folded his arms across his chest with the air of one who is about to win an argument. “That’s nothing to concern yourself with. After all, love makes fools of everyone, don’t you agree?”

  “No, I don’t.” Kate bit off each word. “I don’t agree at all.”

  “How astonishing,” he muttered.

  “In fact,” she said meaningfully, “I would say that love only makes fools of those who were fools to begin with.”

  She smiled at him, clearly pleased with her riposte. Giacomo let his chair fall back to the floor with a thump.

  “If the world was left to people like you,” he said in an accusing tone, “we’d all be computing love’s logic on computers and dissecting our hearts in a biology lab.”

  “If the world were left to people like me,” Kate said with conviction, “it would be a much better place to live.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said sarcastically. “Because it would be orderly. Sensible. And dull.”

  “Love doesn’t have to end in riots and disaster and, and, and . . . spider attacks!” she said hotly.

  He ran his hands roughly through his hair, completely ruining its artfully tousled look. Kate felt a flicker of satisfaction. It was the first time she had seen him make a gesture that didn’t look as if it belonged on the stage.

  “What’s the point of love if you don’t risk disaster?” he demanded. He stopped, as if hearing his own voice becoming heated, and took a deep breath. Then he tilted back in his chair again and grinned at her. “Even to the point of spider attacks.”

  “I think you’re taking this argument entirely too lightly,” Kate said, trying not to sound cranky, and failing.

  “And I think you’re taking it entirely too seriously,” Giacomo said, trying not to sound rankled, and failing.

  That was when Silvia, looking from one to the other, had a very brilliant idea.

  Act I

  Scene VIII

  “I have an idea about how we can play a joke on Kate and Giacomo.”

  Silvia had said this in Italian, but it’s easy to catch the sound of one’s own name being spoken, even in a foreign language. Kate stopped outside the seminar room, her hand on the partially open door.

  After class had been dismissed, she had gone all the way to her room only to discover that she had forgotten her favorite pen. Sighing, she had retraced her steps and was now standing very still, her hand on the doorknob. Kate was not a sneaky person by nature. In fact, she prided herself on being upfront and honest and straightforward and direct. But Silvia’s voice had sounded gleeful and sly, and Kate was not so honorable that she could resist listening for just a moment.

  Casually, she moved down the hall and tried the next door, the door to the room where her father had been teaching his class.

  Good, it opened.

  And the room was empty. Even better.

  She slipped inside and then stepped into the musty darkness of the small cloakroom that connected the two larger rooms, moving gingerly to avoid knocking over an umbrella or rattling wire hangers. She eased the door open a crack and peeked through.

  The housekeeper, Maria, was moving creakily around the room with a dust rag. Every few steps, she would stop and dust a piece of furniture with meditative care. Silvia was sitting at the table, glaring at her as if that would make her move faster.

  Perhaps it would have, with a more susceptible person. But Maria had the air of a woman who had outlasted wars, famines, pestilence, and a long-term infestation of in-laws. She would not be hurried. She continued pottering around the room, humming slightly under her breath, until Silvia sighed and said, “Let’s speak in English, Benno, so she doesn’t understand us.”

  “Very well,” Benno said. “But be quick—my uncle wants me at the souvenir stand by three o’clock, and he’s in a vile temper today. The shipment of candy hearts has gone missing, the woman who paints the small watercolors of Verona is sick with the flu, and yesterday a tourist knocked over an entire shelf of plaster Madonnas.”

  “Basta, basta! Enough, enough!” Silvia flapped her hand at him. “Why do you talk so much if you are in such a hurry?”

  “I’m trying to tell you! Mario will dock my pay if I’m late again.”

  “Listen to me!” she hissed. “Today I came up with the idea for a most brilliant joke.”

  Benno stopped rattling around the room and gave her a sharp, interested look. “My uncle can wait,” he said. “What kind of joke?”

  Through the crack in the door, Kate saw Silvia smile a pointed little smile. “You heard how Giacomo and Kate were arguing during class today.”

  “Si, of course,” he said, grinning. “Giacomo is sure to make her insane by the time she goes back to America. ”

  “Yes, no doubt,” Silvia said, clearly indifferent to Kate’s mental state. “But what would be even more diverting,” she went on, “would be to watch Kate drive Giacomo to the brink of madness!”

  There was a brief pause as Benno looked at her assessingly. Then he laughed. “Oh, I see!” His eyes were filled with wicked delight as he hopped up to sit cross-legged on the table.

  “You see what?” Her voice was wary.

  “If I were Giacomo, I would be very worried about my safety right now! I would be checking the lock on my door! I would be thinking of hiring a bodyguard! I would be letting the cat taste my dinner for poi
son—”

  “Basta! Stop talking like a fool!” Silvia glared at him.

  He shook his head in admiration. “I do admire a girl who can hold a grudge.”

  Kate’s interest quickened. She shifted her position so that she could see Silvia, who had started pacing around the room.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Silvia tossed her head with disdain. “I never waste a moment’s thought on him.”

  “Now, now,” Benno said with false sympathy. “Just because he broke up with you . . .”

  “He did not break up with me!” Silvia said, her eyes flashing dangerously. “I broke up with him!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right, I forgot.” Kate could see Benno watching Sylvia, his face impish. “You broke up with Giacomo, and you never think about him, and you don’t know the meaning of the word grudge. Right.” He pretended to be puzzled. “So now why, exactly, do you want to play a trick on him?”

  Kate strained forward to hear the answer.

  Silvia stopped pacing long enough to snap, “Because it will be fun! And if I must sit in that dreary seminar room for the next month, I might as well find a way to amuse myself!”

  “Oh, of course,” he murmured, with only a hint of disbelief in his voice. “That makes perfect sense.”

  There was a brief silence. Kate peeped through the crack in the door and saw Silvia, her arms crossed, giving Benno a thoughtful look.

  “Also,” Silvia went on, “I think it will be good for his character. You know he is so used to getting his own way.”

  “Very true.” Benno still sounded amused.

  “And so arrogant!” Siliva said, casting a sly sidelong glance at Benno. “He thinks he can make any girl in the world fall in love with him.”

  “Hmmph.” Benno’s mood shifted. He looked gloomy. “Many of them already have.”

  “He barely even has to speak,” Silvia went on, watching him closely. “They just fall in love with him at first sight. Even after he leaves them, they still adore him.”

  Benno’s face darkened. Silvia was right. It was so unfair. Why was Giacomo blessed with perfectly disheveled brown hair and a classic profile and a warm smile, while Benno had been born with messy black hair and a beaky nose and a lopsided smile? Not to mention short.