FIVE

I t was not a script; it was real life. In the make-believe world of theater, Harry had dealt with death, murder, suicide, all sorts of criminal and disruptive behavior, but in his own sphere of personal experience, he knew nothing, had never faced such a serious life-scenario. How ought he to respond to Juliet’s chilling disclosure?

He held onto her hand as she torturously laid out the details of the previous day’s tragedy.

She ended with, “So the police are looking for him, though they aren’t sure they have enough evidence to file charges. I saw her at the morgue. She looked grotesque. The early diagnosis is that she drank or ate something that fouled her blood. Results of the autopsy are due tomorrow.” She turned her head and stared at Harry, no more than six inches from his face.

“You think he poisoned her,” Harry said, edgy about their proximity, but eager to offer support.

“I know he did. No question. He has a history of drugs and knows a lot about the psychedelics as well as the toxics. I don’t know how he managed to slip whatever he used into whatever she consumed. He’s clever, and I’m sure he planned it to look like some kind of illness, the heart or a stroke or something. But I think he tripped himself up here, because his poison of choice is not something she’d take by accident, or that would color her green the way it did.”

“She was green?”

“Like a toad, and her skin was corroded as well.”

“I’m so sorry, Juliet. This has got to be devastating.”

“Doesn’t matter if you’re alienated from someone, its hard to handle this kind of violation. Imagine, your sick father killing your sick mother!”

“I can’t imagine it.”

“And I can’t recall in all our theatrical literature a case of father killing mother. Maybe in one of the Russian writers, Chekov or Turgenev. Even in Hamlet, it was the evil brother who did the murder in order to gain the throne and the bride.”

Harry was off balance. She seemed cerebral and suddenly analytical, the grief of a moment ago now evaporated. And she maintained that close face-to-face posture as well, her eyes and her breath capturing him, stirring him.

He was stuck, didn’t know what to say, and finally squeezed out, “I hope they find him. I hope they figure out what happened.”

Juliet pressed his hand hard, kept her gaze on him, leaned forward, and kissed him on the mouth.

He had a fleeting urge to pull away, was unsure how to handle a show of affection that was real, tried to imagine he was on stage, in a role, this delicious gesture simply one segment of the playwright’s creativity.

When she pulled back, he said, “Oh,” in a small voice.

Juliet smiled and said, “Oh yourself.”

“I mean that was nice.”

“Yes, I liked it.”

“It’s a hard time for you. I don’t want…”

“You didn’t. I kissed you.”

But…”

“No buts. I did it because I wanted to.” She stopped, smiled again and said, “Would you be okay if we took it to the next level?”

“You mean…”

“Yep. That’s what I mean.”

“But your mother.”

“She’s dead. No approval needed.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know. I’m doing okay. Now and then I get dramatic. After all, they are, or were, my parents, nutty as can be but still the only ones I’ll ever have. Anyway, that doesn’t keep me from trying to scratch out some pleasure. In fact, I think because of their rotten parenting, I’ve become somewhat of a hedonist, screw the consequences, go for the gold ring.”

Ah, now the greatest dilemma of his young life: this jewel of a woman was offering herself to him, in the soup of a tragic event, the heaviness weighing in with a stop sign, while on the other side, his long-dormant passions urging him to grab hold of what was clearly an astonishing opportunity. It was as if he had been offered a juicy part in a wonderful play and had to decide if it was right for him.

Another oddity: he found himself probing with his tongue for the early stages of a cavity in his lower right, back molar—now why does one do that? He was aware, too, of the ticking of a saucer-like, black and white timepiece on the wall, resembling a public school clock, unadorned, large-lettered, noisy, and wondered if it was Juliet’s choice or a gift from someone. A neighbor’s nervous dog yapped in the distance.

His hesitation spawned another, unabridged response from Juliet. “Shit, you aren’t ready. Sorry, I jumped in too fast. Another time, okay? I’m ready whenever you are.”

He nodded, no words appropriate, her manner and agenda too much for his untutored psyche to handle. Like any good thespian, however, he filed away the insight for future reference, surely to be needed in a Juliet-sponsored, bound-to-happen, unpredictable, upcoming tableau.

She kissed him on the cheek and said, “You’d better get out of here. I’m going to work myself back into my mourning role. It’s not fake, really, only exaggerated. Maybe someday I’ll have to check in with a shrink to work though my unfinished business with my mother. But for now, I only need to be with myself and think it out. Oh, and yes, I have unfinished stuff with my father too, as you can imagine.”

Again he nodded, and as he moved toward the door, said, “You’re kind of mysterious, kind of hard to follow. Maybe an ugly tragedy causes that. I wouldn’t know.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” She paused, gave him her best, loveliest smile, and concluded, “You’re too sweet a guy to know. Someday, when you’ve been crapped on too hard, you’ll get it.”