The Play's The Thing

BPOV

I can hear Alice well before she sticks her head into my bedroom.

"Bella?"

I roll over slowly and groan. "Yeah. I'm getting up, I'm getting up."

"You okay? How's the neck?"

I sit up slowly and swivel my head from side to side. "Better. Not totally great, but much better, thanks." I shift the sheets and the blanket away from my body and swing my legs over the side of the bed. "Right. Shower. Be down in ten."

I spend slightly longer in the shower than usual, letting the warm water pound against my neck and soothe the aching muscles there. As I lather up my hair, my thoughts again return to the face I'd seen yesterday. What the fuck was wrong with me? And if looking at him caused injury, what would touching him do – would I go all Story of O? Would I maybe hurl myself at him with enough force to break something of his instead? If I break him, must I buy him? And besides, he was g to the orgeous, was Mr. Doctor Fabulous. I'd never get close enough to him to spazz out, so it really didn't matter anyway. All I had to do was lock Alice down, because that innocent "I won't say a word to Daddy" hadn't fooled me one bit – I was betting that she'd already picked out her spy attire and staked a position using Google Earth, and was going to spend the better part of the afternoon on an Austin Powers recon mission. Espionage was her favorite game.

By the time I dry off, throw on clothing, listen to Alice remind me that cotton is not my only option and I should consider broadening my fabric horizons, tell her to can it and to not even THINK about fake spraining anything to scope out the ER, choke down a cup of coffee and race to work, I am only three minutes late for the start of the departmental meeting.

Harrison Greely, the dean, looks up as I scoot into the conference room and grab a seat next to Jasper. He raises his eyebrows and grins in welcome, but says nothing about the negligible tardiness.

"Okay, so I need one of you clever little monkeys to cover the Comp Lit section on Thursday afternoon, because Dolores here has an appointment she can't talk her way out of. Who's my victim?"

I know that as low man on the totem pole I should probably volunteer, so I suck it up and raise my hand. Dolores smiles weakly at me, and Harrison makes a note on his planning calendar. "Any other business to discuss?"

Victoria sticks her finger in the air. "Can somebody PLEASE tell maintenance to change the florescent bulbs in Lecture 2? My eyes freak out every time I have to go in there – it feels more and more like a disco every day." Harrison nods. "I'll have Mindy call down and take care of that. Anything else?"

Jasper clears his throat. "Are we mapping out the new curriculum for Third Years this month? I had a few ideas I wanted to propose for discussion as possible course topics, and I know Admissions is drafting the course offerings and schedules in the next few weeks."

Harrison taps his chin with his pen. "Yes, we need to get on that, and quickly. I suggest that everyone come prepared to next week's meeting with a list of thoughts on the subject, so that we can put everything on the table at once and make some decisions." He swivels his chair around to his left. "Carla, I know you're going to bring up the whole 'Eroticism in 18th Century Lit' thing again. I'm going to ask everyone else to consider that over the course of the week and offer me selections that go beyond Fanny Hill and Tom Jones. If we go ahead with it, we're also going to have to figure out if it's better to have a woman or a man lead the class. I'm not trying to be sexist here, people – we really do need to think about things like sexual harassment with a course like this."

"Anything else?"

Nobody makes a move to put another topic out there, so Harrison nods his head. "All right, I just have one more announcement to make and then we can grab a cup of coffee. The Port Angeles Players are thinking about tackling Shakespeare for their next production – Much Ado About Nothing, to be precise. Doug Banner's directing again, and he's asked me to implore you all to audition tomorrow night, because he's pretty sure that he won't have lots of options in terms of candidates who can handle the text. So I'm asking you very, very nicely to make some time to head over to the community center tomorrow and give it a try. And when I say I'm asking you very, very nicely, I mean I'm telling you that if a few of you don't make the effort, I'll have to duck Doug's calls for a month, and I actually really like the guy, so that would make me pretty grouchy." He looks meaningfully around the room, where all eyes are suddenly attempting to escape to unoccupied corners, walls, and the ceiling.

The meeting breaks up shortly thereafter, and we all push our chairs back from the table to get up and mill around before classes began. Jasper and I walk over to the coffee machine. "So Bella, I'll go to the auditions if you'll go. I mean, at least we can show Harrison we made the effort, and you and I are the only faculty members under the age of thirty, so we should stick together. I'll be your verification and you can be mine. Deal?"

I laugh at the idea of me standing on stage and speaking those beautiful words. I'd gotten used to lecturing by sort of pretending that I didn't physically exist beyond a kind of floating head over a lectern. The thought of standing in front of a crowd, wearing a costume and having everyone watching all of me was genuinely terrifying, but on the other hand, I had moist and happy feelings about Benedick and always wanted to be a Beatrice in real life, so the play selection was painfully tempting. Plus, Harrison would be happy, since I was pretty sure nobody else in the room had any intention of going to the auditions. And really, the odds of me being chosen for anything other than a bit part were extremely slim. I sigh and nod. "Okay, I'm in. But if you say one word about how badly I stink at the audition, you and I are gonna do a little dance of death for the rest of the semester. I will make your life a living hell – trust, brother."

Jasper grins. "Yeah, you're scary."

I lower my brow threateningly. "Don't doubt me. I'm an evil genius, and you'll never see it coming until it's right up on you. Living. Hell." I poke him in the chest as I say the words to emphasize my point.

I tell Alice about the audition thing at dinner that night. Her reaction is startling in its enthusiasm, even by Alice standards. "Ohmygod, you HAVE to let me come too. Bella, it sounds like so much fun. I'm totally going to audition, even though I have no idea what the play's about. What's the play about? You'll fill me in later. And even if I don't get any part, I could still volunteer to do the costumes. Are there loads of, like, party scenes and whatnot in the play?"

I think for a moment. "There are at least two parties and two weddings, so you'd have your hands full on that score. "

Alice is in absolute overdrive – she's buzzing around and landing on every surface of our kitchen for a millisecond and then bouncing over to another part of the room. She's giving me a migraine, but I'm kind of happy that she's so psyched about it because I'm counting on her to get me through the audition and then getting me a little bit tipsy at dinner afterwards. Which reminds me…

"Hey, Al – would it be okay with you if I invited this guy Jasper out to dinner with us after the auditions tomorrow? He's in the English department with me – very cool in kind of a long Texan way, complete with drawl and 'yes ma'am' tendencies."

Alice cocks her birdlike head to one side. "He actually says 'yes ma'am'?"

I nod. "Not only that, but he's cuuute. And single. And employed. He's a damned specimen, Al." I'm as sneaky as she'll ever be, just not as obstinate about it.

"And you're not hitting that because…?"

I laugh at her. "I work with him – like I need that kind of awkwardness in my life. And I've sworn off men, because they all suck. Plus, he doesn't curl my toes that way – I like him and we get along really well, but he's not my sledgehammer."

Alice grins up at me but knows better than to say anything at all on the subject of Mr. Doctor Fabulous. "Sure, Jasper's welcome to join us. We'll do that little Italian place up on Crescent, since it's right around the corner from the community center and their penne ala vodka gives me happy feet."

I tell Jasper about dinner when I see him in the faculty break room Tuesday morning. He doesn't seem fazed at all by the invitation, so I assume he understands that we are strictly friends. I get zero vibe from him and am positive I give zero vibe in return.

Later in the afternoon, I decide to pull out the copy of Much Ado that I plucked off my bookshelf before leaving for work in the morning. I thumb through the pages, reacquainting myself with my old friends and their beautiful sparkling words. I daydream about being Beatrice, about saying what I mean and being tart and pithy and sexy as fuck. A firebrand. A hellcat. I'm not a hellcat – I don't even have hellcattish leanings, but it sure would be nice to crawl back into the head I was occupying while I was dating Jake.

I want to get in the cool zone again and just not care about how I'm coming across, but I realize that this is entirely impossible when applied to the whole Mr. Doctor Fabulous situation, because even the thought of him, the merest flicker of a memory, the tiniest mental image of the tip of his pinky, is enough to create a bizarre chemical reaction that turns my insides from solid to vapor in a kind of lust sublimation that's extremely uncomfortable even at this distance from the real thing. No good would come of putting myself back into his deadly sphere of influence, unless by some freak chance he's hopelessly turned on by jabbering, drooling chimpanzee women.

Alice meets me at my last class of the day, and sits in to watch me talk about how Virginia Wolf nails the feeling of forced mental uselessness among women of the upper classes. The proscribed manner in which they live, with subjects which are appropriate to consider and subjects which must never enter into a thought process, stymies the natural curiosity and creativity of an educated woman, forcing her to watch from a distance while the men in her life are free to experience, and fail, and achieve, and feel. I tell my students to imagine themselves being barred from attending college because it's not a productive use of their time to learn anything beyond the basics. Several students laugh and volunteer to skip school for a week just to see what I'm talking about. I end the class and remind them that they have papers due on Friday.

"I love watching you talk about books," Alice says.

"I love watching you drape fabric," I answer, grinning. "It's great to see someone you care about doing something that makes them happy."

Alice sighs, but says nothing, and I can tell she's thinking about Mr. Doctor again, but she knows better than to go there with me. We walk back to the English Department offices to pick up Jasper and head over to the community center.

Jasper is leaning against the copier with his head bent over a book. He's squinting and has a slight smile on his face, and his legs are casually crossed at the ankles. Alice skips over to him and puts her face between his book and his nose. "Hello, I'm Alice," she chirps. "Good book?"

Jasper straightens up and looks down, way, way down, to peer into Alice's face. I suddenly realize how tall he is, and think briefly about Alice and her model/circus freak family genes. Jasper stares at Alice for a full minute, saying nothing, before he realizes that he's just created the mother of all awkward pauses and needs to snap the hell out of it pronto. "Hey there, Alice. Sorry, I was just – I was –," he loses his train of thought again, and I'm beginning to worry that the Alice Factor is too much for him to handle, but he mans up and pulls himself together. "Sorry about that. "I'm Jasper – nice to meet you, little one."

Alice erupts into a peal of laughter. "No, really, I insist that you 'ma'am' me immediately. Bella promised me a 'ma'aming', and I won't leave until I get it."

Jasper looks at me and grins, then looks back down at Alice. "Is that right? Well, I sure would never want to disappoint you, ma'am," he says, playing along because if it makes her happy to tease him about being southern, he's game.

She grabs the book from his hand and studies the cover. "Hmmm…Pynchon. You're a deep'un, ain't ya. Let's put this stuff away and go embarrass Bella while she auditions – if we're lucky, she'll hyperventilate and lose her appetite, and you and I can split her untouched appetizer at dinner."

Heartless wench. But I'll bet she packed a paper bag in her purse just in case the hyperventilation thing happens, because she knows it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

We take Alice's car over to the community center, and watching Jasper fold himself into the bright yellow Porsche further promotes my whole private circus freak concept. The center has a big rehearsal space in the basement because this town likes it's pageants and parades and things. We enter through the main doors of the building and head downstairs, following the "Auditions Today – 6 PM" signs on the banister. I force myself to take deep, calming breaths as we walk, reminding myself that this is local community theatre and not the Royal Shakespeare Company. I need to relax and have fun.

There are about twenty people in the rehearsal space. Alice, Jasper and I put our names on the call sheet and sit down on some folding chairs to wait our turn. Alice gets called first; she twirls over to a man I'm going to assume is Doug Banner. He looks at her and considers for a moment before asking her to read some of Hero's lines. Alice looks so young and innocent and pure that I totally get where he's heading with her, even though the truth is that Alice is a vamp with more than a few notches on her gun holster. She breezes through the text because she honestly believes what she's saying, so the words don't slow her down even though they're put in an order that's unfamiliar to her.

Jasper reads next, and I'm not a bit surprised to note that Banner is considering him for Claudio. I think he might make a better Don Pedro because of his commanding height, but I realize when I really look at him that there's something very young and unseasoned about him. Jasper reads all the romance into the words – I sneak a peek at Alice while he's reading, and she seriously has her chin propped up by her interlaced hands, staring at him as though he was selling her some religion. She is joining the cult of Jasper, I note with satisfaction. Knew she would.

Banner has the two of them run a few of Hero and Claudio's exchanges, and it's pretty obvious that the chemistry is working.

My turn next. As much as I love Beatrice and wish like hell I could be her in real life, I'm expecting to read for Margaret or maybe Ursula because no way do I come across as the firebrand I was earlier wishing to be. Banner considers me for longer than a minute before he asks me a surprising question. He wants to know if I've ever been really disappointed in love. I think to myself that it's none of his damned business and then want to ask him to define love for me, but I think I know what he's getting at so I hold my tongue and just nod. He wants me to read for Beatrice. I'm petrified now because Beatrice really matters to me and even though there's no way I'm getting the part, I still want to do her justice, because she and Viola are my two favorite Shakespearean characters of all time.

Banner asks me if I've ever read the play, and I tell him I know it by heart, because I do. He tells me to choose my own text to share with him, so I ask him if he'll be Don Pedro for me and tell him I'd like to run the lines from their exchange in Act II Scene 1, and I'm once again so moved by her careful wistfulness and her urge to cover up everything that hurts her with a smile and a witty remark. When Don Pedro says that my silence most offends him, and that to be merry best becomes me for out of question I was born in a merry hour, I say the words that almost always make me tear up a little. I say

"No, sure, my lord, my mother cried: but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."

And for a moment, I can accept that Beatrice and I are both pleasant-spirited ladies, even if only one of us is brave enough to be angry and risk loss for clarity's sake.

I finish the reading and Banner asks me to stick around. This is convenient, because Alice and Jasper are also staying, but when I walk back over to our chairs, I notice that they have their heads so close together that they look like the McDonald's golden arches, even though neither one of them is actually yellow. So I take a seat a little bit apart from them and pluck Much Ado back out from my bag, getting lost in the words once more.

About forty-five minutes later, Banner is done with the auditions. I look over at who is still hanging around and I try to guess which part they got. I can see Don John, and I can see Leonato, and I'm pretty sure that the cop snoozing in the corner is a shoe-in for Borachio. There are two women standing in a corner, and I'm going to guess that the older one will be Ursula and the younger one will be Margaret, which means that he's definitely considering me for Beatrice. I'm elated and scared shitless.

And now that I've stopped to consider the matter, I realize that there's nobody in the room who would really work for Benedick. Is Banner going to play the role himself? I mean, it might make it easier on me because there is no part of the dashing soldier in him, so I would probably be a lot less nervous with the wordplay and the slow tug-of-war between the characters. And I've quite resigned myself to the likelihood that Banner is going to be my Benedick when the door to the rehearsal room swings open and my heart quite literally leaps out of my mouth and lands – splat – on the floor in front of me.

Because standing just inside the door now is Mr. Doctor Fabulous, make no mistake about it. And everything I was thinking about him is still true, even truer now because he's got the unmitigated nerve to be wearing the greatest old and faded pair of jeans, a long-sleeved black t-shirt, and his gray scrub top. And as if that weren't enough to put a period to my existence, he's got on a pair of black-rimmed glasses and he's running his sickeningly beautiful hand through his sickeningly beautiful hair.

His eyes scan the room. They find me, staring at him as though he had Medusa snakes crawling out of his skull, and they freeze for a moment before he drops his chin down to his chest, where it stays.

It was a short life, Bella, and you really should have done more with it. I mean, you never made it over to England, you never swam with dolphins, you never danced in a public water fountain in the pale moonlight. You're gonna be carrying a whole list of 'shoulda' with you into the afterlife. And that's a major drag, baby.

Maybe he's just lost or something. Because if he's not, and I have to think about him playing Benedick, I will lose my mind and I'm not sure there will be any way that I'll ever be able to face anyone in this room ever again, including Jasper and Alice.

Speaking of Alice, I wish like hell that I could move one part of my frozen body to alert her to my suffering, but I can't even manage to blink or twitch at the moment. I silently will her to look in my direction, because there is NO WAY she won't realize I'm in trouble. I think her name really loudly and am screaming 'You oblivious lovestruck midget, look up, look up and look at me dammit, I am drowning, I am suffocating, I need you to TiVo the Jasper thing and just look the hell in my direction for a fraction of a second.'

Banner looks up instead, and notices Mr. Doctor Fabulous in the doorway.

"Edward, thank God. I was afraid you weren't coming. Get stuck at the hospital again?"

Mr. Doctor Edward/Bedward/Still-Hasn't-Said-A-Wordward nods and looks down at his shoes, which I notice are Pearl Izumi SynchroPace IIIs. Edward runs, apparently. He's a runner.

Alice finally manages to tear her mooning gaze away from Jasper and take a peek around her to see what's going on. She turns slightly when she notices that there's something going on at the door. She registers it all in a nanosecond and her eyes quickly lock on my frozen face. I worry that she's going to stand up and start snapping her little bird fingers in front of my nose to break the spell, because THAT wouldn't be too obvious in the slightest. But no, she's cool as a cucumber, and excuses herself from Jasper's side to slide on over to me and grab my lead-lined hand.

"Bella, breathe," she whispers. "You gotta breathe, sweetie, or we're shortly going to be carrying your unconscious body out of here."

I break the surface and take a huge lungful of air a split-second before I reach the point of no return and drop my head down a little. I can't look up, but from the corner of my eye I see Edward moving slowly toward Banner.

"Everyone? Can I have your attention, please?" Banner is trying to get everyone to look at him, and I make an heroic effort to comply.

"Okay, so, welcome, welcome, one and all. I think we have pretty much everyone we need here for the major roles, and I've got a few minor parts that I can cast from our regular company. This production is a bit of a departure from our standard fare, but I really want to stretch a bit and I know you'll get the job done. I don't want any of you to think for one moment that I'm going to expect you to affect an English accent for this play; it's far more important that you really wrap your heads around what the words are saying, and do your best to develop a true relationship with those words as YOU understand them.

The role assignments are as follows: James, you'll be our Don John. Mike, you're Don Pedro. Alice, you've got Hero, and Jasper is your Claudio. Jessica is our Ursula, Angela is Margaret, Bella has the lovely Beatrice, Ben is Leonato, Pete, you've got Borachio, and Bill is Antonio. Oh – and Edward here is Benedick – sorry about that, Edward," Banner smiles. Edward nods again, and I'm honestly starting to wonder if he's the world's most beautiful mute. My mind flashes to the sex scene between Marlee Matlin and William Hurt in Children of a Lesser God, and I think about taking a sign language class or two at the Y.

"It's almost eight o'clock, so we're going to break for the night in a few minutes and pick this up again at our regular rehearsal time on Thursday evenings from six to nine. We've got six weeks to work on it, and I hope everyone enjoys the experience." He smiles. The bastard smiles. "I'm pretty easy-going for a director, and I want you to always feel comfortable coming to me with any problems or questions you've got. We're building this together, even if I'm the general contractor. So, congratulations everyone, and we'll see you back here on Thursday. Please pick up the Penguin solo edition of the play and bring it with you on Thursday, so we're all reading from the same text."

This seems to be the end of his spiel, and I'm anxious as hell to make a break for the door so that I can start knitting my sanity back together, but of course I am not that lucky.

As people start shifting around and collecting their things, Banner calls my name. "Bella? Bella, can you come over here for a second? I want you to meet Edward."

Alice? Oh, Alice. Why aren't you strong enough to hoist me onto your back and carry me over there?

I take another deep breath and stand. I'm surprised to discover that my feet are cooperating in this exercise, so I test them further and move one in front of the other, eventually reaching Banner's side. I am not looking at Edward, and even though I'm not looking, I can tell that he's also not looking at me.

It's a bit of a Mexican standoff, and Banner fires first. "Okay, I know how shy you are, Edward, and I'm getting the sense that Bella's not much better in that department, but I really need the two of you to loosen up a bit and take a chance on each other. Beatrice and Benedick are the heart and soul of this play, and if you don't find that thread between them, nothing else works. I'm going to ask you two to run their first exchange for me right now, just to see if this is hopeless or if we've got something we can work with. I'll feed you Don Pedro."

I don't need my book, so I don't bother to retrieve it from the chair I recently occupied. It seems that Edward doesn't need his book either, which I must confess only serves to turn me on even more.

Banner starts talking now:

"You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this what you are, being a man. Truly, the lady fathers herself – Be happy, lady! For you are like an honourable father."

I wait to see what Edward is going to do. I don't have to wait long, as it happens, because as soon as the words have left Banner's lips, Edward's head snaps up and there is serious mischief in his beautiful green eyes as he looks at me and starts to speak.

"If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, as like him as she is."

Oh ho, now, I think. And then I give myself permission to hide behind Beatrice's skirts where it's safe.

"I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick; nobody marks you."

Benedick is angry now, and Beatrice loves goading him on.

"What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?"

That was weak. Feel the burn, thinks Beatrice.

"Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain if you come in her presence."

Benedick smirks.

"Then is courtesy a turn-coat – But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart: for truly, I love none.

Beatrice was just waiting for an opening like this, and hands him his nuts on a platter, but she doesn't want the game to end too quickly, so she ladles some sauce over the nuts as well.

"A dear happiness to women; they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God, and my cold blood, I am of your humor for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me."

Benedick isn't afraid to use his pimp hand to show her she's not all that.

"God keep your ladyship still in that mind! So some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face."

Excuse me? You are NOT that cute.

"Scratching could not make it worse an t'were such a face as yours were."

Quit making me feel like a loser. It's totally pissing me off, thinks Benedick.

"Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher."

Can you not even tell me that I look good, or that you've missed me, or anything even approaching a compliment or a non-insult? A crumb of attention that's not so awful, that's all I want, snaps Beatrice.

"A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours."

You are SUCH a bitch. How can you be so pretty and yet be such a bitch? You're giving me blue balls and a migraine, and I need to end this conversation before I say something really stupid. Oops…too late. Thought of something really dirty and mean to say anyway.

"I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer. But keep your way o'God's name; I have done."

I hate it when you shut us down by insulting me and then giving up. You should fight a little harder for me. If I saw you put in an ounce of effort, don't you know I'd give it all back and then some? I'd give you anything – everything – if you'd just be decent and normal for a change.

"You always end with a jade's trick; I know you of old."

I realize as the last words are leaving my lips that Edward and I have been staring at each other, moving closer and closer as we exchange beautiful, complicated insults. We are almost nose to nose now, and breathing so hard that we're panting, but the words have stopped and we have no idea where we are.

There is a brief moment of silence, which Edward breaks. "Uhm," he whispers very, very quietly.

"Yessssssssss…," I draw out the last letter until it becomes a reptilian hiss, and I have no control over that whatsoever.

Edward looks down again, breaking eye contact with me. "You're, uhm, you're standing on my shoe," he says, and is slightly apologetic about the whole thing.

I quickly remove the offending appendage from his toes and mumble "sorry" under my breath. It suddenly and simultaneously occurs to us that there are other people in the room. I look over at Alice and Jasper, and their jaws are gaping in true cartoon fashion. I'm not entirely sure what just happened, because really, Bella no esta en casa for that whole exchange. It was all Beatrice – I just took some kind of nap while she was yapping.

Banner clears his throat. "That'll work, I think. Yeah. Okay, see you all back here on Thursday."

I step back, turn around, and walk slowly to where Alice and Jasper are sitting. "Let's go," I murmur, because if I don't leave right this minute I will start dropping bits and pieces of myself like a breadcrumb trail from a fairytale. I grab my bag without looking at it and lead the way to the door.

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