If We Were Villains: A Novel

Our first off-book rehearsal did not go well.

It was also our first rehearsal in the space. The Archibald Dellecher Theatre sat five hundred people and was decorated with all the modesty of a baroque opera house. The seats were upholstered in the same blue velvet as the grand drape, and the chandelier was so impressive that some people seated in the balcony spent more time staring at it than watching whatever play they’d come to see. With six weeks of rehearsal left, none of the actual platforms or set pieces had been built, but they were all taped out on the stage. It felt like standing on a giant jigsaw puzzle.

I knew my Casca lines, but I hadn’t spent as much time on Octavius, since he didn’t enter until Act IV. I crouched in a third-row seat, furiously rereading my upcoming speeches as Alexander and James faltered through what we had started calling the Tent Scene, which by that point was one part martial strategy dispute, one part lovers’ tiff.

James: “Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?

When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous

To lock such rascal counters from his friends,

Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;

Dash him to pieces!”

Alexander:        “I denied you not!”

James: “You did!”

Alexander: “I did not: he was but a fool that brought

My answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,

But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.”

They glared at each other for so long that I glanced toward the prompt table before James blinked and said, “Line.”

I felt a sympathetic twinge of embarrassment. Richard, waiting in the wings to enter as Caesar’s ghost, shifted his weight, arms folded tightly.

“I do not, ’til you practice them on me,” Gwendolyn called from the back of the house. I could tell from her exaggerated emphasis on the meter that she was getting tired of delays.

James: “I do not, ’til you practice them on me.”

Alexander: “You love me not.”

James:                   “I do not like your faults.”

Alexander: “A friendly eye could never see such faults.”

James: “A flatterer’s would not, though they do appear

As huge as high Olympus!”

Alexander: “Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,

Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

For Cassius is aweary of the world … Line?”

Gwendolyn: “Hated by one he loves—”

Alexander: “Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;

Cheque’d like a bondman; all his faults observed,

Set in a note-book … Damn. Line?”

Gwendolyn: “—learn’d and conn’d by rote—”

Alexander: “Right, sorry, learn’d and conn’d by rote,

To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep

My spirit from mine eyes!”

Alexander proffered an imaginary blade (we didn’t have props yet) and tore the neck of his shirt open. “There is my dagger,” he exclaimed, “And here my naked breast; within, a heart / Dearer than Pluto’s—No, sorry—Plutus’ mine. Is that right? Fuck me. Line?” He looked toward the prompt table, but before Gwendolyn could feed him the text, Richard emerged into the work lights from the stage left wing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, deep voice ringing in the mostly empty auditorium. “Are we going to spend the whole night on this scene? Clearly they don’t know the lines.”

In the answering silence I stared at James, openmouthed, afraid to turn around. He and Alexander both glowered at Richard like he’d said something obscene, while Meredith had frozen where she sat on the floor in the aisle, one leg extended to stretch out a kink in her hamstring. Wren and Filippa craned their necks to peer into the darkness over my shoulder. I risked glancing behind me. Gwendolyn was on her feet; Frederick sat beside her with his hands folded, frowning down at the floor.

“Richard, that’s enough,” Gwendolyn said, sharply. “Take five and don’t come back until you’ve cooled off.”

Richard didn’t react at first, as if he hadn’t understood, then abruptly turned on his heel and left through the wings without a word.

Gwendolyn looked down on James and Alexander. “You two take five as well, look over your lines, and come back ready to work. In fact, everyone take five. Go.” When nobody moved, she flapped her hands to shoo us out of the auditorium, like we were so many unwelcome chickens. I loitered until James brushed past me, then followed him out to the loading dock. Alexander was already there, already lighting a spliff.

“That son of a bitch,” he said. “He’s got half as many lines as we do and he’s got the nerve to interrupt our first off-book run? Fuck him.” He sat down, sucked hard on the spliff, then passed it up to James, who took one short drag and handed it back.

“You’re not wrong,” he said as he exhaled, a cloud of white smoke issuing from his lips. “But neither is he.”

Alexander looked mutinous. “Well, fuck you, too.”

“Don’t pout. We should know our lines better. Richard’s called us out on it, is all.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but he was a major dick about it.”

One corner of James’s mouth twitched toward a smile. “True.”

The door opened and Filippa appeared, arms folded against the nighttime chill. “Hey. You guys okay?”

Alexander took another long pull and let his mouth hang open, the smoke pouring out in a long, lazy stream.

“It’s been a long night,” James said, flatly.

“If it makes you feel any better, Meredith’s just bitten Richard’s head off.”

“What for?” I asked.

“For being a jackass,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “Just because she’s sleeping with him doesn’t mean she can’t see when he’s being a shithead.”

James: “I’m confused. Is he a jackass or is he a shithead?”

Filippa: “Honestly, I think Richard could be both.”

Me: “At least he won’t be getting laid for a while.”

Alexander: “Yeah. Great. That’ll make him much more cooperative.”

“Actually, he apologized,” Filippa said. “To Meredith, anyway. Said it was childish and he regretted it already.”

“Really?” Alexander said, smoke curling around his head like he was about to combust. “So not only is he a jackass shithead major dick son of a bitch, but he’s already apologized?” He threw his spliff on the concrete and ground it out with his heel. “That’s just perfect, now we can’t even stay mad. Seriously, fuck him.” He finished pulverizing the spliff and looked up at the rest of us. We stood in a loose ring around him, lips pressed tight together, struggling to keep straight faces. “What?”

Filippa caught my eye and we both burst out laughing.