• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2311 0

lipsticked lips on his bearded face, which rose to definition as soon as enough of the pink had drained from Leon’s face that the pink lipstick could be discerned against the surrounding flesh; and after we bid good-bye to little Emily, who was in a sullen way, unsharing in her mother’s high spirits; and after we walked outside and hiked back up the hill to where we had parked Leon’s ex-wife’s car out of sight in order to conceal our embarrassing poverty; and after I had interrogated Leon as to the particulars of what had happened when he and Vivian Goyette, little Emily’s large mother, had remained out of sight for well over two hours; and after I had interrogated in vain, for Leon uncharacteristically clammed up and wouldn’t offer a word in the way of detail, thus forcing me to guess the worst; and after we had climbed back into the car; and after Leon started up the engine and began to try to guide us back to the Cross County Parkway, which would carry us home—Leon smiled wryly at me, as I sat beside him, slipped his fingers into the breast pocket of his shirt, extracted a once-folded rectangular slip of paper and handed it to me, whereupon I inspected it, read the writing printed and scrawled upon it in the shifting light of the streetlights we were passing beneath, and saw that it was a check, in the account of Mr. and Mrs. Goyette, signed by Mrs. Goyette and made out for an impressively large sum of money. I was shocked by the figure written on the check.

“Is that correct?”

“Your eyes do not deceive you, Bruno. Of course I suppose this means that we must cast that sullen child in the role of Miranda. But if anyone can make anyone into a first-rate actress, it is I. How old is she?”

“She’s fifteen.”

“Aha! Convenient. That is the age of Miranda in the play.” Leon quoted: “ ‘Canst thou remember a time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not out three years old, and twelve year since, thy father was the duke of Milan and a prince of power.’ ”

Leon let me fondle the check and read it over and over on the way home. This was to be our production budget. The next morning we went straightaway to the bank to cash the check before any second thoughts could come to a more sober Mrs. Goyette. The first thing we bought with the money was a sturdy metal box with a combination roll that released its snaplocking clasps, in which we dumped all the crisp, never-been-circulated one-hundred-dollar bills that Leon and I had summoned from their beds of rest in the bank teller’s register, to introduce them into the winding paths of commerce, to be spent toward a good cause, and forthwith set out on whatever untold adventures the world had in store for them. We carefully counted and re-counted the money, and wrote the amount on the top line of the first page of a yellow spiral-bound college-ruled steno pad (much like the notepads that Gwen, my amanuensis, uses to record this narrative), clipped the pen to the pad and put it in the box to keep the cash company, along with a calculator for subtracting expenses. This was the entire extent of the bookkeeping system we cleverly designed for the company expense account of our now-considerably-enriched avant-garde theatre group, the Shakespeare Underground. Leon and I decided on a combination that we each committed to memory, set the combination, shut the box tight, and locked it.

Then we immediately opened it again to pay for lunch. We extracted two of the crisp hundred-dollar bills, fastidiously marked the expense on the steno pad, locked the box, stashed it under the futon, and took a train downtown for celebratory steaks. It took a while to find a nice restaurant that we hadn’t swindled before, but we found one, and over top sirloins and martinis we discussed the immediate future of the Shakespeare Underground. Our first argument concerned the venue. We arrived at no immediate conclusions, as Leon was hard-pressed to think of a theatrical venue that he had not been barred from for some reason or other. Our second argument concerned our first significant