The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [59]
He had chosen the position of stage manager for the express purpose of staying out of the spotlight. He could supervise and coordinate, place his hands on every aspect of the performance without anyone in the audience knowing he was there. And now, thanks to Coby Reid’s misplayed suicide attempt, he was Romeo, the idiot boy of Verona, so desperate for sex that he’d leave dead bodies in his wake.
Wearing an itchy, air-reducing mask, a ferocious tiger, Buster held his sister’s hand and asked, in a way that he could not imagine ever being successful, if he could kiss it. Annie, thank god, rebuffed him. Buster, oh god no, then asked if he could kiss her lips. As he looked at his sister, he noticed the smirk on her face, the playfulness of this exchange. She was flirting with him and he, because William Goddamn Shakespeare decreed it, would give in to her. “Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take,” Buster said and, leaning forward, made to kiss his sister. Then, inches from her mouth, he loudly smacked his lips, kissing the air, and pulled away from Annie, the threat avoided, the audience tittering but not outraged. Annie scowled at him and then smiled, saying, Shakespeare on her side, “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.” Buster, no other choice, said his line, “Give me my sin again,” and, as Annie quickly leaned forward to deliver the kiss, Buster feinted, moved slightly to the left, and again kissed the air, wet and loud. The audience now began to laugh outright. Annie stared at Buster without emotion, though her hands were balled into tight, damage-seeking fists, and said flatly, “You kiss by the book.”
Once the scene finally ended, the first act closed, Buster looked in the front row at Mr. Guess, who gave Buster a thumbs-up, obviously pleased. Tragedy, in Buster’s hands, had become comedy.
As the curtain fell, obscuring the stage, Annie punched Buster in the face, a looping overhand right that sent Buster crashing to the ground. “You are ruining this for me,” Annie said. “This is my last high school play and people are laughing at us because of you.”
“Mr. Guess said no kissing,” Buster reminded her, a bump already forming on his right temple.
“Who gives a shit?” Annie yelled. “This is Romeo and Juliet. We are Romeo and Juliet. We are going to kiss.”
“No we aren’t,” Buster said.
“Buster,” Annie continued, her voice breaking. “Please. Do this for me.”
“I can’t do it,” Buster said.
“A plague on your house,” Annie said, and stomped away from him.
“Your house is my house,” Buster said, but she was already out of earshot.
“O, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Annie asked.
Beneath the balcony, in shadow, Buster had no answer for her.
Just before the end of act two, Buster stood next to Jimmy Patrick, rotund and balding at age sixteen, a perfect fit for Friar Laurence, as the friar counseled him that “violent delights have violent ends” and that “the sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness” and, finally, understandably, that Buster should “love moderately.” The advice given, Annie walked onstage, so light a foot, and took Buster’s hands in her own, gripping them tightly, squeezing the feeling out of them until they were ghosts of his own hands. Annie greeted Jimmy, who then said, “Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.” The crowd began to laugh, a thunderclap of applause, and Buster stared at his sister’s reddening face, embarrassed and angry at the same time, her eyes unblinking and watery. He had