Kathleen Tessaro - Innocence

I’m stuck.

Shit! I have to stop playing the piano! I have to stop! I’m panicking! I have to stop panicking and I have to stop playing the piano!

I twist round and nearly fall off my seat. A sea of bewildered faces greet me. I feel like a lounge singer. ‘“To be or not to be,’” I shout, sounding remarkably like the guy who sells the Evening Standard outside Baker Street tube station. ‘“That is the question!’”

OK. Calm down. I’ve begun. That’s the main thing.

Only now I’m trapped behind the piano. I try pushing the bench back dramatically. But it makes a hideous, spine-crunching, scraping noise. The whole room gasps in agony. Once up, I attempt to recover by leaning nonchalantly against the side of it. The lid slams down and I end up screaming like a girl.

Sadistically, Boyd allows me to work my way all the way through. And when I finish he just looks at me, arms folded across his chest. ‘Thank you, Miss…?’ He pauses, waiting for my name.

‘Miss Garlick,’ I mumble.

The speech had seemed a lot more impressive in my room last night.

‘Yes, well, Miss Garlick, I believe you’ve given everyone a valuable lesson about props.’

There’s a twitter of laughter.

I want to die.

‘So, what’s a nice girl like you doing wrestling with a piano?’ He leans back in his chair.

I stare at the floor. ‘I don’t know…I thought it would be…a good idea.’ I sound like an idiot. Why doesn’t he just let me go? Why does he have to keep torturing me?

‘How old are you?’ he asks.

I pause. Is this a trick question? ‘Eighteen,’ I admit.

‘And what do you like to do?’

‘Uh, well, going out, being with my friends…’

‘You like boys?’

I flush. ‘Yeah.’

‘So pretty much the same stuff Hamlet likes: girls, hanging out with friends, being at school and away from home…normal student stuff. Only, of course, Hamlet isn’t eighteen, he’s thirty’

‘Oh.’ This is obviously important. I only wish I knew why.

He looks at me, tilting his head to one side. ‘Doesn’t that seem strange to you? You see,’ he continues, not waiting for my answer (perhaps already knowing that there isn’t one), ‘long before the play begins, way before his father’s murdered, there’s already something wrong with Hamlet. He enters, fucked.’

I’m not really getting this.

‘That’s what’s so interesting. The hero of our tale is a loser. The most famous play in the world is about a guy who can’t pull himself together, doesn’t have a job, can’t get the girl and who takes four hours to accomplish something he was told he needed to do in the first twenty-five minutes! And then he dies!’

I nod as if it’s all starting to make perfect sense.

It isn’t.

He leans forward eagerly. ‘To be or not to be isn’t about indecision—it’s about failure. He goes through the whole speech, thinks about every angle of the question and then ends up back where he started. So why does the world love Hamlet, Miss Garlick?’

I shrug my shoulders, inwardly kicking myself for not learning Juliet instead.

‘Because’—he speaks with sudden intensity, his face illuminated with feeling—‘very few of us relate to what it’s like to be a hero. But everyone understands what it’s like to fail.’

Boyd stares at me, searching my face for some flicker of recognition.

He’s lost me. I avert my eyes, concentrating on the worn surface of the wooden floorboards, hoping he’ll release me soon. I can sit down and be anonymous.

‘Of course, there’s a lifetime between eighteen and thirty’ he concedes quietly.

‘OK, right!’ he shifts gears. ‘Let’s get this speech moving.’ Standing up, he fishes around in his pocket and throws me a coin. ‘Forget the piano, OK? Let’s keep it simple. Heads you live. Tails you die. Go on—toss it.’

I throw the coin into the air, slapping it down on the back of my hand. ‘Tails.’

‘Is that what you wanted?’

‘I don’t know’

Boyd goes over, pulls Lindsay Crafts to his feet. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he tells me. ‘You can either kill this guy or kill yourself!’

I blink at him. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Go on, flip the coin! Heads, you kill him. Tails, you kill yourself!’

Reluctantly, I flip the coin again. ‘Heads.’

‘Brilliant!’ He gives me a shove. ‘Off you go!’

I look at him, horrified. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Go on! Kill him!’

I turn to Lindsay. He smiles politely.

‘Come on! What’s wrong with you!’ Boyd claps his hands. ‘Time’s ticking! Let’s go! Stab him! Strangle him! Hit him over the head with a chair! Do something!’

I’m completely paralysed. ‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t!’

‘Then kill yourself!’ Boyd’s circling me, fencing me in. ‘Go on! Do it! Those are the choices—him or you!’

‘I can’t!’ I feel trapped, panicky. ‘I can’t do either!’

‘So say it! Start!’

To be or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d.

‘That’s it! Keep going!’

I press on, the language coming fast and easy now. The speech that five minutes ago had seemed like a nightmare of dragging time, tumbles out with a new urgency.

To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil , Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time , The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely , The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay , The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes , When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear , To grunt and sweat under a weary life , But that the dread of something after death , The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will , And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought , And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry , And lose the name of action.

Before I know it, it’s over; done. And for the first time I feel as if I’m in control, driving the words forward instead of racing to catch up. It’s an exhilarating, intoxicating sensation—like being behind the wheel of powerful sports car. I wasn’t sure I could do it. And now I want to do it again.

Boyd’s rocking back on his heels. ‘Well, that’s more like it!’

The door to the studio creaks open and Robbie, still wearing last night’s clothes and clutching a takeaway coffee, tries to steal in.

Boyd swirls round. ‘Ahh! An Ophelia! My, my! You’ve definitely been picking the wrong sorts of herbs! And what’s this?’ He plucks the coffee cup from her hand, tosses the plastic lid to one side and slurps loudly. ‘Mmm! Milk and sugar! Perfect for a hangover, wouldn’t you say?’

She smiles uncertainly and I retreat to my seat.

Wrapping a paternal arm round her shoulders, he leads her gently into the centre of the room. ‘Let me explain to you how this one goes. You can be late but you’d better be good. If you’re crap, you’d better make certain that in future you’re on time. So my dear (and, by the way, it’s nice to know I’m not the only person in London who takes personal hygiene with a pinch of salt), I’d very much like to hear your audition speech.’