Page 4 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“Tease me again, and I’ll shoot you straight through with an arrow,” I say.
He only laughs harder. “You’re a hot-blooded fool, but that only makes you a true Montague. I’m going to fetch myself a drink. Can I trust you not to fall in love with yet another girl while I’m gone?”
I shove him lightly. “Go. I’ll be glad for a moment of peace without you.”
With Benvolio gone, I scan the ballroom for Rosaline, but she’s nowhere to be found. I sigh. Benvolio’s right. Rosaline is probably at home, chastely saying her prayers. Suddenly, I’m quite ready to leave. There’s no longer a reason to be at this ball.
But then Juliet appears at the top of the staircase.
A hush falls over the room. Violins and clarinets stop playing. Unicorns and lions freeze in the middle of their dance. All eyes turn upon Juliet, like daffodils to the rising sun.
I forget to breathe.
She’s dressed in a white toga, with a tiara nestled in the brown braids of her hair and a delicate butterfly mask over her face.
“Psyche,” I whisper.
The mortal princess who falls in love with Cupid.
Juliet glides down the staircase, giving out smiles as if they cost her nothing. She smiles not only at the nobility attending her father’s ball, but also at the footman who helps her down the final steps. She smiles at each and every musician in the band, and at the servants shuttling food and drink around the room. She smiles at her arrogant cousin Tybalt, and at the elderly aunt everybodyhas forgotten in the corner. And no one can look away from Juliet, because her smiles are a golden light in our world that is usually shadowed by bloodshed and spite.
She is beautiful, yes. But it is her radiant kindness that tugs on me. I’ve only ever been infatuated with the superficial before, but in this moment, I know what it’s like to bask in the glow of the sun.
Benvolio returns with goblets of hot honeyed wine. I take only a sip before I set mine down on a table beside us. He follows my gaze to Juliet, then back to my wineglass, which I spin around and around.
“Nooo,” he groans. “All I asked was that you not fall in love while I was gone. It was but a handful of minutes!”
In my defense, everyone in this ballroom is in love with Juliet tonight.
Perhaps I should better heed the mythology of Cupid and Psyche, of all the trials and tribulations they battled through for their love. But I’m spellbound by Juliet as if shot by my own arrow, and I abandon Benvolio, leaving him with his protests and our wine.
A crowd has surrounded Juliet, complimenting the butterfly mask and wishing her a felicitous birthday, which is in a little more than two weeks, on Lammas Eve. I thread my way through the throng, until I am face-to-face with her.
Juliet’s eyes light up as she recognizes my costume. “It’s you,” she says. “I know you.”
“Not yet,” I say. “It’s only the beginning of our story.”
She laughs. “Fair enough, Cupid. Then how shall we become acquainted?”
“Dance with me.”
“Bold.”
“Very.” If only she knew I was a Montague.
But then her fingers touch mine, and lightning crackles across my skin, family feuds forgotten. Never have I felt this way before, as if the world were a stage built just for us.
The musicians strike up aballonchio,and as Juliet and I dance, our heartbeats pound so loudly in our ears we can’t hear the beat of the drums. I haven’t seen her face behind her mask yet, but Idon’t need to, because from her costume alone, I already feel fate’s hand upon us.
We are young, yes, but not as young as future bards would tell it. Juliet is nearly seventeen, and I but a few years more. We are old enough to steal each other’s breath away, to know that what we hold in our hands this night is singular. The spark that will begin an extraordinary life.
The story isnot quite as Shakespeare told it. He was brilliant and prolific, but like many artists, he borrowed stories from real life and wove them through his imagination to make them his own. Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth…and most of all, Romeo and Juliet.
What Shakespeare didn’t realize was that the tragic tale of star-crossed lovers was about more than one boy and one girl. He envisioned only a small sliver of history, and not the span of all time.
Unfortunately, I know the true story all too well. I age at a glacier’s pace—roughly a year for every fifty—but I am still Romeo. A more weathered, battered version of the hero of Shakespeare’s play.
Juliet, however, changes, reincarnated again and again. Sometimes she’s blond and Rubenesque; other times she’s raven-haired and thin as a feather. Tonight she is soft curves and hair as rich as butterscotch. But she always has the same soul, twinkling with curiosity and wit. No matter how her appearance changes, she is the same woman I first kissed all those lifetimes ago. I’ve loved her over and over across centuries.
