Just One Day Read Free

good girl.”
    “Thank you,” I say automatically. But her compliment leaves me empty. I don’t know
     if it’s because that’s the nicest thing she could think to say about me, or if it’s
     because I’m not being such a good girl right now.
    “Good girl, my ass.” Melanie laughs once we are clear of the queue and she can give
     up her swooning act.
    “Be quiet. I don’t like pretending.”
    “Well, you’re awfully good at it. You could have a promising acting career of your
     own, if you ask me.”
    “I don’t ask you. Now, where is this place?” I look at the flyer. “Canal Basin? What
     is that?”
    Melanie pulls out her phone, which, unlike my cell phone, works in Europe. She opens
     the map app. “It appears to be a basin by the canal.”
    A few minutes later, we arrive at a waterfront. It feels like a carnival, full of
     people hanging about. There are barges moored to the side of the water, different
     boats selling everything from ice cream to paintings. What there isn’t is any kind
     of theater. Or stage. Or chairs. Or actors. I look at the flyer again.
    “Maybe it’s on the bridge?” Melanie asks.
    We walk back over to the medieval arched bridge, but it’s just more of the same: tourists
     like us, milling around in the hot night.
    “They did say it was tonight?” Melanie asks.
    I think of that one guy, his eyes so impossibly dark, specifically saying that
tonight
was too nice for tragedy. But when I look around, there’s no play here, obviously.
     It was probably some kind of joke—fool the stupid tourist.
    “Let’s get an ice cream so the night’s not a total write-off,” I say.
    We are queuing up for ice cream when we hear it, a hum of acoustic guitars and the
     echoey beat of bongo drums. My ears perk up, my sonar rises. I stand on a nearby bench
     to look around. It’s not like a stage has magically appeared, but what has just materialized
     is a crowd, a pretty big one, under a stand of trees.
    “I think it’s starting,” I say, grabbing Melanie’s hand.
    “But the ice cream,” she complains.
    “After,” I say, yanking her toward the crowd.
    “If music be the food of love, play on.”
    The guy playing Duke Orsino looks nothing like any Shakespearian actor I’ve ever seen,
     except maybe the movie version of
Romeo + Juliet
with Leonardo DiCaprio. He is tall, black, dreadlocked, and dressed like a glam rock-star
     in tight vinyl pants, pointy-toed shoes, and a sort of mesh tank top that shows off
     his ripped chest.
    “Oh, we
so
made the right choice,” Melanie whispers in my ear.
    As Orsino gives his opening soliloquy to the sounds of the guitars and bongo drums,
     I feel a shiver go up my spine.
    We watch the entire first act, chasing the actors around the waterfront. When they
     move, we move, which makes it feel like
we
are a part of the play. And maybe that’s what makes it so different. Because I’ve
     seen Shakespeare before. School productions and a few plays at the Philadelphia Shakespeare
     Theatre. But it’s always felt like listening to something in a foreign language I
     didn’t know that well. I had to force myself to pay attention, and half the time,
     I wound up rereading the program over and over again, as if it would impart some deeper
     understanding.
    This time, it clicks. It’s like my ear attunes to the weird language and I’m sucked
     fully into the story, the same way I am when I watch a movie, so that I
feel
it. When Orsino pines for the cool Olivia, I feel that pang in my gut from all the
     times I’ve crushed on guys I was invisible to. And when Viola mourns her brother,
     I feel her loneliness. And when she falls for Orsino, who thinks she’s a man, it’s
     actually funny and also moving.
    He
doesn’t show up until act two. He’s playing Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, thought
     dead. Which makes a certain sense, because by the time he does arrive, I am beginning
     to think he never really existed, that I’ve merely conjured