The Chalk Artist

  “Beaumont and Fletcher.”

  “Boo!” Shakespeare cried, and then to Nina, “Fair lady, I’m the last man standing! They’ve heard only of me!” Rhythmically, he clapped his hands and gestured for the students to join in.

  “He was born in Stratford, and he worked in London,” Nina said as her kids clapped along with Collin. “He founded his own theater, the Globe.” She looked down at her notes. “He invented the words radiance, equivocal, lustrous, amazement. Phrases such as sea change, all of a sudden, dead as a doornail, in stitches, the game is up, fancy free…”

  Shakespeare gestured for Miss Lazare to move along, and the class laughed as she cut her introduction short. “His plays are still performed all over the world. I give you William Shakespeare.”

  “Can I call you Will?” Isaiah called out, as the applause died.

  Shakespeare raised an eyebrow.

  “What do we call you, then?” Isaiah asked.

  “The Bard of Avon.”

  After this answer, bold and pretentious, the class drew back a little. Shakespeare didn’t seem to mind. He walked up and down, perfectly possessed, actually enjoying the growing distance between him and his audience.

  Nina tried to catch Collin’s eye, to remind him of the Q&A they’d planned. But Collin ignored her. He gazed coolly at the class, and, fascinated, they stared back at him. Without a word, he attracted their attention, offering no greeting, no information, nothing but suspense.

  “We prepared some questions.” Nina spoke as much to her students as to Shakespeare. “Who’d like to start?” She looked out at the students, issuing a silent appeal. Anyone?

  Finally, Chandra asked in her small voice, “When did you start writing?”

  “When my players needed parts.”

  “What’s your favorite play?” asked Isaiah.

  “The one that pays.”

  Another pause, and Nina gestured to Jonee, who read from her open notebook: “Who did you write the sonnets for?”

  “None but you,” Shakespeare cried gallantly, and took her by the hand!

  The class sniggered. Holding hands with Jonee? She was this large, pale, seriously depressing girl, and there she was, with Shakespeare escorting her to the front of the room, seating her on Miss Lazare’s own desk.

  Khalil laughed so hard he started coughing. “And you!” Shakespeare added, offering his hand to Khalil as well.

  The class exploded with whoops and catcalls, as Khalil shrank back.

  Shakespeare knelt down on the spot. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” He looked adoringly at Khalil’s stubble and his dreadlocks, then gazed into the boy’s dark eyes.

  No! Nina thought. She hovered behind Khalil’s chair, trying to catch Collin’s attention.

  “Thou art more lovely and more temperate…”

  “Holy shit!” Khalil interjected, even as Nina gestured for Collin to stop.

  “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.”

  The class was in hysterics.

  “Back off!” Khalil snarled.

  In vain, Nina told her students to settle down. Unheard, her explanation that actually this sonnet was written for a young man. Doubled over, clutching themselves, kids were falling out of their chairs—all but Khalil, who lost his cool completely, and shoved Shakespeare with two hands.

  The Bard lost his balance, since he had been down on one knee, but he recovered fast, springing to his feet.

  “Let’s take a moment here,” Nina said, trying to intercede, but Shakespeare waved her off and turned toward Jonee, still sitting where he had left her on Nina’s gray Steelcase desk.

  “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines…” he told Jonee. You could see all the blood rush to her face as everyone’s attention turned toward her. “And often is his gold complexion dimmed.”

  The class watched in shock. How could the Bard have known that Jonee panicked if you even looked at her? She had a thing where she could hyperventilate at any moment. She could do it now, even as Shakespeare knelt down, velvet cloak streaming around him. He spoke to her as though they were alone. Jonee’s eyes widened as he declared, “And every fair from fair sometime declines…”

  Jonee gasped, breathing faster and then faster. Her classmates watched Miss Lazare pluck at Shakespeare’s sleeve—to no avail. Jonee’s cheeks burned redder than her limp strawberry-blond hair. She swayed.

  Miss Lazare tried to stand between Shakespeare and his victim. He waved Lazare away. The guy was hard-core.

  Even Anton, who usually kept his head down, was on the edge of his seat. Fully recovered from the assault on his sexuality, Khalil grinned in disbelief. This was going to be the most amazing class in the history of the school; Shakespeare could be causing a medical emergency.

  Meanwhile, Shakespeare sounded blissed. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” he intoned, looking deep into Jonee’s eyes.

  The Bard got a standing ovation, especially when Jonee flumped off the desk. She would have fallen in a heap, if not for the Bard’s steadying hand. Her classmates shouted, “Encore! Encore!” Everybody saw the faint smile on Jonee’s face as Shakespeare returned her to her seat.

  Nina saw Collin raise a frenzy and then with a flick of his hand, silence the whole class. She watched him and she thought, You should have it all—money, fame, every success.

  Collin himself broke into her reverie. He whipped around and bowed to her. Then, right in front of all her students, he took her by the hand. There she’d been, enjoying the show. Now suddenly she was in it. “No. No!” she whispered. Unfair to ambush her like that! “Collin,” she begged under her breath.

  Her kids thought this was hilarious. “Pray be seated,” Shakespeare said, and Lazare was shaking her head, but she had to listen. The guy was a rock star. She took the hot seat atop her desk.

  Shakespeare didn’t kneel this time. Everybody watched as he looked Lazare up and down. She was so embarrassed she couldn’t even meet his eye. Whooo! The guy was her boyfriend. The more she tried to hide it, the more it showed.

  With a wave of his hand, Shakespeare signaled his next speech.

  “My mistress’ eyes,” he said, “are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.”

  Oh God, Nina thought, knowing what was coming, but he recited so well. The kids loved him, and loved her embarrassment even more.

  Shakespeare took a step back to view her in profile. “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun.”

  “Owwww!”

  “Her breasts are dung?”

  “If hairs be wires…”—Shakespeare lifted a lock of Nina’s hair—“black wires grow on her head.”

  “Hey,” Nina whispered. She had planned a discussion of playwriting and acting, costuming, performing at the Globe Theatre. “Collin.”

  Either he ignored her or he couldn’t hear. He had galvanized the class, now cheering.

  “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight”—the Bard turned away—“Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks…”

  “Ewww!”

  “Death match! Death match!” the students screamed.

  Isaiah called, “Miss, don’t let him tear you down!”

  “I love to hear her speak, yet well I know / That music hath a far more pleasing sound.”

  “Kill! Kill!”

  “I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. / And yet…” Shakespeare paused and looked out at the class and they hushed, wondering what he would do.

  He fell to his knees and pulled a single red plastic rose from his sleeve. “Awwww,” chorused the class, amused, but also disappointed to see him cave.

  Sean said, “Miss? You gonna accept that from him?”

  “Reject! Reject!” the class thundered.

  Nina shook her head. Her kids cheered as she turned the flower down.

  Despite this, Shake
speare had the last word: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.”

  Applause and cheers and school bells ringing. Wait. Those were alarms pulsing in the halls. Kids groaned and started shuffling for the door. As usual, whenever anything fun happened, DeLaurentis hit them with a fire drill.

  Collin was still carrying the plastic rose when everybody trooped outside. Students and staff gathered in the designated area behind the school, where Mr. DeLaurentis waited, furious, in his charcoal-gray suit. This was not a scheduled fire drill, so either a real fire was raging somewhere in the building, or some kid had pulled the alarm.

  “Line up! Line up!” DeLaurentis barked into his electric bullhorn, as students poured out of the building, but no one paid attention. Fire trucks had already arrived, and firemen were tromping into the school with empty hoses trailing behind them. Meanwhile, it was so close to dismissal that the students figured February break had started. Yes! The problem was their teachers had rushed them out the door without coats. They had to huddle and hug each other to stay warm.

  Like temporary parents, Collin and Nina shepherded their class to the school’s spiked black iron fence.

  “Yo, Shakespeare,” one of the boys called out, but Collin wasn’t Shakespeare anymore.

  “No reentry,” blared Mr. DeLaurentis. “No reentry.”

  “Bard of Avon,” Isaiah asked, “you coming back?”

  Collin stole a look at Nina, but she glanced away.

  “Did I say you could leave?” Mrs. West was confronting a tall blond kid edging toward the street. “Did I dismiss you, Aidan?”

  “Come on, Nina,” Collin said, but she wouldn’t speak to him where her students could overhear.

  “Down. No climbing!” DeLaurentis crackled, even as the student body surged.

  Nina saw Aidan close his eyes and lean against the fence. There was something grand about his silent resignation, a royal insolence.

  Kids and teachers waited for what felt like hours. In fact, after twenty minutes, the returning firefighters reported no fire, no smoke, no evidence of faulty wiring. The official cause for evacuation was some student, and DeLaurentis was talking about consequences, but no one stuck around to listen, because the fire marshal had just given the all-clear.

  In the throng of students racing to empty lockers for vacation week, Collin cleared a path, sheltering Nina with his arm. At last he opened the door for Nina and they took refuge in her empty classroom.

  “Phew.” Collin tried to keep it light. “Next time we’ll do the theater games.”

  She was picking up stray papers, rescuing paperbacks splayed open on the floor.

  “Nina?”

  She turned to face him. “I never said you could recite sonnets to me in front of my class.”

  “I know, but—”

  “I asked you to stop!”

  “You were laughing.” He crossed the room to make his appeal.

  “Why didn’t you listen?”

  “Sorry. I gave you away. The secret’s out. You have a crazy boyfriend.”

  “I wanted this lesson to be about Shakespeare, not you.”

  “It was about Shakespeare,” he retorted. “And what’s the big deal? The kids already know that you’re in love with him.”

  “You don’t understand. They hardly listen to me. I’ve barely got them sitting down.”

  He tossed hat and plastic rose onto her desk. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

  “No. Just having fun at my expense.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Well, what’s fair, Collin?”

  “I don’t know.” He took her hands.

  He was hard to resist; he was so warm. “I was embarrassed,” she admitted. “and I was…”

  “What?”

  “Jealous,” she confessed. “You’re just…surprising. I don’t know what to do with you.”

  He forgot the classroom door was open. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.

  As if on cue, some kid whistled in the hall.

  They sprang apart.

  “No more sonnets,” he assured her. “No more school visits. I don’t want to mess up your life.”

  Her response surprised him. “I don’t want to mess up yours.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think there’s any danger.”

  “I don’t want to do the wrong thing.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, not knowing what she meant. “Do the wrong thing. You need the practice.”

  “You’re so talented…” she began.

  Now his eyes hardened. His body tensed as he guessed where this was going. He had listened to this speech from his mother, from Noelle, from every other serious girlfriend, and he felt a kind of grief to hear Nina start in on him now. Two months before, they had been sledding in Danehy Park. Now the long talks had begun.

  She said, “You could do a lot more, and earn a lot more, and have a career if you want.”

  His voice was cold. “I’m not going back to school.”

  “It’s just an idea—and I keep debating whether to tell you.” She took a breath. “I could take you to Arkadia.”

  “Take me?”

  “Well…introduce you…”

  “That’s what’s on your mind. You want to introduce me to Arkadia.”

  “I do and I don’t,” she confessed.

  “That’s what you’re debating. Whether to leave me in my poor miserable life, or invite me to the big leagues?”

  “I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”

  “I know!” He almost laughed. “That’s the arrogant part. It comes naturally.”

  “Wait. Let me explain.”

  “You don’t have to explain. I understand.”

  She persisted. “Listen.”

  “I don’t need you to find me a job. I’m not your charity. I’m not your good deed, okay? I don’t want help.”

  Hands on her hips, she protested, “I let you help me! I let you embarrass me in front of my whole class.”

  “That was nothing. You’re talking about a job. You’ve got my whole career planned out.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to change you or mess up your art.”

  “You’ve planned so far ahead you’re already up to feeling guilty about it.”

  “Don’t tell me what I’m planning.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not! And don’t assume you’d get a job.”

  She began rubbing out vocabulary words with her felt eraser. “You’re the arrogant one.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You don’t even listen.”

  “I’m listening,” Collin retorted.

  “Is it that hard for you to accept a favor?”

  “Stop.” He took the eraser from her hand and drenched it with water from the bottle on her desk. Then he wiped her cloudy board until it was sleek and black again.

  “You would blow them all away.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.” She picked up her bag, but then she said, “Just let me introduce you to my father.”

  “He won’t meet with me.”

  “Yes, he will.”

  “Because of you.”

  “Well, that has to be enough.”

  He shot her a look.

  “Can’t you just take a chance?”

  “You’re not offering me a chance,” he said. “You’re offering a gift, out of the goodness of your privileged heart.”

  For a long moment she didn’t answer.

  Young as she was, she understood her position. She could teach for two years or she could quit tomorrow. She could travel, study abroad, go to law school, or do nothing at all. She didn’t need to earn a living. Nothing kept her at Emerson but idealism and interest. “It’s not a gift,” she said at last. “It’s not a job. It’s just an open door.”

  “Thanks. I’ll open my own doors.”

  She leaned against her desk. “And
how will you do that?”

  “None of your business.”

  Nina thought of Collin’s theatrics, and her students’ laughter—his crazy visit. “That’s what I should have told you!”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let’s get out of here and have a drink.”

  Even then, she persisted. “Just think about it.”

  “I told you I don’t want help.”

  “I know,” she said, “but you deserve it.”

  Those words pierced him. His mother and his girlfriends and his instructors always accused him. He was wasting his time. He wasn’t living up to his potential. Nina said the thing he hardly dared to tell himself.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, searching his bright eyes.

  “Nothing.” He wrapped her in his cape.

  He held her in his arms and the velvet cape trailed all around her shoulders. Yes, she thought. Yes he would listen to her, but she was half afraid of what she’d done.

  In silence they headed out together. Seriously, almost ceremonially, he took his plumed hat from her desk. She turned off the lights and he followed her out into the hall, where janitors roared up and down with vacuum canisters strapped onto their backs.

  “I can’t program,” he reminded Nina.

  “That wouldn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “No, no, no. They’ll know what to do with you.”

  Collin wore a button-down shirt, blue-striped, clean but wrinkled and papery. Where had he found it? Of course Nina couldn’t ask. Her father was sitting next to her, ordering wine, and Collin had been exiled across the table.

  They were eating dinner at Harvest, and Collin was trying not to stare. Viktor was fifty-four, but he didn’t look old. He looked like a guy who woke at dawn to bike up mountains and ford icy streams. His eyes were black, his nose craggy. His dark hair and bushy eyebrows stood up as if to say, Who’re you calling short? He smiled to himself as though delighted with his own ideas—and why not? They were worth a ton of money. Nina’s father set Collin on edge immediately. Collin saw the laughing ferocity in Viktor’s eyes.

  “Nina tells me you act and sing and dance and draw, and I don’t know what else,” Nina’s father said. “Jack of all trades.”

  Fuck you, Collin thought. “I draw,” he said.