My Name Is Will Read online

  “Oh . . . yeah.”

  Robin picked up the candle by the bedside, and leaned back, holding the candle directly over Willie’s balls. “What happened? Did she go for it?”

  Willie had a feeling he’d better answer this reeeeally carefully.

  “She wasn’t into it, at first. But it’s hard to tell with her. She doesn’t give much away. Kinda cold.”

  “Really? She looked pretty hot to me.” She tilted the candle, and let three drops of hot wax fall onto Willie’s scrotum.

  He flinched with a hiss of in-taken breath.

  “In fact, she looked a little flushed,” Robin continued. “Maybe she had a fever. Or maybe she just got out of bed or something.” She let another drop of wax fall.

  “AH! I . . . wouldn’t know.”

  Robin shifted her position, allowing Willie to look at her from behind as she took his dick gently into her hand and gave it a stroke or two. She gave it a questioning look, as she might contemplate the purchase of a dress that she wasn’t certain was quite her style. “So you’re saying she didn’t like it?”

  Willie was silent, concentrating on the feeling in his loins. He heard and felt a sudden, painful snap in the most sensitive of all possible places. “OW!”

  “Your thesis,” Robin said, holstering the instrument of torture, her middle finger, while Willie watched. “She didn’t like it?”

  “She thinks it needs a little more.”

  “More? More what?”

  “More research. A little deeper analysis.”

  “I think that’s wise. You wouldn’t want to get too far into a bad idea, don’t you think?” She took him into her mouth; swallowed him whole twice.

  “For sure.”

  “You’d hate to fuck up all the good work you’ve done in the department by letting your thesis get out of control, right?”

  “Right.” Right now, Willie would say or do whatever Robin asked, the feeling of dizziness running from his feet to the tips of his hair, acting like truth serum.

  “Wherever your thesis is going to go, you want to be fully committed to it, right?”

  “Right.”

  Robin turned again, and slowly, slowly lowered herself onto him. Breathlessly, she said, “Because your thesis sounds like it’s going to be a very long . . . hard . . . job.”

  An hour later, they were both asleep in postcoital lassitude.

  I’m on stage, playing Hamlet in the moonlight of the Quarry Amphitheater . . . but no, now it’s the Greek Theater in Berkeley. The audience rustles, and they are not quiet like trees, but chanting, “Ham-let, Ham-let!” There are signs bobbing up and down, but I can make out only two:

  WILLIE GREENBERG IS HAMLET

  WHEN PIGS FLY!

  I say, “To be or not to be . . .” but I can’t even hear myself through the chanting. Ophelia enters and the crowd goes silent.

  “Good my lord, how does your honor for this many a day?”

  “Are you honest?” I ask.

  “My lord?”

  “Are you fair?”

  “What means your lordship?”

  “That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.”

  “Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?”

  She is an angry, jealous Ophelia, accusatory. And so I play a slippery Hamlet, words streaming out of my mouth in a torrent of mad bs.

  “Ay,” I say, “truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.”

  “Mayhap once, my lord, but never again.”

  This isn’t the right line . . . and it isn’t Dashka playing Ophelia. I realize too late that it’s Robin, and her hand is in motion, smacking my left cheek. The audience hoots and cackles wildly, then suddenly cuts out like a bad laugh track.

  I turn as the spotlight from the heavens comes up and illuminates the bed in the middle of the stage. There is a woman there, hidden by the headboard. I can feel it.

  Polonius taps me on the shoulder. “The Queen would speak with you, and presently.”

  Caught between the compulsion to step forward and the urge to run, I can’t move. My feet are like tree roots in the stage. I will myself to move, to no avail. The restless audience murmurs. Whoever awaits on that bed, I can’t go to her. I’m petrified.

  The phone next to the bed rang, and he woke with a weak scream.

  Robin picked it up, still lying prone.

  “Hello? . . . Oh, hi. Yeah, hang on.”

  Robin held out the phone.

  “It’s your stepmom.”

  “I’m not here,” Willie said, and rolled over.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It should be pointed out that Shakespeare was not entirely nor on every page “modern.” Whether it’s statues coming suddenly to life (The Winter’s Tale), gods descending to arrange marriages (As You Like It), or pirate ships escorting Hamlet around the North Sea, the Bard showed a certain proclivity for the ancient device of deus ex machina.

  William did not fare well under torture. That answers that question, he thought. After two turns of the rack, he begged Sir Thomas Lucy to stop. He would tell Sir Thomas Lucy everything he wanted to know.

  Sir Thomas Lucy said, “Tell me of Edward Arden and Mary, his wife.”

  “I have met them but once, and know little besides their names, not even our exact relation,” William replied, sweating and panting.

  The answer seemed not to satisfy Lucy, who nodded to Henry Rogers. Moving forward, Rogers leeringly poured hot wax onto William’s ballocks, and William screamed again. Henry Rogers grinned, and offered to cut them off to alleviate the pain.

  In a fountain of words, William told Lucy about his relatives on his mother’s, Mary Arden’s, side. He told him that yes, his mother was certainly born Catholic, though he never saw her worship openly. He told him about the time when he and the family were visiting his grandmother at the stately brick house at Wilmcote, and he and his brother Gilbert were playing hide-and-seek. He had ducked under his grandmother’s bed, and discovered a loose floorboard. Prying it open with a sense of discovery and danger, he had found a carefully polished, gleaming silver crucifix and a set of rosary beads, magical, alluring, and terrifying all at once. He’d slammed the floorboard shut and run to hide in the washtub.

  “Now,” said Lucy, “tell me once more about Thomas Cottom.” He nodded slightly to Henry Rogers, who gave the rack the tiniest turn.

  But just as William finished his scream, and took a breath to tell Lucy about the locked box, there came a pounding at the door of the chamber. Lucy, annoyed, gestured to Henry Rogers; he, pissed off, left his work to answer it. The moment Henry Rogers unbarred the door and opened it, he stepped back and bowed deeply.

  “My lord.”

  Sir Thomas Lucy also did his reverence, and stayed there as Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, followed by three of his seconds, strode into the room. William recognized him from the day nine years ago at Kenilworth when Leicester had entertained the Queen and might have come to swordplay with Edward Arden but for the intercession of Lady Magdalen.

  Leicester looked much older now, and he coughed.

  He looked blankly at William. William suddenly forgot the pain in his shoulders and knees, the biting of the bonds at his wrists and ankles. He only felt how absurd he must look to Leicester, spread-eagle on the rack, his belly hair wet and curled with sweat and his ballocks dripping with comical little candle-drips of wax.

  Leicester turned to leave, and as he passed Lucy, muttered, “Let him go.”

  Lucy stood upright in shock.

  “My lord, this yeoman’s brat is on the point of revealing secret papist enclaves amongst the nobility, in your own Warwickshire. I pray you let the inquisition play its course, and I shall deliver recusants and plotters that threaten the Queen’s very life.”<
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  The Earl of Leicester stopped, and looked over his shoulder at Shakespeare. His lower jaw worked back and forth for an instant. He breathed a short, sharp breath through his nose, like a caged bull. Then he coughed a long, racking cough. Before he was fully recovered from the fit, he choked out, “He is, as you say, but a yeoman’s brat. I said let him go.”

  Then he was gone.

  “Ay, my lord,” said Lucy, with a bow to the already closed door.

  William tried not to look too searchingly at Lucy. There were, he thought, a couple of ways this could go. Either Lucy would do what Leicester had told him to do; or he wouldn’t.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius:

  Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;

  Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat;

  Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,

  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,

  Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.

  — Cassius, Julius Caesar, I.iii.90

  Willie woke up on Friday morning only when Robin sat on the small of his back and thrust a cup of coffee in his face.

  “Ambition, thy name is Willie. Get up, sleepyhead.”

  Willie groaned as Robin threw the covers off of him.

  “Come on, I’ve been padding around being quiet for an hour.”

  He took the coffee and looked at the clock: 8:03.

  “Jesus, why does Berkeley get up two hours before Santa Cruz? Is it a different time zone?”

  Robin was loading up a large portfolio case with signs, flyers, and pamphlets. A bundle of sticks and posterboard waited by the door; a staple gun was slung in one of the loops of her olive green painter’s pants. “It’s not easy for a city, being on the cutting edge of political and social reform. Gotta start the day early.” Robin took a sip from her own coffee, and put on a beret. Her hair was braided into two chestnut ropes that trailed across her collarbones. She wore black eye-shadow. All in all, Willie thought, she looked not unlike Patty Hearst in her manifestation as Tania. In pigtails. And sans the AK-47.

  Willie and Robin had been dating since she was a junior and he was a senior as Berkeley undergrads. He’d wanted to apply to the Berkeley M.A. program in English, but learned from his father that the University of California had a unwritten policy not to accept graduate candidates from the same campus where they received their B.A. So he was exiled to Santa Cruz. He’d been taking the library jitney to Berkeley to visit Robin on weekends ever since.

  “So are you going to see your parents this weekend?” Robin asked as she fed her cat, Mao — whom she referred to as the Chairman, or sometimes the Couchman, or sometimes, when he pooped in the corner next to the stereo, “You fucking piece of Commie shit.”

  “I don’t know. My dad and I are kind of on the outs.”

  “What did your stepmom want last night?”

  “What does she ever want? Attention. Her father’s approval. A Bloody Mary.”

  “You should go see them,” Robin said.

  “There are a lot of things I should do. You know, by age twenty-six, Shakespeare had written six, maybe seven plays already?”

  “So you’ve still got a year to catch up. Besides, people got old a lot younger then. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I mean, you’re very smart, but despite the soulful brown eyes, and despite the name . . . you’re no William Shakespeare.”

  Willie felt his shoulders tense. He didn’t want to start a fight before breakfast. He tried to laugh, but he failed. “What does that mean?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Don’t worry, nobody else is William Shakespeare, either.”

  “You’re saying I couldn’t write a play?”

  “Of course you could. You should.” There was a heavy pause. “So, do you want to come to the rally?”

  Willie considered. It was only Friday morning. He wouldn’t be able to make his contacts at the Renaissance Faire until tomorrow. Besides hanging with Robin for the day, he only saw two other options: visiting his dad and stepmom, or going to the library to actually work on his paper.

  “Sure,” Willie said. He looked at the duffel bag, which sat on Robin’s couch where he’d tossed it when he walked in yesterday. He considered taking it along with him now, but decided it was safer where it was.

  If Sproul Plaza had been bustling the day before, it was a mob scene now. As Robin and Willie entered from Telegraph Avenue, there were already one or two of Robin’s friends handing out flyers. The Piano Man was banging out “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” A sound crew was setting up microphones and a lectern on the top step outside of Sproul Hall.

  Robin met a group of her friends under the shaded arcade of the student union building across the plaza, and after some coffee and genial Reagan-bashing, Robin whipped out her staple gun, and they got down to the work of nailing signs to signposts.

  Willie looked at the signs that had already been scrawled out: PARAQUAT KILLS. JUST SAY NO TO TURNER. DEA: DRUG ENFORCEMENT ASSHOLES.

  Willie found a big red Sharpie and a blank posterboard, and wrote:

  MAKE LOVE ON DRUGS, NOT WAR.

  He showed it to Robin. “How’s this?”

  She shook her head. “We’re not trying to encourage drug use per se. How about MAKE WAR ON POVERTY, NOT DRUGS?”

  “Not as clever.”

  “But more to the point.”

  “No, that’s not to the point,” said one of Robin’s group, and held up a sign. “This is to the fucking point.”

  GIVE HINCKLEY ANOTHER SHOT.

  The rest of the group groaned. Bill, the president of the Committee to F$¢K Reagan, snatched the sign away from the guy. “No way, Jeremy.”

  As Willie stuffed his own vetoed sign into a trash can, he checked Jeremy out. Stereotypical Berkeley radical. Long, kinky, dirty hair that hadn’t seen a brush or comb in weeks. Pot-leaf t-shirt. Greasy jeans. And behind his wire-rim glasses, dull brown eyes that were swallowed by giant black pupils, even in the bright light of day. He was young; maybe twenty.

  “I’m sorry, but I think Reagan’s the fucking Antichrist,” Jeremy said, continuing the argument as though it hadn’t stopped.

  “Yeah, well, if so, you’re not going to be the one to take him out, right?” said Robin.

  Angela, a pudgy dark-haired girl, didn’t look up from the sign she was putting together, but said, “Excuse me, but I’m totally uncomfortable even talking about this. I don’t mind protest, but anything that veers toward conspiracy to assassinate the President I prefer to avoid, okay?”

  Jeremy grabbed his sign back from Bill.

  “Exactly. You’re all afraid Ray-gun’s storm troopers are gonna come pounding on your door because of what you say, Angela. Speech is either free or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “You believe in absolute freedom of expression, too, Jeremy?” asked Robin.

  “Absolutely.”

  Robin picked up the can of red paint next to Willie and threw the whole thing across Jeremy’s sign, obliterating the slogan and splattering red paint over his greasy jeans and torn dime-store sneakers in the process.

  Everyone was stunned for a moment.

  “Solidarity, brother,” said Robin, taking the staple gun away from him.

  Willie laughed. “Doesn’t freedom of speech end where your paint meets his jeans?”

  “Yeah.” Robin smiled at Willie. “So I’m a fascist. Protest me.”

  Everybody began to snicker, then to laugh.

  Jeremy threw his sign aside. “Very funny. Fuck you, Robin.”

  This only made everyone laugh harder. Jeremy flushed red, threw his sign down, and stormed off onto the plaza.

  Angela called out, “Jeremy, wait!”

  “Let him go,” Bill said. “I think he’s tripping.”

  A half hour later, the rally began. Robin’s group spread themselves around the plaza, which by 12:10 was packed with several hundred people, from fresh-fac
ed undergrads to local radicals to strung-out druggies to curious tourists to faculty who had tripped with Leary in the old days. Willie stood next to a small, wiry, bearded guy with beady eyes who was holding up a sign while openly smoking a joint and yelling “Reagan sucks!” and “Don’t blame me, I voted for Mondale!” at random intervals.

  Willie glanced up at the guy’s sign: it read MAKE LOVE ON DRUGS, NOT WAR. It was the sign Willie had abandoned.

  A young woman from the Student Political Alliance stepped up to the microphone and the rally began in very earnest. She spoke about the growing AIDS crisis and how the fight against it was being ignored by the Reagan administration. She spoke of news that the administration had suppressed information that hypodermic needles could be cleaned by simply rinsing with bleach, a revelation that would have saved hundreds of lives in San Francisco alone, where AIDS was raging and needle-sharing among junkies and meth freaks was rampant. She spoke of how the War on Drugs was hypocrisy, because alcohol, tobacco, and now AIDS killed more people than smack, crack, pot, and all the other illegal drugs combined. She ended by declaring that the War on Drugs should be transformed into a war on the drug policies of the Reagan administration. Willie shrugged, nodded, and applauded. Not a brilliant turn of phrase, but it hit the nail on the head.

  And then the girl at the mike introduced “a great American.”

  A salt-and-pepper-haired woman, short, dark, a little mannish, appeared on the Sproul steps. She slung a guitar strap over her shoulder to cheering and applause and stepped up to the microphone.

  “Hi. I’m Joan Baez.”

  Amid the rapturous cheer, Willie turned to Robin.

  “Can we go?” he asked.

  “I should stay ’til the end. Why don’t you go see your folks?”

  Joan Baez or a visit with his stepmother. Tough call.

  She launched into a tedious cover of “Shout,” by Tears for Fears. Willie wasn’t sure he could make it to the end. Those Shakespeare guys were right — she did suck. Something about her braying, humorless sincerity bugged the hell out of him. He wasn’t sure he could make it to the end, but she finally stopped Shout-ing, and the crowd cheered again.