his own doing, his own sober, crushed, depressed doing.
Barnardo: “Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.” What does that text mean?
Ophelia: It’s from an old eighties movie the boys and I loved. Jesus, for being “intelligence,” you seem not to know much.
Barnardo: Watch it.
Francisco: We think it was a code.
Ophelia: Yeah, it was code for: “You’re not going to believe that the queen was (whispers too low to be heard).”
Barnardo: Hey, hey. Have a little respect. You kiss your mother with that mouth?
Francisco: ’Course she doesn’t. She doesn’t have a mother, and all because of the royal family.
Ophelia: I have to go to the bathroom.
9
Zara’s excitement returns. “It happened pretty fast. Don’t you agree?” She fans herself, asking the audience as much as Ophelia. The audience members look at one another, a mix of laughter and disapproval.
Ophelia is enjoying this moment. “Indeed it did.”
“What did you think of the whole… affair?” Zara winks.
Almost sincerely, Ophelia replies, “I’m not sure it’s my place or anyone else’s to judge.”
Zara turns to look at some photos of Gertrude in an elegant gown with Ophelia at her side. Both women are smiling and waving. “Despite our opinions of its speed, it must be said that the wedding was beautiful.”
“That it was,” Ophelia replies, eyeing the series of pictures that follow: the church, in front of the castle, inside the reception.
Zara flips her hair and furrows her brow. “Hamlet did not, as had been announced, act as Claudius’s best man.”
Ophelia squints and says, “Uh, nooo, he did not.”
“And yet you were a bridesmaid.”
“Well, Gertrude was like a mother to me. How could I refuse?”
Whenever I spoke with Horatio, I updated him on the latest development. They seemed to be coming so quickly that I found myself speaking to him a couple times a day. I should have known the castle phones were tapped. I sort of did. I mean, my father had always warned me to watch what I said on the apartment phone or in the public spaces of the castle, but it had never mattered in the past. I always figured that I had nothing to hide, which I usually didn’t.
Horatio asked, “Why is she making you a bridesmaid?”
“I’ve been thinking this over, and there are three possibilities. One, to keep me close. Two, because she thinks the pictures will look nicer with Hamlet and me in them together. Or three, she thinks he’s more likely to show if I’m part of the whole thing.”
“Probably all three.”
“That’s what I think.”
That afternoon when I went to meet with Gertrude and the dressmaker, she was perturbed. “Ophelia, would you like to know why I asked you to be my bridesmaid?”
I was taken aback, totally unsure if she had already been told what I said or if she was just in a snit because of my hesitant reaction when she asked the day before and felt she needed to explain. In either case, I vowed to myself that I would use my cell phone and watch what I e-mailed, too, from that point on. As far as I knew, my cell phone was still safe.
“I asked you because I thought you would be honored. I thought we had a good relationship. Sort of like a mother-daughter thing.” I felt a chill. She was nothing like my mother, and I did not need adopting.
I had found out about my mother’s death after going to the movies with Hamlet. We were in the middle of a very silly comedy, and despite the constant pratfalls and bodily fluids that kept spewing, I spent much of the movie thinking about what my mom said before we both went out for the night. I had asked what she thought of my dating Hamlet. It had only been in the last few months that we had gone from friends to boyfriend/girlfriend, and she had been very quiet on the subject.
“He’s a smart boy with quite a future ahead of him. But being with him won’t be easy,” she warned as she put on her lipstick.
“I know,” I said, hopping onto the marble counter next to her bathroom sink.
She looked at my reflection. “I don’t think you do. Sweetheart, think about what we go through with your father. Even that sort of a public position is hard enough. We are never alone. We rarely do precisely what we want.”
I picked up one of her discarded necklaces and jangled it. “But I really like Hamlet.”