had to hope for a dose of smallpox or a bad childbirth to get you out of an unpleasant coupling - and besides, he knew it wasn't her fault, so why should he punish her for loving the only man who had ever wooed her?"
"You so understanding."
"Freud and Jung and you, masters of the mind."
"So Will Shakestaffe got himself taken on as a substitute in a traveling company that had a lead actor die suddenly, so they had to reshuffle all the roles. He showed them some of the sonnets he had written for his beloved wife and they mocked him for being such a bad writer - and it's true, nobody does their best poems when the love is artificial. The only one he ever allowed to be published was the one that punned on Anne's last name - 'hate away' for 'Hathaway.' So he had to show them he was a good writer by rewriting some speeches and adding lines to his own bit parts. It really pissed off the big boys in the company, because he was getting laughs and tears for tiny parts, but the audience loved his rewrites and the partners weren't stupid. They had him rewrite the leading actors'
speeches, too, until they had some plays that were more Shakespeare than the original writers' work.
And they nicknamed him Shake-scene."
"So they accepted him."
"He hated the nickname," said Puck. "And they wouldn't even look at his first complete script.
That was why he quit and joined a company that would treat him with respect and put on his plays.
So you see, I did him a favor. I started him on his great career by making him fall in love with an unlovable woman."
"And broke her heart when he left her," said Mack.
"She had three good years of a husband who was completely devoted to her," said Puck.
"That's two years and fifty weeks more than most wives get."
"He wouldn't have been an actor without your little prank?"
"Oh, he would have been," said Puck. "He was part-timing with a company when he met Anne."
He really couldn't see that he had caused any harm. "So you postponed his career."
"I postponed his acting career," said Puck. "It was loving Anne Hathaway that made a bad poet of him. And the ridicule he got for those poems that made him a great playwright."
And now Mack understood something. "You're the one who twists the dreams."
"Twists? What are you talking about?"
"Tamika dreams of swimming and you put her inside a waterbed."
"I woke her father up, didn't I? Not my fault if he took so long figuring out where she was and getting her out."
"And what about Deacon Landry and Juanettia Post? It was his wish, not hers, and why did you have to make them get found on the floor right in the middle of the sanctuary?" next. And you have to admit it was funny."
"They both had to move away, and it broke up his marriage."
"I didn't make up the wish."
"You made them get caught."
"Man has no business wishing for a woman ain't his wife," said Puck.
"Oh, now you're Mr. Morality."
"He was a deacon," said Puck. "He judged other people. I thought it was fair."
"But in the real world, without this magic, he wouldn't have done anything about it."
"So I showed who he really was."
"Having a wish in your heart, a man can't help that," said Mack. "He's only a bad man if he acts on it."
"Well, there you are. This beautiful woman suddenly offered him what he had no right to have.
Nobody made him take it."
"So it was all his fault."
"I set them up. They knock themselves down."
"So you're the judge."
"They judge themselves."
"You make me sick."
"You're so sanctimonious," said Puck. "Come on, admit it, you think it's funny, too. You're only making yourself angry cause you think you ought to."
"These people are my friends," said Mack.
"You were a little boy then, Mack," said Puck.
"I mean the people in this place. My neighborhood. All of them."
"You think so?" said Puck. "There are no friends. There is no love. Just hunger and illusion. You hunger till you get the illusion of being fed, but you feel empty again in a moment and then all your love and desire go somewhere else, to someone else. You don't love these people, you just need to belong and these are the people who happened to be close by."
"You told me to tell you the truth," said Puck.
"You love things to be ugly."
"I like things to be entertaining," said