Children of an Idle Brain
By Wendy Webb

old it."  The bell at the tip of his jester's hat dipped in front of the camera lens to obscure the couple standing in front of the painted balcony scene.  Peering through the viewfinder, he was more than a little confused.  "Methinks you have chosen a disguise fit more for the witness protection program than for a masked ball."

"Try the picture again, Einstein," the star halfback snorted.  "Your ball was in the way."  His date, the head majorette, giggled and pressed her face, which was covered by a cat mask, into his shoulder.  He smiled broadly to reveal cracked and broken teeth, then draped a muscular arm about the majorette's bare shoulders.  "I mean your bell was in the way."

"Good one," the majorette purred.

The star halfback puffed out his chest a bit, then scowled deep into the camera.  "Take the picture."

The wiry young man struck a pose.  The bell on his jester hat sounded a jingled note.  "You can call me Mercutio, being the theme is A Night in Verona."

"The picture, Einstein."

Holding tight the bell on his hat, Mercutio stole a quick peek through the lens, then ran his hand the length of the remote cord to the button on the end.  "Hold it.  And say 'Queen Mab.'"

A blast of light filled the room, then winked out leaving the shadows a darker gray.

“What the--“  The star half-back's face contorted in disgust.  He blinked, then squinted.

Mercutio offered a basket adorned with ribbon to the couple.  "Don't forget to take a souvenir hazelnut."

The majorette turned her hazelnut over and over in her hand.  "Hey.  There's nothing in it."

"It is a chariot made by the joiner squirrel or old grub," Mercutio quoted with a wink.

"Eeew," the majorette said, dropping the hazelnut and wiping her hand on her dress.

"And methinks you may win a door prize with that."

"Oh.”  She looked at it a bit closer.

The football player lifted Mercutio by the frilly collar around his neck.  "And me thinks you are full of crapola.  Don't come anywhere near me the rest of the night and you might go home with all your teeth."

Mercutio widened his eyes and went theatrically limp.  "I'll certainly chew on that.  And now, good sir, if you will release me, I find others waiting for their photo op."  Dropping to the floor in a heap, Mercutio made a show of stiffening one rubber-like leg only to have it loosen while he worked on the other.

"Drop dead and die," the football player said as he escorted the majorette to a dark corner table.

One of Mercutio's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.  "Be careful of what you dream," he said, brushing his finger alongside his nose, "for Mab sits athwart men's noses as they lie asleep."

A new voice chimed in then.  "And he's what's in men's noses."

Mercutio turned on his heel to the voice.  Feigning great hurt, he pressed his clenched palms to his chest.  "You cut me to the quick, fair Emily."

"Why?" Emily asked, boldly adjusting the crotch of her tights that crept below the hemline of her tunic.  "I was talking about our star halfwit, not you."

"Because you were quick in the cut, and beat me to it."

A flicker of light danced in her eyes.  "I'm just getting started.  Thoughts of what the head majorette can do with her baton has kept me going whilst pouring four bowls of punch and opening twelve bags of potato chips.  God, I hate these end of the year dances."

Mercutio waved the next couple in front of the camera.  The flash exploded with light.  "So why are you here, fair Emily?  And who, by the by, are you supposed to be?"  He shooed the newly photographed couple away with a hazel nut each, and herded in the next set.

"Same reason you're here,” Emily said.  “And tonight I'm Prince Escalus by the way, but without the attitude thanks to these tights."

"I see."  Another burst from the camera flash filled the dark.  Mercutio's toothy smile glowed in the dim aftermath.  "Then you've become hence, a royal pain in the ass?"

Emily raised a finger in warning.  "Don't start with me, Ben--"

"Mercutio."

"Of course.  Any excuse to play the classic clown."

Waggling his overly large footwear, he leered at her.  "If the shoe fits."

"It never does, Ben--I mean, Mercutio.  Try as we might we've been labeled.  All we can hope for is to get out of this hellhole as soon as possible and move on with our lives.  Hiding behind this comedy act—or any of your other acts—hasn't made it easier."

Anger surged through him.  "You don't know what you're talking about."

She tried to touch his arm, but he pulled away.  Her voice softened.  "Unfortunately I do know what I'm talking about.  Can you spell 'pariah'?  Of course you can.  And so can I.  Most everyone here inflicts that punishment on us, but they don't know what it means.  The star half-wit probably thinks it's a dessert."

"I fear he is an ice cream pariah."

"We can only dream."  She successfully touched his arm this time, then rolled her eyes.  "Well, it's back to the trenches.  We do what we can to belong, don't we?  And we hope for the best.  But honestly, if I hear one more reference to the wheel of cheddar as 'cutting the cheese,' I'm going to strangle someone with these tights.  That is, if they don't get me first."  She hitched her outfit one more time, then was gone.

Pariah.

The word stuck in his mind.  And though it took many forms throughout the years…when his ears were too big, his legs too lanky, his grades better than most and his athletic skills less, a rose by any other name...well, it still hurt.  Humor was a kind of bandage that helped hide the pain when there was little else to do, and when there were fewer places to go.

In his dreams he could escape.  There, in the dark with the help of Queen Mab, he could make things happen; he could wish for the sun and an envious moon.  He could dream of...

"Hi, Bunny Ben."

He blinked at the sound of her voice, then cringed as her date snickered.  The other couple joined in.

"Stop it, Ty.  Stop it, all of you.  Bunny Ben is sweet, and you're not being very nice."

Ty punched his double date buddy.  "Bunny Ben, huh?  What a weenie."

"Yeah," the buddy said.  "A real geek."

"It's all geek to me," Mercutio said, striking a pose.  He swallowed hard, and could barely take his eyes from her.  "You look beautiful tonight, Rosalind.  Can I take a picture of you by yourself?"

"No."  Ty stepped close to Mercutio and stood as unmoving as a tree trunk.  "We want a picture together.  The four of us."

"What are you afraid of, Ty?" asked the double date buddy.  "That he'll keep Rosalind's picture under his pillow every night and kiss it before he goes to sleep?"  The buddy sucked his arm loud and long for effect.

"I could kill you for that," Ty said.  "But it'd be a waste of my time."

Rosalind looked at Mercutio.  "I'm sorry for this, Ben.  Maybe we should just take the picture now."

Mercutio nodded, then grasped the remote with trembling fingers.  He took a deep breath to ease the knot in his stomach, and stared at her through the viewfinder.  She had been one of the few to show him kindness.  Her nods of recognition in the hallway, and the soft "hello" she offered at those times would always stay with him.  It was Rosalind who took the seat behind him to ward off the assaults of the others; and it was her compassion that helped him gather his books and papers when they were consistently knocked from his hands.

She was picture perfect, and he knew he could never have her.  It was not the way of things.  It never would be.  He blinked once, twice, and tried to remember this view of her in the camera forever.  So rare was a vision such as this--his lips curled with revenge small but sweet--and so rare was there such an opportunity.  "Hold it, and say Queen Mab." 

"Queen Mab," said Rosalind.

Mercutio didn't notice if the others said it or not, and he'd be long gone when the pictures were developed showing the beautiful Rosalind surrounded by a headless entourage.  "Don't forget to take a hazel nut."

Rosalind chose a token out of the basket and whispered, "Thank you."

Ty knocked the basket out of Mercutio's hand, sending the contents skittering across the floor.

"Someone else can have mine."

Raising himself up to full height, Mercutio placed his arms akimbo, adopted an expression of exaggerated indignation, and bellowed: "You have no nuts!"

Ty lunged for Mercutio.  "Why you little bastard."

Squealing, Mercutio dodged under Ty's arm, then ran in tight circles around him until the tree-like young man stood dazed and dizzy.

Pointing a wavering finger in the general vicinity, Ty narrowed his eyes to focus on the wiry Mercutio.  "You are nothing.  You will always be nothing.  And," he added, clinging to Rosalind, "you will always be alone."

Mercutio jabbed his finger into Ty's chest, then blew a puff of air. Ty reeled back as if punched, then was escorted away by the charming Rosalind who offered a mouthed "I'm sorry," and took a hazelnut in his behalf.         

The newly assembled group waiting for pictures burst into wild applause.

"Thank you, thank you," Mercutio said, bowing deeply to the picturesque group.

"Words spoken by such a villain as that young man are hurtful to the ear."  A wisp of a woman wearing a high-waisted dress, Juliet cap, and holding a mask to her face by a long wand, emerged from the group.  "And, perhaps, hurtful to the heart."

"A scratch," Mercutio said, with forced merriment.

"Only that?" she asked.

"Ay.  A scratch."  He sighed deeply then, and wished he could believe his own words rather than those of Ty.  "'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough.'"

"Enough indeed, I should think."

"It always is."  He cleared his throat of the lump that formed there, and pushed aside the pain as he always had before.  This time it seemed a little harder to do.  "But I should expect nothing less from my fellow thespians, as that seems to be what you are."

"Fellow dreamers," the woman corrected.

Mercutio gestured theatrically, and looked from one mask-covered face to another.  "And not thespians?  Who else would take to heart A Night in Verona, or know so intimately the words of the bard than fellow thespians?"  He peered a little closer.  "Do you always travel in a pack like wild dogs?"

"Always."  The woman waved her hand as if to encompass the group.  "For we are all, each one of us, cut from the same cloth.  One in the same when darkness falls, you know as well as I that we are called a troupe."

"Amass the troops then, and I will take a picture of all at once."

"And what of you?" she asked with gentleness in her voice.  "Historically we are all outcasts by choices made.  You, certainly, have felt an exile more acute."  Gathering the crowd around her in front of the painted balcony scene, she beckoned him.  "Join us then?"

He nodded, and a smile lit up his face.  "Yes.  I think I will."  Stretching the remote cord as far as it would go, he took a place in the center and pushed the button.

And pushed again.

Nothing.

No burst of light deepened the shadows to a darker gray.  There was no blinking in the aftermath that for a few moments rendered the eyes unseeing.

There was only a split second—that even now was dissolving—of being a part of something.  Of being included.  Of being in the very center where he had been invited, welcomed.  Wanted.

And now it was gone.

The group collectively shrugged, then broke into smaller parties that began to disappear into the great room for their night in Verona.

But the night was still young.

He did what he had to do.  He did what he always did.  The jester cap with the dancing bell, and the bright costume with the frilly collar covered many scars from the unexpected, and unwarranted, stabs.  It would cover this, too.

Eventually.

Then later, he would retreat to the sanctuary of his dreams.

"Wait!" he called to them.

They turned.

Mercutio waved the ribboned basket.  "She comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone."

One by one the troupe came to pick a souvenir from the basket.

"Her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat.  Her chariot is an empty hazel nut.  Besides," he shrugged, "you might win a door prize."

The beautiful, lithe woman chose last.  Pausing over the basket, she lowered the mask that covered her eyes, and looked deep into his.

He had seen those eyes before.  The world was in those eyes.

She spoke without benefit of words.  Her sound touched and lingered deep within him.

He had felt that sound before.  He knew those words.

"And in this state she gallops night by night through lover's brains, and then they dream of love."  She nodded then. 

His voice cracked.  A small shudder ran the length of his spine.  "Yes."

Reaching a long, slender hand into the basket for the last hazel nut, she held it tight, then gently pressed it into his hand.

A microphone released a keening of feedback with the announcement of door prizes.  Chairs scraped the floor, a titter of excitement traversed the crowd, and fancy attire—that would be worn only once—rustled, then quieted.  

Mercutio stared at his closed fist, and felt the woman's presence fade like the others of the troupe.  "True I talk of dreams which are the children of an idle brain...."

The silence of anticipation filled the room and seemed to echo off festooned rafters and painted walls.

"Begot of nothing but vain fantasy...."  For fantasy was all he had.  Maybe, he realized suddenly, fantasy was all he ever had.  That wasn't so bad, was it?  But was it enough?  "It is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind."

Palms opened throughout the room, and eyes looked deep into those once empty hazel nuts to see if they had won.

The words flowed from him and would not be stopped.  "Others dreamed a dream tonight—and so did I."

The star half-back froze in fear at the thing in his hand, then stared unseeing.

Mercutio saw from within the hazel nut what it was the half-back tried to refuse.  "O'er years restrained, then running free, for crimes that make him flee."

The head majorette shook her head as if to set her vision right.  A whimper caught in her throat.

"O'er ladies' lips, who on kisses dream, but find themselves alone."

Gasps and moans filled the air, punctuated by tight smiles and occasional sighs of pleasure.

Mercutio watched a serene beauty settle on Rosalind's face as she stared mesmerized into her hazel nut.  "And sometimes she comes with charity, of good, and kind, a quality of being just."  He followed Ty's gaze.  "While others dream of cutting throats, then frighted, prays there is no such dream for him."

Opening the hand where the last hazel nut was so carefully placed, Mercutio looked on his own dream.

It was dark.  So very dark.  Until.…

There!  A glimmer, a speck of light, a vision, suddenly filled the space deep within the hazel nut.  The thespians stood in a happy group, all smiling, welcoming.  As outcasts they at last belonged.  In the very center was an empty spot—room enough for one.  It was a place of honor; a place reserved for those who called for this new world.  And if he chose to join them, he would take his place beside her.

"I see Queen Mab hath been with you," he said to himself, as he reached for the button on the camera remote.

Most in this room would see one last flash of light that left the shadows of memory a darker shade.  Then they would go on with their lives.  And when it was time, the visions of this night would tweak their recollection that dreamers often lie.  For the last dance of the night had yet to play.

For him it would be a final blast of light to illuminate that which had been kept hidden far too long.  With vision clear, he would start anew, and at last be a part of the whole.

"She is the fairies' midwife.  She gives hope.  She gives birth to dreams."

A small smile touched his lips.  He winked.

She gives belonging.

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