Just One Night Read Online Free PDF

leave right after the play. David is catching a late flight back to London, and she’s seeing him to the airport.
    Willem’s cast mates slap him on the back, offer congratulations from last night, and condolences for next week. He accepts them both.
    Max is by his side, as always. She is the other understudy, for Rosalind, and Willem’s best friend in the cast. “You win some, you lose some. And sometimes you win and lose at the same time. Life’s a bloody cockup,” Max says.
    “Is that Shakespeare?” Willem asks.
    “Nah. Just me.”
    “Sounds like the Universal Law of Equilibrium,” Willem says.
    “The what?”
    When Willem doesn’t answer right away, she says, “Sounds like a bunch of shite.”
    “You’re probably right,” Willem agrees. And then he asks her if she’ll come out after the show.
    “I’m still hungover from last night,” Max complains. “How many parties does one man need?”
    “This is different,” Willem says.
    “How is it different?” Max asks.
    Max has become one of his closest friends these past months, and yet he hasn’t told her a thing. There is nothing to do now but to tell her
everything
.
    “Because I’m in love.”
    Kate and David arrive just before curtain. She’d meant to come straight from the airport, but when she’d seen David, she had been overcome. It was a bit silly, really. It had only been a few days since she’d seen him, and they’d been together for five years. But she’d been feeling roiled since last night. A good Shakespearean performance was known to have aphrodisiacal effects. So when David arrived, she’d hustled him back to her Major Booger hotel and had her way with him. Then they’d fallen asleep and gotten themselves massively lost on the way to the park (someone should mention to city planners that Amsterdam was laid out like a rat’s maze, albeit a very pretty rat’s maze) and now here they are.
    I hope I haven’t oversold it
, Kate thinks as the lights go down. She has essentially promised Willem an apprenticeship based on last night’s performance, but David has to agree. She is sure David will agree. Willem had been that good. But she is nervous now. They’ve offered apprenticeships to foreigners before, but sparingly, because the visa paperwork and union issues are such a headache.
    Willem enters the stage. “As I remember . . .” he begins as Orlando.
    Kate breathes a sigh of relief. She hasn’t oversold it.
    It is better than last night. Because there are no walls. No illusions. This time, they know exactly who they are speaking to.
    “The little strength that I have, I would it were with you”.
    She is his Mountain Girl.
    “What would you say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind?”
    No more pretending. Because he knows. She knows.
    “Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.”
    She believes. They both do.
    “I would kiss before I spoke.”
    The line is a kiss. Their kiss.
    “For ever and a day.”
    For ever and a day.
    “Holy shit,” David says to Kate when it is over.
    Kate thinks
I told you so
, but doesn’t say anything.
    “And this is the hitchhiker you gave a ride to in Mexico?”
    “I keep telling you, he wasn’t a hitchhiker.” David has been giving her grief about giving a ride to a stranger for months now. Kate keeps reminding him that all people are strangers, initially. “Even
you
were a stranger to me once,” she’d said.
    “I don’t care if he was three-legged ape,” David says now. “He’s unbelievable.”
    Kate smiles. She loves lots of things, but she especially loves to be right.
    “And he wants to apprentice with us?”
    “Yep,” Kate says.
    “We can’t keep him off a stage for long.”
    “I know. He’s green. The training will do him good. And then we can sort out union issues and get him up there.”
    “He’s really Dutch?” David asks. “He has no accent.” He stops for a second. “Listen to that. They’re still applauding.”
    “Are you