Romeo, Juliet & Jim by Larry Schwarz

Author:Larry Schwarz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

CHAPTER 14

ROMEO

HE’D BEEN WAITING for an hour. Not even waiting. Preparing.

He’d bought food for an indoor picnic. Cheeses, bread, one of Juliet’s favorite chocolate tarts. He had music playing. Wine chilling. Candles lit.

It was that standard kind of romantic in a way he knew Juliet didn’t necessarily covet, but he’d wanted to do something for her in that cheesy lovestruck sort of way. These were the kinds of gestures he’d never made for his other girlfriends. No, not girlfriends. Trysts.

He wasn’t sure how to show Juliet she was different. That he intended to be with her for a long time. Not a long time. Forever. He was only eighteen, but he’d lived enough to know that there was nothing he wanted more than her. That was part of the impetus for renting a real home for them and not just a hotel room. It seemed more grown-up, a way to say that someday they’d be the ones with the home.

And now came a cryptic message that she couldn’t make it. What was “something important”? To him, there was nothing as important as being with her.

Walking through the apartment, he envisioned again how he’d planned to greet her, how he’d wanted to take her by the hand to the blanket he’d set up. He was going to pour her wine, serve her food, demonstrate in gestures what he never felt his words could say. Now that she wasn’t coming, he felt like an idiot. Or like this was karma. Women had tried to prove they loved him with gestures that went beyond the bedroom, and he’d never really bitten. Was this the tables turning?

He held his phone in his palm, staring at the screen. He wrote back a simple message, No problem. Hope things are okay. Then he dialed Jim.

As soon as his new friend answered, Romeo asked him plaintively, “Have you ever boxed?”

* * *

A half hour later, Romeo was waiting at le Sports Club, a dingy gym in the Twentieth, a working-class arrondissement. He’d learned to box in the air-conditioned, fluffy-toweled confines of his father’s gym, located in the very different Eighth. (The club catered to the very rich, and a single glass of Scotch cost as much as a yearlong gym membership somewhere else.) He’d trained with a former pro, who flattered Romeo and never swung too hard.

It was fine to learn in that gentle manner. But now, when he wanted to box, he came here, where the other clientele didn’t care who he was and literally pulled no punches. Romeo was sweating as he pummeled a speed bag, waiting for Jim.

The distinctive roar of a Triumph tipped him off to his friend’s arrival. How many bikes did this guy have?

Jim pulled open the smoked-glass door and looked around, evidently not expecting Romeo to have invited him to a place like this. It gave Romeo some satisfaction to not be exactly as Jim expected. It wasn’t just bike-collecting Americans who had edge, he felt like saying. His need

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