The Adventures of Elegy Flynn
by V. J. Chambers
2: Will Shakesprick
Elegy, Catherine, and Lizzy save Shakespeare from being outed.
WILL SHAKESPRICK
© copyright 2012 by V. J.
Chambers
http://vjchambers.com
Punk Rawk Books
Smashwords
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The Adventures of Elegy Flynn
by V. J. Chambers
2: Will Shakesprick
For Andre.
At least I know you'll get the jokes.
Elizabeth Peters slammed the door of the bar behind her. "I've done it," she said, striding across the room to slump down in a stool. "And now I'd like some wine."
Lizzy was a volur. That meant she traveled through time fixing problems that time travelers made in the time continuum.
"What did you do?" I asked. I'd been asleep when Lizzy left earlier, and so I didn't know what her current mission was. My name was Catherine. I was trapped in the bar because if I left, I'd be dead. See, my boyfriend... Never mind. It was a long story. The point was, I couldn't leave. So I got to travel through time, but I was stuck inside this bar. Which looked like a sports bar from the 1980s, even though Elegy claimed it could look like anything she wanted. Elegy was a goddess of Fate. She was unnaturally obsessed with the 1980s. In fact, right at that second, she was blaring "If You Leave," by OMD over the bar's speakers. I was having Molly Ringwald flashbacks. "Where are we? When are we?"
"I see you finally woke up," said Lizzy. "How about that wine?" she asked Elegy.
Elegy was dancing behind the bar and lip-syncing the song with her eyes closed. She ignored Lizzy.
"I didn't mean to fall asleep," I said. "I was just getting bored listening to Elegy go on and on about Kellen's meltdown the other day. I witnessed it, and she's already told me the story three times. She started into it with you, and I couldn't help yawning."
Elegy stopped dancing. "I didn't know you were bored listening to me talk about Kellen," she said. "You could have said something."
"I did say something," I said.
"Oh, when did you do that?"
"Only about seven times. I distinctly remember telling you that I was getting really sick of hearing that story," I said.
Elegy studied her fingernails. "Oh, right. I thought you were joking."
If Elegy hadn't saved my life, I might have hated her. She was ridiculously annoying.
Lizzy tapped her fingers against the bar. "Could I have a glass of wine now, please?"
"Wine?" said Elegy.
Lizzy raised her eyebrows. "Yes. I've saved Shakespeare, and now I'd like some—"
"What?!" I interrupted. "Shakespeare?"
Lizzy and Elegy both turned to me and nodded.
"Someone was trying to kill Shakespeare?" I asked. On the last time mission I was on, someone was trying to kill Hitler.
"No," said Elegy. "Don't be silly." She turned to Lizzy. "I'm sorry. You can't have any wine, because it didn't work."
"Well, then, how did you save him?" I asked Lizzy.
"Weren't you listening?" said Elegy. "She didn't save him. It didn't work."
"What do you mean, it didn't work?" said Lizzy. "I distracted that dolt of a time traveler for over an hour."
"It didn't work," said Elegy, "because he just went back to his own time, found a time portal, went to a different point in Shakespeare's timeline and did it again."
"Did what again?" I asked.
"I do not believe it." Lizzy got up off the bar stool. "That idiot. He's a university professor. He should know better."
"Did what again?" I asked. Again.
"He outed Shakespeare," Elegy told me.
"Outed?" I said.
"Isn't that what they call it during your time?" Elegy said. "Came out of the closet?"
"Out of the..." I trailed off. "No way. Shakespeare was gay?"
"Yep," said Elegy.
"He wasn't gay exactly," said Lizzy. "He was sort of...adventurous."
"He can't have been gay," I said. I was completely floored by this. "I need a drink, Elegy."
"Sure," said Elegy. "Rum runner?"
"Please," I said.
"Wait," said Lizzy. "She gets a drink?"
"She's my sidekick," said Elegy. "Sidekicks get drinks."
I glared at her. "I am not your sidekick."
Lizzy glared at me. "Aren't you the lucky one?"
"Let's get back to the point here," I said. "Which is, 'Shakespeare was gay?'"
Elegy scooped up some ice and began pouring rum and juice over it. "I thought everyone knew by your time period. They weren't really suppressing it, then, I didn't think."
"I don't believe it," I said.
"Well, he wasn't really gay," said Lizzy.
"Please," said Elegy. She poured my rum runner into a metal shaker glass and then back into my glass. "That sonnet about the summer's day and the darling buds and whatnot? It's written to a man."
My jaw dropped. "Seriously?"
Elegy topped my drink with an umbrella and handed it to me. "Seriously."
Lizzy eyed my drink. She didn't look happy. "He had affairs with women. He was married. He had three children."
"So he was bisexual?" I said. Did that make it easier to take? I really wasn't sure.
"Oh please," said Elegy. "He was trying to hide his proclivities. He was gay. He was through and through rainbow colored. He was a card-carrying friend of Dorothy."
"Friend of what?" I said.
"If I'm going to have to talk to that professor again, I'm going to need a glass of wine," Lizzy told Elegy. She shot me a glance. "And he did like women."
I sipped at my drink. This was extraordinarily weird. Shakespeare gay? Romeo and Juliet written by a gay guy? Wait a second. I did kind of remember that Romeo had seemed awfully close to that Mercutio dude. "So I don't get it," I said. "If Shakespeare was gay, what's the big deal about outing him?"
"Well," said Elegy, "during Elizabethan England, it wasn't exactly a good idea to be open about such things. Our time traveling friend has made it so that Shakespeare gets put in jail for sodomy and that half of his plays don't get written or performed and that the ones that are already written get burned in a huge bonfire in the center of London."
"Oh," I said. I drank some more of my rum runner. Elegy was very good at mixing drinks. "I guess that's bad."
"Are you kidding?" said Elegy. "Do you have any idea what kind of shape society would be in without Shakespeare?"
"There's the time paradox too," said Lizzy.
Time paradoxes happened because time travelers changed something, and then when it got to be time for them to go back in time to change it, they couldn't, because it didn't need to be changed anymore. That really threw all of time into panic mode. Houses floated and the sky turned funny colors. It was bad news. If Elegy and the volurs didn't fix the paradoxes, then the fabric of time ripped apart. All in all, we were doing very important work in Elegy's time-traveling bar.
"Yes, of course. The time paradox," said Elegy.
"Which I'm not going to fix without wine," said Lizzy. "I can't talk to that professor again if I'm sober. It will drive me insane."
"Maybe," said Elegy, getting a wine glass, "there's a way you could avoid talking to the professor at all." She opened a wine bottle and poured some into the glass.
"And what would that be?"
Elegy took a sip of the wine.
Lizzy threw up her hands in disgust. "You have got to be kidding me."
"I'll give you the wine when we fix the problem, Lizzy," said Elegy. "That's the agreement we worked out, or don't you remember? You're the one who insisted that you didn't get any wine until you were finished with the job. Something about rewards and motivation and—"
"Shut up." Lizzy looked ready to strangle Elegy.
"Anyway," said Elegy, "why don't you just get Shakespeare and bring him back to the bar?"
"Here?" I said, getting excited.
"Sure," said Elegy. "The bar can change appearance so that it looks like something out of the sixteenth century. The bar will translate whatever we say so that we all can understand each other. Why not?"
My eyes lit up. "I'm going to meet Shakespeare?!"
"No," Lizzy said.
"No?" Elegy said.
"No?" I said. I was disappointed. I hadn't gotten to meet Hitler—not that I really wanted to—and I was beginning to be a little annoyed with this whole time traveling thing. Sure, I got to go anywhere in time and space. But it kind of sucked that I never got to leave the bar.
"I know him," said Lizzy, sighing. "Just forget whatever I said about rewards and motivation and give me a goddamned drink, Elegy. This is not shaping up to be a great day."
"Lizzy, you told me never to listen to you whenever you insisted I give you a drink," said Elegy. "And what do you mean, you know him?"
Lizzy stalked across the bar and threw herself down on a couch next to the pool table. "I'm from the 1500s, okay? I witnessed a time paradox, and then I got snapped up to do volur work and fix the time continuum. But before that, I was just a regular serving wench at a tavern in London. And I knew William Shakespeare."
I swiveled around on my bar stool to face her. "Whoa. That's so much cooler than the 1980s."
Elegy took another sip of wine. "You know him? Perfect. Then it will be easy to get him back here, won't it?"
"Oh God," said Lizzy. She rolled over so that her face was buried in the couch cushions. The next thing she said was muffled.
"What was that?" Elegy asked.
Lizzy lifted her head. "I said, 'Fine.'"
"Great," said Elegy. She drank some more wine.
* * *