Page 110 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
Chapter 33
The lights are on in Mike’s kitchen when I get back from my FroggoDoggo clients. I shouldn’t loiter, but Mike is up to his elbows in soapsuds at his kitchen sink and working through new lines. I can’t help myself.
I tap on his door. “Hey, friend.”
He looks up and tosses the dark hair from his eyes, and for a moment, I can pretend that there is a spark there. “Bea, hey.”
“New play?” I slide into a chair at his kitchen table.
“Just a monologue for one of my classes.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Titus Andronicus.” Mike drains the sink and dries his hands. “There’s actually a line in here that made me think of you.” He tosses his book to me. “Run lines with me?”
I smile. “Sure.”
“‘Come, come, our empress, with her sacred wit. To villainy or vengeance consecrate.’”
“‘To villainyandvengeance consecrate,’” I correct as I scan the rest of the monologue. “Why on earth does this remind you of me? This play is about murder and revenge.”
“Because it’s how your mind works.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Not the murder and revenge part.” He joins me at the table. “You argue and poke and prod like Aaron until you find it.”
“Find what?”
Mike smooths my hair away from my face, and I have to remind myself that gestures like these can be friendly. They’re not a symptom of wanting more. “A weakness, a foothold—something to exploit, and then heaven help us all. Beatrice Hero McKinney is going to lawyer us into submission. She’s going to leave her fingerprints all over us, bruising us with her wit, her spite if we deserve it, until we concede…acquiesce.” His lips twitch into half of a smile. “Albeit reluctantly.”
Mike retreats and grabs a canister from above the fridge. “Poor Bea. She never knew it could be another way.”
“Another way?”
“You see the world with the heart of a shriveled, crusty cynic. You browbeat us inferior intellects until we have no choice but to adopt your point of view. Yes, the world is cruel and life is unfair. But tedious though it may be, it can also be sublime. And gentle. It can be healing. It can be raucous and fun. Amazing, even.” Mike opens the fridge and retrieves the bottle of cranberry juice and carton of blackberries, which he rinses in the sink. “I can’t help but ask myself what Beatrice Hero McKinney could do ifshe let someone smooth out her rough edges and breathe new life into her heart.”
Someone? “Are you volunteering?”
“Heck no. I don’t have a fetish for being tortured and eaten alive.” Mike opens the canister. “Burnt chocolate chip cookie?”
The jar contains a plethora of beautiful, golden cookies. “Those aren’t burnt.”
“Who said they were burnt?”
“You did. Just now. When you opened the canister and said, ‘Burnt chocolate chip cookie?’ And earlier when I asked what your favorite cookie is.”
Mike laughs. “I was eight years old when Grandma taught me how to make them. I didn’t understand the nuance of browned butter versus burnt butter. My misnomer stuck. Try one.”
I’m skeptical, but I take a small bite. “Oh my gosh,” I moan around a mouthful of cookie. “Oh my freaking gosh. You made these?”
“You act like I never feed you.”
I try hard not to inhale the two dozen cookies in the glass canister before me. I try hard not to think about what one of these might taste like warm from the oven. “For the sake of argument, let’s say I agree with some of whatever it was you said just now. What if I am cynical? Stuck, not because of choice, but because I was pushed to the edge of a very unstable cliff. There are entire houses in La Jolla that slid down cliffs in the last El Niño. Others teetered on the edge. I’m one of those houses teetering on the edge.” Depending on who you talk to, I already face-planted in the mud. “What does a person do to unstuck herself?”
Mike closes the lid of the canister and rests his elbow on top of it. “You lean into your known resources. You spend time doing the things you value most in this world.”
“I don’t know what I value most.”
