Page 65 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
I jump and yelp at Mike’s words. “Don’t sneak up on me.”
“Sure. Just as soon as you stop staring.”
“Uh-huh. Is that what Sam wanted to talk about?”
“He booked a reading to celebrate SummerFest, but they canceled at the last minute. I’m going to fill in.” Mike reaches behind me and grabs a flower crown, one similar but so much nicer than the tacky thing we left with the florist. He tugs the circlet onto his head. “Is it on straight?”
“Wait.” I adjust it so the price tag is in the back. “What are you reading?”
“A selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.” Mike runs a hand through his hair. “Would you mind staying? Filming a couple for me?”
Heat creeps up my neck. “No, that’s okay.”
“Please.”
My knees literally feel weak. “Okay.”
Mike slips me his phone. “Thanks.” He tugs me by a lacy sleeve to where the chairs are set up. “I think here might be the best shot.”
“Um, which sonnets?” I try to sound casual. I do, but I’m close to falling apart.
“Oh, the chestnuts, for sure, but I was going to read the room a little bit. Why? Do you have a favorite?”
All of them. Because he’s highlighted and annotated all of them. The sloped blue ink. The wit. The intense feeling. “‘So are you to my thoughts as food to life.’ Sonnet 75.”
“‘Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day…’”
“The idea of it, anyway,” I clarify. “You know, the tension of being still so obsessed with a lover even when they are yours. It’s hot, even if the execution is a little tamer than some of the others.”
“Is that a challenge, Bea?”
“What? No!”
But Sam is already introducing Mike to the little assembly. “A local treasure. A classically trained Shakespearean actor. We’re so glad he made time for us today. Michael Benedick.”
“‘Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you,’” Mike says, opening the book. “In honor of summer’s return to our shores, some of Will’s most-loved sonnets. I’ll save his best for last, but I thought I’d start with my neighbor’s new favorite, 75. Hope you enjoy it, Bea.”
It’s a cliché to say you could listen to someone’s voice all day, so I’ll say that I would drive cross-country, zero out my 401(k), and go without all kinds of necessities, forgoing sleep and subsisting off of Peanut M&Ms and flat Diet Cokes to hear Mike read poetry. I’d even go back to practicing law if it was a means of supporting that habit.
It isn’t just his voice—that’s warm and rich, silky like fine Swiss chocolate with the barest scratch of a crackling vinyl record. It’s what he does with the rest of himself. His body becomes a tuning fork, amplifying some of the most beautiful words the English language has ever produced. I see the tension in his shoulders, in the creases that form between his eyes when he reads 75. And when he crests some lines only to pause on specific words—alone,pleasure—I catch some of that same energy, feeling that same thrum deep inside.
I was wrong. I was so wrong about this being a clunky sonnet. It’s hot. A sexy push and pull between sharp and languid sensuality.
Thank goodness I can hide behind Mike’s phone. I can stare at that little screen all I want. It doesn’t matter where he looks. I have a job to do. I’m filming, and if I happen to enjoy how he locks eyes with me through the lens of his phone, it doesn’t matter. He’s supposed to. I am holding the camera, doing a job, so what if I enjoy the heck out of it?
Like any good performer, Mike finishes strong with exactly the sonnet everyone wants to hear on this day celebrating summer. He delivers it like a man who is daydreaming, except I know Mike. He delivers it like a villain daydreaming.
“‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’” The words are languid but also pulsing with an undercurrent of calculating intellect.
I’m still under their spell even when the crowd, which has grown since Mike began, breaks into applause.
“I’m David Jenkins, a local author,” a young man in the audience calls out. “Do you narrate audiobooks?”
“Ababababa,” Sam says, making a cross with his fingers as if warding off evil. “We do not speak of such things here in this palace of the written word.”
The audience laughs.
“I’d kill to have you read mine,” the man continues.
