“Youwon’t be eating it. Tommy will. He canceled a class to come here. Did he tell you? He was taking a theater class at the community college back in Minnesota. Had to withdraw to be here. And with college, you know that means giving up any money paid. Not that money matters much to you guys. Though as young as you all are, I hope you’re well invested.”
Bas began taking things out of the bags. Flour, eggs, sugar—both white and brown—food coloring, butter, vanilla, and lemons.
“I didn’t know,” Dane said quietly. He’d thought Tommy would be the least affected by his problems. Of course he’d been wrong about that too. Couldn’t he do anything right? “I didn’t know he dropped out of school. I never wanted that.” He paused feeling his stomach flip over. It would be nice to give Tommy something. “I don’t know anything about cooking.”
“That’s okay. I got this recipe online. It’s pretty easy. We’re making unicorn poop cookies.”
“What?”
“They are sugar cookies with food coloring in them to make them all rainbow-like. Unicorns are good luck and all that. Supposed to be the embodiment of goodness and purity.” Bas picked up his tablet, tapped the screen, and flipped it so Dane could see. The cookies really did look like a big pile of rainbow poop.
“Looks tasty,” Dane grumbled.
“We shall see, right? Think you can measure for me?” He pulled out a couple of cookie sheets and turned on one of the many ovens. “I got permission to use the kitchen here, but we can’t get too rowdy or they’ll kick me out.” He winked at Dane. “I’m pretty sure the orderlies outside are to make sure I’m not burning the place down.”
Dane got up and moved around the counter to stare at the list of ingredients. Bas plugged in a big mixer and took the mixing bowl out of it, bringing it to the counter for them to fill.
“This is really for Tommy?”
“Sure. We can send some to Ru and Adam too if you’d like. I heard they are only an hour or so away.”
“I don’t want Ru to know I’m here,” Dane said immediately. He didn’t need to mess up anyone else’s life. “He’s happy with that guy. He should be happy.”
“You’re okay with Ru being gay?”
Dane debated that for a minute to two. “Yes.”
“Because it’s hard to tell with him? He doesn’tactgay?”
“Yes.” But it was more than that. “Bad memories,” was all he could add. He leaned over the counter for a minute and Bas talked through a familiar breathing exercise. Like a square, in for one side, turn the corner, out the next side, turn the corner and in, following the mental path in his mind until he could finally catch a breath.
“Better?” Bas asked when Dane was finally breathing again.
“Yes. You’ve had training in this?”
“A little,” Bas agreed. “And planning to go to school for it. PHD and all.”
“You want to fix people,” Dane said quietly.
“I want to teach people the tools they need to fix themselves. Everyone has it in them, but sometimes they need a little push.”
“Even when they are weak?” Dane felt too weak to do anything. And fixing himself seemed impossible.
“Yes,” Bas agreed.
“You won’t tell Ru? Even if we give them cookies?”
“No. We need tell them nothing other than that they are from you. Now, how are you with measuring things?” Bas handed him a stack of measuring cups, and spoons. “I think we’ll do a double batch to start. See how they turn out? I found some nice containers to put them in.” He took a couple plastic buckets out of his bags and then folded up the bags. “Let’s make some magic.”
Two hours later they had a counter full of rainbow piles. The smell was heavenly. Dane watched all the ingredients like a hawk. No way was this guy going to put something into Tommy’s cookies that was bad. He’d even paused when Bas pulled out a lemon, grated it, and squeezed the juice into the batch. Was lemon normal in a cookie? What about the peel? Why would anyone grate that into a batter? But they smelled tasty, lemon-buttery goodness. They looked like unicorn poop, if unicorn poop was indeed a pile of rainbow sugariness in cookie form. Dane felt like he had really accomplished something.
Bas picked up a cooled one and took a bite. He closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to savor the taste with his whole body, leaning against the counter and sighing delightedly.
“So good.”
“Don’t eat them all. Save some for Tommy.” Dane grabbed for one of the empty containers and began to stack the cooled cookies in the bucket. He put them in careful circles until the bucket was full, then shut it. There was more than enough to fill the second whole bucket. “This is a lot of cookies. Enough for Ru and Adam. Maybe Joely. She’s my manager.” Ru wouldn’t think anything weird about getting cookies, right?
“Of course,” Bas agreed.
