“Big blue eyes and a beautiful smile?” I ask.
He nods. “Is she your girlfriend?”
“I think so,” I answer honestly.
“Well, she sure seems crazy about you, if that helps. She begged me to do this for her the moment I got off work.”
“Well, thanks,” I say, not sure what else to do. I don’t even want coffee. I mean, it’s time for bed.
I fish for my wallet. “Here, let me give you a tip.”
“No, that isn’t necessary. Your girlfriend paid me a hundred bucks to do this. I didn’t want to do it. I could get fired, and I told her no five times, but man, she was really insistent.”
“A hundred bucks?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yeah, and she said I had to keep on my apron and hat and that I had to give you this exact cup.”
“A hundred bucks?” I ask again.
“Please don’t be mad at me. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. My girlfriend and I even missed our movie for you to get this cup of coffee.” He shakes his head. “And you don’t even want the coffee…I’ll never understand the point of this. Can I go now?”
“Okay, sure. Tell your girlfriend I’m sorry you’re late.”
“It’s all right; she’s okay about it,” he admits. “She thought it was really romantic.”
I smile. “Well then, thank her for me.”
“Can I take this apron off now too?” he asks.
I laugh and realize that it’s the most relieving laugh I’ve had since Sunday.
“Sure, take it off.”
“Well, try to enjoy your coffee. I hope you like it…that’s the most expensive cup of coffee in history, I bet.”
He nods and rushes to his car, pulling off the apron and hat as he goes.
Once I’m inside, I turn off the alarm and flip on the lights. I’m overcome with curiosity.
There has to be more to this than just a cup of coffee.
I move into my dining room and set the cup down. I begin to study it. I never put the sleeves on Brooke’s cups, so I’d have room to draw on them. I carefully remove the lid and gaze inside. Most of the milk foam bubbles have popped and the liquid is a lazy brown. I sniff it and it has the oldish coffee smell from sitting so long, so I snap the lid back on and slowly turn the cup so that I can examine it further. I discover that on the edge of the sleeve she wrote start here.
I lean back in my chair and stare at it some more, delaying what I hope is the big reveal. Finally, I lean forward and carefully wedge the cardboard sleeve down to the bottom of the cup, as gently as a man who slides the panties off his lover.
My heart starts pounding. Sure enough, there’s a message hidden under the sleeve.
She wrote in small letters in the center of the cup:
I loved our sketchbook story so much. And realizing that despite everything, you still love me. It gives me hope.
“Oh, Brooke, after everything I’ve said to you how could you doubt that?” I say out loud.
There I go again, talking to myself like a crazy man. At least I’m a crazy hopeful man at the moment. I look back down at the cup and realize there are dots that lead me further around the cup…
There are things I need to tell you. Will you meet me at the Starbucks in Toluca Lake tomorrow at 4pm?
As much as that first line scares me, at least she’s finally ready to see me. Finally…I almost can’t believe it. Of course I’ll meet her—wild horses couldn’t keep me away.
One more twist of the cup reveals the best part of all.
See you tomorrow. Love, Your B-Girl
Love…my B-Girl.
My eyes instantly well up and I take a deep ragged breath. It feels like the first full breath I’ve taken all week. I cradle the cup in my hand and gently turn it to reread her words again and again.
Tomorrow I will see Brooke. She knows everything now and she still wants to see me.
She still loves me.
When I finally rise to go to bed, I stop in the kitchen, pour out the coffee and carefully rinse out the inside of the cup. I finish by gently patting it dry with paper towels. Before I crawl in bed, I set it on my nightstand so it’s the last thing I look at before I close my eyes to sleep.
It may have been the world’s most expensive cup of coffee, but it was worth every cent.
Animate Me / Chapter Twenty-Nine / Wounded Soldiers
“You needn’t be out there on the edge anymore. You needn’t be alone.” ~Batmanxxviii
Just past seven a.m. I wake up with a start and it takes a moment to remember where I am. The Starbucks cup on my nightstand grounds me, but also reminds me that I dreamed of Brooke.
In the dream, she was trapped in a cartoon and I was trying to get her free. It was like that trippy Aha! Take On Me music video that made an impression on me when I was a kid. I take a deep breath and move closer to the edge of my bed so I can read her words again, to remind me that Brooke isn’t trapped in a cartoon. I’m having coffee with her this afternoon. I smile and run my fingers through my hair.
I ease out of bed and decide to take a run. I may have a meeting with my lawyer to talk about the challenges in the case, but today there’s a reason to feel real hope. I chant my new mantra.
I’m seeing Brooke today.
I’m just tying up my running shoes when Curtis calls.
“Dude, quick! Turn on channel seven!”
I grab the remote and press the buttons. “Why? What’s up?” I ask as I wait for the TV to warm up.
“Do you have it on yet?”
I look and as the screen brightens there’s a cleaning ad on. “It’s just a commercial right now.”
“Yeah that’s right; now turn the sound up and wait!”
I turn up the volume and just moments later the news broadcaster comes on.
Watch out cartoon fans…there’s an uprising in Toon Town! The artists at Sketch Republic are staging a revolt claiming the company’s president, Arnauld Roth, has stolen the personal creative work from a young artist, who was employed there, named Nathan Evans. The company’s headquarters was plastered with angry posters and the company’s public website was hacked with the protestors’ message.
The visual switches from the broadcaster to my monkey illustration with Nick’s verbiage on the homepage of a computer.
I gasp out loud. I can’t believe this is on the damn news.
“Whoa,” I hear Curtis gasp. “That fucking rocks!”
The company’s twitter account was also hacked. For almost twelve hours, tweets were continually sent to the ninety-thousand Sketch Republic followers from a so-called “monkey man” character who tweeted repeated threats to steal their ideas and claim them as his own, while sucking out the souls of his followers.
I can tell the newscaster is fighting back a smile as she reads the copy.
The twitter sabotage may have gone unnoticed longer if a diligent mother hadn’t reported the tweets to Sketch Republic’s parent company after her child was traumatized by the threats. Her lawyer says a lawsuit’s pending.
I fist pump the air victoriously. I mean, I feel sorry for the kid and all, but this is just brilliant. Arnold is getting it from all sides.
Yesterday evening, several local bus bench advertisements were replaced with posters of the same theme and the resourceful rebels also took over one major billboard in Burbank, all within several miles of the Disney, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network Studios.
They switch to the long shot of a billboard on Olive Ave. just past Warner Bros. It appears that the monkey man poster was reformatted in a long rectangle and pieced together in large printed squares. I can’t believe it.