for love and lemons

"Would you fight for me?"

Flora's eyes danced as she regarded the two men whose lives she stepped alongside, never quite as intertwined as they (and even they liked, somewhat joylessly, to step out and around each other).

Not would you fight each other, goodness no, but would you...would you put up a fight, if my nest were threatened? Would you fight to win me, if I had been stolen? Would you fight your own demons, the inner things that plague you, if it were them that sought to keep me away?

Addam's answering swear was fervent, immediate, unquestioned. Of course he would. "If I was the only one," he replied.

But then he remembered Minoth, and the fact that he wasn't, in fact, the only one. Hopefully, anyway. Hopefully not.

"How about together, then? Minoth?"

He rather disliked the question, and the assumptions it imposed, though he could deal with it being implied, as a test of all gauntlets' loyalty. Would you impugn your own peacemaking ideals, if you had any such things, to win a sweeter prize than all that, by far?

A sweeter prize than peace...a dearer secret than salvation. And Flora was, in truth.

"I fight for Addam. I fight for you. My own battles, my own demons...but we all have to have something we're reaching for. So, if you've given me that, then I suppose it's only right I return the favor."

Ah, a nice speech indeed. Flora clapped her hands once, then dusted them off so that her two fine husbands would have no complaint of her cool hands coated in flour as she made to kiss each of them on the cheek.

These were black bean brownies, because she happened to be out of chocolate chips (somebody seemed to like to snack on them, and secret them all away as if he were a mouse, but regardless of which man it was, neither of them were that small nor that mouselike), and it was a funny sort of simile, that just like Minoth, an odd flavor that smacked of cowboys came a-calling in the house of ordinary, plain-conventional sweetness.

If Flora were a baked good, she'd probably be some pastry sold for overpriced tong-selected enjoyment, she did have to admit. She wasn't sure she'd necessarily be a kosher-special dill pickle tart, of particular homemade speciality, but she could dream, and sometimes she did.

Would either Addam or Minoth fight for a slice of pickle pie? Without hesitation or idle question, no, they would not. But they would fight to procure one for her, if they had to. If she asked.

"Why the worry about that now, though?" Addam was pleased to be kissed and even more pleased to be kissed in short succession with Minoth, especially if Minoth tried to snake his head around and steal a kiss on the lips, which he hadn't done this time, but he did wonder if he should be any more inquisitive into Flora's capricious motive.

Maybe baking just made her pensive. Personally, he was doing a crossword puzzle, and Minoth a sudoku. They were working through a single pair of books, swapping every morning and evening so that they could keep up their mutual mental acuity and irritate each other with heckling, if any lack of sharpness should show.

But none of that had anything to do with fighting, or unsubtle requests for declarations of love.

"I suppose I was thinking about idioms, and how 'going to bat' for someone or something really has nothing to do with baseball, anymore."

"Lemons, as in automobiles, never had anything to do with the fruit," Minoth chimed in. "And sucking eggs...don't even bother."

"Well, that's what it means, isn't it?" Now that the purpose had been revealed, Addam found that he greatly enjoyed this intellectual conversation. Some of his favorite puzzles in the book were about idioms and how they could be woven together to test the free association of the human mind.

For public speaking, some abused this as a crutch. Some, like Minoth, could do wild and wicked and wonderful things with wordplay. Always a delight, thought Addam - and even better to enjoy with coffee cake.

Whatever it was, from black bean brownies to sour cream coffee cake with pear streusel and cornbread crumble to chocolate chip cookies with potato chips and green beans hidden inside, Addam appreciated the adventurous palate that he could pretend to have, so long as they avoided spice (and Minoth, who liked jalapeños in his cornbread, could have his own claims to Flora's time, but Addam, as the original paramour, liked to stake precedence in matters such as these).

Lots of parentheticals, recently. Lots of thoughts set aside.

So Addam set his plate aside and motioned for Flora to leave off the potholder gloves and come sit on his lap, in the barstool-height chairs. She went gladly, because she loved him. That's what it means, isn't it? That's what the point of it all is.

Minoth looked a touch cross, to see it, but Addam just shrugged without a shred of guilt and pushed the remaining chunk of his apple fritter Minoth's way. Peace offering, my friend? My dear friend, that is. My dear.

So Minoth shrugged too and polished off the fritter, then moved the empty mixing bowls to the sink and set them in to soak.

"Having your cake and eating it too, my prince?"

"Well, no." Addam smiled at Flora, kissed her cheek, pressed his to hers so that they both could innocently look at Minoth. Oh, and what a nice look it was. "I gave the eating part to you. I just like having her."

Now Minoth snorted. "Really, easy for you to say." But he didn't like employing complaint as tactic to win Flora's attention, so he tried to be patient, he did. He waited, elbows propping him over the counter and gaze mooning somewhere out the window at the yard, until Flora beckoned him closer and grasped his hand to rub circles into with her thumb.

"Not fighting each other, my loves," she said aloud at last. "Just being willing to brave the storm."

"No storm." Minoth pointed with his free hand back out the window where he'd been watching. "All is calm."

"All is calm," Addam repeated, nodding. "Just the way I like it."

The calm satisfaction of being necessary and sufficient for only just each other, three, pervaded all rooms of the heart and mind even faster and more fully than did the aroma of chocolate blooming against and through some measured-by-feel mix of olive and canola oils.

"You know, Flora makes everything well."

Two sets of eyes set upon Minoth.

"Most of all, she makes a nice wife."