Crown Him With Many Crowns

by Mike Mayak

“Drew, will you take that thing off?”

We were sitting in a booth at Los Tacos which was nearly deserted at this time of the afternoon.

Drew adjusted the yellow crown he had perched on his head. It was made of thick wires painted gold and looked more like something a beauty pageant contestant would wear, not a College junior.

“What for?” Drew said with a grin.

God his grin could make me melt.

“It belongs to the Theater Department,” I said. “They’ll miss it. They’ll…”

“What?” Drew said. “Clap me in irons and throw me in the bloody tower?”

“No, but they could expel you or call the cops.” I said.

“Why?” Drew said. “We’re supposed to promote the show and what better way than to show off the costumes?”

“Yeah,” I said glumly. “It’s not like we need any more publicity.”

The Colleges spring production had made the local news because we were doing Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a play that probably was mostly written by somebody else and so our director had turned around and re-written the whole thing. Drew was working on the tech crew. So was I and I was covering a couple of bit parts.

Someone suggested calling it “Henry IX.”

“You should have worn those purple pantaloons and that hat with the feather in it, Kip!” Drew said.

“That would attract attention all right,” I said. “Look, you’re not supposed to take school property off-campus without…”

“Who’s off-campus?” Drew said with a shrug. “Last time I looked Los Tacos is still in a corner of a campus parking lot.”

I sat there and blinked like a character in an old Warner Brothers cartoon.

“Oh, yeah.” I said. “Right.”

“Anyway,” Drew said munching on his taco salad. “Do you want to, you know, go out this weekend? On like, a date?”

I smiled. Usually Drew was pretty forceful and fearless. But when it came to asking a guy out…

“Hey, we’re busy working on the play this semester.” I said. “That’s kind of like a perpetual date, isn’t it?”

Drew grinned and nodded.

“You know, even with Valentine’s Day right around the corner you’re still a sweet, funny, infuriating year-round Valentine’s Day card.” I said, leaning in to kiss Drew over the table.

We held the kiss for a moment.

“Uh, Kip…” Drew said.

“Yeah?” I said, looking dreamily into Drew’s eyes.

“You’ve got your elbow in my salad…”

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the February Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Romance, set in a Mexican Restaurant including a Crown from a Theater Prop Room.

Enjoy! See you next month! ——mike