Battle of Buttons: Kenzie's Date (Part 5, Kenna Version) (Patreon)

Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/64548439

Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/battle-of-part-2-64785102

Part 3: https://www.patreon.com/posts/battle-of-part-3-67312625

Part 4: https://www.patreon.com/posts/battle-of-date-4-67695714

* * * *

The furniture in Kenna’s dining room has a surreal haze around the edges. With the exception of Antigone and Cassandra’s dog bowls, all the furniture is different—the casual dining set replaced by an antique oak table and chairs with carved lion-paw legs; a French cupboard against the wall displays a collection of faded floral teacups.

The chandelier gleams above a formal setting for five. There’s no rhyme or reason to the food within the serving dishes: the largest is filled with macaroni and cheese; the others all contain assorted Polish pastries (jam-filled donuts, sour apple tarts, sugar-dusted angle wings, and more).

Nick’s Voice, longingly: Those kolaczki . . . so immaculately flakey. What filling is that? Blueberry?

Kent’s Voice: Poppy seed.

Nick moans.

Thalia’s Voice: Looking at the offerings, it’s not exactly a balanced diet.

Kent’s Voice: It’s all my favorites.

Thalia’s Voice: Since when do you like sweets?

Kent’s Voice: From my grandparents’ bakery.

Gil’s Voice: If you all would kindly fall silent, I haven’t yet introduced this latest date of my Truest Love Quest.

Thalia’s Voice: For what audience? I’m pretty sure we all know why we’re here.

Sally’s Voice: To prove that I’m El’s perfect match.

Ferro’s Voice: Toot-toot goes the little engine’s own horn.

Sally’s Voice: I’m just calling it like it is. And don’t call me little.

Thalia’s Voice: Like you see it, at least. And you are little. Adorably so.

Sally’s Voice: Drop dead, Glitch.

Nick’s Voice: Hey, uh, Kenna? I don’t suppose you kept your grandparents’ recipes?

Kent’s Voice: I did.

Nick’s Voice: Fantastic! Would you mind if—

Ambrose’s Voice: This is ludicrous.

Ambrosia’s Voice: Agreed.

Gil’s Voice: That’s quite enough from you, my darling Instructor Spoilsport, or it’s back to the cage.

The following heavy silence is broken by Nick’s beleaguered sigh.

Nick’s Voice: Stop being an overaggressive asshole, Kim. Dream or not, it’s should be obvious by now that you can’t simply shoot Gil.

Ambrose/Ambrosia’s Voices: Watch me.

There’s a click as two gun’s safeties are simultaneously turned off.

Gray’s Voice: I swear to . . .

Gil’s Voice: To me?

Gray’s Voice: Kims, put down the guns. Nick, stop baiting them. Gil, you were saying?

Gil’s Voice, imitating a sportscaster:Special thanks to my Current Favorite Contestant, frontrunner Grayson Black. As I stated just before the unscheduled break . . . this is Kenna’s turn to really prove her case as Button’s canon soul mate. Her request for tonight was unorthodox, and wouldn’t have been tried by a lesser player of the Game. But as host and also sole producer of this competition, I’m magnanimously allowing it. Besides, Hades owes me a favor.

The sound of fingers snapping echoes like a cymbal’s crash. Three of the five empty seats around the dining table are now suddenly filled with motionless occupants:

A man in his seventies with snow-white hair resembles an aged (and significantly shorter) Tobias Zarneki. His arms are muscled—baker’s arms—but his middle is soft, his belly straining against the buttons of an overly starched dress shirt. Over his head, in golden cursive is the name “Jakub Zarneki.”

Besides him sits a woman of the similar age, her French-tip manicure resting on of his hand atop the table. She’s several inches taller than the man, her build narrow and angular. Her bottle-blonde curls peek out from beneath a knit purple cap. Above her cap, in the same golden script, hovers the name “Celina Zarneki.”

Across from Kenna’s grandparents, a woman in her early thirties is paused mid-laugh. She wears a bright yellow sundress, her thick brown hair tied up in a half-fallen bun. She’s beautiful, her expression exuding warmth and merriment despite being frozen in place. The name above her reads “Maria Santos-Zarneki.”

Thalia’s Voice, softly: You okay?

Kent’s Voice: Yeah.

Ferro’s Voice: It can’t be easy to see them again.

Kent’s Voice: Kenna and I wanted this.

A doorbell rings, and the three members of the Zarneki clan come (back) to life. The gold script above their heads fade, until the scene looks . . . almost . . . real.

Celina: Oh! That’s them.

Celina reaches into her pocket and draws out an Estee Lauder lipstick, which she then reapplies to lips. She looks at her husband expectantly.

Jakub: As beautiful as always, pączusiu.

Maria rises and heads to the door, her smile widening with every step. She opens the door.

Kenna and Button stand at the threshold: Button carries a small ceramic planter, their face obscured by its blossoming orchids growing. Kenna holds a gift bag, which she immediately drops in order to tightly embrace her mother.

Maria: I’ve missed you.

Kenna doesn’t release her mother, even as the hug’s duration stretches awkwardly long.

Kenna: I miss you, too.

Maria laughs and gently extricates herself from her daughter’s embrace.

Maria: It’s only been a week, you goose. Aren’t you going to introduce us to your guest?

Celina and Jakub walk to the door. Jakub’s smile is even wider than Maria’s, Celina limits herself to a politely friendly grin to avoid getting lipstick on her teeth.

Celina: And where’s my hug?

Kenna: Of course, Babcia.

Kenna hugs her grandmother almost as tightly as her mother. Celina smiles wide, mauve lipstick smearing her prominent front teeth.

Jakub addresses Button.

Jakub: So, you’re the one who my granddaughter can’t stop talking about!

Button: Guilty as charged, sir.

Jakub: Please, call me Jake! “Sir” is my son.

Jakub laughs heartily at his own joke, and Maria fondly rolls her eyes.

Maria: My husband couldn’t make it tonight, unfortunately.

She waggles a finger at Button before they can speak.

Maria: And I’ll hear none of this “Mrs. Santos” or “ma’am” business, either! You’ll call me Maria and one day, hopefully, Mom.

Kenna’s pale cheeks flush red. Maria giggles.

Maria: Now I’ve embarrassed your girlfriend.

Button: It’s good to keep her on her toes.

Maria, to Kenna: I like this one.

Kenna: Me too.

Button hands Maria the orchids.

Button: These are for you.

Maria: My absolute favorites!

Button bends down and pick up the gift bag that Kenna dropped earlier to hug her mother, passing it to Celina with an apologetic smile.

Button: And these are for you and Mr. Zar—um, Jake. I hope they didn’t get crushed.

Celina opens the bag and pulls out a tuppaware of homemade cookies.

Button: They’re chocolate chip. I asked Kenna what I should bring, and she said—

Celina, giving Button a half-hug: She told you to bring baked goods, because no one ever bakes for bakers.

Nick’s Voice: See, that’s what I’m always telling people!

Sally’s Voice: Maybe more people would bake for you if you didn’t criticize their work like you were a judge on the Food Network.

Nick’s Voice: I do not.

Gray’s Voice: You do.

Ferro’s Voice: Shut it. You three are ruining Kenzie’s moment.

Unable to hear the external commentary, the Zarneki clan and Button return to the dining room table. Kenna serves Button one of everything on the table, explaining in a low voice what each pastry is called and made from while Button fields off overly personal questions from her grandparents.

Maria urges Jakub and Celina to “save their interrogation until after dessert.” All act oblivious to the fact that this dinner is nothing BUT dessert (minus the mac and cheese).

Button regales Kenna’s family with the details of their very first encounter and the misunderstandings that occurred immediately after—their shared laughter fades to the background as the disembodied voices of the judging panel converse.

John’s Voice: Should we be watching this? I realize it’s a competition of sort, but this feels . . .

Hope’s Voice, shaking: Personal.

Nick’s Voice: Plus, it’s making me hungry.

Kent’s Voice: Gil said the date could be anything. I wanted to introduce them to my family.

Hope’s Voice: That’s incredibly sweet, Kent.

Ferro’s Voice: Besides, look how well Button fits in!

Thalia’s Voice: It’s like they were always meant to be a Zarneki.

John’s Voice: Except the only Zarneki still alive, at least in my reality, isn’t at the dinner table.

A terse silence follows.

Gil speaks up in an attempt to alleviate the tense mood. In a serious misjudgment of atmosphere, he’s decided to retain his sportscaster voice.

Gil’s Voice: Well, I for one am ready to declare Taliaferro and Kenzie’s friendship the true OTP. Glitch just went to bat for the opposing team!

Kent’s Voice: It’s still Button’s decision. Not yours.

Gil’s Voice: About that . . .

He’s interrupted by Jakub’s seal-like bark of laughter.

Jakub: A towel? That’s truly all?

Celina, scolding: We raised you better than that!

Kenna: Sorry, Babcia.

Maria: Well, it worked out in the end, didn’t it? You know, it actually reminds me of how Kenna’s father and I first met.

Kent’s Voice: Oh.

Thalia’s Voice: Oh?

Kent’s Voice: Kenna and I disagreed about whether to bring him in. Kenna went ahead.

Ferro’s Voice: How can you disagree with yourself?

Kent’s Voice: Easily, when it comes to my father.

The doorbell rings again. Maria leaves and returns to the table with a Tobias Zarneki. But this Tobias is different—at least a decade younger than the current Mayor, the silver streaks in his hair still soot black.

Jakub rises and throws his arms around his son.

Jakub: Toby! Maria said you couldn’t make it.

Tobias winces at the nickname.

Tobias: I do try to make time for my family, you know. But I have responsibilities at Mirrortech, and I can’t—

Celina, placatingly: We know, Toby. We know. Sit down.

Tobias sits down next to Maria, who scoots her chair over closer to his as Jakub fills his plate with pastries and cheesy macaroni.

Maria: I was just telling the kids how we met.

Tobias: Surely that’s not necessary.

Maria, impishly: Oh, but I think it is.

Tobias’s wince becomes more pained, but his expression softens as he takes in his wife’s enthusiasm.

Tobias: What you need to understand, Kenna, is that your mother is prone to exaggeration.

Maria: No, Kenna. What you need to understand is that your father is forgetful.

Tobias: I remember you promising never to tell our daughter how we met.

Kent’s Voice: My grandfather told me this after my mother’s funeral; he was trying to make me understand that my father wasn’t always so . . .

Thalia’s Voice: Dead inside?

Ferro’s Voice: Evil?

Kent’s Voice: Cold.

Maria leans across the dining table conspiratorially.

Maria: Tobias didn’t always enjoy wearing a suit the way he does now. In fact, he was once a lot like Kenna, with three pairs of jeans and ten of the same T-shirt. It’s only recently that he became an old fuddy-duddy.

Tobias: It’s about creating the proper expectation. No one will take Mirrortech seriously if their CFO wears flipflops to meetings.

Kenna: You wore flipflops?

Tobias: That’s not the point.

Maria: Your father was a beach bum.

Tobias: “Bum” might be overstating things. I enjoyed surfing.

Button: You two met at the beach?

Jakub laughs his harbor seal bark once again. Celina dabs a linen napkin to her lips, using it to hide her smile.

Jakub: Not exactly. They met—

Tobias: Dad.

Maria: We met at a wet t-shirt competition.

Kenna chokes mid-sip of water, forcing Button to pat her back until she stops coughing.

Maria, waggling her eyebrows: Tobias won first place.

Kenna: Dad was participating?

Maria: Yup. Your tie-wearing, lip-too-stiff-to-smile father won the grand prize in a wet t-shirt competition at Joe’s Beach Bar in Orlando, Florida.

Tobias: It was spring break. I was on vacation with a few of my fraternity brothers. We . . . had a few too many celebratory shots.

Button: Did you enter the competition as well, Maria?

Maria, laughing: Oh, heaven’s no! My mother would’ve flayed me alive and called for an exorcist if I behaved that way in the same city as her church—my family’s Catholic.

Jakub: As are we!

Celina’s snort succinctly dismisses his claim.

Jakub: We’re Catholic on Easter and Christmas.

Maria: I was working at Joe’s as a waitress, and was tasked with the honor of crowning the winner with a wreath of day-old onion rings.

Kenna: How . . . romantic.

Jakub, chuckling: I still can’t believe that Toby won a wet tee-shirt contest. He wore turtlenecks as a kid because he was embarrassed by his thin neck, did you know that?

Celina: I never quite understood how he won.

She pats Tobias’s arm condescendingly.

Celina: Not that you weren’t dashing back when you were twenty-two, dear.

Tobias: Mom.

Celina: It’s just, you do have a rather thin neck.

Maria: There were three bachelorette parties at Joe’s that night. Most cast their votes for Tobias, as did the bartender.

Tobias: Your cousin?

Maria: Raul was bereft when he learned that you were straight. Until he spent the evening talking with you at our engagement party, after which he told me that he’d dodged a bullet and that I needed to be more selective when I eventually chose my second husband.

Maria presses a quick kiss to Tobias’s cheek.

Maria: Lucky for this guy, I have abysmal taste.

She grins at Button.

Maria: Anyhow, that’s how I first met Kenna’s dad. He forgot his wallet at the bar—

Tobias: Like I said, I’d overindulged the night before.

Maria: —and he came back for it the next day. I was working again, and he asked me out. And that, as they say, was that.

Tobias: It most certainly was not. She turned me down.

Maria: I thought you were just another tourist looking for a vacation fling.

Kenna: What did you do after she rejected you?

Tobias: I came back.

Maria: Multiple times.

Tobias: Seven.

Kenna: That sounds like harassment.

Maria: If anything, I was the one harassing him. I gave him a digit of my phone number every time he returned.

Kenna: Which is why it took seven days.

Tobias: And then two more weeks before she agreed to visit me at Yale.

Maria: Boston was cold.

Button: You two dated long-distance?

Maria: Only casually until I got into Northwestern for my graduate degree. Then I found out that Tobias had family in Chicago, and that he had a job lined up with Mirrortech nearby.

Jakub: Toby brought Maria home for dinner. She fell in love with my pomidorowa, and then she fell in love with my son.

Button: Pomidorowa?

Kenna: Tomato soup.

Maria: It was compelling incentive to become a Zarneki.

The conversation shifts to Maria’s favorite Polish dishes, as well as her frequent and failed attempts to get Kenna to eat soups of any kind.

Nick’s Voice: You don’t like soups?

Kent’s Voice: No.

Nick’s Voice: How can someone not like soup? It’s the most inoffensive offering of all food categories.

Kent’s Voice: They’re slimy.

Thalia’s Voice: Kenzie doesn’t do hot foods.

Ferro’s Voice: He has a cat’s tongue.

Jakub shares stories of Kenna as a child, with Celina interrupting to add her own details about Jakub’s own outrageous behavior.

Button asks Kenna’s grandparents questions about their immigration from Poland: Jakub proudly pontificates about the superiority of Chicago to all other cities, while Celina nostalgically reminisces over her birthplace and “best city in the world”, Gdańsk.

Eventually, the family dinner winds to an end, and empty dishes are cleared to the kitchen. Kenna and Button hug Jakub and Celina goodbye before leaving a house which, in this surreal reality, isn’t (yet) Kenna’s.

An edge of anger over . . . something . . . turns Kenna’s eyes flinty as she looks at Tobias, but she eventually give her father a one-armed hug.

Finally, Kenna embraces her mother with the lingering tightness of a child afraid of the dark and unwilling to close the door to their bedroom at night.

Maria, laughing: I’ll see you again next week!

Kenna: . . . Yeah.

Maria, to Button: You’ll come to family dinner as well, won’t you? It’s been so wonderful seeing Kenna settled and happy with someone. And I adore the orchids you brought.

Maria’s smile turns wistful, and she hugs Button.

Maria, to Button: Take care of her for me.

Button: Always.

Kenna and Button head out into the night and towards a familiar black mustang parked in the driveway. Once inside the car, Kenna leans across the cupholder and passionately kisses her partner.

Kenna: Thank you.

Button, breathlessly: For what?

Kenna:  For being you. For giving me tonight. For being perfect.

Button, chuckling: I’m hardly perfect.

Kenna, insistently: You are. To me, you always will be.

Kenna turns the key, and the scene fades to black to the sound of the car engine revving. The scene fades and is replaced by the open-air auditorium and lifted stage, complete with those who observed this latest date.

For a long moment, no one speaks.

Hope: May I give you a hug?

Kent: . . . Yes.

* * * *

Pączusiu = Polish term of affection meaning “little donut”

Babcia = Grandmother