Diversion

Sounds Like A Plan

Monday morning

Rita looks in the full length mirror in her room. She tugs on the jacket, plucks at her hair and then exhales. "You can do this." Picking up the satchel by the door she goes downstairs and into the kitchen.

Cookie looks at her consideringly. "You look good."

"Thanks. I'm too nervous to eat."

"Have some toast at least." Cookie pops some into the toaster. "It'll give your stomach something to chew on besides you. I don't think passing out from low blood sugar is the impression you want to make."

"True. All true." Rita pulls up a stool at the breakfast bar and drops the satchel to the floor. The toast pops up.

Cookie butters it while it's still hot and passes it to Rita. "So what's the plan?"

"First stop the courthouse. Hand out a few business cards." Rita reaches down to her satchel and pulls out a card case. She hands one to Cookie. "I had them made up after Alexis and Dara agreed I'd work there. At the time the attorney at law part was just wishful thinking."

"Very professional."

"Talk to the Judges first. Sometimes they make assignments to outside counsel. You know get my name on the available list. I'd make more money hostessing for Johnny but it's a start. Same thing... go over to the Public Defender's office and let them know I'm available. Then head over to the office at L&B to check in with Alexis and Dara see if there is anything I can help them with. If it looks like I'll be sitting on my thumbs then I'll head over to the Ward House and see if there is anything I can do over there. Even if there is no money in it... it will get me in front of the judges as something other than Daddy's little girl."

"You're really worried about that."

"Yeah, I want them to take me seriously."

"Then be good at what you do. Honey, I admit it. They will probably be a little condescending and think you're cute-- little Rita in her navy blue suit. But you have to remember too... these are the same guys who have been over to this house millions of times. They know you have a good brain-- they know you know the law. They've been testing you and arguing with you for years. I think they will expect more from you than some wet behind the ears punk right out of school. You already know all the ins and outs of the building which is half the battle. You know the clerks like to pull their crap on the newbies. The stories your father would tell both of us." Cookie shakes her head.

"Where is Daddy?"

"He has a jury." Cookie replies and that says it all. Whenever JD had a jury empanelled he was at the court house. Jury duty might be the responsibility of the citizens but JD hated making it more onerous than it was. "This one is big. And your dad is in the same spot you are. He's new on the job too. He knows he's good but it's still a different ball park, you know?"

Rita nods. "What are you going to do?"

"Well I thought I'd take his jury some lunch. If they are going to be stuck there it might as well be a memorable experience."

Rita laughs. "Nothing too heavy... if they fall asleep in the afternoon that defeats the purpose." Rita looks down at her empty plate. All that are left are crumbs. "You're sneaky."

"Yes, I am." Cookie comes around the counter and gives Rita's hand a squeeze. "Knock 'em dead. And be home by six. I'll have a pitcher of Daiquiris made."

"Now that sounds like a plan." Rita grabs her satchel and heads out the door.

Ricky groans as he looks as his desk. Temptation calls to him to just dump all those memos right into the round file next to his desk but he resists. His secretary comes in with a large cup of coffee and hands it to him. "You couldn't have taken care of this?" Ricky indicates with a tilt of his head.

"Sure, I could have. And I probably would have tossed the one piece of paper you wanted. Or said sure to some appointment you really wanted to duck. This way it's all on you." The secretary says cheerfully. She stops in the doorway. "Actually I did get rid of about half of it."

"Too many executives with too much time on their hands." Ricky mutters. "You think I can have Em institute a policy. That any memo comes out of their damn bonuses? A hundred bucks per memo... hell a grand." One by one Ricky drops the memos in the trash can. "Who the hell cares if someone uses blue ink or black ink?" There goes one. "Gees self promoting bullshit." And another one. "CYA, CYA." There goes two more.

"Ricky, are you busy?" Em asks from the doorway.

Ricky laughs. "This is why I like being out on the road. Give me charts, give me spread sheets but for heavens sake save me from the fucking memos. No, I'm not busy. I can do this with my eyes closed."

Em brings her own mug of coffee in with her. It's a cutsey thing that the lab guys had given her. It says Boss on it but then there is a lipstick print on it in exactly her signature shade. "Gary Winslow is coming to town. Last time I talked to him he was in about the same shape as you are now."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, he likes the designing but is getting weighed under by the paper. I think he was hinting that he wants me to make him an offer so he can get back to what he really loves doing."

Ricky stops messing with the paper and leans back in his chair. "Oh. Really. How good is this guy?"

Emily turns around showing off her suit. "He makes me look good. Alexis uses him exclusively. Maddy wears a lot of his stuff. He was just starting to break out back when I was modeling. He's pretty much become a household name in the last ten years."

"Should have grabbed him ten years ago. Now he's too rich for our blood. He's got nowhere to go but down. Look at that Martha Stewart... first it was her own show and coffee table books then she started working for Kmart. Now it's Martha who?"

"I think that is what Gary is afraid of. That he's gotten too big. And yeah, women my age are the ones with the disposable incomes. But he wants to hook the kids into him not associate him with their mothers."

Ricky leans in and rests his arms on his desk in the space he's cleared. "So he wants to tie in with you. You take the headaches; he gets his space and what-- access to Deception maybe his name on the next hot fragrance that comes along?"

"We do have some spare bean counters about now-- thanks to you. It's a meeting. That's all it is."

"You're a soft touch, Em. You want to rescue this guy from himself." Ricky shakes his head. "I'll take the meeting but you ought to be finding yourself a designer who is ready to break out not someone who is already tried and tired. If you want a designer I'll find you one and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than this guy."

"Great. It's dinner on Thursday at the mansion. Johnny is cooking. So dress up."

Ricky rolls his eyes. "At least the food will be good."

"There is no excuse for serving your family that preprocessed crap." Cookie instructs the women in front of her. "It's expensive, it's full of chemicals and it's got no flavor. I wouldn't have it in my house. Give me one afternoon a week and a damn good freezer and everyone in the house will have a balanced meal that meets their nutritional needs for the whole week."

"But Mrs. Porter, none of us are trained chefs the way you are and right now a freezer is impossible. A stove is impossible." A young woman complains with just a hint of whine in her voice.

"Honey, if you think it's always going to be that way then you might as well shoot yourself now. This place is about getting back on track not laying on them waiting for the train. Get over here." Cookie calls up a young woman who is just now beginning to show in her second pregnancy. One of the other women in the house is babysitting while Cookie is giving this class and preparing dinner for the house at the same time.

The woman hesitates as she walks into the oversized kitchen. She's already had her ass kicked more times than she'd like to think about. And Mrs. Porter is just scary. Especially after what she'd done to the guy who broke into Ward House to collect his property. "Go over to the fridge and pull out three things. Any three things." Knowing that the woman will do her bidding, Cookie turns back to the rest of the class. "Most of you know that everything in this place is cheap. We've got a lot of mouths to feed here. It's the same stuff you'll get if you're on low income. Government cheese, rice, peanut butter. Tastes like crap but you won't starve."

Rita sneaks into the back of the room. Cookie had started teaching these classes after She and Daddy had gone to the first Ward House award program. It was after they were just married. Cookie hadn't wanted to have anything to do with it. But Daddy had reminded her how important places like the Ward House were and that things could have been a lot easier for her and for Johnny if there had been one around when her she was being used as a punching bag. Since Cookie had never been one to just right a check, she started showing up. First cooking dinners now and then and afterwhile she started teaching when she saw the need was there. Cookie catches her movement and nods. Rita mouths back. "Hey."

The woman brings up chicken, broccoli and tomatoes. "Is this okay?"

"I don't know is it?" Cookie turns to the group who are all avoiding her gaze. Still all too new and too scared to answer her. Especially since the girl who had was the one in the hot seat now. "Rita, tell her if she did alright."

"She did great." Rita smiles at the scared rabbit reassuringly.

"Everyone, this is my stepdaughter, Rita."

"Hey everybody!" Rita smiles and waves.

"Dinner for twenty, Rita. These three ingredients. Tell them what they are having for dinner."

Rita looks around the kitchen. "Do I get the cheese and rice too?"

"Yeah, they are givens." Cookie looks at the women. "Y'all know they will give you cheese and rice coming out your ears. Whatever is surplus."

Rita slides out of her suit jacket and rolls up the sleeves of her white blouse. "Chicken and rice casserole, broccoli with cheese sauce-- 'cause kids will eat any vegetable as long as it is smothered in cheese sauce and tomato quarters kinda on the side. They're fresh and cool and they'll add some color to the plate. Cookie may bitch about the government cheese but it melts up great."

"Show them how it's done, Baby." Cookie steps out of the kitchen and hands her apron to Rita. She takes a seat on the other side of the breakfast bar. The rabbit tries to duck out of the kitchen but is waved back by Cookie. "Un uh. You're on the hook for this one too. Get back in there." Cookie turns to the other women. "My boy started helping me in the kitchen when he was this high. Grating cheese or peeling vegetables. Rita actually started late."

Rita laughs as she starts skinning and deboning the chicken and chopping it into bite sized pieces. "First time I met Cookie, I was ditching school. She grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, tied an apron around me and put me to work scrubbing pots and pans in her son's restaurant. Really disgusting pots and pans. Told me that little girls who ditch had better get used to the view."

"Now she's a lawyer just graduated with honors from Tulane." Cookie says proudly. "She works over at Davis and Jensen the best law firm in Port Charles, hell in New York!"

"And I'm still cleaning pots and pans." Rita laughs. She starts a conversation with her co-cook coordinating their efforts. The woman hands her a restaurant sized pan. Rita pours in some rice and then adds water swishing it around.

"Aren't you going to cook that ahead?" One of the women asks.

"I could." Rita agrees. "I could cook the chicken ahead too. Then layer them together and just reheat it to combine the flavors. But I'm hungry! So I'm just going to throw everything together and let it all cook in the oven." Rita catches the other girl as she is about to throw out the broccoli stems saving just the florets from the top. She takes them from her and peels off the woody outer skin and then juliennes the stems to the sizes of the matchsticks in a confident manner. "For flavor and color." She spreads the broccoli over the slurry of rice and water then the chicken pieces on top of that. Looking around the kitchen she finds what she'd been expecting. Cookie wasn't really into gardening but she always had pots of herbs in whatever kitchen she uses. The others watch her with interest as she sniffs plants and then starts pinching off pieces of them.

"You think they cook that pasta and rice in the hamburger helper first?" Cookie tells the group. "And have you ever checked how much salt is in that stuff? It's a killer. There is enough salt in meat anyway. No need to go overboard. What are you going to use there?" Cookie asks Rita.

"Some rosemary I think. And I'm not as prejudiced against salt as Cookie is." She seasons the pan with a quick flick of salt and pepper then adds the rosemary that she'd minced. Sealing the whole thing up with foil, she slides it into the preheated oven and sets the timer. "Now I'm ready for a cup of coffee. Who is with me?" Her assistant sets a pot of coffee to drip. That's one thing you could say about this place. Thanks to Corinthos/Morgan Coffee they had the best and most expensive selection of coffee in the city.

Everyone gathers around the farm style long kitchen table coffee mugs in front of them. Cookie goes up to the dry erase board and starts doing the math comparing the cost of prepackaged chicken helper and what Rita had done. One of the women leans over to Rita and whispers. "Are you really an attorney?" Rita nods. "Can I talk to you later? Privately?"

"Sure."

JD walks into the house hollering that he is home. Cookie comes out of the kitchen wiping her hands. She can tell already that JD has a headache. "Long winded attorney?"

"Two of them." JD sighs. "What I wouldn't give for one of those timers the appellate courts use." He hangs up his jacket and drops his briefcase on the floor by the closet. "Where is Rita?"

"She is over at Ward House talking to the women over there. She stopped by this afternoon and made supper. Everyone got to talking and all of a sudden there was a line of women who want to consult with her. I finished up what I was doing and headed home."

"Restraining orders, separation papers, divorce papers, child support, child custody." JD starts running off the list.

"Yep, all of that. Along with some petty thievery and name changes. She might not make any money but she sure is going to be getting her face known down at the courthouse."

"Don't be so sure on that one, Cookie. The women she is defending might not have two nickels to rub together but the men they are running from could. She'll collect from them and probably enjoy doing it."

"Nothing more than they deserve." Cookie says coolly. "Go get changed." She changes the subject. "I promised Rita a pitcher of daiquiris when she got home and I have your dinner about ready to throw on the grill. I'll meet you out back." JD nods and heads upstairs.

About thirty minutes later, Cookie and JD are seated at the patio table. There is a pitcher of daiquiris on it and each have a glass in front of them. JD is eating his dinner while Cookie fills him in on what is going on at Ward House. "...So Mary Alice is about ready to move out. She's been able to bank a couple of paychecks and found a nice apartment."

JD nods. "You going to get her a starter kit?" Another thing Cookie did for the women who were moving out of the shelter. Set them up with the bare bones necessities for their kitchen. The kits themselves were rather limited and depressing for the women breaking free, to have not even those basics. More proof of everything they'd abandoned to save their lives. But to make it more homey Cookie also included little pots of herbs along with directions on how to take care of them.

"I'll have it ready by moving day." Cookie agrees.

"You guys kicking me out already?" Rita drops into a chair across from the two of them. She reaches for the pitcher of Daiquiris and pours herself a glass of the frosty beverage.

"Hell No." JD protests. "Baby, you can stay as long as you want. I'm happy to have you home."

"I was just talking about one of the women who is ready to move on from the shelter." Cookie explains. "Getting her a house warming present."

Rita takes a sip and sighs. "Well I don't have to worry about what I'm doing tomorrow. There is a lot of work to be done down there. A lot."

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