Cheers, Somebody

By Katie Lewis

From a former child star trying her best to raise a son with her TV mom as her only example, to an innocuous boy who points out Orion's Belt in the pockmarks on a girl’s upper thighs, and calls them stars, in awe, Cheers, Somebody, a short story collection by Katie Lewis, travels as a houseguest to relationships in flux. The twent

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
• Release date: Sep 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781925417395

Katie Lewis

Katie Lewis grew up in New Zealand and moved to the UK after studying International Business (BCom) and Psychology (BA) at the University of Otago. She soon realised London provided her a fantastic opportunity to work within a buzzing and emerging start-up ecosystem (in 2010). She spent several years at an early-stage VC, then running an Accelerator company through which she has supported 1000s of companies to raise investment in the UK and abroad. She is currently COO at a high growth scaleup, ThisIsAspire.com working with the world's largest organisations to upskill their talent to launch new products/services to drive growth through new business models & routes to market (including partnering with and buying from startups). In 2011 she cofounded 9others, bringing people together in a supportive, trusting environment to give those going through the trials and tribulations of building a business a sense of community and belonging. Katie lives with her husband Nigel, in Kingston Upon Thames, UK where she enjoys Olympic Weight Lifting, reading and gardening.

Book preview

The plume and the pile

The religious draw a distinction between what’s above and what’s below, their earthly actions motivated by where they hope to spend eternity. You hear about top dogs and bottom-feeders, feeling over the moon and underwhelmed. For Collins, that division existed one spring as well. But it wasn’t a rainbow arching up and ambitious zucchini plants spreading their roots out beneath. He saw it as the dissipating dust of shattered humans and heaps of filth powdering buildings. A blowout of crude oil and a sheen that spanned miles.

Nashville was like that in May, but it seemed to him network news saw neither the plume nor the pile, so engulfed were winsome anchors by an oil spill and drenched aviary victims two states to the south. The torrential rain lasted two days, and twenty-one people died in his sweet state, their souls drifting up as volunteers sought missing bodies underneath. Cars left abandoned with ticking radiators clogged neighborhood streets until they were swept away. Front porches sagged then disappeared, tips of their wind chimes tickling the floodwater’s surface. His Titans, his Opry House, his exquisite Schermerhorn Symphony with its Steinways and organs. More than $1 billion in damage accrued as his city sank like Atlantis. The expansive new lake flowed a muddy tan and carried diseases, but dog packs still swam through it with their owners swimming after them, chins pushed up out of the current, their throats sore from the stretch and the scream.

Collins kept quiet about it. The grocery store line and gas station attendant conversations sickened him. This was his city. The others lived here but didn’t know it as he did, couldn’t detect its spark of magic away from Broadway’s honkytonks. Reality shows and tourists alike flocked to the downtown tract as example of the city’s heart, but the truth was the last time Collins went to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge was for a bachelor party, and only then because he was a groomsman. He’d sat in the corner, lips to bottle, until the night faded to rhinestone-studded black. Anyhow, the magic was all underwater now. Instead of a summer that smelt of fresh lumber with Virginia creeper binding the city, Nashvillians would spend their season milking the sun for its healing power, praying it would dry out their homes. The murderous flood wasn’t punishment for cohabitation or skipping church or gays, like the few old, loud, stereotypical Southerners wanted everyone to believe, bless their hearts. It was just rain, and it had rained really hard for a long time, and yes, it was a bad thing that happened, but no one’s fault. He was still mad and wanted vindication for his city, but he didn’t know where to direct the anger.

***

So he registered with Hands On Nashville to find volunteer opportunities and added his name to at least one effort a day while his office building had its insides removed by huge pumps, wet-dry shop vacs and fans. Everywhere smelt of mold and standing water, as his Honda did whenever he risked leaving his windows down on a sunny day that turned to rain. Rain would carry a different potential to him forever more.

It was at one of these Hands On Nashville jobs that he met Stew, like the chunky soup. That’s how Stew introduced himself.

I prefer stew to soup and certainly to the word chunky. Makes me think of vomit, said Collins.

I prefer not to think of vomit, my man, Stew said, handing Collins a pen with which to scrawl his name on a sticker. The slender man sat bent over a folding table, straightening name tags, pens and forms. His rectangular glasses slipped down his nose, and he pushed them back up with a middle finger. Fellow volunteers packed the civic centre’s hallway, waiting their turn to create their name tag and be assigned a task. Those who volunteered solo like Collins stood apart from the small groups of friends and coworkers, changing their sightline every three seconds, narrowing eyes to feign preoccupied interest in motivational posters taped to the cinderblock walls.

There are three areas, and we rotate so you get to do them all. You’ll start by separating the donated food into expired and still-good.

Collins peeled off the red Hello, my name is tag and stuck it to his stomach.

So people gonna have to look at your stomach to learn your name?

That’s the heart of me, Stew. I’m ruled by my stomach.

Stew shook his head and waved Collins off. Get on in that gymnasium and throw away the bad shit, my man. People donating they trash. Next!

They were. There was bright yellow Kraft macaroni and cheese from a dorm-room pantry, expired in February 2010. Dented Green Giant vegetable cans with expirations from the early 2000s. A bag of egg noodles with the month worn off, but the year read 2004. Collins stood below a basketball hoop throwing the old food into a black garbage bag, cursing under his breath with each chuck into the weighted sack. He felt sweat beading atop his head, in the wispy patch. He’d briefly had thick hair in high school, but it had thinned ever since. Collins intentionally dated women shorter than he so they couldn’t spy the bald spot revealing itself on his crown. Once, a girlfriend met him at work for lunch and, sneaking up behind him, rubbed the bald spot like the Buddha’s belly. They hadn’t dated much longer after that.

Don’t be so angry, my man, Stew said, appearing beside Collins after twenty minutes of separating what had first seemed to be mounds of food donated by kind hearts. He watched Collins through brown eyes beneath bare skin where eyebrows usually arch, his forehead stretched taut and shiny. Collins could nearly see the shadow of his reflection in this man’s skin. They don’t know it’s rubbish. They know they not gonna eat it, but they think it might help someone else while they get to get rid of it.

Collins dropped his hands to his sides. Swirling dust motes separated the two men. "Would you eat, what is this, corn muffin mix from November 2007? It’s crap. They’re, they’re not helping. It’s crap." He kicked at the food mound and felt instant embarrassment over his immaturity, then anger about his embarrassment. His speedy cycling of emotions made for difficult explanations to his therapist.

Stew took a step back, laughing. You mad, huh? He slapped a hand down on Collins’s left shoulder. Listen. They trying, and that’s all they can do. This is Belle Meade, son. They not gonna come separate food when they live in Belle Meade. He stuck his long thumbs in front of his chest like he was grasping suspenders, play-acting high and mighty. "They’d send the maid to do it, though. All they know is it’s food, and if somebody hungry enough, somebody gonna eat corn muffin mix from 2006."

Collins shook his head, eyes downcast. 2007.

Yeah, boy, but that don’t rhyme, Stew said over his shoulder as he strolled to the next station, where volunteers divided clothes into piles by gender, then size. A man with a large mouth and the teeth to fit it held up a jumpsuit to himself.

After a while, the volunteers took a lemonade break. The cynic in Collins wanted to scoff at the lost time, but the child in him craved the summertime tartness. Everyone sat with a seat between them and the next person, sipping from blue Solo cups.

OK, everybody, we done here, Stew spoke into a megaphone. Next crew in at 3:30.

His fellow volunteers shuffled out the door as Collins tapped Stew’s shoulder. After he finished scrawling on a clipboard, Stew looked up. What can I do you for, my man?

Stew, it’s only 2:00. We aren’t supposed to be done until 3:00. My shift’s until 3:00.

Stew placed the clipboard and megaphone he’d held in his armpit onto a chair and picked up a lemonade. You always so truthful?

No. Of course. Not always. He shook his head. I don’t know. Why are we leaving? he asked as they walked toward the door together.

You need something stronger than lemonade. There’s a McDonald’s down the street. We getting some afternoon brew, Stew told him.

Collins would rather have had a Shiner, but he was trying to be aware of and truncate his impulses for alcohol. His old therapist thought he had an unhealthy desire to lubricate conversation, but his new therapist hadn’t yet called out the distinction between social and troubled drinking.

***

The two men sat inside to avoid the mugginess that rose from the sidewalks. Stew angled himself sideways so his long legs had more room to stretch. I read that in Chicago or Minneapolis or somewhere, they got the heated sidewalks for the winter. Sometimes when it gets like this, I think the steam heat coming from the sidewalks. You see that reporter try to fry an egg outside? Dumb shit, but still.

They looked out the floor-to-ceiling window next to their booth like at a room-sized archival painting at the Frist, a short piece of tape on the floor a stop sign for the viewer’s toes. Collins thought Stew might talk even when he sat alone. Normally, a verbose character would irritate Collins, and he’d find an excuse to never again encounter the individual, either by blocking the person’s phone number or forever avoiding where they’d met. But Stew didn’t bother him in the least—a pleasant surprise for a naturally ornery person. Being with him felt like a familiar Sunday, the leisurely Southern drawl lulling him. He saw a large front porch with slowly turning ceiling fans, rocking chairs and true sweet tea (sywate tehy), the home of his grandparents, God rest them. Appeasement always took him back to that porch at his grandparents’ feet, with his brother and him waving goodbye to their parents for a summer month. His grandfather would bend down with two lemonades for the boys before he and his wife drank tea in the rocking chairs. Collins and his brother obsessed over the small framed photograph next to the couch. It showed a sun-glassed man on a motorcycle with a black cat on his shoulders. The black and white background looked a blur. Who is this? they’d ask their grandmother, who always shook her head and rolled her eyes with, I can’t, boys.

You wanna talk about it? Stew asked, swirling the cup in tight circles on the table hard enough that the liquid skimmed the rolled rim around the top.

Nope, Collins replied, watching the picture window.

Stew made a show of looking at his black rubber watch. The sun caught the watch’s face and momentarily highlighted his dark freckles. This real fun, my man. I’m glad we doing this.

Aw, what do you want? Collins asked, drinking the coffee he’d diluted with powdered creamer. I’m angry at something, someone, everyone. I’m trying to, you know, channel it in a healthy way. He mimicked his therapist’s voice, though Stew couldn’t know this. I’m pissed off in general, and this just made it worse. The flood, you know.

Yeah, Stew nodded, slipping off the brown cardboard shield around his coffee cup so he could recycle it later. You got a bum end of the deal, my man.

A couple of junior high boys pushed each other to win at opening the door for the girl behind them, who paid them no mind. School was out, Collins deduced. He always had to think—holiday? winter break? vacation?—when he saw kids knocking around on a weekday.

Hell, come on, said Collins, pushing himself up straighter in the molded booth seat where he’d slid down into a slouch. I know. I know I have no room to complain, but still—I want to. So what do you think that means?

Shit, I ain’t your therapist. You need one’s, what I think, but we all angry, Stew said, leaning his head forward and shaking it at Collins. I’m seeing these kids come to the events because they think it’ll make them look good or feel good, and sure, they either work hard or they half-ass it, but when it’s over? They not coming back and helping us. They not volunteering to lay mulch trails at the zoo or clean up brush in Glen Leven cow pastures. They gonna recount the experience to girls and act like ’twasn’t nothing, but inside they know that they volunteered for the wrong reason.

Stew didn’t take other people’s shortcomings personally, though their inadequacies weren’t lost on him, but their faults offended Collins most of the time. The chip on his shoulder grew craterous as he flailed for a foothold.

McDonald’s was busy on Fridays, everyone asking if breakfast was still being served at 2:30 and then acting indignant when offered French fries instead of hash browns. Weren’t they still potatoes in the end? Through his haze of hatred, Collins felt for the kids stuck working behind the counter instead of being outside or eating their own meals. He’d despise customers, too, he was sure. Even as a customer himself, he wasn’t a fan of them.

So why do you do this? Collins asked Stew. That’s a question—what the reason is you’re doing this. He waved his hand at Stew’s body.

All this? Stew waved back. I feel I got something here now. I didn’t graduate high school with a mission like those kids who always knew what they wanted. I had two sisters and a mother with heart disease, and she went on disability my junior year. I could’ve went to college, but I didn’t want to; I woulda wasted four years trying to figure out what I wanted to do or be, so I started working, thinking I’d come across it, and here I am.

Collins danced his empty cup on the table, making a pock-pock-pock noise with the indented bottom’s echo until Stew placed his hand on top of the cup to make it stop.

***

They went for coffee the next day, too, this time at Burger King, after spotting each other across a pile of waterlogged drywall and insulation they were stacking into wet lumps on a lawn.

Seventeen inches of rainfall, Collins said. Seventeen inches—That’s more snow than we get in a year.

Stew wiped a spilt spot of coffee from the table onto his hand then jeans. What’s the difference between rainfall and rain?

Collins shrugged. Same as the difference between thingumajig and whatchamacallit.

So, everything, then.

’Spose.

Stew cleared his throat. "What you do for a living? Or, wait, we’re not supposed to ask that. They want us asking what you like to do, not what you do for a living. We got so many people volunteering that don’t have jobs."

Collins said that he’s a CPA, but he didn’t know what he liked to do. He thought he’d figure that out in the next thirty-five years leading up to retirement. Thirty-five years. A lifetime. His father had given his life to his work instead of his family. Collins’s therapist might point out the gritted anger tied to his overuse of the personal possessive pronoun and the detachment from his father, but then, if there weren’t fathers, there’d be no need for therapists.

Alright, alright, said Stew. You got to have answers, my man, is what I’ve learnt. Even if you don’t believe in them. Take me—I like to fish. At least, that’s what I say. Because it’s an answer to have, to define you to someone. I was in a fishing group during the collegiate years, so I can chit-chat ‘bout it enough to pass.

Collins sneezed and felt a tendon spring in his neck. There went his next couple days of painless living. He’d sleep dead on his back with his hopelessly balding head lodged between two pillows tonight as a homemade remedy, the sweet harbor of bed. I thought you didn’t go to college.

Stew looked at him. Right, high school. Collins, you astute. What’s your name mean?

A one-syllable ha. It was the name of a councilman my parents liked. At craft shows, he sold pieces of balsa wood he’d whittled into flowers and gave the profit to charity. Turns out, he was also a child molester and later died in prison, but they didn’t know that at the time. What an honour for him, right?

My man, we all messed up. You need to find another Collins who’s honourable and say you named after him.

He’d never met another Collins. That was the one thing that didn’t piss him off.

***

The city experienced less looting than one might expect. Maybe the moats kept all criminals trapped on their roofs. The water had risen high enough for storefronts to disappear, and so few people could swim properly, each annual lake season taking victims on its way out. Not a soul had been in his office other than the cleaners, and the stink of sewage dissipated. He couldn’t smell it anymore by Wednesday of the first week back, the beige carpet and grey cubicle walls having been replaced with new office ware. He’d stared at the previous carpet for years, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember its pattern. Something geometric, like triangles inside squares. He pinned new photos of his niece and nephew on his cubicle’s walls, the extent of his nesting.

Hey, Collins, how’s it going? Sheena asked. Collins stood so she wouldn’t notice his thinning hair. He’d been aware of her interest in him for a while, but her greeting always grated him. He didn’t know how to answer a question like that.

It’s going well. Everything OK with your apartment?

Yeah, I’m way up on a hill, a little mountain, she said, inching into his cubicle and leaning against a wall that wobbled. She straightened and crossed her arms. And the second floor, so.

So, he said back.

Sheena had long hair, longer than long hair for a woman, even. It’s as though she’d stopped getting her hair cut because she couldn’t be bothered. The ends tapered to a point and brushed the top of her behind. She wasn’t the type of person to purposefully draw attention to herself, which is why Collins supposed she simply couldn’t be bothered to make a hair appointment. The volume of shampoo she must go through. In the winter, Sheena piled on sweaters for warmth in the office, and the static made strands of her long hair reach out behind her like fingers trying to entice.

Well, nice to have the paid time off at least, right? She tried a smile, and it sort of worked. She was OK, really; he shouldn’t be so hard on her. She combed that hair, had a real job and liked him. And your place—good, dry?

Yeah, you know, I lucked out, he said, tossing the last pushpin onto his keyboard.

I love that area of town, she said of his home. A few months ago, he’d drawn his cross streets and a couple landmarks on a bar napkin. She’d laughed at his not-to-scale rendering and touched his arm. This made him smile, but he’d turned at the bar to talk to a co-worker on his right after that. Good thing it was preserved, out of trouble.

She did this, where she couldn’t land on one word and gave liberty to her mind’s thesaurus to pitch a few options.

Yeah, it is.

They stood nodding at one another,