Chapter 2
Orlando June 21st 1990
The one thing Katie Creoles was learning in this lifetime was that the informal adverb of "ish" covered a multitude of sins.
She was twenty-nineish, a natural auburn redheadish, 6 foot tallish, decent-lookingish, dating-on-and-offish, just barely making rent for her studio apartmentish, a college dropout to be a stand-up-comedianish, not getting many gigsish, not getting very many laughs when she did have a gig-ish, a recovering alcoholic who just fell off the wagon a week ago after nine years of sobriety hating herself and getting that stupid "first chip"…againish, at least it wasn't drugsish, what the hell's happen to my lifeish, I blame being compared to my perfect twin, lawyer sister Lesleyish, I should really think about getting a cat…or into some therapyish person
In short… she was a mess…ish.
Fresh Prince filled the room in a dim hazy glow from the television along with recorded laughs that went off at all the right times, when handsome Will Smith delivered a punchline. Katie grimaced at it bitterly propped up on one elbow on the futon like a Roman deity realizing that fake laughter was better than no laughter and that she didn't even have that much going for her she pressed the change-channel-up button brutally on the remote in her dangling hand to Carson. With that little shift of movement some leftover gummy snacks rolled from creases of her maroon camisole onto the floor in glowy bear-shaped gelatin clusters. Gusher clusters.
What a crapola week this had turned out to be.
Shit-canned, shit-canned last week from the Chuckle-Hut not even as a comedian (not that it was possible because it was open mike, not that she doubted that if this was cartoon-land management could yank her by the neck with the hook end of a cane off the stage they would) but as a waitress, she couldn't even cut it as a waitress at The Chuckle-Hut! That was also when she fell off the wagon like completely face-planted off the wagon.
One of the busboys (who was too short and too much of a scum-bucket for her to be in his league at all) had offered to buy her a drink to cushion the blow of being laid off from perhaps the easiest job ever. She had meant to say "root beer" but somewhere in translation the "root" was lost…twelve times over, just like when he had made advances at the end of the night she had meant to say "screw you" and that got lost in translation too and got converted into "Screw me and hard"…twice over…ish.
Another toll of just how bad her week was going struck her. that lowlife hadn't even called her, not even for seconds.
Five hours at the unemployment office, three hours at the DMV (which we all know is like 20 years in purgatory) to update her license picture with a hell of a zit on her cheek, an AA meeting where Kathy hogged up all the time talking about her journey of sobriety healing her relationship with her cats, and a parking ticket later and the day was gone.
What really lit a flame under Katie's butt was that all-knowingness that somewhere in Tallahassee Lesley Creoles; lawyer extraordinaire, was having the week of her life! That was always how it was with her and Les. Katie got less, and Les got more.
Oh, Katie is sitting up on her own—Les is crawling. Katie is crawling—Les said her first word. Katie passed her math test—Les got a straight A report card. Katie had a growth spurt—Les got her first training bra. Katie's hamster died—Les' iguana got best in show for a science report. Katie missed a shot on the girls' baseball team—Les got on student council third year in a row. Katie got called to the office today for smoking pot (even though she really was just holding it for a friend)—Les got nominated for homecoming queen. Katie dropped out of college to be the next Dana Carvy (insert eye roll here please)—Les; of course, passed the bar with flying colors.
Now it was; well Katie fell off the wagon and got fired—god only knew what wonderful thing Les had to report to mom at their Sunday brunch. She had made Madam Mayor perhaps? Finally had learned how to walk on fucking water the way God had intended, who knew.
Katie knew how it would go; the way all their monthly brunches would go. Their mom Hannah Creoles would pick a niceish place with an all-you-can-eat-buffet option, somewhere with a windswept patio where if the weather was not too hot and muggy (this was Orlando Florida after all) you could sit outside. And it would all start from the moment they both set foot in the restaurant.
"Jesus Christ Katie, you couldn't have worn something nice?" Les would say in that all too jovial tone that masked to the rest of the world that she wasn't joking at all. Sporting some Ralph Lauren pencil dress or an Armani pantsuit, the best that lawyer money could buy. Then Les would take it upon herself to ruffle the kink-curled auburn hair that was a shade redder than her own straightened hair, and Katie would want to point out that a white maxi skirt and a fitted yellow tank top was what regular people considered "nice" and that she was farther from being underdressed than Les was from being overdressed.
Then they would sit with their mother. Their mother was a good mother—fair, almost too fair. Katie specially remembered their mom's solution to the peanut butter and jelly fiasco in their household during the elementary school years (Katie liked crunchy peanut butter—Les liked creamy. Katie liked Apricot preserves—Les liked strawberry) the solution? The weeks would switch off; one week it'd be the peanut butter Katie liked the next the one that Les liked, same with the jelly. The problem was that their mother could never line up the peanut butter or the jelly where it was matched up. It was either crunchy with strawberry or creamy with apricot and neither girl ended up happy…but, it was fair. And that was how it went at the brunches. Their mother would listen to them, weigh out the good from Les and the negative from Katie and give a lighthearted, fair answer and then move on to idle prattling about their father's work in dentistry, and neither girl would end up with the approval from their mother they so sought. Neither girl would walk away happy.
Their mother would; however, she would touch both twins on the wrist with a sunny smile that made her eyes no more than slits and declare. "Now doesn't this remind you girls of the old days when I would sit you down at the kitchen table after school and we would catch up on each others days and eat PB&Js?"
Unfortunately, that was exactly what it reminded Katie of!
The thought of PB&Js made Katie throw-up-sick now she had so many of them growing up it was ridiculous (and she imagined that was probably the one thing her and Les could agree upon) her fall back now was takeout Chinese food, which her apartment currently smelt of.
"What song did dim sung sing?" she thought wryly as a possible joke for her next act and then heard the crickets in her own head at that one and realized that was probably why she didn't get many laughs.
She was better at quips than actual joke-jokes but unless you were going to see Don Rickles no one paid to get heckled. Besides, heckle the wrong person in an audience and she would have a whammie-bammie lawsuit at her feet probably served to her by her own god damn sister, with her luck.
Besides; she scoffed, she hadn't had dim-sung anyway. Her standard order was Mu Shu Pork with extra plumb sauce and tomato-beef chow main. So much so that the owner of The Dragon Temple (over on the corner of main, kitty-corner from The Chuckle Hut) Jenny (which probably wasn't her real name) would just answer the phone the way an old high school friend would—or so she imagined.
"Dra-gone Temple, this Jenifer how can I halp you?" Jenny's broken English would travel to Katie's ears through the phone conjuring the cherry imagine of Hello Kitty in her mind (probably offset by her My Melody plushy key chain she always had hanging either out of her jeans or overalls pocket) and the sharp smell of a good nail salon somewhere on the east side; a place where you could ask for a feet rub and not be looked at like a crazy person.
"Jen, it's Kay—"
She need say no more…
"Kay, you be here ten minute, order be ready for you!" click.
That satisfying click that Jenny had everything taken care of. Something in her life was easy. Jenny was a shroud business woman in just hanging up on her like that but Katie supposed that it was the way it had to be and after all; for a little six-table hole in the wall it was probably the busiest Chinese restaurant in Orlando…if there were very many. It was the kind of place where the food was stellar and cheap but you probably didn't want to question where the meat was from…or see the kitchen.
But what did that matter? After a day like today…a week like this week, what did it matter as long as it was waiting hot in Styrofoam and a tied plastic bag for her? after all she had seen her mother's own immaculate kitchen and all she ever got out of that was crunchy with strawberry or creamy with apricot peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and fair but disappointing answers.
And that was exactly how it went down on June 21st 1990 after the unemployment office and the DMV and crying into a pillow on her futon watching Fresh Prince of Belair…after looking at the "first chip" and wishing that it could represent something better, she called Dragon Temple and went to go pick it up, first taking a long, hard look in the mirror in the entry hall.
In the mirror she saw that twenty nineish face looking back at her. The one with the pert nose that had a speckling of pinpoint freckles that formed a bridge from one cheek to the other, that nose and ended in explosions of red clusters in the apples of her cheeks which was sometimes mistaken for acne in elementary school and even now. Les had found a decent foundation to cover most of hers, either that or she had them removedish...
the top of Katie's head was cut off by the wooden framed the old mirror which was funny because if she had hung it any higher in the entry hall her guest (if she had any) couldn't have seen themselves at all. Her height had come in real handy on the high school baseball team; coach had always put her in line for a bunt and lickity split steal to first maybe even second. She could get homeruns just by steals and runs:
Mercury, that was her nickname back then.
Mercury. Always "ready Freddie" and hot and smooth like the lead singer of everyone's favorite band Queen. Chewing her bubblegum as she got up to the plate with a stingingly funny quip for the pitcher dancing a Maringa on her tongue. Making the scoreboards rise like a thermometer like on a hot day on the good ol Fourth of July.
She had such a clear sense of identity back then. She was Katie "Mercury" Creoles; outfielder and runner extordanaire. Bruce Springsteen lover, bubblegum chewer and coolish.
But then high school ended.
She frowned, corduroy yellow overalls with a white and yellow polka dot shirt underneath, ridiculous plushy keychain hanging out of the pocket, red kink curls forced into low pigtails on each side of her neck with white scrungies. She thought the look would be catchy for her comedy routine, like Galiger and his hammer and beret but all it really showed was she was going on thirty and didn't know how to dress without her baseball uniform. A cross between the Wendy's mascot and Pippy fucking Longstocking... patheticish.
Her Hello Kitty collection had started with the drinking (freshman year at LECOM School of Dental Medicine), hey some people got tattoos when they were drunk she got collectible children's toys, to each there drunken own, as memorabilia. Beer was okay but Coconut Rum or a good cold Pina Colada was her poison of choice. Nothing with the burning sting of alcohol just the kind that left her with nothing but a numbing hazy blur and a newly purchased Hello Kitty collectable. She could have got rid of them, donated them, but they meant something to Katie that they wouldn't mean to anyone else. They were her own personally acquired "first chips". Be it in stuffed-animal or figurine form. She was a sentimental drunk apparently.
When she didn't get the sports scholarship she had hoped for her dad had automatically sent her off and packing to dental school to be his apprentice, when she found what she had expected (that being in other people's mouths was grody) she got the bright idea to drop out and become a standup comedian (after all she had been funny out on the field, right?
Well, we all know how that was going…
Normally she just tossed the fortune cookie; they were, cheesy and hokey and stupid and impossible to eat. Not worth the bother; but after today she needed a good laugh and maybe a Chinese proverb printed by an American printing company that took nothing to make and a scope other people got and then got hit by cars or maybe choked to death got might do the trick.
She opened it. It was not a clean open (another reason she never bothered with fortune cookies) Katie wasn't one of the lucky few who could break a fortune cookie in half, get the little slip of paper out and be done with it; oh no, for her it always broke in fragmented tannish pieces that migrated deep into the shag maroon carpet in crumbs.
"Fucker." She swore quietly to herself as she now gave herself an excusable reason to breakout the Dirt Devil.
She drew out the tiny slip of paper with an irritating scrape and squinted to read the words.
Be brave, be bold, be forthcoming and the brave, the bold and the forthcoming will follow you.'
She felt a strange connection with this fortune. It wasn't hokey like the others, or so she felt for some odd reason.
Granted, she had never been any of those things (bold, brave and forthcoming)…but something about it. Granted, it also didn't go into depth that a plague would come and wipe out almost the whole cotton-pickin universe and she would be handpicked, yes handpicked by an angel to lead a band of the worlds biggest rejects and misfits to Nebraska like a second Flight into Egypt while said angel went off to play another rousing round of keep-away from the devil's cad of an imp…
Had the fortune cookie said that Katie might have bowed out willingly with the majority of those who got carried off by El Capitán Trips
All Katie knew and really needed to know was things were apparently where they needed to be
And it was okayish…
Except for when she picked up her food from Dragon Temple, Jenny had kinda half sneezed on her hand when she handed over the plastic bag which was kinda groody…thank God for Purell.
Come to think of it, a lot of people had been and looked sickish lately.
Strange.
…ish…
