Free Waking Kate by Sarah Addison Allen

Waking Kate
    Kate was in the kitchen putting ice cubes on a plate of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, two glasses of wine on the counter next to her, when she heard the evening news come on. She usually didn’t like to have the television on in the evenings. She thought it generated a buzz that made the hot air in the house seem hotter somehow. More crowded. Matt thought she was crazy, but it was true. Everything had a presence. Even small things. Even things you took for granted.
    Kate put her fingertips, cool from the ice cubes, to her cheeks as she walked through the kitchen into the living room to look for the television remote. Her long hair was sticking to her neck in thin ropes that looked like tattoos of waves from old maps. She knew Matt liked her hair down, so she kept it down that evening, that special evening when it was going to be just the two of them for the first time in what felt like forever. She hoped he would get there soon, before all her efforts melted away.
    Five years ago, back when Kate’s mother had been in the hospital, Kate remembered walking out of the building, out of the clinical chill and into the oppressive summer heat, and encountering a woman who was standing on the curb, smoking a cigarette. As Kate had waited for a car to pass so she could walk to the parking lot, the woman had commented that she had just moved from Vermont to Atlanta and that she didn’t know how she would survive here without an air conditioner. When Kate had told her that she’d lived in Atlanta her whole life and had gotten by just fine without air-conditioning in her house, the woman seemed appalled. She was a Buckhead lady, no doubt, like Kate’s mother-in-law. Matt had grown up in that rich, cool world, that world where nothing ever melted, but he wanted nothing to do with it now. Not that Kate minded. It wasn’t like she could miss something she’d never had. She often wondered, though, how Matt felt now in the summers, in this steamy little house they lived in, which Kate had inherited when her mother died.
    They had both been nineteen, and Kate had been pregnant, but Matt had still moved in with such ease. Probably because Kate had tried to make it as easy as possible. She was always trying too hard. She knew that. It was starting to weigh on her. Her whole life felt like one long day at work, and lately all she’d wanted to do was fall asleep when she got home in the evenings. She wasn’t sure exactly when it happened, when she had realized that she could only make one of them happy. She only knew that she had chosen him.
    Kate found the remote in the couch cushions where Matt had buried it. She aimed it at the television, but then she stopped. The reporter on screen was saying something about Valentine’s, Atlanta’s oldest men’s clothing store. Apparently it was closing its doors for good that day. After several recorded shots of the store and interviews with the customers and staff, it went to a live shot with a handsome young reporter. He looked as if he was just out of college. Kate probably wasn’t much older than him. She felt older, though, like they were worlds away from each other. The reporter was standing next to a tall, elderly gentleman who was wearing a flawless charcoal-colored suit and a gray tie so soft in color that it almost disappeared. The tie was knotted with precision, like the old man had spent hours getting it perfectly straight. Kate immediately dismissed him as the fussy sort, rich and aloof. Maybe that was why he seemed so familiar to her. He reminded her of her mother-in-law.
    “This is Mr. Reginald Donbeet,” the reporter was saying. “Valentine’s oldest employee. He’s been with the company for sixty-eight years and is something of a local legend. Mr. Donbeet can tie a tie ninety-nine different ways. I’ve asked him for a little demonstration. What knot do you think will look best on me, Mr. Donbeet?”
    The old man sighed, clearly not impressed by the media