21 Smiles

Part 1-1

Part 1

My phone went off before the alarm. Though the makeshift tiny bedroom in my sister’s attic was pitch black, thanks to heavy dark shades on both windows, I could tell the sun was bright that day. A glowing sliver on one side, where my bedmate had already peeked outside, told me so.

“Mmmrrrggghhh.”

Both of us made a similar sound as I rolled over her and blindly grappled for the source of the annoying buzz.

“Get back here.” My grumble turned soft and more appreciative. “I meant the phone, but thank you for brightening my morning.”

Technically, it was almost afternoon, but sloppy wet kisses were always plentiful upon waking, no matter the time. My stubbled cheek and nearly hairless head got quite wet with tongue.

“I love you, too.”

The yawn that came back at me was high pitched and rather pungent.

“Though three minutes with a toothbrush wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

I scratched at my bare gut and noticed my increasingly prominent ribcage. It distracted me from the phone another moment. Maybe my ribs weren’t all that prominent, but there was definitely some tummy rumbling behind a smattering of reddish gold fur.

“Just like yours, huh?”

I’d skipped a meal or two in the past couple of months, now that restaurant freebies were no longer an option. Hunger wasn’t my only diversion, though. Throbbing between my legs begged for attention. Still, I managed to grab the phone with the other hand, before it jumped off the edge of the shiny, pristine nightstand I’d bought just six months earlier.

“What was wrong with your old bedroom furniture from Mom and Dad’s?” my sister had asked me then.

“I’m too old for a twin bed and Batman sheets Santa brought me when I was in fourth grade,” I’d said.

“I still have my Strawberry Shortcake set from the same year, Nero.” My sister had a comeback for everything. “I’ll use them on my daughter’s bed someday.”

“Even though you could already read the Do not remove under penalty of law mattress tag by the time you started middle school?”

Toni was frugal. That was how we’d been raised, not raised so much as forced to live. Long about October of 2018, maybe because of that, a new high limit credit card and a promotion at the TV station where I worked had inspired a spending spree. I’d shopped ‘til I’d almost dropped for that upcoming Christmas, birthdays, and my niece’s high school graduation, even though she hadn’t been born yet. For myself, I’d gotten a bedroom suite, the vehicle of my dreams—a brand spanking new yellow Dodge Ram pickup truck—a cartful of toys for my Great Dane Abby, and the latest, priciest iPhone Apple had to offer a couple years back. My precious 10 was one of the few things I hadn’t sold months later, after ending up over my head in debt.

“Yeah?” I finally answered it.

“Nero?” It was my boss at WTWN, Frasier Bellamy. “You there, Nero?”

Nero Storm…Maybe I should have been a weatherman, but I’d chosen journalism over meteorology. My name did sound kind of cool when signing off on the nightly TV broadcast. “Nero Storm, Westchester County, Channel 9 news.”

“Hello?”

I’d stopped to yawn. “I’m here. What’s up?”

“Not you, apparently.”

My usual shift was evening and nightly news shows, so I tended to sleep in most mornings.

“It’s a beautiful day out there,” Frasier said. “The sun is shining, and it’s finally warm.”

The winter of 2018 and ‘19 had been long and cold, as it usually was in the northeast. Now early April, the temperature had been steadily climbing out of the thirties. Our actual weatherman, John Berry, whose name was not nearly as good for TV news as mine, had promised a big jump into the sixties by midweek.

“Rough night?” Frasier asked.

Truthfully, I’d had several months of rough nights. The days were nothing to write home about, either. “Nah. All’s well. You have a story for me?”

“Happy faces.”

“Happy faces?”

“Smiles.”

Hearing the word brought one to my face.

“Think emojis, Nero. Yellow happy faces. All over town.”

“Like graffiti?” I sat up, grabbed my glasses, and my happy face went away.

“No. That was my first thought, too, when the calls started coming in,” Frasier explained. “But these aren’t spray paint on brick walls, like rotten yet artistic teenagers tagging crap. We’re talking flowers, Nero.”

“Flowers.”

“Yeah, popping right up through the dirt and leftover snow, all bright and yellow and…well…smiling.”

“Like, metaphorically, you mean. Poetically speaking.”

“Have you ever known me to wax poetic?”

“I have not.”

“Like an emoji,” Frasier repeated. “A literal happy face.”

“Not literal.”

“The shape, I mean. Christ, Nero.” My executive producer was easily flustered, especially by me.

“Sorry.”

“I’m no gardener or expert on flora and fauna, but it’s obviously not something that just happened. Mother Nature does some amazing shit.”

I reached up to pull back the shade. “Flower fairies.”

“What, now?”

“Never mind.”

“The arrangement of the plants—the shape—is too precise,” Frasier continued. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and neither have the people who think it could be news. Take a look.”

I got a ping as a few colorful images hit my inbox.

“That’s a smile, all right.” One spread across my face again, but just for a second or so, as I took in the bright mustardy blooms that had, indeed, sprouted in the shape of a happy face against a background of white, brown, and green terrain.

“They’re not wildflowers.”

“No.” That was obvious.

“Daffodils? Tulips?”

I knew they weren’t those, either.

“Crocuses!” Frasier’s revelation came at great volume. “Croci someone said.”

The flowery faces were definitely cheerful and cheesy, cute and happy, but, “This is news?” I asked.

“Today it is,” Frasier said. “A couple of the callers sounded pretty damned excited. One leapt right to aliens, but most seem to be thinking of it as some sort of statement.”

“Hmm.” I swiped through a few selfies of people beside the floral emojis. That was the term I was using, for lack of a better one. The photo subjects all looked happy, too; a few teenagers, an older man, and a loving couple in their twenties, I guessed, holding hands. Those two had laid right down on the no doubt damp ground—on the side of Westchester County’s busiest parkway, no less—to put their beaming faces next to the faces created from flowering plants.

“There’s more than one. Did I mention that already?” Frasier sounded excited, too. “Flower faces have already been spotted north and west of the station, coming up in the dirt behind the guardrails along the shoulders of the main drag. Then, there’s one in the median at the four-way stop here on Church Street.”

Church Street was our Main Street, the local hub of activity, community, and commerce. The TV station was there. My old apartment building was about twenty minutes north, in Mt. Pleasant, my parents’ restaurant close to thirty in another direction, over in New Castle, all by car. On foot, the trek would take more than an hour to each. I’d needed that new truck. Well, I’d needed a vehicle, not necessarily the luxurious one I’d chosen. Now, it took me an hour to get to work driving, since I’d relocated to North Salem. Walking to the station every day would have done me in.

Frasier’s words were still coming at me; parking lot island, supermarket plaza, exit off 684. Truthfully, I’d zoned out, unsure if those were some that had, or if they were only in my mind because of a certain car service experience from back in the fall.

“There’s even a Twitter hashtag.” Frasier definitely said that. “Hashtag Put on a Happy Face is trending locally. People are intrigued. Intrigue means viewers. Viewers mean ratings. Maybe it’s our feel good story of 2019.”

I huffed at that. “Unless whoever planted them gets busted for trespassing and defacing public property.”

“Always looking on the bright side, Nero.”

“Whatever. I have to walk Abby first.” She lifted her head at her name, and I brought mine close for fresh smooches. “Then I’ll hit the shower and get on the road.”

“Carmen’s already on the way in the van.”

Carmen was my coworker, my cameraperson, and also my bestie.

“All the way over here?” A deep hiss escaped me when I tripped on a puddle of sheets too big for my mattress and stubbed my toe on the corner of my twin size bedframe. “Son of a b***h!” The room I slept in now wasn’t big enough for the king-size bed that came with the nightstand. No way was I selling the best sheets I’d ever laid my naked body on, though. The standing wardrobe, dresser, mirror, and second nightstand—I’d figured I deserved to keep at least one—went for way less than I’d wanted. I was able to lower the minimum payment on my Visa after sending Citibank a chunk of cash from that sale, at least. Still, I felt screwed in the end, and not in a good way, like I had in the past when using Craigslist ads.

“Why is Carmen coming to get me?” I asked again, after slipping on yellow boxer briefs from the floor.

“Because there’s a happy face over that way, too.”

“No kidding.”

“Not yours, I’m guessing by the curse words.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I know you’ll put something good together.” Frasier was suddenly solicitous. “It’s the kind of thing we could even take bigger, metropolitan if not national. Quirky…odd…possibly relatable and meaningful, depending on the intent behind it all, you know?”

“And yet you called me instead of WNBC?” I nodded, and Abby led the way out the door and down the stairs.

“Damn straight. My reporter, their airwaves. Could be a steppingstone for you, though. Big leagues.”

Bigger money. That sounded good. Intern, to associate producer, to on air talent, my rise up the WTWN ladder had come rather quickly. I’d pictured myself getting rich on a local newscaster’s salary. A Stephanopoulos, Strahan, Roker, or Anderson Cooper-size paycheck, that was the kind of income I’d need now for real, to get out of the hole I’d dug myself into only six months in on what I actually got paid each week.

“I’m happy where I am, Frase.” That was true, too.

“I know someday you’ll want something more.”

“Maybe someday.”

In nothing but underwear, since I knew I had the house all to myself with my sister at work, I took in a huge gulp of air as soon as I opened the kitchen door out to the big backyard. Despite the rise in temperature, every inch of bare skin and even some covered by stretchy yellow cotton developed goose bumps. Fifty felt better than twenty, but it still wasn’t eighty, so I decided to stay on the porch.

“I just have a feeling this is something people are going to eat up, Nero. Oh, and speaking of eating, I had the best calamari last night at your place. Give my compliments to the chef.”

Summer Storm’s Downtown Bistro wasn’t mine. My paternal grandparents had passed it down to Dad. Born Summer Rossi, when Nonna married aspiring restauranteur Ray Storm, she not only brought in the Italian cuisine but also inspired a much better title for the eatery that would have been called Ray’s Place. Nonna Storm was the one who suggested the Roman monikers with which my sister Antonia and I had been blessed, too. One could argue I might owe my entire television career to her.

As for Frasier, when all I offered back was a grunt, he went back to the flowers. “If it is some sort of statement piece, Nero, and I assume it is, what, why, who?”

“The truth is out there.” I called back to the alien thing.

“Could there be a political agenda to it?”

“If the blooms were red or blue instead of yellow, we might know whether the person who planted them planned on voting Democrat or Republican in nineteen months.”

“That’s why you do what you do, my man. You think outside the box, and your jokes are too lame for stand-up comedy.”

There were no colorful floral crowns poking through recently thawed ground in my own backyard. My sister wasn’t into gardening. The lawn beneath the melting snow was green, though. I looked ahead to the oily scent and humming sound of a gas-powered engine and the smell of fresh cut grass in another couple of weeks.