The Happiest People in the World (9 page)

I
t was after eight o'clock, and Locs didn't know what to do. Matthew might be down at the Lumber Lodge. But she couldn't go into that terrible place, because his wife might be there. He might be at his house or at the baseball game (The first Wednesday in October! she remembered), but she couldn't go to those places, either, for the same reason. And Matthew wasn't in his office at school. She knew that because she'd checked. He wasn't there. He was not anywhere. She didn't want to risk using her cell phone to call his, because if she used her cell phone, then she could be tracked by her cell phone, and right now she knew the people who might be trying to track her. London, she thought. Crystal. Doc.
Capo
. Jesus Christ. His ridiculous nickname and his ridiculous clocks to remind him of the whereabouts of the rest of his ridiculous people. But just because they were ridiculous did not mean she wanted them to know where she was. But what exactly
do
I want? she wondered. What am I
doing
here? But that was a rhetorical question. She was here because she was lonely; she was here because she loved Matthew. She loved Matthew so much that she couldn't stop thinking about him, even after he'd dumped her, even after she'd left Broomeville and joined the CIA just so she could put several thousand miles and several large bodies of water between them. She loved Matthew so much that she'd brought that cartoonist thousands of miles under the ludicrous pretense that this was the best place for him to stay hidden, forever. She loved Matthew so much that she'd convinced herself that Capo would somehow not discover that she'd brought Henrik to Broomeville, even though Capo lived in
that same fucking town
. She loved Matthew so much that she'd convinced herself that if Capo
did
discover that she'd brought Henrik to Broomeville, then Capo would see the enormity of her love for Matthew and would be so moved by that love that he would forgive her for bringing the person she was supposed to be guarding to Broomeville, without his permission, and not kill her, as he had done to other agents who had gone rogue and done things without his permission. She loved Matthew so much that she'd convinced herself that after Capo had forgiven her for going rogue, he and she and Crystal and Doc and London would look after Henrik together, like a family or something, while she simultaneously started a family of her own with Matthew, even though Matthew already had a family and even though Matthew had already shown a pretty clear resistance to leaving his family for Locs, even though he supposedly loved her so much. “Fuck, fuck,” she said to her rental car, which was a dark blue Chevy Cruze or something ridiculous like that. Everything about the car was slightly wrong, in the way of rental cars. The steering wheel, for instance, was too low. It felt like it was practically in her lap. And she couldn't find the knob or lever to raise the thing, either. It was an awful car in which to drive aimlessly around the town you hated, hoping to find the man you'd come so far to see.

And it was snowing, too, because of course it was, because it always snowed. It
was
pretty. But there was always something that ruined it. For instance, the insolence of people who, during or after snowstorms, walk in the road instead of on the sidewalk or the shoulder. There was someone in front of her doing just that. He was practically in the middle of the street, too. And it wasn't even a street; it was Route 356, where you could and wanted to drive fifty-five miles per hour. Yet this bozo was walking pretty much down the center of the road, not anywhere near the shoulder. There was snow in both places: it was calf deep on the shoulder, while it was only shoe high on the road itself. But there was snow, and the cars had to drive on it, and cars were known to sometimes skid on snow, were they not? Was this not common fucking knowledge? Had this guy really weighed his options? Had he examined the two possibilities—getting his shoes and pants a little snowy, a little wet, while walking in relative safety on the side of the road, or keeping his feet somewhat dry while being struck by two thousand pounds of hurtling steel—and chosen the latter? He apparently had. And she knew exactly what this guy was thinking: Oh, I hate it when my pants get all snowy, so I'll take my chances with the road, the cars will move over, they always move over, they have always moved over. God, she hated these people. One of these days, maybe this day, she really would hit someone, and when that happened, she would get out of her car and stand over one of these arrogant bozos who had finally gotten his due, and before she would be able to get a word out, he would say, if he wasn't already dead, I can't believe you actually hit me.

She pulled around this guy, but she did not give him a wide berth, just to see what he would do. Sure enough, he gave her a look that said, Hey, what's your problem, you almost hit me! And only after she'd pulled back into her lane and driven maybe a hundred feet farther did she recognize him as Matthew.

I
t was after eight at night when Henry returned to the Lumber Lodge. The tavern was full now—full of big people and the big sounds they made—but he didn't join them. He was tired. Besides, there'd be time to join them on some other day, at some other hour. Odd: Henry didn't know them but was already thinking of these Broomevillians as family, family being the group of people you look forward to spending more time with later.

Anyway, he waved to Ellen as he skirted the barroom, climbed the stairs to room 24. He turned the key and opened the door. The first thing he noticed was that the room, using the expression his students would teach him in the days and weeks and months and years to come, “smelled like ass.” The walls were painted dark yellow, and nailed to those walls were several faded prints of families being transported through the snow by horse-drawn sleighs. The carpet was yellow like the walls, and there were
NO SMOKING
signs everywhere, even though there were cigarette burn marks and holes in the carpet. The bathroom was visible from the rest of the room; the sink was white, but the porcelain was stained blue under the tap, as though the tap released not water but antifreeze. Henry sat down on the twin bed, which creaked and buckled but did not break. Home, he thought, and then he thought it might be easier to think of room 24 as a home if he turned the lights off. He did that. Then he got into bed, fully clothed, without taking off his contact lenses. Downstairs he could hear the big happy sounds of the big happy people. There was music playing, and the people were shouting to be heard over it, making both the music and the shouting unintelligible. Henry put his hands over his ears, but he could still hear the sounds—of the people and the music, but also of Ellen and Matty and Kurt and his cronies, and of the man on the bus and their singing, and Locs telling him to go to Broomeville, and Ilsa in Aarhus, and his editor in Skagen, and the man who'd burned down Jens's house, and that strange man at the baseball game (Lawrence was his name), who had started talking to Henry in what was probably Swedish, and the people on the television and in the newspapers and on the Internet, talking about Jens's cartoon, his death, whether it meant the end of something (
civilization
,
maybe) or the beginning of something, or whether it meant anything at all—all these sounds and voices and faces gathering around Henry, and he thought, If I were still a cartoonist, I would draw a cartoon of a man in bed with his eyes squeezed shut and his hands pressed over his ears surrounded by faces with their mouths open, little sad or happy or angry lines coming out of their mouths. But Henry wasn't a cartoonist anymore. He was a guidance counselor, and in ten hours he had to get up and find out what it meant to be one.

He pulled the scratchy covers up to his neck and fell into a deep sleep, a sleep so deep that he didn't even hear, three hours later, someone opening his door, didn't sense her standing over him, breathing hard.

G
enerally speaking, to be in love is to be embroiled in an endless internal conflict between world-weariness and stupidity. I am in love, Locs thought, I have been in love before, I have been in love before with the same person, I know that that same person had been in love with me, and yet that love did not work out so well, that love ended up terribly, all love ends up terribly, why deny that all love ends up anything other than terribly, that is what it means to live in the world, it is so wearying to live in the world, this is why the world makes us weary, it makes us weary so that we're too weary to love again, and yet the world also gives us another chance, and now I have another chance to see the person I love, because I still love this person, I still love this person so much, and since I still love this person so much, after everything that has happened between us, that must make this love different from all other loves that ended up terribly, including our own love that ended up terribly, that only
seemed
to end up terribly, because true love never really ends, love, love, love, love renews the world, it changes people, it changes the world, the world gave me the name Lorraine Callahan, but you gave me the nickname Locs, which is a terrible nickname, a nickname I should have loathed, but I loved it because you gave it to me, I loved it because I loved you, because love makes you act out of character, it makes you feel like doing things you never wanted to do before, it makes me feel like doing something ridiculously domestic, like tidying up this rental car, like it's a home or something, please forgive the mess, my love, here, sit down, but first let me take this notebook off the passenger seat of my Chevy Cruze, the notebook I lifted from your son, who lifted it from your guidance counselor, a notebook that has, inside, an incriminating cartoon and also an incriminating Danish word, can you believe that that cartoonist could be so stupid, sweetie, to draw this cartoon and write this word in this language, sweetie, you look just as handsome as ever, sweetie, is everything all right, sweetie, why do you have that look on your face, sweetie, I haven't seen you in so long, sweetie, but the last time I saw you, you also had that look on your face, you mean I came all this way just to see this same look on your face, Jesus, I'm so stupid, Jesus, I'm so weary.

“You're wearing my hat,” said Matty. Because that's really what he was. She wanted him to be a Matthew. But he would always be a Matty.

“Do you love me?” Locs asked.

“I really do,” Matty said. “But I just can't.”

Locs didn't listen closely to the rest of it. Matty wasn't really saying anything he hadn't said before. Locs stared out the windshield while Matty talked. It was still snowing. The snow made everything seem out of time; it was night, but as long as it was snowing like this, would the day look much different?

“I know this hurts,” Matty said. “But I also know that everything is going to be just fine.”

Locs was suddenly paying attention. “What did you just say?” she asked, and Matty repeated what he'd just said. Locs knew the words weren't Matty's. She was sure that he'd never said anything like that before in his life. In fact, even when he said, “Everything is going to be just fine,” his voice sounded tragic, like nothing would ever be all right again, like he desperately wanted to be saying something else.

“What did he tell you?” Locs demanded.

Matty didn't even bother to pretend not to know whom she was talking about. “Henry said I knew how to make sure everything would turn out fine.” And then he repeated what he'd already said. “And the only way to make everything turn out fine is to let you go, once and for all. I need to stay with Ellen and Kurt. It's the only right thing to do.”

Henry, Locs thought, hating him even more. “He said that?”

“In so many words.”

Somewhere in the distance, Locs could hear the roar and scrape of a snowplow. A minute earlier she would have wanted to throw herself into the path of that plow. Now she was thinking of throwing someone else.

“Please tell me what you're thinking,” Matty said.

“I'm not thinking anything,” Locs said. In truth, she was thinking that she was going to kill that cartoonist. But that was an imprecise thought: she had actually never killed anyone. This was a common misunderstanding about secret agents: sometimes they protected people from getting killed, and sometimes they got people killed, but rarely did they do the killing themselves. No, Locs would not kill the cartoonist; she'd get someone else to do that for her. She
would
leave him something, though, just a little hint of the huge fucking disaster he'd made for himself. But first, she needed Matty to go away.

“Please just go away,” Locs said. Matty seemed to want to protest. He opened his mouth. But then he closed it, opened the door, said good-bye, I'm sorry, etc., and shut the door. Locs watched him walk away in the rearview. The idiot was walking pretty much in the middle of the road again. A car appeared in the snow and almost hit him. It drove past where Locs was parked, slowed down enough for Locs to see that the car was, like her rental car, a blue Chevy Cruze. The car turned around, drove very slowly past Locs again, and then suddenly sped up. Too suddenly: it fishtailed, spun, ended up stuck bumper-first in a snowbank. Matty didn't seem to notice: he kept walking, head down, while the car spun its wheels and spun its wheels, trying and failing to get out of the snowbank. Please hit him, Locs thought. And also: Please don't. Those mixed feelings were the worst. Love, love: it was never as pure as you needed it to be. That was the good thing about hate. If you hated someone, really hated him, then you could wish him dead and never once worry that you would change your mind about it.

W
hat? Ellen was in his bed. No. That was just a dream. Henry knew it was a dream, because his pants were off, and in reality he'd fallen asleep with his pants on. And in the dream Henry knew his pants were off, not because he'd taken them off in the dream, but because he could feel Ellen's bare legs rubbing against his.

“You took off my pants,” he said in his dream.

“I took off mine first,” she said, not in his dream.

Henry sat up, opened his eyes wide. His dried contact lenses made the room looked crinkly and bleached out, even in the dark. He'd neglected to close the window shades before falling asleep, and could see that it wasn't snowing anymore. “What time is it?”

“A woman without pants is in your bed and you want to know what
time
it is?” Ellen said, and Henry lay back down again. Ellen smelled like cigarettes and dish soap and something else that Henry couldn't identify. Her right leg was touching his left; he could tell that he still had his underwear on, and he wondered whether she had hers on, too. What else? Henry was suddenly desperate to know what he should do with his hands. He placed them on his stomach, but he'd seen corpses in coffins do that. He then tried to reach back and clasp them behind his head, but in doing so, he almost hit Ellen in the head with his left elbow. Finally, Henry did what he'd been wanting to do the whole time anyway: he placed his left hand on Ellen's right thigh, and Ellen put her hand over his and left it there. Henry thought he could feel her thigh vibrating, humming.

“Anyway, it's not even midnight,” Ellen said.

“You're in my bed,” Henry said.

“I decided to close the bar early.”

“I can't believe you are in my bed.”

“Two hours early,” she said. “Do you know what drunk people hate?”

“What?”

“When you close their bar two hours early.”

Henry didn't know what to say to that. He guessed “I'm sorry” wasn't the right thing, especially since he wasn't. I am so happy right now, is what he wanted to say, but he worried that maybe that wasn't the right thing, either. “I'm not a drunk person,” is what he ended up saying, even though that sounded much lamer than either of the other two things.

“I want to have sex with you in a minute,” she said.

“I am so happy right now!” he said, and they both laughed. But then Ellen abruptly stopped laughing.

“Listen,” she said. “I am married to Matty, and after you and I have sex I'll still be married to him. I might still be married to him for a long time; then again, I might not. But either way, I also still might want to have sex with you again.”

Henry didn't say anything to that. He had the sense that Ellen was talking to herself more than to him. So he did what she'd taught him to do. He didn't say anything; he just lay there, frowning, touching Ellen's hand and thigh in the dark.

“I'm just telling you the truth,” Ellen said.

“OK.”

“Don't ever lie to me.”

“I promise,” he said.

“Are you married?”

“I used to be,” Henry said immediately. He did not want Ellen to think he was lying. Besides, was he? Was he still married? What was your marital status if you've been declared dead and your wife knows you've been declared dead and has agreed to act like you're dead, even though she knows you're not? At the very least, he was divorced in spirit—“in spirit” being the small lie people tell themselves in order to get to do the thing they really want to do before getting in big trouble for it later on.

“Please get over here,” Ellen said.

Henry thought he was already over here. “I thought I was already over here,” he said.

“Well, you're not,” she said, and then she rolled over onto his chest and kissed him. Ice skating. That was her smell. The smell of someone who's been out ice-skating—cold air and dried sweat and wool.

“HEY,” ELLEN SAID. THEY
were back to lying side by side in Henry's bed. Ellen hated it when she asked someone a direct question and that person answered, “Well, yes and no.” But had Henry asked her the direct question, Are you happy? her honest answer would have been, Well, yes and no. But he wasn't asking her anything. Maybe he was thinking yes and no, too. “These were on your floor when I came in.”

“When you broke in,” Henry said.

“It's not breaking in if you use a key,” she said. “Besides, I did knock first.” She reached over to the end table, picked up and handed Henry two pieces of paper. On one was his drawing of himself being watched while at Doc's; on the other was
KØKKENBORD
=
COUNTER
. Someone had scratched a big black
X
through Henry in the drawing; the other paper was untouched. Neither page was attached to the notebook.

“Did you draw that?” Ellen asked, and Henry said that he did. “It's pretty good,” she said. “Although apparently you didn't think so.” Henry realized that she thought he hadn't liked the cartoon and had drawn the
X
himself, and he let her think that. “Is that the word you taught Kurt?”

“What's that?”

“I heard Kurt talking to his uncle Lawrence at the baseball game. Something about not remembering a foreign word for ‘counter.' I figured it had something to do with you.”

Kurt. Either Henry had dropped the notebook and Kurt had picked it up, or Kurt had stolen it from him. Either way, it must have been Kurt who had ripped out the pages, Kurt who'd defaced the cartoon with that big black
X,
Kurt who'd slipped the pages under his door. But why? What was Kurt trying to tell him? What had he ever done to Kurt? Besides have sex with his mother, that is. But the
X
had been made before that. Anyway, he would have to keep his eye on Kurt.

“Is that word Swedish?” Ellen asked.

Don't lie to me,
Ellen had told him, and he had promised not to. But then again, he had no idea what the Swedish word for “counter” was. Besides, the languages were pretty similar; everyone always said so. If the Swedish word for “counter” wasn't
køkkenbord,
it was probably something very close. “Yes,” Henry said. “That is Swedish.”

“I probably have to go,” Ellen said.

“Please don't,” Henry said. He meant it. But he knew that Ellen really did have to go, and once she did, he would destroy those pieces of paper. It had probably been very stupid of him to draw that cartoon, and write those words, in the first place. It was exactly the kind of thing Locs had warned him not to do.