Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“Yes,” she said. “How?”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

“He called you Matthew.”

“That is my name.”

“Almost no one calls you Matthew.”

“My mother sometimes called me Matthew.”

“You didn’t cheat on me with your mother.”

Matty paused again. He might make a joke about how all men cheat on their wives with their mothers and how he learned that in his first-year seminar on Greek mythology or Freud or something at Cornell. And if he did that, Ellen would finally leave him. Or he might ask her whether she was by herself. And then she might also leave him. But maybe not. Because this was what it meant to be a junior-senior high school principal in a place like Broomeville. You had to be sure no one was listening to you and your wife talk about things that everyone already half knew about already.

“Are you by yourself?”

Ellen turned and looked at Kurt’s cronies. They were oblivious to everything but their bowls of soup. They were already on their third. “Yes,” she said. “I’m by myself.”

“Where’s the Swedish guidance counselor?”

“He was hungry,” Ellen said. “I sent him across the street to get something to eat at Doc’s.”

“Couldn’t he have eaten something in the bar?”

“No, we don’t officially open until five,” Ellen said, as though Matty didn’t know that. And as though Matty also didn’t know that Ellen often opened the bar earlier than its official opening time. To feed soup to their son and his cronies, for instance. Henry could have eaten some of that soup. There was no need to send him across the street to Doc’s. But it was weird: She knew she was going to have this conversation with Matty. And she did not want Henry around to hear it. She did not want Henry to hear her being the shrewish, paranoid, needy, get-over-it-already wife talking to the husband who had cheated on her many years ago with that strange woman who was always walking around with binoculars in her hands and a scowl on her face. You swore you’d never see her again. I haven’t seen her again; I don’t even know where she is. You promise? I promise. Then why do I have a bad feeling that you’re seeing her again? This was some of what Henry would have heard, had he stayed in the bar. And why shouldn’t Henry hear it? Who was he to her? He was nothing to her; he was only Matty’s new guidance counselor. Nevertheless, Ellen did not want Henry to hear her saying any of this. She did not even want to hear herself saying any of this.

“Is there anything you need to tell me?” she asked.

“Yes,” Matty said. “I need to tell you to please bring the new guidance counselor with you when you come to the baseball game.”

Mr. . ,” the voice started to say. Then it caught itself and said, “Capo?” The connection was scratchy, the voice teary. Capo remembered this about him. Even as a student, he had always wanted to do the right thing, had always been ready to cry at the first thought that maybe he hadn’t done the right thing.

“London?” Capo said. “Why aren’t you in London? Where are you?”

“Canada,” the voice said. Between sobs he told Capo the story, and when he was done, Capo asked him go through the whole thing again. “But this time without the pitiful sniffling.”

“I’m trying, ” London said. He sucked in a wet breath and then told the story again. Capo listened. How could I have known something like this was going to happen? he thought. And also: I should have known something like this was going to happen. When the story was over, London said, “She called me in London and said to fly to Kennedy, then meet her at Port Authority. I had to do it,” he said. “She’s my superior.”

“And I, hers.”

“She said it was your idea in the first place,” London said. When Capo didn’t respond to this, London asked, “What should I do now?”

“You should come home,” Capo said. He hung up, then dialed again. He heard the voice say, “Doc’s,” in a tone that made it clear that she was really saying, What the hell do you want?

“Manners,” Capo said.

“What the hell do you want?”

“Put London back on the wall,” he told her.

“That all?” she said.

“No,” he said. “Take Berlin down after you put London up.” Then he told her why. When Capo was done with his story, Crystal laughed. That abrupt, barking smoker’s laugh. Except she had never smoked. This was why she was such a good agent. She was so clearly one kind of person that it would never occur to anyone that she was actually another kind of person entirely. “You knew something like this was going to happen,” Crystal said, and then she hung up.

They took turns trying to say the word.

“Cock-en-BOARD-en-gord,” Kevin said.

“Crack-er-GOS-borg-en,” Tyler said.

“Come on,” Kurt said. “Stop adding syllables.” He was taking the pronunciation of the word seriously. Then again, it’s possible that his cronies were taking it seriously, too. “It’s KOOK-en-boord,” he said, saying the word very deliberately and giving it too many long o ’s but coming somewhat close regardless.

The word they were trying to pronounce was køkkenbord . It was written on the pad of paper Kurt had taken from Henry’s pocket. Next to that word was an equal sign, and on the other side of the equal sign was the word counter .

“But what’s it mean?” Tyler said.

“Idiot,” Kevin said. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s probably just a made-up word.”

“Counter,” Kurt said, still studying the word. They were standing in the parking lot between the Lodge and the Stewart’s. There were many signs emphatically warning would-be parkers that the lot was not for patrons of either the Lumber Lodge or Stewart’s convenience store and gas station, and that violators would be towed. But the signs didn’t also say who was allowed to park there. In any case, the boys were standing right in the entrance to the lot, huddled around the pad, which Kurt was holding. “It means ‘counter,’ ” he said. He then flipped the page. On the next page there were no words, just a pencil drawing of a man hunched over the counter, pencil in his right hand and poised above a pad of paper. An empty plate and coffee cup were off to the left side. Farther off to the left was the LES DESSERTS cooler; farther to the right were those clocks. And in the foreground was the front door, open, and to the left of that the window, and in the window was the very top of someone’s head: hair, eyebrows, eyes peering over the sill. No nose. The eyes were enormous. They occupied almost the entirety of the face.

“Who’s that supposed to be?” Kevin asked.

“Me,” Kurt said.

“It doesn’t look like you,” Tyler said.

“No,” Kurt said. Because it didn’t. His real eyes were actually on the smallish side. But that was definitely Kurt in the drawing. It was incredible. The old guidance counselor had known Kurt for years and had never given him any useful advice, except for telling him that he was going to be late for his next class. And even that she usually got wrong. But somehow this new guidance counselor, in just a few minutes of being in Kurt’s general vicinity, had managed to see into Kurt’s soul, or essence, or whatever. Kurt felt something running up and down his spine. “But it’s definitely me.”

“Excuse me!” This was from a woman. She was trying to pull into the parking lot. Her head was out the car window. She had black hair peeking out underneath a baseball hat like the one his father often wore — a red hat bearing a white C —and her mirrored sunglasses were the large kind that seemed designed to swallow the whole face. They dominated the woman’s face like Kurt’s eyes in the drawing had dominated his. “Excuse me!” she yelled again. And then, before they could excuse her, or not, they hadn’t yet made up their minds, she hit the horn! She hit the fucking horn! The unbelievable arrogance of people and their fucking car horns! Which always caused the opposite of the intended reaction.