Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“That’s what I was going to ask Henry. Me, I’d never seen him before.”

“He was a stranger?”

Ronald nodded. “A mysterious one,” he said, and then he looked around the bar again as though just realizing he was in one. “Hey, I could use a drink. You open yet?”

Matty was in his office, taking off his ad hoc umpire’s gear, when someone knocked on the door. It was Kurt, standing there with a look on his face. Matty recognized it: it was the look you gave your principal when you needed to talk to someone about something important but didn’t know who to talk to and then you remembered the mnemonic about the principal being your pal and so you decided to go talk to your principal. Except of course that Kurt wasn’t only Matty’s principal; the two of them had ample time outside school to talk as well. For instance, the night before, Kurt and Matty had eaten dinner together, during which Kurt hadn’t said a word to Matty, or at least not a word that consisted of more than one syllable. After dinner they’d sat silently in front of the TV, Kurt flipping through the channels at superhuman speed until Matty had said, “Hey, buddy, slow down, I’m starting to worry about the well-being of your thumb,” and then Kurt had sighed, dropped the remote on the couch between them, and gone up to his room. And neither of them had talked during breakfast, nor during the ride in to school, which had ended not ten minutes ago. But at school, Kurt felt like he could talk to Matty. So this meant that Kurt trusted Matty as his principal, but not as his father? Wow, that was depressing, if you looked at it from one point of view. But if you looked at it from another point of view, hey, at least Kurt felt he could talk to his principal.

“What’s up?” Matty asked, flinging his shin guards and his mask into the bottom drawer of his file cabinet. Kurt didn’t answer at first. He wandered over to the wall where the extra bathroom passes hung on a hook, took one down, and began fiddling with it. Each pass was a wooden block with a chain hanging from the block, and a key attached to the chain. Nobody knew what the keys were for. The bathroom doors didn’t even have locks. Matty himself had used these passes when he was in high school, in a different building, with different bathrooms. And even then the wooden blocks had seemed ancient, the keys meant for locks that obviously hadn’t existed in forever. That meant that generations of Broomeville schoolchildren had been holding these things while going to the bathroom. The more you thought about it, the more disgusting it was. But that was school pretty much: you got through it, not by changing the things that were gross, but by not thinking about them too much. Which was of course the opposite of what they taught you at Cornell. Think, Cornell had taught him. Think about how everyone else thinks and then think harder and better than they think. But Matty was thinking less and less of Cornell these days. And when he did think of Cornell, he mostly thought of Locs wearing his Cornell hat, of whether she was still wearing it, wherever she was.

“You need to go to the bathroom or something, buddy?” Matty said, trying to tell Kurt to stop messing around with the bathroom pass but also trying to keep his tone light, making sure he called Kurt “buddy,” which was what Matty called him these days when he was trying to keep his tone light. He wasn’t sure it was working: every time he called Kurt “buddy” he felt as if he was acting like someone else’s father talking to someone else’s son. Although maybe that was the point.

Anyway, Kurt put the pass back on its hook, sat down in the red plastic chair next to the door. “What’s up?” Matty asked again.

Kurt told his father about how Jenny had interrupted Mr. L. and the stranger in Mr. L.’s office the day before; how the stranger had fled; how Jenny had told them the story at the baseball game; and how the cronies had come to one conclusion about Mr. L., but Kurt himself had come to another.

“A stranger?” Matty said.

“A stranger who was speaking another language,” Kurt said.

“A spy?” Matty said in a tone that was intended to let Kurt think that Matty didn’t quite know what to think about this difficult-to-believe plot twist. By now, this tone came easily to Matty: over the past two years, he’d fired his guidance counselor, who had then killed herself; his new guidance counselor was internationally wanted for Matty didn’t know what reason and had been sent into hiding in Broomeville by a CIA agent who’d been Matty’s lover before he’d rejected her and turned her into a CIA agent and whom Matty then rejected again, regretting it the minute he had done so and then most minutes after that, too; and finally, Matty’s wife had divorced him and in three days was going to marry this guidance counselor, who also was a fugitive of some kind or maybe even, as Kurt thought, a spy himself. For Matty, this last was the most difficult-to-believe plot twist of them all. This was what he’d been trying to say to Henry at the game today with his eyes: I cannot believe my wife is now my ex-wife, I cannot believe you are marrying my ex-wife, I can’t believe I am not murdering you for marrying my ex-wife, I cannot believe I am not at least firing you for marrying my ex-wife, even though you are the best guidance counselor Broomeville Junior-Senior High School has ever had, by far, and I know that, and everyone knows that, and so everyone would know that I was firing you just because you were marrying my ex-wife, and if I were to tell everyone, You know, it might seem as though I’m firing him because he’s marrying my ex-wife but in fact I’m firing him because he’s not really a guidance counselor but instead an international fugitive of some kind and maybe even a spy, then you would have no reason not to tell Ellen and Kurt and everyone about why I hired you in the first place, and if you told them that, then you would tell them about Locs, and if you told them about Locs, if you told Ellen about Locs, if Ellen heard that I was thinking about Locs, let alone that I’d talked to Locs, let alone that I’d agreed to hire you as a guidance counselor because Locs wanted me to, let alone that I’d seen Locs, even though I’d seen her two long years ago, and only then to reject her again, which right after I’d done it I wished I hadn’t done it, but even so, that wouldn’t matter to Ellen, it would not matter, she would never take me back, even if she dumped you for lying to her about what you are, who you are, which admittedly would give me no little satisfaction, since she dumped me for being what I am, who I am, but even so, even if she did that, she would still never take me back, and then what would be the point, what would be the point in her not ever taking me back unless I could figure out a way to get Locs to take me back, Locs, wherever she is, however she is, how is she anyway, is she thinking about me, does she ever mention my name, do you think she’s ever coming back to Broomeville, she’s probably never coming back to Broomeville, and if you’re not here anymore, then she’s definitely never coming back to Broomeville, and if I fire you and Ellen dumps you, then you won’t have much reason to be here, either, and then you’ll leave, and if you leave, then Locs would never have a reason, a professional reason, to come back to Broomeville, to come back to me, her personal reason, and how awful would that be, for me to never see Locs again, Locs my love, Locs my true love, probably my truest love, and so maybe I wouldn’t fire you after all, besides you’re probably as decent and great a guy as everyone says you are, including my ex-wife, including my students, including my son, including everyone else, and since you’re such a great guy, couldn’t you do me at least one favor, couldn’t you tell Locs that I’m thinking about her, that I still love her, that I want her to come back to me, depending on how everything else shakes out, and see, that’s why Locs should never come back, why would she come back to me if I don’t know how I really want everything to shake out, do you know what I need, I need someone who I can talk to, someone who can sit down with me and help me figure out how I really want all this to shake out, you know, a buddy, I don’t have a buddy, maybe that’s why I’m calling Kurt “buddy” now, because I’m grooming him for this job, this job as my buddy, although can you imagine a worse job than the job of being my buddy, Jesus, what an awful future to wish for my son, my only son, my God, any job would be better, even a principal, even a bartender, even a guidance counselor, even a spy, although speaking of being a spy, you know, Kurt is probably right, you probably are a spy, I can’t believe I’m letting a spy counsel my students, I can’t believe I’m letting a spy stepfather my son, I can’t believe my son’s stepfather-to-be is a spy, I will not let my son have a stepfather who is a spy.