Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“Jens Baedrup,” Ellen said again.

“Not Jenz. Yents, ” Henry said. Ellen just looked at him, as though expecting more, so Henry said, “That’s the correct pronunciation.”

“Yents,” Ellen repeated. “So you’d heard of him before today?”

Henry shrugged. “The Copenhagen cartoons were more famous. But yes, I’d heard of him.”

“And what did you think?” He frowned at her, and she said, “About the cartoons.” Henry shrugged again but didn’t say anything, and Ellen didn’t seem to notice: she was back to reading her phone. “I mean, on the one hand,” Ellen said, “what was this guy thinking?”

He was probably thinking that everything was going to be just fine, Henry thought but did not say.

“But on the other hand,” Ellen said, “someone killed him. For this ?” At that, she held up the phone so Henry could see. There was the cartoon. He had managed to not picture the cartoon since he’d been in Broomeville. Once, Henry had seen a monster movie in which the only way to keep the monster from killing you was to not think of it, to not allow the image of it into your mind. That had been Henry’s approach to his cartoon. But it had found him anyway. What are you doing here? the cartoon seemed to be saying to him.

“But I guess he’s not dead after all,” Ellen said.

“Unless it’s not really him,” Henry said.

“I still don’t get what he’s doing in Broomeville,” Ellen said. “It’s a long, long way to Skagen,” she sang, in a tune Henry didn’t know, but in any case, in singing it she’d mispronounced the name of his hometown.

“Skane,” he said.

“What now?”

“You said ‘Skaw-gen.’ But it’s pronounced ‘Skane.’ ”

“ Skaw- gen, ” Ellen insisted, drawing out the aw, daring Henry to correct her again, and also letting him know she wasn’t crazy about the way he’d corrected her the first time. This was the closest they’d come to fighting in their two years together. It reminded him of fighting with Ilsa, how they’d never fought until the day they’d started fighting, and from then on it felt like the most natural thing in the world. This was the worst thing about fighting with someone you loved: it taught you how easy it would be to just keep on fighting. “How do you know how it’s pronounced anyway?”

“I went there once,” he said. “On vacation.” Then Henry described it: Skagen, the town between two seas; the town with the pretty yellow houses with the red tile roofs and the neat yards; the town with the wet wind and the cold sand; the town that painters in the nineteenth century made famous for its light; the town where the eastward-moving waves from the North Sea crash into the westward-moving waves from the Baltic Sea, and the spectacle is so great that even the skeptical end up taking too many pictures; the town so orderly and good that even the hulking tankers from Sweden and Norway and England and Germany patiently wait in lines that stretch from one sea to another before easing into the docks at Skagen Havn. The town with the big white church with the little white clipper ships dangling from the ceiling in between the chandeliers. The town that I loved, even though I went there only once, on vacation.

“That sounds nice,” Ellen said when Henry was through, clearly not peeved anymore. She tossed the phone onto the bed and leaned back into him. “Skagen,” she said, getting the name right this time. “Maybe you can take me there someday.”

“Yes, I will do that,” Henry said, thinking, How am I ever going to do that? He was still thinking that a minute later, when Ellen said, “We’re getting married in three days,” and then, before he could respond, she said, “I wonder when this Yents is coming back.”

“Who knows?” Henry said. “Maybe he’s never coming back.” And in this, of course, Henry was right, but later he would have reason to wish that he hadn’t been.

So we got three things,” Crystal said. “This.” And then she handed Søren’s knife to Capo. This meeting was taking place in Doc’s. The blinds were drawn, and the lights were off except in the kitchen, where Doc was preparing the stove. London, who was now just called Joseph, was in the bathroom, running the water, thus drawing attention to his vomiting, which the running water was meant to obscure. Capo was sitting on a stool, back against the counter, facing Crystal, who was standing, violently chewing on something. Gum, Capo guessed, although he would not have been surprised if it were broken glass, or barbed wire, or human gristle. She really was terrifying; if there was a room where Crystal would not be the scariest person present, then Capo really did not want to be in it. He extended his right hand and she handed him the knife, handle first. He examined it briefly, then placed it on the counter behind him.

“And also this,” Crystal said, and she handed Capo a cell phone. He idly fiddled with it as Crystal told him what they’d learned from Søren. That Locs had found him at the cartoonist’s ex-wife’s house; that she had brought him back to the house in the dunes in Skagen; that she had coerced Søren to come to Broomeville to kill the cartoonist again, finally, once and for all. The one thing that Søren had not been able to tell them is why Locs wanted him to kill Henry. Others would have made more sense. Matty, for instance. Ellen. Capo himself. But why Henry?

“Don’t know,” Crystal said. “But he wasn’t going to be able to actually do it anyway.”

“Is that your opinion?”

“I don’t have an opinion,” Crystal said.

“But if you were required to have one.”

“I don’t have an opinion, ” Crystal said. “I have a knife, which I took off the terrorist-arsonist-murderer who said he really wasn’t one. But he—”

“Søren,” Capo said.

“Yup,” Crystal said.

“Søren Korkmaz.”

“That guy,” Crystal said. “He was sent here to kill our little guidance counselor, but he wasn’t going to be able to actually do it. That was his opinion.”

It’s mine, as well, Capo thought but did not say. The griddle hissed, the toilet flushed, and Joseph emerged from the bathroom, eyes red, face wet. He saw Capo looking at him, and tucked his nonexistent hair behind his ears. It’d been two years since Capo had removed Joseph from his London post; two years since Capo had convinced his brother to hire Joseph as a security guard for the school when in actuality he was there to guard not the school but Henry Larsen; two years since Capo had made Joseph cut his ridiculous hair and then ordered him to keep it cut. And still, the child acted as though his mane had just been sheared.

“I was thinking,” Joseph said. Crystal laughed. Joseph tried to ignore her. “We should send someone to Locs’s house in Skagen,” Joseph said, and again Crystal laughed.

“Locs won’t be there,” she said. “She’s not stupid enough to still be there.”

“I don’t suppose Locs told Mr. Korkmaz where she might go next,” Capo said, and Joseph shook his head.

“She never even told him her name,” Joseph said. “Go to Broomeville, and kill the guidance counselor who is really the cartoonist. That’s all she told him.”

“How he reached the guidance counselor’s office in the first place, I’ll never know,” Crystal said. Chewing, chewing, she pretended to think about it. Then she turned to Joseph and looked at him blankly. “Never mind,” she said. “I know.”

“I went to the bathroom, ” Joseph said. “Can a man not go to the bathroom ?”

“A man can, sure,” Crystal said.