Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“Fortunately,” Capo said, “Jennifer intervened.”

“Now, Jenny’s a good girl,” Crystal said.

“Jennifer is surprisingly capable,” Capo agreed. “I’ve taken the liberty to invite her to my weekly summit with the students Friday afternoon.” Here, Capo grew thoughtful. “Although she will have to be taught to keep the news of her good deeds to herself.” And then Capo told them what he’d learned, beginning with Jenny telling Kurt and his cronies about what she’d seen and heard in Henry’s office, and ending with Henry informing everyone at the Lumber Lodge that Søren had told Henry that his name was actually Jens Baedrup.

“He said what ?” Doc said. He was bearing three plates laden with eggs, hash, English muffin for Capo, dry toast for Crystal, no toast for Joseph. Doc placed the plates on the counter, and Joseph and Crystal sat down on either side of Capo. “Eat,” Doc said, standing behind the counter. No one ate. Capo watched them think about this new bad news, watched them try to go back in their minds, determine who was responsible, how it could have been prevented. The cartoonist drew the cartoon, Søren burned down his house; that was not their fault. Locs was crazy, but that was more Capo’s brother’s fault than Capo’s. And besides, they could not have anticipated that she would bring the cartoonist to Broomeville. They could not have anticipated it, but that did not mean they had to facilitate it. Joseph had helped Locs bring the cartoonist to Broomeville; Joseph had killed the old guidance counselor, Sheilah, instead of Locs; Joseph’s killing of the old guidance counselor had gotten her brother involved, her brother with the stricken hand and the murderous eyes. Ronald. Doc had told Capo that they should be worried about Ronald, that Ronald knew that his sister had not killed herself. Now, Ronald had seen Søren run out of Henry’s office. And whose fault was that? Whose fault was it that Søren had made it to Henry’s office in the first place?

“Hey, at least you killed the right person this time,” Crystal said to Joseph.

“Crystal, no more,” Capo said, but by then Joseph had already gotten up and run to the bathroom. Capo sighed and said, “I assume Mr. Korkmaz’s body. .”

“No one will ever find it,” Crystal said.

“Good,” Capo said, although he was not feeling especially good, especially since they had killed Søren only because Capo had ordered them to. He supposed that it was necessary to kill the person who had come to kill the person under his protection, even if that assassin would never be able to bring himself to be anything but a would-be assassin. But still, the whole episode seemed miserable and brutish and excessive and totally lacking in nuance and gamesmanship. Not at all like it used to be. “Denmark!” he said. “Copenhagen, of course, is a wonderful city. But there are so many others. Vejle, for instance, with its fjord, its gentle river, its Munkebjerg! An unlovely name, but such a lovely mountain! And its people! Such amazingly generous people! Carsten, for instance, the old mapmaker whom I befriended in the old city and who took me into his home!” But then Capo remembered that before Carsten had been an old mapmaker, he’d been a young Nazi collaborator. So Capo stopped midreverie. Not that Doc and Crystal seemed to be listening to him anyway. Perhaps they had heard this sort of thing too often from him. Or perhaps they were distracted by Joseph’s loud retching. Capo picked up his fork and began eating. Doc’s scrambled eggs and corned beef hash! But the first bite tasted vile and the second bite worse. Even the English muffin tasted like soap. Everything is ruined, Capo thought, including my favorite meal, and also my brother’s marriage.

“It’s time to move Henry,” Doc said.

“I hardly think that’s necessary,” Capo said.

“It’s necessary.” When Capo didn’t respond, Doc said, “He’s in danger here.” Capo didn’t say anything to that, but he did make a face that said, Too bad. “You don’t like him very much, do you?” Still, Capo didn’t respond. “Why?” Doc asked. “Because of his cartoon?”

“Well, it did reveal an impressive lack of cultural sensitivity,” Capo said. “But, no.”

“Because it made it harder to do our jobs?”

“Our jobs are supposed to be difficult,” Capo said.

“Then why?” Doc asked.

“Because Henry can’t keep it in his pants,” Crystal said.

“Must you be so vulgar?” Capo asked.

“And when he can’t keep it in his pants, he shares it with Capo’s brother’s wife. His brother’s ex -wife.”

“One does feel a certain loyalty to one’s brother.”

“Because your brother is a saint.”

“My brother is the reason Locs will come back,” Lawrence said. “And we’ll be waiting for her this time.”

“Oh really?” Crystal said. “And how are we going to get her to come back, exactly?”

I don’t know, Capo thought but did not say. I don’t know, but when she comes back, I’m going to stab her in her face with this fork until she’s dead! But where did that thought come from? It seemed to have come not from Capo’s mind but from the miserable, brutish world’s. A horrifying thought, thought Capo, and even more horrifying to have thought it. Capo dropped the fork, picked up Søren’s phone, and began idly opening and closing it, and then suddenly he had another thought, a thought that Capo thought was much less the world’s, much more his own.

“How was Mr. Korkmaz to contact Locs to let her know that he’d killed Henry?” Capo said, just as Joseph returned from the bathroom and sat next to him at the counter. He looked more pitiful and wrung out than ever, and Capo patted him on the shoulder in an attempt to reassure him that everything was going to be just fine.

“And that’s the third thing,” Crystal said. She handed a piece of paper to Capo. On it was an e-mail address. “He was supposed to use the phone to e-mail her.”

“I see,” Capo said. “It might be amusing. .,” he said, and then he explained to them his plan. When he was done, Crystal said, “You know, I like it.”

“Me, too,” Doc said.

“I guess it might work,” Joseph said. His head was bowed, his back hunched. Even his hair, as short as it was, seemed lank. It seemed as though his whole self was weeping. Capo might have paid more attention to this if he weren’t so enamored with his plan.

“It will work,” Capo said. “And it will also be fun .” He typed the first of his four e-mails, hit Send, and then added, “We so rarely get to have any fun anymore.”

Locs was sitting in her house, drinking coffee, listening to the sand scratch and brush on the roof, when she got the latest e-mail from Søren.

Thursday, October 7, 2011, 12:05 a.m.

From: undisclosed sender

To: undisclosed recipient

Subject: Re: Broomeville

You write, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” I do not know what I’m doing. But then again, neither do you.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Locs thought and then typed, and then after that she typed several other words and then tried to send the e-mail. But the Internet was down again. It didn’t work more often than it did. Why is this happening to me? she wondered. But that was a rhetorical question.

She turned off her laptop computer, then turned it on again. Locs thought of it as her computer, but in fact she had stolen it from a café in Roskilde. She thought of this house in Skagen as hers, too, even though she was just squatting in it. Her Internet connection: she was poaching from one of the other houses nestled in one of the other dunes. Her Toyota: she had not stolen it, and she had not stolen the credit card she’d used to pay for it, but she’d acquired the credit card using a fake passport and a bank account that didn’t exist but looked real enough on the application. This was the credit card with the PIN Locs had been told she didn’t need; Locs had never had to deal with PINs when she was a secret agent. This was what they didn’t tell you about the fantastic life of a secret agent: that it rendered you surprisingly feeble for ordinary life when you were no longer a secret agent. Or as ordinary as a life could be when lived in secrecy and in constant fear of being discovered and assassinated by your former fellow secret agents. Anyway, after Søren agreed to do what Locs wanted him to do, and after she gave him instructions about how he should do it, she drove him to Copenhagen, where she then used her PIN to get a cash advance, used some of the cash to get Søren a fake passport, used her credit card to buy Søren a plane ticket to New York, and then gave him the rest of the cash before leaving him at the airport. Then she got back into her car, feeling very good about herself, very accomplished. That’s done, she thought; now I can go anywhere. And yet she was surprised to find herself heading north, back to Skagen, and surprised again to find herself thinking of Skagen as home. I’m going home, she thought. It felt good to think that.