Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

But then Locs tried to use her credit card to get over the toll bridge at Vejle. She put the credit card into the slot, and it shot back out at her in what seemed like an especially emphatic way. A word popped up on the screen. It was amazing how the word rejected was so similar in so many different languages. There was a line of cars behind her now, and people were beeping at her. You know you’re in a bad way when you make even Danes impatient. It was probably the first time many of them had used their horns. She’d turned the credit card over and blew on the strip, the last desperate act of someone who doesn’t want to believe her credit card has been canceled. Rejected again. Locs had ended up digging around in her pockets for kroner and then dropping the coins into the basket just like all the other sad people whose lives hadn’t worked out the way they’d wanted and who asked themselves pathetic rhetorical questions like, Why is this happening to me?

But at least she had a home to squat in, a home that someone had abandoned, true enough, but clearly it had been abandoned by a rich person, or a formerly rich person, and in any case it was a definite improvement over the places she’d lived in over the past two years, two years of living in secret and squalor after seven years of living in secret and comfort. At least she had this house. At least she’d gotten Søren to Broomeville. At least he would kill the cartoonist and then she would never have to think of him, or Broomeville, or anyone in it, ever again. She’d been feeling good, and clean, and new, at home in her skin and in Skagen, and in the world, and in fact, she had started typing a letter to Matty telling him these things before she’d started getting all these screwy e-mails from Søren. The computer was fully booted up now, but the Internet still wasn’t up, so Locs opened the letter and continued working on it.

Dear Matty,

Your brother Lawrence is a CIA agent. You don’t know that because you’re too stupid to know that. Although not necessarily more stupid than your stupid brother, who goes by the stupid nickname Capo. He insists he was given the nickname during his time infiltrating the Cosa Nostra in Calabria, but probably he just gave the nickname to himself. Anyway, he’s a CIA agent. Doc and Crystal are CIA agents, too. They all used to be active spies. Now they recruit future active spies. Meaning, they recruit your students — not the smartest ones, just the ones most in need of being recruited, the ones most in need of a home. Like me.

You’ll notice I addressed this letter to Matty, not Matthew. Because you’ll never be a Matthew. I know that now. I’ll never be a Locs, either. I’m a Lorraine. Lorraine is not a lovelorn spy. Lorraine lives in a rich person’s house on the North Sea. Lorraine does not miss Locs at all. Because if Locs were in this house, she’d be thinking ridiculous thoughts. She’d be thinking not of how happy she was in this house, in between these dunes, next to this blue-black sea. No, she’d be thinking of you and of how much happier she’d be if only you were in this house with her, and since she, Locs, would know that you’d be happier if Kurt were with you, too, then she’d be thinking of Kurt, also, in his room, with his posters on the wall, his dirty socks all over the place. Socks? Posters? Locs was too stupid to live; Lorraine is glad she’s dead. Lorraine is better off without her, and without you, too, and once Søren has killed that cartoonist, she’ll be absolutely perfect. Although maybe it’s possible that Søren won’t kill that cartoonist, and that’s another reason that Lorraine doesn’t miss Locs: because deep down, Locs knew that Søren would fail, and if he failed, which she knew he would, then she would have to go back to Broomeville and take care of it herself. But Lorraine is not going to do that. For one thing, Lorraine is suffering from a little credit card problem, a little cash flow issue, and if she wanted to come back to Broomeville, then she would have to steal a credit card to pay for the plane ticket, etc. And she does not want to do that. Locs was the one who stole credit cards. Lorraine is going to be the one who is going to stay in Denmark, the home of the happiest people in the world, and be happy, and that is basically why I’m writing you, to tell you that I’m never coming back to Broomeville, not to be with you, not to kill the cartoonist, not for any reason, because it’s beautiful here, and I have a home, and I’m happy, even if the Internet connection is pretty spotty.

Just then her computer beeped. The Internet was back on, and she had another message from Søren.

One more thing. Why did you not tell me that Mr. Larsen is about to marry the school principal’s former wife? Is it possible you didn’t know that, either? Is it possible that you were too stupid to know that?

Marry? Former wife? Lorraine thought. Oh, Matthew! Locs thought. And because she was once again Locs, and once again in love, she did not think, You idiot, it’s a trap! and she would not think this until it was way too late. Anyway, Locs was just about to start trolling the Web for its large supply of illegal available credit in order to buy herself a plane ticket from Copenhagen to New York when there was a knock on her door. Locs actually went to answer it. Because she was not thinking like a spy, a spy on the run squatting in someone else’s house in someone else’s country, a human being who never, ever should answer a knocked-on door. No, Locs was thinking, Oh, someone is at the door! She was thinking, Matthew, oh, Matthew! And then she went ahead and opened the door like it was her door to her house in her country, and like Matthew would be on the other side of it. She even greeted Matthew in that musical way she’d heard Danes greet each other: “Hi, hi,” she said. And only then did she notice who was standing in the doorway. It was not Matthew, of course, of course, although it was a man, a hollowed-out, clean-shaven, light-dark-skinned old man, a man who was wearing Western clothes — jeans, sneakers, a waterproof blue jacket with the collar up — and who was pointing a gun at Locs. When Locs saw the gun, and when she saw who was pointing it, she felt her eyes go wide. The man probably recognized the look. It had very little to do with the gun. The look was the look white Danes sometimes had when strange nonwhite Danes who were also probably Muslims knocked on their door. But Locs was not a Dane, and this man was not a stranger. Locs knew exactly who he was.

“Your son burned down the cartoonist’s house,” Locs blurted out, and to her surprise, Faruk Korkmaz responded, “I know. And yet he did not have sufficient faith in my confidence to share with me that information.” He looked at Locs to see whether she’d understood — his English was the kind of very formal, somewhat mush-mouthed, contractionless English spoken in novels by characters who are not speaking English even though their novels are written in English — and when she nodded that she had understood, Mr. Korkmaz added, “How do you think that makes a father feel?”

“WHERE DID YOU GET your gun?” Locs asked him. This wasn’t merely a time-buying technique. She was genuinely, professionally curious. In her two weeks in Denmark, she’d tried — tried and failed — to buy a gun, by either legal or illegal means. Never before in any other country had she been unable to acquire a firearm. It was the most frustrating thing ever.

“How is that of your concern?” Søren’s father asked. Locs was now sitting on a kitchen chair; he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, gun still pointed at her. Locs didn’t recognize the handgun model, but it didn’t look especially heavy. But even so, Søren’s father was holding it with both hands and struggling to do even that. Locs knew from reading Søren’s file that his father was in his early sixties; a decade earlier he’d had heart surgery. Then, he’d been way overweight; now, he looked underweight and hunched over, like someone had carved out some important part of the middle of him. When he breathed, his nose whistled. Locs doubted that he’d ever held a gun before, let alone fired one. Which is not to say he would not fire this one now.