Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“If you were me, and you wanted to go somewhere so remote that no one would ever find you,” Jens asked her, “where would you run?”

Without hesitation she said, “Broomeville.”

“Where?” he said.

“Exactly,” she said.

Matty was in his office, even though it was Friday night. Outside, it was dark, dark; inside, the overhead lights were flickering like there were small animals up there, chewing on something important, or just running back and forth, enjoying their Friday night, having a good time messing around with the long fluorescent tubes.

“I’m not even supposed to be thinking about you,” he said into his cell phone, “let alone talking to you.”

“So don’t talk,” she said. “Just listen.”

So Matty did that. She talked for a long time, long enough for him to understand that after he’d ended their affair seven years earlier, she’d been so angry at him and at Broomeville and at the fucking world that she’d decided to go to work for the CIA, long enough for him to understand that — in her capacity as a CIA agent and his capacity as an American citizen — she wanted him to do her a favor, long enough for him to get up out of his chair, walk out of his office, out of the building, out into the parking lot. He kept turning in circles while he listened to her talk. Way off to the west was the big dark nothing of the lake; to the east was the big dark nothing of the mountains; a half mile to the north was the town, the little square that was actually more like a trapezoid, the gazebo, the monument, the diner, the bar, the other bar, his house, which — before they died — had been his parents’ house, the river that eventually ran into the lake; right in front of him, to the south, was the Broomeville (New York) Junior-Senior High School. But from where was she calling? In what direction was she?

Anyway, when she was done talking, Matty said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

“You sound different,” she said. “Are you outside now or something?”

“The CIA?” he said.

“I bet you’re standing in the parking lot.”

“How does someone just end up in the CIA?”

“The old Broomeville Junior-Senior High parking lot.”

“The sky is full of stars here,” he said.

“The sky is full of stars here, too,” she said.

“Are you outside?”

“No, but I’m just guessing.”

“What exactly did this guy do anyway?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t say anything right away. The only thing he could hear was breathing, and he wondered, Why is it that when someone breathes in your ear on the phone it’s either sexy or sinister, but when someone does it in person it’s mostly just annoying? “Because I don’t want to,” she finally said.

“Fair enough,” Matty said, and immediately he wished he hadn’t. She had once accused him of saying that—“fair enough”—way too often and in response to things that weren’t fair enough at all, and then they’d gotten into a fight about it, his gist being, did she have to be such a bitch, and her gist being, she wouldn’t have to be such a bitch if he didn’t say “fair enough” all the time.

“There are no jobs,” he said.

“Then fire someone. There has to be at least one person there who deserves to be fired.”

“There’s no one,” he said. But too late: he was already thinking of someone. “I’m not giving your buddy a job,” he said anyway.

“Any old job will do,” she said. “And he’s not my buddy.”

“No,” Matty said.

“Let me just make two points.”

“He’s an internationally wanted criminal.”

“He’s not a criminal, Matthew,” she said, “unless being clueless is a crime.”

“But he is internationally wanted,” Matty said. “People are trying to assassinate him. And you want me to give him a job in a school. A school full of children.”

“But that’s one of my points,” she said. “People are trying to assassinate him here . People get assassinated here all the time. But no one ever gets assassinated in America.”

“What about Martin Luther King Junior?” he said. “What about Abraham Lincoln?”

“Well, there are obviously exceptions,” she admitted.

“What about the Kennedys?”

“Fair enough,” she said, and then they both laughed.

“I have missed you,” Matty said.

“That’s my other point,” she said.

After Matty got off the phone, he thought about the last time he’d seen her, a Saturday, early morning, seven years earlier. They had been sitting in her car, which was parked outside Doc’s Diner, in downtown Broomeville.

“You said you were going to tell Ellen about us,” she’d said.

“I did,” he’d said.

“And that you were going to leave her,” she’d said.

“I can’t,” he’d said.

“Do you love me?”

“I really do.”

“Then why can’t you leave her?”

He’d thought of all his reasons why: his guilt, his fear, his son, his teachers, his students, his job, his town, his wife, his life. “I just can’t,” he’d said.

“You’re so gutless, ” she’d said.

“I’m what?”

“Gutless,” she’d said. “Without guts.”

“Fair enough,” he’d said.

“Wow,” she’d said. “I really want to hurt you right now.” And Matty could tell she meant it, and so he got out of the car, missing her before he’d even shut the door behind him, but still feeling like maybe he’d avoided some trouble that was much bigger than the huge trouble he’d already gotten himself into.

Now it was seven years later, and he was in his office, thinking about the last time he’d seen her. “Am I really going to do this?” he said out loud. Then he went down to the Lumber Lodge.

As usual the bar seemed smoky, even though state law had been insisting for years now that no one was allowed to smoke there. Also as usual, it seemed to Matty, the place was populated by devils, tired, overfamiliar devils whose every action, every word, was totally predictable but who would probably still be able to ruin your life without trying very hard or maybe without even meaning to. He’d gone to high school with almost all of them.

“It’s Friday night!” Sheilah Crimmins was screaming into her cell phone. She had been pretty in high school. No, she hadn’t. But she’d been prettier. Now her clothes were always too tight, even the clothes that were supposed to be loose clothes, and she always looked red and damp, except for her red hair, which now looked dry and rusty and obviously the casualty of too much product, and she always seemed like she was on the verge of falling down, which was probably why she spent most of her days at school sitting in her chair. She was like a lot of people Matty knew in Broomeville: she would have been an essentially OK person if she weren’t so lonely. Matty would have felt even sorrier for her if she weren’t so loud.

“It’s Friday night!” she screamed into her phone. “And you’re in the DR, but I’m in the Lodge. You lose, motherfucker, you lose!” Then she saw Matty and said to him, without moving her mouth away from the receiver, “Bossman!” And then she said to whoever was on the other end of her phone call, “That was Bossman.”

Sheilah Crimmins was the person he was looking for. But just for now, he pretended that she wasn’t. He made his way to the bar, nodding at people as he went. He was wearing his Cornell baseball hat, and he felt, as he nodded, like a bird pecking at something. Ellen was behind the bar, smiling at him, watching him walk toward her, and when he got there, she stopped smiling and asked, “What’s your problem?”