The Happiest People in the World: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t know what this is, Carl,” the woman was saying, dangling a white packet over her cup of coffee. “But I do know what it is not.”

  “Helen, you know exactly what it is,” Carl said. “It’s sugar.”

  “But it’s not Splenda,” Helen said. “That’s my point.”

  “Henrik Larsen?” Jens said to the agent. Because right before entering the airport, the agent had handed him his passport and ticket and said, “This is you.” The name on both was Henrik Larsen, and the passport said that he was a citizen of Sweden. “Why Henrik Larsen?”

  “Because your English is too good for you to be anything but a Dane or a Swede. And I thought it would be better for you to be a Swede.”

  “And why am I in America?”

  “You met an American woman in Sweden. You fell in love. You married her. The two of you moved to the United States, to New York City. Then you did something stupid. She divorced you. You deserved it.” All of this should have sounded mean, and in fact might have been intended to be mean, but the agent’s voice instead sounded sweet, definitely sweet. She smiled at Jens in what seemed to him an oddly fond way. It was the way his wife had looked at him back when she thought of him as a lovable goofball, before she began to think of him as an unbearable and then dangerous-to-be-married-to goofball.

  “What did I do?” Jens asked. “To make her divorce me?”

  “I’m sure it won’t be too hard for you to think of something,” the agent said.

  It wasn’t too hard. Jens was already thinking about it. He never stopped thinking about Skagen, the cartoon, his wife, their burning house, their marriage, his fake death. His whole life, it seemed, was a series of mistakes that anyone else in the world but him would have recognized as mistakes in advance and therefore not have made them.

  Then again, he told himself, this was probably true of everybody.

  But then again, he told himself, not everybody was on the run from people trying to kill him because of that mistake that nobody else would have made. “Where is Broomeville?” Jens asked.

  “It’s in the sticks,” she said loudly.

  “The where?”

  “The boonies.” She said this more loudly yet, giving the word many long o’s.

  “I see,” Jens said. “And are you from there?”

  “I have some people on the ground there.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Who?”

  “The people in Broomeville.”

  The agent turned to look at him. Her eyes were black, dancing. She smiled at him, showing teeth. In the eight months she’d been guarding him, Jens had not once seen the agent smile. “There shouldn’t be any Muslims in good old Broomeville,” she said, patting him on the knee. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m not,” he said, and in one sense he wasn’t. But then again, in another sense, of course he was. He looked at the people sitting next to him, to see whether they’d heard what the agent had said, but they were still talking loudly, paying no attention to him at all.

  “I thought that Hamburg had a very nice facility,” Carl was saying. “Much better than the facility in Düsseldorf.”

  “Oh, Düsseldorf was a terrible facility.”

  “ ‘Terrible’ might be overstating it,” Carl said. “But it’s true that I’ve seen better.”

  “Will you write that in your report?” Helen asked.

  “Only in so many words.”

  They clearly hadn’t heard Jens and the agent talking. No one else seemed to be paying attention to them, either. Jens stood up slightly again, looked three rows in front of him and to the right. The woman and man had switched seats. The woman’s screen was showing a movie, but she was looking incredulously at the man’s screen, which was also now showing a movie. Jens sat back down. For the past two years, whenever he saw a Muslim in public, he was convinced they were looking for him, even though he was supposed to be dead. But he didn’t feel this way on the airplane: apparently, to be on an airplane was to be in a place where the rules and fears that guided you had been suspended. This was what he hoped it would be like to live in Broomeville, too.

  “I think I’m going to like Broomeville,” Jens said to the agent.

  “Yeah, you would think that,” she said. Once again, this should have sounded mocking, mean, but didn’t. Jens took a close look at her. She was still smiling at him, but it was as though she was amused not by him but by something way off in the distance; meanwhile her legs lazily wagged in and out in the manner of someone who is sort of sedated. You’re on drugs! Jens thought, and decided to ask her something that he’d wanted to ask all the agents who’d guarded him, but hadn’t had the nerve.

  “What’s your name?”

  Her smile got wider, although again it seemed like it was directed at something far away. “Locs,” she said.

  “Locs?” Jens said. “How do you spell that?”

  That seemed to do something to Locs. Her eyes focused and turned wary. “Why would you need to spell it?” she asked.

  “Well,” Jens said, “is it your first or last name?”

  “Yes,” Locs said. But before either of them could say anything else, the pilot came on the loudspeaker, promising a rough ride the rest of the way. The plane bucked, and the engines made that whining shifting-gear sound that ends up meaning nothing even though you think it must mean something. Locs closed her eyes and gripped her armrests even more tightly. “You’d better fasten your seat belt, Henrik,” she said to him. And those were her last words to him until they landed at JFK.

  10

  After they arrived at JFK, Jens and Locs took a taxi to the bus station, where he was to take a bus to Broomeville. Alone. Locs told him that the usual precautions weren’t necessary. She told him that in America, no one would ever look for anyone important on a bus, that in America no one who was anyone would even consider taking a bus, not even an assassin.

  “And you’re going to be there when I arrive?” he asked her, yelled actually, over the tumult of the New York City bus station. Port Authority, Locs had called it, although Jens didn’t see a port visible, nor any authority: twenty feet away from them a man wearing what looked to be several layers of charred burlap sack was urinating into a corner; in the corner opposite, a man in a blue pin-striped suit and shiny brown wing tips was doing the same in, or to, his corner. But Locs wasn’t paying attention to either of them. Jens could tell that whatever sedative she’d taken for the plane trip had worn off; she was all business now, again. She was wearing sunglasses, even though they were inside. Her head was like a security camera, panning to one corner of the bus station, then panning back, not seeming to see anything, but possibly not missing anything, either.

  “Am I going to be where?” she asked.

  “Broomeville,” Jens said, and when he said that name, Locs’s head stuttered to a stop. She and he had said the name Broomeville several times on the airplane, and it hadn’t seemed to affect her then. But now there was an effect. “Broomeville,” Jens said again, and Locs took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were as black as black licorice, and wide with horror, but also with wonder. It was the way the corners might look if they had eyes to see the men urinating on them. Then she put her sunglasses back on and resumed her scanning.

  “Don’t worry,” Locs said. “Someone’s always watching you in Broomeville.”

  Suddenly a bus driver called, “All aboard!” Then he took Jens’s bags and shoved them under the bus. Jens turned to Locs. She took a step closer to him, put her left hand in his right jacket pocket, then withdrew it. “Have a good trip,” she said. Jens nodded. He got on the bus. It idled loudly. He watched Locs through the window, repeating to himself the name and address of the place where he was to be staying in Broomeville, repeating what Locs had told him after the airplane had landed at JFK.

  “Remember,” she’d said. “You are Henrik Larsen. You have always been Henrik Larsen. Remember: you are no longer a cartoonist. You are a gu
idance counselor. Remember: do not tell anyone the truth about who you are. Remember: go to the Lumber Lodge and ask for Matthew.” And Jens (Henrik) had asked, “But won’t Matthew know who I am?” And Locs had said, “Matthew doesn’t even know who he is.”

  Then the bus backed out of its parking spot. The driver hit the horn, twice. Henrik glanced quickly at the driver, then looked back to where Locs had been standing, but she was already gone.

  Henrik put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. He didn’t know what they were, but he was so terrified, being alone and unguarded for the first time in two years, that it didn’t matter what they were. He took two of the pills; five minutes later, he was unconscious.

  WHEN HE WOKE UP, it was four hours later. Henrik felt that pleasant, superior, invincible feeling one gets when one has just gotten up. It’s the way cats must always feel. He stretched his hands to the ceiling, then looked out the window. He was sitting in the back of the bus, in a seat next to the window on the right side of the vehicle. Outside, he saw a body of water—either a canal or a calm, wide river. There were no boats. It was as though boats had yet to reach this country. On the other side of the water were green fields, green hills. Looking outside made him feel new and hopeful inside. But inside the bus, the seat was sticky. As far as Henrik could see, there were no people outside the bus. Inside the bus, across the aisle, was a man: he was wearing a red sweatshirt with the hood pulled over the back part of his head, tucked just behind his ears, but still Henrik could see his long, curly black hair, a beard that was struggling to really be one. The man was wearing large white headphones through which Henrik could hear random squawks. The man was making squawks, too, with his mouth, while his hands played what Henrik imagined was an imaginary guitar, right hand high up against his chest, left hand out in the airspace of the seat next to him, fingers moving furiously. The seat next to him was empty. Possibly the seat next to him was always empty. Through the man’s window, out the other side of the bus, was a wall of black rock, a runtish tree here and there trying and mostly failing to take root, streams of water pouring down the face and onto the sides of the highway. Henrik preferred the view out his window, but before he could turn back to it, the man must have seen Henrik looking at him, because the man turned in his direction and said, yelled actually, “Stevie Ray’s birthday!”

  “I see,” Henrik said but the man must have thought he didn’t, because he elaborated: “It’s Stevie Ray Vaughan’s birthday!” And then he raised his imaginary guitar to his mouth, where he appeared to eat it.

  “I see,” Henrik said again. Because he did. He knew exactly what musician the man was talking about. He had heard this Stevie’s songs played on the radio in Denmark, had seen him on TV. Henrik had read all about him in newspapers and magazines. Henrik knew Standard English from school, but he knew America from everywhere else. This was his first time in America—not because he’d never had the chance, and not because he’d never wanted to go, but because he never thought he’d needed to, because America was always coming to him, the way it always comes to you, whoever you are.

  Meanwhile the man had stopped gnawing on his imaginary guitar and was looking at Henrik, eyes wide, possibly in expectation, possibly in fear, possibly both, waiting, wondering, possibly wondering the same thing Henrik was wondering about him, and about himself. Wondering, What kind of man is this? Friend or foe? Wondering, Is this a man I should trust or a man I should run away from? Wondering, Are you scared like me? Why do you wear your hood that way, half on, half off? Are you in hiding? Do you not want to hide anymore? Have you been alone for so long? Are you so lonely? Do you have anyone to talk to? Do you have anyone to sing with?

  And that’s why Henrik started singing. He sang, of course, one of this Stevie’s songs, one of his most popular songs, a duet. “Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony,” Henrik began, eyes closed, singing both parts, but softly, embarrassed, because it was his first time singing to a stranger, on a bus, in America. Then he opened his eyes and saw the man looking at him, his eyes darting back and forth like little nervous pale blue bugs between Henrik and the rest of the bus. Henrik stood up slightly and looked over his seat toward the front; there were only a few other passengers on the bus, but their heads were turned in his direction, their faces pinched, wary, and Henrik remembered another thing Locs had told him: Never call attention to yourself. I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake, he thought. This wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought, but every time felt like it would be the last. But when Henrik looked back at the man across the aisle, his eyes were smiling. His mouth, too. He nodded, Go on, and so Henrik sang another line, and when he did, something incredible happened. The man pushed the hood off the back of his head, and then his headphones, which landed in the hood, so naturally that it made Henrik wonder if that’s where he stored them when they weren’t over his ears. Then the man scooted over to the seat next to the aisle, closer to where Henrik was sitting. Henrik had read and heard but never really understood that English word—scooted—and why it was preferable to, for instance, the word moved until he saw the man do it on his bus seat. He did not move; he definitely scooted. Henrik scooted closer to him, too. Then the man sang the next line. He sang the line after that, and then the next one after that, too, which was Ebony’s. He seemed like he wanted to be Ebony, and Henrik let him. Individually, they sang loudly; together, they sang sweetly. When the song ended, they sang it again. Whenever they sang the chorus, the man grinned, reached over the aisle, and with his fist began walloping Henrik on the thigh, hard, not out of menace, but out of joy, joy, joy. Henrik knew he’d have bruises, but he didn’t care. He did not care. Everything is going to be just fine, he thought, and he might have gone ahead and said it out loud if he hadn’t already been singing. Henrik thought this because he felt safe; he felt like he belonged. Henrik felt like he’d come to the right bus, the right place, the right country. He felt, if his time on the bus was any evidence, like nothing and no one in America would ever hurt him, except possibly by accident or overenthusiasm.

  Anyway, they sang the song again, and again, six times at least. They might still be singing it if the bus driver hadn’t yelled, in the way of all bus drivers—fingerless gloved hands on the wheel, his eyes finding theirs in the large rearview mirror—“Quit it or you’re walking!” In telling them to quit, the bus driver also called them by their last names. Not their real last names, of course, but the last names of the men who’d made the song famous, including the last name of the Stevie whose birthday it was. Henrik knew the bus driver wasn’t comparing them favorably to the original singers, of course; Henrik knew the driver was being sarcastic. But that felt fine, too. It doesn’t hurt to be insulted if you’re not the only one being insulted. It felt safer to be insulted with a friend than to be kept safe by a safe-keeper. This was one of the things Henrik was learning, on his own, unguarded, on the bus, on the way to Broomeville. He looked away from the bus driver and back to his new friend. Except now the friend’s smile was gone, his eyes were sad, subdued, his headphones over his ears, his hood half back on his head. And only then did Henrik truly hear one of the last names the bus driver had called them. It wasn’t the last name of the Stevie whose birthday it was. Or was it? Had Henrik heard the bus driver correctly? Please tell me I’m wrong, he asked his friend with his eyes. Please tell me everything is going to be just fine. Please tell me we’re talking about the same Stevie.

  “No, you’re talking about Stevie Wonder,” the man said, and then he reached across the aisle and gently patted Henrik’s left forearm. “But he’s also quite a talent.”

  AFTER ANOTHER HOUR OR SO, the bus exited the highway and entered another highway. The bus began to labor as the road went up and up and up. The air in the bus changed, even though the windows were closed. It felt colder, and cleaner. The man across the aisle retreated even more completely into his sweatshirt. Henrik buttoned his coat and looked out the window. It was a world of t
rees. Tall trees with unreal red and yellow leaves. Taller trees thick with deep green needles. Even the road was full of wood. Trucks hauling logs roared past the bus. Henrik couldn’t believe how fast they were going, especially since the logs were restrained by straps that looked just about thick enough to control a good-size mental patient and not several thousand pounds of lumber. The straps made Henrik nervous. Otherwise he felt good, and new inside. The bus passed a series of billboards. One said WELCOME WOODSMENS!!! Another said CLAMZ THURZDAY. The billboards made Henrik feel even better, like anything was possible, even new ways of spelling old words.

  Then the bus took a left, off the divided highway. It bumped and rattled over some train tracks. The road narrowed. On the right was thick brush and piles of discarded railroad ties. On the left was a succession of three-story wooden houses, each with chipping gray paint and rusted metal balconies on the upper levels. The balconies leaned dangerously over the road, and children leaned dangerously over the balcony railings. The road narrowed some more, until it looked more like a chute than a road. It was very dark, but there was definitely light in front of them. It was like the bus was being born. Henrik imagined a cartoon in which a tiny bus covered in oil emerged from between the back wheels of a reclining larger bus. Maybe he would draw that cartoon once he got settled in Broomeville. But then again, maybe not. It might seem gross, even offensive, if you looked at it in a certain way. Henrik could imagine his wife looking at it in that certain way. Henrik could imagine the person who’d tried to kill him looking at it in a certain way, too. How would Broomeville look at it? Would Broomeville see things the way he did, or the way his wife did, or his would-be assassin?

  And then the bus driver honked his horn, twice, and suddenly they were out of the darkness and into Broomeville’s town square. In its center was a fenced-off grassy area with a white gazebo and a statue. On the far end was a building that looked like a Swiss chalet. To Henrik’s left was a two-story red brick building. The building was long and seemed, on its first floor, to house several businesses—a restaurant, a tavern, two beauty salons, a consignment shop (whatever that was). To Henrik’s right was an even larger three-story gray stone building with five white columns supporting a white balcony on the third floor and a white balcony on the second, and hanging from the top balcony were red, white, and blue half circles—they weren’t American flags (there were no stars on the fabric), and Henrik wondered who or what they represented. Possibly Broomeville itself. Anyway, at the very top of the pillars was a piece of white wood with the black words LUMBER LODGE, and on top of that a triangular peak with the black numbers 1792—the date of the building’s construction, or possibly its address. The building listed a little to the left, and some of the stone had been patched, or smeared, with mortar.