My American Unhappiness

by Dean Bakopoulos

  "I am!"

  "Meet me in the parking lot, here. Or is that too late for a meeting?"

  I nod. "No, it's perfect. I often work late into the night."

  "You know, you could just ask me out on a date," she says. "You don't need to hire me to spend time with me."

  It strikes me as an incredibly confident thing to say, and it strikes me that Minn would be just the sort of woman who might, in fact, make a rapid decision to marry me and help me raise two adopted seven-year-old daughters.

  I know I am ahead of myself, but there is significant joy in my heart. Minn almost skips out the door. Nothing is as uplifting as two people aflutter with the possibility of a new friendship. I struggle to keep my mind right there in the blissful moment. I try not to flood my mind with images of our first home, shopping at Target, her belly full and pregnant; later, a baby resting in her arms as I rub her shoulders. Slow down, Zeke. Slow down!

  But did you not see the giddiness with which she leapt from the table? Did you not hear the joy in her voice when she pointed a fork at me and shouted: I knew it?

  Minn Koltes, neighborhood barista, is now a prospect. I'm so excited, I almost forget about the engagement ring she wears on her finger.

  I spend the rest of the evening watching Minn go about her work as I sit in the corner of the Starbucks and read the New York Times. As I read about the health care crisis, the devalued dollar, the continuing drop in employment rates, it is easy for me to forget about my unsettling visit from Farnsworth and Morris, as well as the confusing encounter I had afterward, at the bookstore with Joseph and Mack. Reading about the general woes of the world has always helped me forget about my specific, personal ones. Every so often, I look up from my newspaper, sip on my Americano, and catch Minn's eyes as she efficiently mans the Starbucks drive-through. When our eyes meet, she smiles, a warm and wide smile that I can only describe as hungry.

  At the strip mall in Fitchburg, I have twenty minutes or so to kill while Minn closes down Starbucks for the night, putting the deposit bag into the safe and cleaning the restrooms. While she does this, I wander up and down the sidewalk of the strip mall—actually it's called New Prairie Lifestyle Center, and it houses the Starbucks, several "upscale" fast-food eateries, a boutique fitness center for women, a stationery store, a store called The Faithful Gardener (which sells gardening supplies and inspirational books), and Colonel J. D. Fitch's South Side Brew Pub, a vast warehouselike cavern at the end of the center. I decide that I might be well served by a quick vodka tonic—a personality drink, if you will—and start walking toward the large neon beer signs that are ablaze in Colonel Fitch's floor-to-ceiling windows.

  In the center window of Colonel J. D. Fitch's, at a high table surrounded by five high stools, a group of middle-aged professionals is sharing a large deluxe platter of nachos. They drink pints of beer and I pause for a moment to consider the nachos; they look good, and I am suddenly hungry and think that it might be fun to take Minn somewhere loud and open like this suburban fern bar. We could sit back in a corner booth and make smug comments about the earnestness of the place, the absurdity of the wait staff, the mundane music, and the questionable fashion sense at work among the bar's patrons.

  Apparently, I have stared at the nachos in the window a little too long, I suppose, thinking of hunger and of Minn, because when I turn my attention to the five people dining in said window seat, I realize that they are looking at me without really looking.

  There are two men and three women at the table. The two men are looking at me now. The women sort of seem oblivious to me, all of them laughing, weighted by too much hair, too much makeup, tank tops with the zealous sparkle and flesh-baring cuts more suited to sixteen-year-olds. The men are both in their forties and are wearing the sort of wrinkled dress shirts and loosened ties that speak of a long, hard day doing something not at all meaningful. Neither of them will break eye contact with me. The taller of the two offers me a smile, while the shorter, darker, stockier of the two is glaring at me, holding his beer in one hand, his other hand spread out wide on the table before him. It takes me a minute to place the men, because, truth be told, they look like just about every other single man in the bar. But then it dawns on me like an anvil. This is Farnsworth and Morris, the two men from the federal government who stopped by my office earlier in the afternoon. I had not recognized them in this innocuous and insipid context. How did I miss them?

  I decide that I must confront these people. I have to find out exactly what is going on here; it will do me no good to sit back and wonder what I am up against. Have they followed me here?

  Still, just as I harden, become a web of tensed and sinewy muscles pumped full of adrenaline, someone touches my arm. Minn! Oh, Minn. The warmth from her fingertips seems to push through the pores of my skin; my racing heart slows. I can smell her—the sweetness of coffee, lotion, antibacterial cleaning products used at closing time at Starbucks—and I decide that no confrontation is worth it. Nothing should risk what I may be about to begin with this lovely, dark-haired barista, whom I have admired from afar for a long, long time.

  We walk away from the window of the bar.

  "Do you want to have a drink?" I ask.

  "You don't want to go in there, do you?" Minn says.

  "In there? That bar? No," I say.

  "Good. I hate that place. It's obnoxious," she says.

  I must look funny, as if I have just been offended, because then she says, "Oh, I'm sorry. You like it, don't you?"

  "No. No, why?"

  "You made a face."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, no. Well, no, there was just a woman in there, at the table. Someone I used to know, I guess."

  "An ex?"

  "Yes. Of sorts."

  "Was she in the window?"

  "Yes, she was one of the women at that table. It's not a big deal."

  Minn smiles. "That's what I hate about Madison," she says. "Always running into people you had hoped you wouldn't ever see again, aren't you?"

  I turn around for a moment to see if we're being followed. Something is greatly amiss in my world, something greatly troubling is about to occur; I can feel that. But I can also feel, suddenly, Minn taking my arm, the perfect amount of warmth and closeness and heft, and I am not about to say anything so odd or scary or strange that it would make me sound unstable, paranoid, or obsessive.

  "Is this okay?" Minn says, stopping her stride. I stop too. "Taking your arm like this? You seem tense."

  "No. No, I love this," I mumble. "It's just that it's been an incredibly odd day."

  "Did you say odd, or hard?"

  "Both," I say. "I guess."

  "There really isn't a good place to get a drink around here, you know? There is nothing here that's worth going to in this mall," Minn says. "I can't stand a shitty bar. There's nothing more depressing, is there? You want to just go to my place, have a drink?"

  I nod. It's all I can do, for the smile on my face, a medley of sheer joy and anticipated bliss and unidentified fear and tension, has me nearly paralyzed. Oh, Minn!

  ***

  Minn asks me to wait in the parking lot of her apartment complex—a new, suburban affair that attempts, unsuccessfully, to mimic the lines of Prairie-style architecture. "Give me ten minutes," she says, and disappears into the building's front entrance. The complex is an attempt at architectural originality on a severe budget, and that has never worked, though in Wisconsin, soggy with the moody ghost of Frank Lloyd Wright, such a feat is attempted again and again. While I wait in the breezy evening, I wish that I had a cigarette. I smoke rarely, if ever, but every so often, when my heart soars with anticipation and the wind of a late summer evening seems to blow air into my feet and my palms, I do want to smoke. I am reminded of the possibility I used to feel at the end of each school year as a young man, on those first spring evenings, when options appeared limitless and the forces of evil and despair, which I knew, for certain, existed, were so far from
my reality that I did not need to even consider them. No need to even keep an eye out for trouble, for none was brewing and my life seemed ready to become the sort of exciting and charmed life I once imagined I not only wanted but also deserved.

  She comes out to me in a simple black cotton sweater, jeans, and black boots, tall and high-heeled. She has put on makeup, and her hair is no longer pulled back in a ponytail but is loose and flows down toward her lovely olive shoulders.

  "You look lovely," I say.

  "Is it too much? It looks like I'm trying."

  "Not only trying," I say. "Succeeding."

  She smiles, does a playful curtsy, which makes my heart race, my tongue swell.

  "I checked my inventory, Zeke. I have one bottle of red wine—a cheap Spanish red—plus four beers, and a little gin, a few fingers of vodka, and a new bottle of tonic."

  "Sounds great. But what will you drink?" I say.

  She finds this marginally hilarious. I like her laugh.

  We go up to her place. She spends a few minutes making gin and tonics; Minn is pleased to find half a lime in a Ziploc bag. "I don't cook much," she says. Her apartment is tidy. I have never enjoyed spending time with a woman in a messy apartment or home. It reflects an inner chaos that's better to avoid in relationships. We sit in a loveseat by the window. There are three long and narrow windows, from which you can see, in the middle distance, the illuminated Starbucks sign.

  "That's a little sad, don't you think?" Minn says. "My view?"

  "Oh, no. No, that's more, um, coincidentally ironic—maybe it reeks a little bit of American suburban despair, like a Green Day video directed by, say, Camus. Except it's cleaner than that, tidy, I mean. You have better hair, and I'd venture to say you smell better than any of the band members in Green Day."

  She smiles. We exchange some basic background information—how long have you lived here, do you like it, et cetera. We exchange a brief litany of music and film and literature admired and find some similarities on our lists: the Shins, Hoosiers, Jim Harrison.

  "I love the way women feel lust in Harrison's work," she says. "Most male writers don't allow their female characters to feel lust, they only receive it. Harrison's women get horny all the time. I once met a feminist bookstore clerk who said that Harrison was a misogynist. I told her she was being a misogynist by believing that female characters should not want it as bad as the men."

  I feel myself blushing.

  She asks me about my work.

  I try to describe the Unhappiness project, and the whole history of the GMHI, but describing it makes me remember the curious visits from Farnsworth and Morris. An ulcerous burning of caustic worry flares and blooms in my abdomen.

  "Well, what do you do all day?" Minn says.

  I try to tell her, but it seems dreadfully weird and dull. The more I talk, the worse it sounds.

  "So you interview people about why they are sad?"

  "Unhappy."

  "I don't get it."

  "It's hard to explain. I'd have to show you some of the interviews. Sometimes I just ask one question: Why are you so unhappy? Sometimes, if people will let me do a more in-depth interview, I probe deeper. Much deeper."

  "Interview me," she says.

  "Oh, you don't want to do that," I say.

  "How else will I know if I want to work for you?"

  "You probably don't."

  "Like hell I don't," she says. "Do you have your video camera here?"

  "I do. I always have it."

  "Well, get it out."

  "I don't know, Minn. These interviews can get pretty intense. A little heavy. A lot of people cry. I make a lot of people cry."

  "I never cry."

  I stand up. "Is this a dare?"

  "Look, you are obviously so nervous to be up here, drinking with me, that you are really blowing it. You suddenly have nothing to say? In the coffee shop you always had something interesting or funny to say, but now that you're here with me, without a counter between us, you clam up? Get out your camera. Give us something to talk about, Zeke. Make me want to be your assistant."

  "Okay," I say, a little wheezy word of agreement.

  "My God, you're seriously blushing."

  It is hard for me to keep from skipping, so I give up. I skip.

  There is raucous laughter behind me.

  "While you're skipping," Minn calls out to me, "Skip to the kitchen and get me some more beer. And then turn on that fucking camera."

  An Inventory of American Unhappiness

  Minn K., 29, Starbucks barista, Fitchburg, WI.

  September 24, 2008, 12:15 A.M.

  Should we begin?

  Please!

  Why are you so unhappy?

  That? That's how you begin?

  Yes. So, tell me: why are you so unhappy?

  I'm not.

  Really? Think about it for a moment.

  Okay. Okay. Thinking. Nope, not unhappy.

  You'd be surprised how many people, after getting over the shock of the question's directness, start talking. Often it's the only question I need to ask.

  What if they're not unhappy? As in my case?

  Well, they're lying. This is America. Everybody is unhappy. Perhaps not chronically, but certainly, at times, we're all unhappy here.

  Not true. I'm happy.

  Well, occasionally some subjects take longer to confess their unhappiness.

  Right. Okay. What do you do then?

  I switch gears in the conversation.

  To what?

  I say this: Tell me about your childhood.

  That's not much better.

  In my extended interviews, I find it's better than a direct question. People make a few general statements—well, I grew up here or there, my father was x, my mother was y, I had two or three or four siblings—and then, once the throat is cleared, they go right to the sadness.

  I see.

  So? About your childhood?

  It was happy.

  Really?

  No. My father was a high-functioning drunk; he saved his real unraveling, his true anger, for my teen years; my mother was a shattered little bird. We had an enormous house in a suburb of Minneapolis; I stayed away from it as much as I could. When I was eighteen I left for the university in Madison and I didn't ever go back home, not even in the summers.

  Did you visit?

  My mother came to see me once a month. We would spend the night in the Edgewater Hotel together. I'd order a shrimp cocktail and some champagne through room service. My mother would buy me anything I wanted. My father was later convicted of fraud and tax evasion, but we had enough money back then. By the time that trial came up, he was already in jail for repeated frunk driving expenses.

  Frunk?

  I meant drunk, asshole.

  I see. Did you enjoy your college years despite the trouble at home?

  I did, I guess. I was far too serious. I had very few boyfriends, no one-night stands, almost never drank, not even a beer. I studied all the time. My grades were exceptional.

  What was your major?

  Anthropology. Minor in rural sociology. I've told you that.

  And you finished your degree?

  Yes. I've told you that too.

  If I may be bold for a moment: why are you working at a Starbucks then?

  Well, because I have a degree in anthropology. [Laughter]

  I see.

  This is strange. How many of these interviews have you done?

  Five hundred, at least.

  And nobody has punched you yet?

  God, no. Why?

  It feels very invasive.

  I'm sorry. We can stop.

  No. No, are you kidding? I love talking about myself. There is no burden of conversation here. I can just blather on and on about my own life, which is typical of my first dates. I don't have to ask you anything. I don't have to pretend to care what your father does for a living.

  Did. He's dead. He made hot dogs.

  Oh, I'm s
orry. You said that.

  There you go. That's why people like to do this. They just answer the questions, which is easier than asking them, for most people. I like to ask the questions.

  Hey, Bub, then kick it back to me. [Laughter]

  Let's continue. Tell me, do you regret majoring in a humanities discipline? Do you wish you were able to find work in your field?

  If I stretch it I can actually link my degree with my work. I just think about the fair-trade coffees we sell—we really have become a leader in that sort of business model, I swear. I try to focus on the international world music and the globally minded literary selections we sell—that sort of thing. And there is no better place to observe human beings at work in the twenty-first century. Starbucks is the new epicenter of suburban life. I'm thinking of writing a book: Lattes in the Midst.