My American Unhappiness

by Dean Bakopoulos

  This makes me feel bad, because I do care about Lara very much. But in truth, it is absolutely essential that Lara stay on my prospect list because she is one of the only real marriage possibilities I have left. It is now Lara or nothing, and I'm not sure how much time I have left. If only I hadn't taken Lara for granted! I didn't give her the respect and attention a true marriage prospect deserves!

  I check my messages. There are three voice mails from H. M. Logan, all of them begging me to call him and all of them from the middle of the previous night.

  There is one e-mail from a fellow named Donovan Brass, the executive director for a group called ArtAttack, who wants to know if I can provide a reference for Ms. Lara Callahan, who has applied for the position of program coordinator with his organization.

  I reply with the following statement: Hiring Lara Callahan would be a debilitating and energy-sucking mistake. I wouldn't, if I were you, bring such obvious and soaring malaise upon your organization. Also, she stole from the organization on a regular basis.

  I hit Send.

  I'm in the office, late in the day, still looking through Lara's desk for financial records and trying, futilely, to guess the password for our online banking system. I have no idea how to pay myself this month, and Lara left no instructions.

  I hear the door to the main entrance swing open—a little bell lets us know somebody has entered—and I stand up to greet the visitor. Without Lara, the duty of reception falls to me. I sort of expect to see Farnsworth, or maybe even Lara, but it's Joseph.

  His eyes are bloodshot and his face is unshaven and bloated. He wears a light gray hooded sweatshirt replete with food stains and he flops down on the couch in reception as if he's run for miles just to reach me. He's breathless. He takes a hit of his asthma inhaler, holds his breath for a minute, and then exhales slowly.

  "What is it?" I say, a little annoyed by the drama.

  "The Cynic Cessation Project," Joseph says.

  "What?"

  "The Cynic Cessation Project," Joseph says. "That's what it is. I've been on the phone and the web for twenty-six hours or something. I found a guy, a reporter from the Nation, who gave me this other guy to call."

  "Joseph, what are you talking about?"

  Mack walks into the office next. "Zeke, don't listen to him. He's crazy. He lives for shit like this and he's upsetting you for no reason."

  Mack's voice rises a bit at the end of this sentence and Joseph and I both turn to him, surprised.

  "Calm down, Mack," I say.

  "This is who is harassing you!" Joseph bellows. "I'm sure of it. These guys, these guys are from that."

  "From what?"

  "The Cynic Cessation Project. It's a joint effort between the executive branch and Homeland Security, but it's privately funded. It's funded by the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute."

  "You're serious? How come we've never heard of it?"

  "You will hear of it soon. Leatherberry's on the board of the Heritage Foundation, and this is one of his ideas."

  "Jesus. Can they do this?"

  "They have a mandate from the foundation to assess and then suppress instances of anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-exceptionalism in federally funded programs or projects. They were going to start small, and so they started with you. If you want to know the truth, I think Leatherberry has been sleeping with H. M. Logan, and that's part of this somehow. There's been rumors about Leatherberry's gay lovers for years!"

  "But Leatherberry's the guy who gave us the money in the first place."

  "Exactly. Because he was fucking Logan! But if he comes down on you first, makes an example out of you, he can make Logan out to be some scorned, delusional liar."

  "Jesus."

  "You have to find H. M. Logan and find out everything he knows."

  "You're amazing, Joseph. I don't know how to thank you."

  "Are you kidding? This is great. This is validation that my fifteen years of paranoia, obsessive reading, code names, security systems, and everything else is all worth it."

  "This is all speculation," Mack says. "None of it is confirmed. You're going to get yourself in trouble, Zeke. You should be focusing on getting yourself married if you want to keep those girls."

  "How are you, Mack?" I ask.

  "His hand is still messed up," Joseph says.

  "That's too bad," I say.

  Mack sticks up his middle finger. "I have to hold it like this."

  "Isn't that convenient?" I say.

  "As far as I can tell," Joseph says, "these are pretty rough guys. They talk the talk. It doesn't scare a seasoned anarchist like me, but Mack's just a sales rep. He doesn't like to know about this stuff. He doesn't want the truth. He can't handle it. Sales reps live for consensus and tranquillity. Room service and happy hour. But we booksellers are more like lone wolves, trolling windowless nooks and crannies, drinking bad coffee from stained giveaway mugs."

  "Well, I don't know if there's anything I can do," I say.

  "Fucking Heritage Foundation," Joseph says.

  "They're going to close down your office," Mack says. "That is all he really found out. But I think it's because you maybe didn't keep track of your finances in the way you were supposed to keep track?"

  "That's their excuse!" Joseph claims. "An excuse to silence all decent citizens in this nation!"

  "Look, maybe I can get a job at your bookstore," I say. "I can just walk away from all of this. We're out of money anyway. Lara's resigned."

  "No!" Joseph says. "Lara? She's one of your 'hot' prospects, right?"

  "Probably the last one," I say.

  "Too bad," Mack says. "What happened?"

  "Incredibly long story," I say. "Look, why don't I just quit? Walk away from this whole mess, give the government back all its money, its building, its copy machine. Do you think they'd let up on me, Joseph?"

  "Yes, they would," Mack says.

  "Who knows?" Joseph says.

  "And I could get a job at your bookstore for now," I say.

  Mack and Joseph look at each other and then back at me.

  "Well, Zeke, we should probably tell you," Joseph says. "Mack's been laid off, probably for abusing his expense account. Or for failing to conform to the sales projection worksheet format. Or because he can't use Excel. He can barely use e-mail. No matter, he's been canned."

  "There's no soul in the spreadsheet," Mack says. "Anyway, it's not just me. The whole sales force in the Midwest has been laid off, and without my salary to keep things afloat, the bookstore is also out of money. Done. It's closing down."

  "No!" I say. "Why?"

  "Why?" Joseph asks. "Why? Because the age of entitlement, of excess, of intellectual preoccupations fueled by disposable income, of government funding, of private endowments, of leisure, of inaction, of self-obsession, of narcissism, all of that is over. Places like the GMHI are a casualty of that, and so, in some odd way, are independent bookstores. What you have left are things that make fiscal sense, which are really the things that fuel capitalism and war. All of the rest of this is bullshit, Zeke. We're all finished. You and me and every English major in a million-mile radius. We've finally become wholly irrelevant."

  "Jesus," Mack says. "It's just time for us to retire. You need to hang around somebody other than two washed-up, middle-aged homosexuals anyway."

  "But you guys are my best friends!" I say.

  "It's an extraordinarily lonely and perplexing era," Joseph says.

  "Zeke," Mack says, "we're not really your best friends, are we?"

  I shake my head. "No! Of course not! Zeke Pappas has plenty of friends. You should see my Facebook page."

  "Mack hates Facebook," Joseph says.

  "Well, what are you and Mack going to do?" I say.

  "We're moving to Florida, land of last resorts," Joseph says. "We're going to manage my father's chain of beauty parlors. He just opened three more in the Tampa area this year."

  "Oh," I say. "Will that mak
e you guys happy?"

  "You're a good man, Zeke," Mack says. "But you ask all the wrong questions."

  Lara lives on the near east side of Madison, on the first floor of an old two-flat from the early 1900s. She rents from a professor, a divorced historian, about fifty, who specializes in the Middle East and North Africa. His name is Hunter Moss and he occasionally accompanies Lara to social events and cultural affairs in town. She has told me, on several occasions, that he is not her type and that there is nothing serious going on between them, but I am sure Hunter Moss is interested in her in a sexual and romantic way. Still, as Lara's boss, I was never in a position to pry, despite my curiosity. I doubt that many women, if any, ever see me walking down the street and begin ruminating on the details of my sexual life; but Lara, a sharp, pretty single mother who does not appear to have had a serious relationship in a long time, must draw a great deal of speculation from the male sector. It's sad and obvious what we all long to know: has she felt any passion and longing for anybody since her husband left her years ago? And, if not, might one of us be able to restore such important elements to her life?

  On her front porch, which she shares with Hunter Moss, two bikes are padlocked to the railing. A few leaves and stray pieces of litter blow around on the dusty surface. The lawn, which I look out on after I ring the doorbell—it is my polite custom to ring the doorbell and turn my back from the door while the person I am visiting prepares to be visited, i.e., dons a robe, straightens her hair, checks her makeup in the foyer mirror—is bare and spotty and the entire house, a washed-out gray, is in need of a paint job. Hunter Moss is certainly not a fastidious landlord.

  Nobody answers the door. I knock again and swear I see a figure moving around behind the gauzy curtains in the bay window. So I knock louder. No answer. I am about to leave when my palms seem to fill with adrenaline and I reach for the doorknob and open the front door and walk into the house.

  I shut the door behind me. Standing in the foyer, I can see that the house is a mess: the vast clutter that children bring into one's life—toys, books, crayons, multiple shoes and coats, a medley of large projects made from construction paper and cardboard—is everywhere.

  "Goddamn it, Zeke," Lara says, walking briskly toward me from the kitchen. "You can't just walk into my house."

  I don't like yelling, I remind her, and she screams in my face, a long, shrill shriek.

  She looks lovely. She is wearing a close-fitting white tank top and black yoga pants and sneakers. You can see the surprising athleticism of her body. (Once, in graduate school, I took a fiction workshop in which I was chastised for having my protagonists always remark on the clothes and body of a woman when she appears on stage, but, do trust me on this, all men make an instant sexual judgment each time they see a woman—yes, she looks like someone I would want to sleep with, or no, not at this time.)

  "I'm sorry, Lara," I say. "But I was very concerned."

  I wish that it was winter and I was wearing a hat, gloves, and overcoat. A leading man, say, in a fifties noir drama, would certainly enter without knocking, then immediately begin to shed his outerwear, as if he were simply arriving at home, a gesture ripe with the sort of aggressive intimacy one associates with strong and forceful men of that bygone era. Alas, no hat, no coat, so I crack my knuckles.

  "I'm fine, Zeke. I just think that, given the circumstances, I should resign."

  "What circumstances?"

  "We're broke, Zeke. Let's start there. You won't be able to make payroll next month. I don't work for free."

  "Well, this is quite insane," I say. "Certainly you can't blame me for our country's delicate economic condition."

  She looks at me, perplexed. "Zeke, this has been coming down the pike for two goddamn years. I try to talk to you about it every day."

  "I know. I know! Wayne Dyer would call that scarcity thinking though, Lara."

  "Zeke, please. I resigned. It's inappropriate for you to barge into my house and demand an explanation."

  "Why didn't you answer the door?"

  "I was doing tai chi."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yes. The kids are at school. I don't get much time alone in the house, so I thought I'd enjoy my day off. I start a new job next week. Despite your shitty references."

  "Pardon?"

  "Don't play dumb. Mark Siegel told me what you said. Luckily, he didn't believe any of it."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about, Lara."

  "What do you want, Zeke?"

  "Tai chi, huh? I've been thinking about that," I say. "I could use something like that in my life."

  "You know, I could sue you for that. For those false reference statements!"

  "Do you find it centering?"

  "What?"

  "Tai chi."

  "I do."

  "Wow. Is it strenuous?"

  "No. It's relaxing. That's the idea."

  "Could you show me? How do you do it?"

  "No."

  "Don't leave me," I say.

  "Zeke, I want you to leave now. This is so inappropriate."

  "After all those years of friendship between us?" I say. "This is how we end things? A typed letter on my desk?"

  That makes her back away.

  "Zeke, look, I'm done. It's not just the way you treated me the other day, it's a whole lot of things. For one thing, I don't really even know what we do. I don't know what sort of career track I am on, answering the phones at an organization that gets increasingly obscure and broke with each passing year."

  "I resent that. You seemed to value the work we did a few weeks ago."

  "I've been doing some thinking. Soul-searching."

  "Look, I want to start again. We could start our own organization, without federal money. Who cares what those auditors do? We'll start a private foundation. The Foundation for the Study of American Unhappiness! We'll do the Unhappiness Festival each fall, and we'll keep the Inventory project on task, and..."

  "Stop it, Zeke."

  "No. I'm serious! I'll pay you double."

  "With what?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "What are you going to pay me with, Zeke?"

  "We'll talk to H. M., Lara. We'll explain why we need his investment in our work now more than ever."

  "H. M.?"

  "We'll tell him we're getting married. We will get married."

  "Zeke, you've gone nuts."

  "Lara," I say, taking her hand, looking into her green eyes, which are remarkably large when you fixate on them in relation to her small nose and chin. She looks down but takes my other hand, moves just a faint step closer so I can feel some heat coming off the skin of her bare midriff. Oh, what a wonderful fashion trend, may it never die again! Ever since I saw Madonna's "Lucky Star" video as a prepubescent youth, I have loved the sight of a shirt rising just high enough to show a hint of skin. "Do you believe in retroactive sex?"

  "What? What is that?"

  She steps back.

  "No, listen to me for a second. Retroactive sex is a guilt-free way of having sex. For instance, let's say there was someone you were friends with in college, maybe you had an intense attraction to that person and vice versa, but for some reason you never consummated it. Whatever. You were dumb and young. And you see that person years later—you can have total, no-strings-attached sex since you passed up your chance at it once before. It doesn't matter what your current situation is or whatever. The sex you engage in at the present moment is actually based on a past emotional response. So, well, the emotional repercussions are done. They're over. What you are engaging in is like a purely cathartic physical act."

  "What?"

  "Like a sauna, or massage, or something."

  "Shut up. This is serious?"

  "I'd like to think so. I sort of perfected this theory. But it's a widely believed phenomenon. I am surprised you never heard of it. It has plenty of useful applications—former students, say, for a college professor who resisted the temptations set before him i
n the classroom and then meets the former co-ed when she is thirty-one, on a business trip for an insurance company. They could go back to her hotel, watch a filthy movie, smoke crack, whatever. It's an event happening, technically, in the present, but it's fueled by the past."

  "That's not how it works," Lara says.

  "Okay. Maybe you see your ex-husband's best friend, long after your marriage is over, and maybe he was single way back when, but now he's married. Right? But you can fuck him, right then and there. You still can act on something you held at bay due to social propriety, friendship, whatever. It's fine. It's a secret with no present-day complications."

  "You're freaking me out," Lara says.

  "Or in our case, you are no longer my employee and I am no longer your superior, so we can have the sex we would have had on that night in Omaha without any long-term emotional or logistical effects on our present situations or relationships. We get it over with, done, end of unfulfilled impulse, end of buried desire. Release of burden!"

  "Omaha? This is crazy. You are such a sick man."

  "Come on, when's the last time you had sex with somebody?"

  "I don't know."

  "See?"

  "About two weeks ago, I guess."

  "Oh? Seriously?" I say.

  She turns away from me, crosses the room. I follow.

  "Who?" I ask.

  "It wasn't great. I probably won't have sex with him again."

  "It doesn't matter anyway. That's the great thing about this. You can have sex with him again. Tomorrow, for instance. I, myself, had two possible opportunities for sex this week, but only one panned out and it ended badly. I don't know where she is."

  "I can't believe this," Lara says. "I'm going to have to call the cops, Zeke."

  "Certainly there's some sort of physical, or mental, attraction between us. All those years in the office, all of that forbidden pleasure we resisted because of professional ethics and our need for gainful employment, none of that is important now."