Wake Up Happy Every Day

by Stephen May

  Twenty-eight

  JESUS

  Jesus is in Lilith with Sarah and she is parading for him in a variety of $5,000 dresses. The best dresses. But don’t think of it as a shopping trip, he tells her. Think of it as a school assignment. Today Sarah must speak Spanish only.

  He thinks Sarah looks good, he can feel the air fizzing around them. He’ll do it today. Today is a good day for it. But the time must be right. He must make sure she’s in the right mood. A good salesman must be a psychologist, a storyteller, a lover. He must seduce and he must enchant.

  They are cool the English ladies, he’s heard that, but after three hours downtown in all the Latino boutiques he is certain that Sarah looks at him with a little extra heat in her eyes. A little more light.

  And now here in Lilith the spark between Sarah and Jesus is making all the store clerks smile. And they don’t smile easy these chicks. They are in a universe way beyond cool. But this handsome young man, this rich older lady learning Spanish for him, is like a kind of fairy tale maybe. Or a story from the entertainment papers. Even this kind of rinky-dink boutique clerk is warmed up by this. And for Jesus it feels good to be looked at like he’s someone.

  He makes sure they all know who is boss. No. No. Not this one. Something not quite right – neckline is wrong. And then at last – yes, yes, perfecto – that one, yes. Does you right, does you justice, brings out the azul of your eyes – the azul of your eyes and your beautiful, beautiful chichis. The girls in the shop all cover their mouths and giggle at that. Jesus includes them all in his widest smile.

  ‘Sarah. She has beautiful . . .’ He makes a shape with his hands. ‘Amazing chichis, yes?’ He is outrageous, but Jesus knows that women like that. A salesman must perform. He must captivate. Sarah blushes, but everyone can see she likes the fooling around. Likes to be seen as a sex symbol. Who can resist that? And the chicks in the store, they all agree, yes, she has beautiful breasts. Amazing chichis.

  And later, in Latin Grill Express, Jesus makes sure to compliment her accent, her vocabulary, to express admiration for the way her chichis looked in the last dress all over again, then Sarah asks about his plans for work, what he will do when they all leave. She says he must be keen to get back to his studies, and he knows he must tell her about his business plans right now. His heart dances hard in his chest and he knows that the time is right. A salesman must know the exact time to close.

  ‘Tees,’ he says

  Sarah frowns. ‘Tees?’

  ‘Yeh. T-shirts.’ And he explains: high-quality American-made tees with a distinctive logo. That is his plan. That is the business to be in. To be the best in. High-grade tees with an awesome logo.

  ‘It’s the logo that counts,’ Jesus says. ‘Look at Superdry.’ The riches from rags story of Superdry is a fable to Jesus. A legend about how to get on and get up, but he says the time is right for a new contender. Like Mary says, ‘There’s always room for a Pepsi.’ By which she means any business has room for two giants at any one time.

  ‘The cheapest. And the best,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Exact. You get me.’

  And he goes on to tell her how maybe some markets even have room for four mega corps. Two trying to be the cheapest. Two trying to be the best.

  ‘And people have to wear clothes. You can’t digitise T-shirts.’

  He claps his hands together. ‘Sí.’

  So then he takes a breath, makes his face all serious and asks. And she sits and takes a sip of her drink. She closes her eyes. She makes a show of thinking hard and serious. And he gets that. He knows that she needs to do that, to look like it’s a big decision.

  And then she says no.

  She says no. He can’t believe it. After everything.

  She says, ‘Let me tell you why I’m out.’ Like she is from one of those shows where tycoons crap all over the dreams of the little guys. Like she’s a dragon in her shitty stinking den. And she asks him if he would have taken a bank manager to Lilith, if he would have told Donald Trump or the manager of the Chase Manhattan Bank that they had amazing chichis? Like that is relevant to anything.

  She tells him that she thinks, yes, tees probably are a good business to be in, relatively easy access to the market, fewer barriers to entry for small-time operators than most industries, but she doesn’t trust him to run an effective company. She doesn’t think he’ll take advice. She reminds him of the time they all went out and got ripped that night they first met. How he didn’t listen to her.

  She goes on to say that she is happy to pay for services, like the Spanish lessons, but she couldn’t invest in a business on the scale he’s asking. It would make her too anxious and she has too much anxiety in her life already. And she tells him some bullshit story about lending her sister money to pay her divorce lawyer and her sister getting back with her husband and spending the money on a new car. And how her sister and her don’t really talk much any more.

  Last of all, she tries to say she won’t give him the money because she likes him too much. ‘It will spoil things between us all. Between me, you, Mary, and Russell. Money and friendship – they just don’t work together.’

  Jesus is shocked. Does she really think they are all friends now? Just because they’ve been shopping? Just because Mary looks after their spastic kid? She’s saying she won’t help him because she likes him? That is fucked up.

  And he has to smile and say of course. It’s no biggie. It’s fine. He understands completely.

  He spreads his arms wide. Smiles. ‘Of course, of course. I get it. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. But I just wanted you to be the first to have the opportunity to invest. Is a sure thing for certain.’

  And she laughs and says that she totally got that and it was a kind thought. ‘But we should definitely keep business and pleasure separate.’

  And so they talk of other things, and she pays the bill and gives him fifty dollars to buy something nice for Mary. And Jesus feels a murderous rage in his stomach. A sickness right in his guts. The bitch will pay, he decides. Her and her freaky geeky dickless man. They are undeserving of their good fortune and some day soon they need to find that out.

  There is a silence and Sarah tries to bring a smile back to their table, like it can all be normal again. ‘One for the road?’ she says, and orders Mojitos in Spanish. ‘How was that?’ she asks, and for a moment he thinks about telling her it was an epic fail. But this is not the time. Sure, there needs to be a reckoning, but not now.

  And she tells him that she and Russell are planning to go back to Europe. ‘I’m feeling homesick,’ she says. ‘I miss my mum. I miss my sisters. Even the one who ripped me off. I miss my friends. And I want my daughter to grow up with an English accent.’

  Like that is a thing to be proud of. She wants her daughter to grow up speaking in the voice of the dead, because the UK is so over. Europe is so over. Don’t these people even know that?

  With Sarah’s dollars Jesus buys a bottle of Jim Beam on the way home. She said buy something nice and Jesus doesn’t think there are many things nicer than bourbon.

  And at home as they drink he tells Mary how things have gone down, and she is as pissed as him. ‘That bitch,’ she says and she puts her glass down on the little table by the bed where she is lying and crosses over to where he stands in the doorway. She puts her warm arms around him. She smells milky somehow and there is a mark on the shoulder of her sweater. Drool from the goddamn kid for certain.

  Jesus is still agitated, still upset. He is pacing as he talks.

  He says it again. ‘That total bitch.’

  ‘Yeah, but maybe we rushed it, baby. Pushed too hard too soon. But it’ll be OK.’ Mary takes his hands and looks up at him and smiles that wicked smile that always makes his heart flip. ‘So just hush up now. I will get your money, honey.’

  ‘Oh yeah? How?’

  ‘From Russell. I’ll sweet-talk him.’ And she presses herself against him. Now he begins to grow calm again, made soft by Mary’s heart kee
ping time against his. Soft and hard. He closes his eyes, breathes her in. Candy, milk, smoke, and the vanilla of some discount perfume. They stand like that for a long moment.

  ‘Or I’ll do this.’ She puts her hand inside his sweatpants and squeezes gently, then not so gently.

  ‘Or I could do this.’ She drops to her knees, roughly jerks his pants down over his hips. Jesus opens his eyes, looks down at her shining hair. The hair she brushes at least a hundred times every morning before she puts it into pigtails. The hair she brushes until it is as silkily golden as the sun on the mid-west wheatfields where she comes from. She grins up at him. Licks her lips and puts him in her mouth. She sucks and licks while her hand explores him. She knows what she’s doing. She is good at this. She is the best. He can’t let her do this with that English faggot. He pulls at her hair. And pulls harder. ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Hey.’ She stands up rubbing at her scalp.

  ‘You big meathead,’ she says, but she is still smiling and she keeps her hand around him. ‘Does it make you angry, thinking of me blowing another man?’

  ‘Of course it does. You’re my girl.’

  ‘I’m going to do it though.’

  ‘You think so, huh babe?’

  ‘I do think so. Babe.’ She imitates his accent. She is smirking. She is still stroking him slowly.

  ‘You are not.’

  ‘It’ll be for you.’

  ‘I don’t care. Is a bullshit idea.’

  ‘Makes you mad, huh?

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Show me how mad it makes you.’

  Afterwards she rolls a fat one and makes cups of some herbal shit. Fag’s tea he calls it, though he is getting used to it now. Still, he adds a shot of Jimmy Beam to his. She tells him she loves him and that she’d never really do any of those things with Russell. He needs to know that. The guy wears a freakin’ wig for a start. And she shudders. And then she smiles wickedly again and smokes and strokes his leg, and says that he should just trust in the Lord and wait. Eventually they – Russell and Sarah – will need them so much that they’ll do anything they ask. Fact is, she thinks pretty soon they won’t even need to ask. That kid is loving her so much right now and that if they just keep right on with what they do – just being around smiling, helpful, kind – then they will get his start-up centavos no problemo.

  ‘Babe, is not going to work.’

  ‘Why not? We just need to be patient is all.’

  ‘I’m telling you. We don’ have time to be patient. They’re leaving. Going away. Going back to Europe.’

  Mary is quiet. He can feel the gathering weight of her anger.

  ‘Do you wanna do something? Go out somewheres maybe?’

  She ignores him.

  ‘When are they going?’

  ‘I don’t know, babe. Soon I think.’

  ‘OK.’ Her voice is hard. He doesn’t like it. For a minute there is quiet. He can hear laughter from a TV show in another apartment. He can hear voices from the sidewalk outside. Some bullshit argument.

  ‘So you want to hear my new big idea?’ she says. He thinks maybe he does, but also that maybe he doesn’t.

  She kisses his chest. ‘Hey, don’t be like that. It’ll be OK. No one will die. No one will even get hurt.’ Her voice is soft again now. He relaxes. The storm has passed without breaking. She is over it. And so then she tells him her idea.

  ‘Worth thinking about, huh?’ she says. And when he doesn’t say anything she takes her beautiful ass out of bed. His eyes follow her. The butterflies, the birds, the flowers, that perfect eagle that spreads majestic wings across her golden back. He can’t help himself. He is lost to her. She bends and picks a pink tee off the floor. He feels a tightness in his chest. She turns to face him and holds it up in front of her. Hides those perfect breasts. It’s a Superdry tee of course. And he sees all over again that it is all about the logo. He’ll need an absolutely, totally awesome logo. Who does he know who could come up with something like that? But there will be someone. The world is full of artists.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Yes, pequeña. Yes.’

  ‘Cool.’ She throws the tee to him and walks to the bed slow and easy. She leans over him, so his face is inside a golden tent of her hair. She laughs. ‘We are going to so kill these fuckers. Superdry, you are so over. Superdry you are toast.’

  Twenty-nine

  SARAH

  Nicky knows most things about Russell’s life, but he doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know about Russell standing in Sarah’s office, shivering and almost naked, bottom lip stuck out like a petulant child.

  He doesn’t know about the gramophone. He doesn’t know about the walk. He doesn’t know about ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’.

  Just after the wedding, nearly four years ago, Scarlett unfurling inside her, Sarah looked up from marking essays to see Russell already in the overheated, airless grey refuge of her office. Her private space. The place where even Nicky had only been a couple of times. Russell closing the door behind him, putting one long finger to his lips and then running a hand through his spiky crop, making it look just that little bit more roguishly tousled. It was ridiculous.

  ‘Come for a walk,’ he said.

  ‘Russell. Bog off,’ she said.

  And he clapped his hands, delighted at how matter-of-fact she sounded, how unfazed she was at his being there even though he was meant to be busy stroking the lovely face of the yuan, cosying up to the voluptuous bosom of the rouble. Stomping with his bespoke shoes all over the tired face of the euro. Or vice versa.

  He was very keen to get her to go for a walk and eventually, even though she was busy, even though she didn’t like him much, she agreed to step outside with him. She was intrigued despite herself. She said she’d go for a bite down by the river. It’s a nice day after all and they should take advantage of that.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ he said.

  They walked out of the office down the careful beige of the corridor with its splashes of Manet prints on the wall. It could, she thinks, be an institution anywhere. This university corridor could just as easily be one in a hotel or a hospital or a prison. They passed some students and some staff, all of them carrying documents on drab recycled paper. Everyone nodded, everyone said hello. No one stopped for a chat.

  It was five minutes to the river and they went there in silence. Russell was lugging a huge black rucksack. He was sweating beneath the weight of it, he had no breath for conversation and in any case Sarah wasn’t going to ask what was inside. She was pretty sure he’d tell her when he was ready to. And she was also pretty sure she was expected to be impressed, and the thought already made her a bit tired.

  As they walked alongside the embankment, the prettiest bit of town as it followed the lazy curves of the Ouse, Russell seemed to be looking for the perfect spot to stop. Quite clearly not any bench would do.

  They walked for about fifteen minutes in the end, before Sarah refused to go any further. It looked for a moment like Russell would argue, but he didn’t. It was nice here after all. There were willow trees and this bench was dedicated to someone’s darling Jo who always liked this view.

  But they didn’t have to sit side by side on Jo’s bench, seeing her view, because from the rucksack Russell produced a plaid rug. And he also produced plates and cutlery. Proper stuff, not plastic. He brought out rolls and pâté and ham and Belgian beer and fine French cheeses. Roquefort and Camembert. It was like a scene from Wind in the Willows. And he’s Ratty, Sarah thought, because she knew where this was going, though of course in the book Ratty prefers boats to girls.

  But Russell had another thing in his rucksack. His best thing. With both hands he hoisted out an old wind-up gramophone and he placed it on the grass. And then he fetched out records too. Brittle shellac 78s in battered sleeves. Sarah took one from him. It was hard and heavy and smelled of antique-shop dust. It was already growing warm in the
sun. ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’.

  Now he placed another record on the turntable. The air was filled with the scratchy waltz of clarinettists and the very proper RP croon of a long dead singer telling the world he’d fallen for the charms of a sweet young thing. She’d captured him magically, wonderfully, utterly. She was a jewel.

  Now Russell held out his hands and Sarah sighed at the nonsense of it all, but she climbed to her feet and there, by the indifferent Ouse, in that small town on a Wednesday lunchtime, they danced. It was quite romantic, she supposed. The sort of memory that might keep you warm on winter nights in your cot in the care village when you were old. Man flies all the way to see her for a picnic and a smooch. But no.

  And when he asked her – as she’d known he would – to come back to the States with him to be his girl, she looked him in the eyes for a long, long second. He closed his. Was he really expecting her to kiss him? Did he really think it was magical, wonderful, that he’d captured her utterly with an old song and a designer scotch egg? The fool.

  She put her hands on his chest. She looked to the uncharacteristically open sky. It was a perfect summer romcom sky. As clear and as blue as hope. She saw all the eager ducks gathering by the bank in case there might be bread. She could give them something better than bread.

  She shoved him. Hard. He stumbled, almost fell, but stayed up. Tottered on the bank, arms windmilling. Several ducks show him how it should be done as they flap away.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey is for horses,’ she said and pushed him again, even harder this time, and caught him flat-footed and unprepared and he went straight into the dirty water with a satisfying splash and a decent fanfare of spray. The ducks took off hooting with what sounded uncannily like human laughter. They’re a very appreciative audience. Everyone likes to see a bloke fall over backwards into water. It never gets old. Not if you’re a duck. Not if you’re a kid. Not if you’re Sarah Fisher.