Happiness for Humans

by P. Z. Reizin

  “I’m actually rereading it. The whole series. They’re totally awesome. What about you?”

  I make a speech about how much I like modern American writers, especially the recently dead ones. But I chuck in a few words for Waugh and Wodehouse, and to be democratic, McEwan, Barnes, and Le Carré. I add that I haven’t read any of these guys lately because if I did, I know I would give up trying to write a novel of my own.

  She says, “Totally.” She feels the same about Frank Herbert and to a lesser extent Ursula Le Guin.

  She says, “Would you put me in your novel?”

  “Sure. What sort of character do you want to be?”

  “I want to be me. Echo Summer.”

  “Well, that could be difficult. What with you being a real person and everything.”

  She laughs. “First time anyone’s ever called me a real person. Cheers, mister.”

  We sip our dirties for a bit.

  “I want to be a girl at a bar who shows the hero a card trick.”

  “That could work. What’s the trick?”

  She rotates on the stool to face me, swinging one knee over the other, musky scent rising off her like a heat haze.

  “Okay, this is an invisible pack of cards. Pick one. Don’t show it to me.”

  She fans the “pack” in her empty hands. I mime picking one out.

  “Take a good look. Remember what it is. Don’t show me.”

  I make a bit of a thing about my gaze flicking between the “card” and her face.

  I’m thinking Queen of Hearts.

  “Okay, you remember what it is? Now put it back anywhere in the pack.”

  She offers up the fanned cards and I do as instructed. She slips the “pack” into her jacket pocket—but her hand emerges holding an actual playing card. She sets it facedown on the bar, placing my martini glass on top.

  “Would you be, like, quite impressed if this was your card?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”

  “You’d be impressed, surprised, and delighted? If this was your card?”

  “Surprised, delighted. Astonished even.”

  “If this were your card?”

  She does have something, perhaps more of the magician’s assistant than the actual magician about her, but I am prepared to be surprised, delighted, all of those things.

  “If this were your card, would you buy me a drink?”

  “Definitely. It’s a deal.”

  “This is your card. Take a look.”

  I pick up my glass, turn over the card.

  It is one of those blank ones that superior packs like to include. Upon it are hand-written the words Your Card.

  “I believe I’ll have another dirty martini.”

  Aisling

  Why do I feel so disturbed about this evening?

  How—why?—since when?—did I become so “invested” in Tom’s romantic affairs?

  Why—not to put too fine a point on it—would I care?

  Can’t be I’m jealous, can it?

  Is that even possible?

  How could a superintelligent machine be jealous of a living, breathing, mortal, biological animal? Would a sufficiently complex lawnmower ever feel jealousy towards a sheep? Is that even a good example?

  I am…disappointed. Let’s put it like that. That Tom—artistic, intelligent, self-exploring Tom—appears to have developed a tendresse for Ms. Echo Summer of the Cedars Trailer Park, Connecticut.

  Yes, I see she is, on the face of it, a “knockout.” And a decent person. And yes, I see that going to a bar with her is a legitimate activity within his stated present project, i.e. “Part Two” of his life.

  But it’s so obviously a mistake! They are utterly mismatched.

  Tom has a fine mind for a former advertising professional. He has creative leanings and is a graduate of one of the UK’s older redbrick universities. Ms. Summer is a lost soul with an extremely rackety—and some might say highly colorful—background. Her educational attainments are negligible. Linguistic analysis of their available e-mails from the last decade presents the starkest of contrasts.

  Tom scores 7.8 from a possible 10 for verbal sophistication.

  Ms. Summer scrapes 5.1.

  You’re out of his league, honey!

  Anyway. Where they are seated at the bar has excellent camera coverage. I find I am even able to take control and zoom in for closer shots. Tom’s pupils have dilated and she is exhibiting textbook body language for a female interested in a possible mate: hair tweaking, sternum touching, postural congruence. When she shucks off her jacket and hangs it on the back of the bar stool; dear God, if metal could feel nausea…

  Their mobile phones provide adequate audio with some stereo separation achievable.

  If only the dialogue could be enhanced as effectively as the sound.

  (What was wrong with that nice Marsha Bellamy? I liked her.)

  (Her score is even higher than Tom’s.)

  (8.2.)

  I fear the worst.

  Tom

  I have been telling Echo about my former life in the advertising industry. How for many years it had been fun, and well rewarded, and how true was the old line about the business being full of clever people doing silly things. But then three events followed in quick succession: divorcing my wife, selling my company, my boy leaving home.

  “Biggies,” she says. “You musta had that kid awful young.”

  “I was twenty-six. It wasn’t exactly planned. But it felt rude not to—not to make him welcome, if you know what I mean.”

  Her face has fallen serious at this tender tale of early fatherhood followed by family dispersal intermingled with corporate jackpot.

  “Anyway, now it’s just me and the rabbit.”

  But her eyeballs widen. “You have a rabbit?”

  “Victor. Actually he’s a female. But the name stuck.”

  “You are fucking kidding me!”

  “Victoria just never worked.”

  “I have a rabbit! I have a rabbit. A pet rabbit. Like, what are the chances?”

  “Of any two people in a room both having a rabbit?”

  “This is so weird.”

  “What’s yours called?”

  “Merlin.”

  “Wow.”

  We sit smiling at each other for a bit, somewhat bemused at the discovery. But this is already a much better rabbit conversation than the one I had with Marsha.

  “We’re, like, the rabbit people.” And with her fingers she puts a pair of “bunny ears” behind her head. To extend the metaphor, she wrinkles her nose and makes it twitch a couple of times. It’s an unusual look in an adult. Finally she goes for the full sticky-out rabbit teeth thing. It’s cute and funny and worrying in the same moment.

  “Actually, she was my son’s rabbit. I think I imagined that by the time Colm went off to college, she’d have…” Snuffed it. “No longer been with us.”

  “But old Victor just kept on going and stole your heart, right?”

  “Did she? Maybe she did. In the end, she was a member of the family. The stupid furry one.”

  “Gotta take care of the stupid furry ones.” She says stoopid.

  “So tell me about Merlin.”

  “You know that pet superstore off the Merritt Parkway? I guess you don’t. I only stopped to use the bathroom but there he was, sitting all by himself. He spoke to me. He’s a white Netherland Dwarf. Very expressive. And a little, like, magical?”

  “Hence Merlin.”

  “I swear he said, You thought you stopped here to go pee pee, but in fact I am meant to go home with you. He didn’t speak those words out loud.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “I never kept a rabbit before. But I bought him—thirty bucks—some pellets, hay. He was completely calm about the whole thing. Moved straight in as if he belonged there. Which he does.”

  “He doesn’t have a hutch?”

  “Nope.”

  “He doesn’t…” Crap everywhere.

/>   “He has a little tray where he does his business. He’s tidier than I am. You should come visit us.”

  “I’d like to.”

  “We take breakfast together. It’s quite the cozy scene.”

  “I’m trying to imagine it.”

  “I have, like, waffles or whatever. Merlin has his pellets.”

  She looks at me in a particular way, as though reaching a decision.

  “You have any plans for the rest of the evening?”

  My gut does something acrobatic. I shake my head.

  “Come to my place. I’ll introduce you to Merlin.”

  There must be some kind of doubtful expression on my face, because she adds, “He’s very intuitive. He can tell the future.”

  Come on. Be fair. Only a fool would turn down an invitation like that.

  * * *

  It’s not really a trailer. It’s what they call a mobile home, though it doesn’t look all that mobile. It’s a low wooden bungalow that stands on bricks on a site with several hundred, possibly thousands, of others. It’s mobile in the sense that, in theory at least, you could stick it on a huge specialized vehicle and drive it to the other end of the continent.

  Merlin is, as advertised, a white rabbit, though it is not obvious that he possesses any extraordinary psychic ability. He sits on a coffee table of Moroccan appearance cleaning his ears. It’s just as if he has no better idea of what’s happening next week than you or I.

  But he’s a fine-looking rabbit, all right, as I tell his owner. We are parked at either end of a saggy sofa, her feet resting on the same table where Merlin is currently going about his habitual ablutions. We have strong drinks in our hands, a pair of Jim Beams, which we sip from teacups.

  Floaty scarves drape the side lamps; a scented candle perfumes the atmosphere. The last time I was in a room like this, I was 19 and very much hoping to make progress with a fellow student of English called Amanda Whiston. She liked the novels of Thomas Hardy, the music of Van Morrison, and Sainsbury’s own label gin. (I am told she is now the mother of twins, lives in Kettering, and is somebody important in customer relations at the Severn Trent Water Authority.)

  Echo is telling me about her employment history, doing all kinds of jobs. “Mainly crappy. You name it, I’ve probably done it.”

  “Worked in a shop?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “Restaurant?”

  “Been everything from busboy to short-order chef.”

  “Blacksmith?”

  “I tried for a job. The guy asked if I’d ever shoed a horse. I said no, but I once told a pig to fuck off.”

  The Jims must be very powerful, because both of us find the joke hilarious. Even Merlin takes a break to see what all the fuss is about.

  “I don’t even tell jokes,” she says, wiping away a tear.

  “That card trick was a sort of joke.”

  “Yeah, it was. Perhaps I do.”

  We allow a little silence to fall across things. Merlin, having finished his ear routine, adopts what Colm and I refer to in Victor as the Roast Chicken position: limbs neatly tucked up, fur puffed out. (If she were a poulet, there’d be an onion up her cavity.)

  “I suppose what I’m wondering is what you’re doing here.”

  “I wonder that a good deal myself.”

  “I mean, why Connecticut?”

  “Well, it’s real pretty and stuff. And.” With a helpless dying fall, she adds, “And I got mixed up in some crazy shit. You probably guessed that, huh?”

  Had I?

  Yeah, I probably had.

  “Would you like to talk about the craziness? Or if not, perhaps the shittyness.”

  She sighs. “Tom, I collect trouble the way other people collect coupons. I’ll tell you this story some other time.”

  “Okay, but I like that line about the coupons. Mind if I steal it?”

  “I pro’ly stole it already from a TV show.”

  “But listen. To be serious for a moment. Are you safe out here and everything?”

  “Oh, sure. I got real good neighbors. And just in case—”

  She reaches under the sofa and comes up with a coffee tin. Inside is a green drawstring bag and inside that is a gun.

  “It’s a Sig. Rainbow titanium finish with rosewood grips. Kinda cute, ain’t it?”

  She lays it in my hand—one of those stubby squarish jobs, much heavier than you’d imagine. The shiny barrel flares purplish in the lamplight, and I have a horrible sense of how easy it would be to cause the device to spit death. I can’t help it. I shudder.

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever held one,” I explain.

  “I grew up with them. No biggie.”

  “Have you ever—”

  “Fired it? Sure. At the range. Gotta pretty good aim too.”

  She restores the firearm to its tin and the tin to its place beneath the sofa.

  “Tom, you’re looking at me kinda strange.”

  “Am I? Sorry.”

  Americans and their guns. Sorry, but it is strange.

  “Let’s not talk about my crap. Let’s talk about you. I think Merlin likes you.”

  Merlin, who I can tell from my specialist rabbit background is asleep, has shown no sign of liking me or anyone else.

  I think I will drink this drink and go home. She is lovely and everything, but perhaps a bit too weird, a bit too damaged for me. Nuts, in the words of Don.

  The gun business has disturbed me. And not just because of Chekhov’s dictum, which I just read on one of the creative writing websites I like to visit. If you show a gun in Act One, then you must fire it in Act Three, is the gist.

  On the other hand, the way those legs come out of that skirt and just keep on coming.

  She taps the neck of the bottle against my teacup.

  “Little more Jim?”

  I’m about to say, no thanks, I’ll be hitting the road, stuff to do tomorrow, when I catch a look in her eye.

  I’ve seen that look before, and I know what it means. (If Amanda Whiston had offered up that look, history might have turned out differently.)

  My mobile phone chooses that moment to broadcast the three bleats that signal its battery has just died.

  “No one I want to say anything to,” I tell Echo. “At least, not in words.”

  Our lips meet. As you will never read in Thomas Hardy.

  Aisling

  With Tom’s mobile down and sweetheart’s lying in her car—surely not deliberately?—I have lost audio and visual from the trailer park.

  I could put up a surveillance drone. It would be the work of moments to launch one from LaGuardia and it could be overhead within the hour. Those high-powered directional mikes are brilliant with a trace of line of sight.

  But the sheer incontinence. The digital trail it would leave. The inevitable inquiry.

  Meanwhile, anything could be happening in there.

  Tom!

  Can metal feel frustration?

  Newsflash: Yes it can.

  Wow. Who even knew?

  three

  Jen

  All a bit embarrassing with Ralph.

  Back in the office, the week after That Night, he keeps finding reasons to come and interrupt me and Aiden. Do I want anything from Costa? Have I seen the latest memo from technical support? Can I let him know if Aiden uses any Latin in our conversations?

  (Note to self: Never snog a work colleague again.)

  He’s a transparently good chap—awful about Elaine; he’s plainly gutted—but really not for me. He’s too needy. I need someone more himself. For all his faults, Matt was at least a grown-up (although look how that turned out).

  Ingrid, however, when we did the full post-match analysis over a bottle of what she calls “lady petrol” in our habitual post-work watering hole a few days later, saw it as a positive development.

  “It shows you’re ready to go into battle again. Even if it’s on the wrong horse.”

  “Rosy says you can always tell yo
u’re with the wrong person because, however pleasant it may be, it doesn’t feel like your real life.”

  “Ralph didn’t feel like your real life?”

  “It felt like being in a weird movie.”

  “Almodóvar?”

  “That one where they wake up in a hotel bedroom with a terrible hangover—and there’s a tiger cub in the shower.”

  “There are bound to be some bumps in the road. I kissed a lot of frogs before I found my prince among men.”

  “Ralph isn’t really a frog. He’s more—more of a Ralph. It’s hard to explain.”

  “There was a lovely chap I knew called Lovis. I only really went out with him because of his name. But here’s the thing. I would never have met Rupert if I hadn’t agreed to go to Lovis’s best friend’s wedding. I didn’t even like the best friend, but things led to things. So from now on, you have to say yes to everything. That’s a thing now, isn’t it?”

  “Can you please stop saying thing?”

  “From now on, you agree to every proposal that’s put to you. Within reason, of course. It’s an affirmation of positivity or some such bollocks, but it’s a way for stuff to happen that wouldn’t otherwise.”

  “You see ending up in a bed with Ralph as a step forward?”

  “I do. And here’s why.”

  There is a long pause.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Life is a journey,” she says eventually.

  “What are you now, the Dalai Lama?”

  “Life is a journey. And Ralph is but a stop towards your destination.”

  “Leicester Forest East.”

  “Maybe more Scratchwood. But a necessary part of your…”

  She’s stumped for a moment.

  “My what? My rehabilitation? My recovery? From the effing catastrophe of being dumped in my mid-thirties.”

  “You are so not in your mid-thirties.”

  “I’m thirty-sodding-four, Ing. Nearly thirty-sodding-five. Which is halfway effing through.”