Happy People Live Here

by C. Sean McGee

9A

  On the freeway, Linda stayed in the fast lane, driving right on the speed limit with her two hands gripping the steering wheel like a toddler would, the inside of its mother’s legs. There were other lanes that she could choose, but they were more dangerous on account of everyone being such crazy drivers and not having any culture.

  Linda hated the slow lane because people always went so slow in it and there were always people rushing at the last second to exit or to run out of gas or break down so it wasn’t a good lane to drive in.

  The middle lanes were always full of trucks and coaches that either drove too slow or way too fast or were always trying to overtake each other, jumping in and out of the middle lanes as if they were little cars and not these humungous things that would probably fall over and crash and kill everyone. And worse than that were the trucks that carried all the new cars around the country. They always drove in the middle lanes too and though it hadn’t happened before, not that she knew of anyway, she knew it was just a matter of time before there was an accident with one of those trucks. Maybe someone would be tired and not thinking or talking about football or sex or something and they wouldn’t have strapped up the wheels on one of the cars tight enough, probably the one right on the end.

  That was so typical.

  People were always so lazy, right at the end of things. They would start with good intentions and put in the effort like they wanted to finish, but then, when they saw the end coming, they’d just give up. Like when people crossed the road. Linda hated the way people would run across when they shouldn’t and then when they were only halfway across, they’d just stop running and walk, as if they were already on the other side. And she’d have to brake really hard so as not to hit them and that would damage her brakes and in the end, that would cost her money, just because some lazy person couldn’t do what they set out to do in the first place.

  So driving behind the big trucks, the ones with two or three levels of cars all piled on, it was probably the worst thing in the world that Linda could do. She knew that one day a car would fall off. It had to happen. If you can imagine it then it can happen, that’s what her daddy told her. Everything you think can come true, you just have to imagine it and it will happen.

  Pretty scary, if you think about it.

  She knew, though if something like that was ever going to happen, it was going to happen while she was there, because of what her daddy said, and just because it probably would. And even when she was in a different lane, she would panic as she came up to and alongside the trucks and her heart wouldn’t stop beating like crazy until she was ahead of it and there was no chance that a car could fall on top of her.

  The middle lanes were no good. They were dangerous because of all the trucks and cars that were about to fall from the sky and because they were fast one second and slow the next and you really had to pay attention or you could drive into the back of someone.

  Linda preferred the fast lane. It was far from the trucks and coaches and everyone drove really fast, even if she didn’t always go as fast as them, or as fast as they would like her to. And if she did have an emergency, she could pull over real easy and she wouldn’t have to change lanes.

  Linda didn’t like changing lanes.

  Behind her, a heckling tail of cursing and fist waving drivers all cursed and waved their fists, stopping only to grimace and spit whilst flicking their lights and honking their horns with the sound of their short temperament so loud that Linda couldn’t hear her favorite pop song. They all wanted to go fast, faster than Linda and faster than they were permitted to go. They all wanted to go fast because they were all late and that was because they were all stupid and impatient and thoughtless, probably because they had slept in or they just weren’t organized, not like Linda was.

  People like that never paid attention to time or to the things that other people did. They didn’t pay attention to anything, not even the people around them or the bumps in the road or nothing. They only thought about what they wanted and not what they could actually have. Like big stupid children; big stupid children with big stupid jeans and big stupid sunglasses and big stupid cars that they probably didn’t even know how to park properly, they probably had to pay someone to do it for them.

  She thought about turning up the radio to drown out the incessant honking but if she did then she wouldn’t be able to hear herself singing along, like she was in the band, and she was on the stage too, and even though she wasn’t the main singer, everyone could see and hear her, and they knew that she was there.

  “Go around,” she said calmly, ignoring the high beams flashing in her mirror.

  Luckily for Linda, she wasn’t tall enough to sit properly in her car so the lights didn’t really affect her that much. They didn’t shine in her eyes, not like the driver would have wanted them to. Linda could see, though, the reflection bouncing off and it made her mad, knowing the other driver was being stupid and dangerous just because he wanted to go fast, faster than everyone else.

  “Go around” she shouted again, waving her right hand manically and panicking as she did, gripping the wheel tight with her left thinking, “This is just how accidents happen.”

  The car behind her accelerated and it got so close that its headlights became invisible against her bumper and even though the driver was still flashing his high beams, it wasn’t shining in the mirror anymore, that’s how close he was. The car didn’t touch or nudge hers or anything, but it could have, if it wanted to or if Linda wasn’t such a careful driver, it was that close.

  Still, Linda ignored the honking and the flicking lights and the driver driving so close that they could both probably crash and die. She ignored it, focusing on her favorite part of the song, the bit where she kind of knew the lyrics and loved most to sing along.

  “La la la la” she sang, pendulating her head from side to side.

  “Get out of the lane you stupid fucking bitch” shouted The Rude Driver, now in the lane beside her, his window down, his right hand beating against the horn to garner Linda’s attention while his face was looking away from the road and away from the truck that was going a lot slower than the speed limit, a lot slower than Linda.

  “La la la la, yeah, oooh, la, na, na, nah, baby yeah” Linda continued, still singing away, unable to see the pile of cars behind her and thinking the beeping horns and flashing lights were still because she wouldn’t go faster than the law permitted her to do.

  This was just how she lived her life, at a reasonable pace, in the fast lane.

  When she arrived at the clinic, she drove around to the farthest parking spots and left her car under a shaded tree, the only one in the lot. It was a fair distance between her car and the building, but it was worth it, especially at lunch, when she liked to sit in her car and listen to pop songs and eat her cheese and baloney sandwiches. It never got too hot, not like it did at the table in front of the building, where some of the other people who worked on the other floors all had their lunch.

  Even if they asked her to sit with them, she probably wouldn’t. It would be good and fun probably, to talk about all the things that they talked about and maybe get invited to the places that they went to after work and on weekends, like to the roller rinks or to ice cream parlors or places like that. She always imagined that they went to roller rinks, mainly because they looked like the type of people who would have fun wearing skates, and they’d probably look good in them too.

  Not everyone looked good in skates. Linda didn’t. That’s what her sister said when they were young. So, if they did go to a roller rink – and if they invited her – she would probably just sit on the seats by the wall and watch, and it would be just as much fun, watching everyone skating around and passing each other and going forwards and backwards and there would always be one who would fall over all the time. If Linda looked good in skates, it would definitely be her.

  But their seat was under the sun and though the owners of the building had promised for a long time to p
ut a roof over the seats like they used to have when she was in school. If they did that then she would sit with the other people if they invited her.

  There was no roof though and that was just as dangerous as the middle and slow lanes on the freeway, if not more. People needed to get sunlight, they needed Vitamin D so they didn’t get rickets and scrunch up into a tiny ball and die, like what happens to old people that didn’t like to leave their favorite chair. They end up looking like a squashed bag of potato chips. And they sound like it too, when they have to scratch their sores.

  Linda got enough sunlight, though, walking to and from her car. Sometimes it felt like too much and she wished someone would invent something that she could carry so she could enjoy being outside without having to worry about the sun always being over her head. Someone invented umbrellas to be safe from the rain, why couldn’t someone invent something for the sun then?

  She knew though, if those people from the other floors - the ones who talked about the shows that she watched at night and had opinions, just like hers, about important things like Israel and corrupt politicians and what really happened to the boy in 9B, if it was really the parents and not the little girl - if they did invite her, and if she had enough sunscreen to sit under the sun, then she could tell them that the man and lady in 9B live across from her and that they’re really nice and the little girl too, she is really cute and she wears her hair in pig tails like a doll that she used to own when she was a girl and that the boy, he had just learned how to walk and talk. And he said lots of funny things and his first word was Korine and he looked so cute and wobbly stumbling around before he died.

  But if they didn’t say nice things about the man and the lady, like most people were saying, then she would tell them to shut up, just like she had been telling everyone else to do; the porter at the building, her neighbors on the eighteenth floor, the stupid reporters that only wanted to interview her stupid neighbor, the one with the slutty clothes and the rich boyfriend.

  Stupid bitch.

  Linda didn’t want to sit under the sun for her lunch break and she didn’t want to get cancer because of it. Every day and all of them sat there not knowing that the sun was killing them, not making them smart or pretty. She didn’t much want to die from cancer and she didn’t want to have to tell them all to shut up, not if she didn’t have to, so she spent every lunch sitting in her car with the passenger seat reclined so she could rest a bit like the patients in the dentist’s chair did and she could eat her sandwiches and drink her milk and sing along to her favorite pop songs which were always playing on her favorite radio station.

  Linda loved radio. The people on the music shows always said the funniest things and they knew so much stuff about different celebrities and about important stuff, like the middle east and the problem with the ozone and the host, he always sounded so handsome and the girl host, she sounded so beautiful and they always played the best songs and they played them over and over and over and they played them all day long and at night too, when she got home from work, so she didn’t have to ever spend money on buying CDs. And when she got new favorite songs, they were always being played on the radio so she could always sing along to them for free.

  “Good morning Linda.”

  It was The Guard. He sat at the reception and acted like a receptionist saying thing like “Good morning” and “Have a good day” and “It’s on the third floor” and at night, he would say things like, “Good evening” and “Good night” and “You might want to put on a jacket, looks like it’s blowing a gale out there.”

  He did most things that a receptionist did in other buildings. He told people which office as on which floor and he answered the phone when it rang and he made sure he remembered the names of all the important people, like the Presidents of the companies. And he’d call them mam and sir and he’d make sure that he spoke in a way that showed that they knew, that he knew, that they were important, more important than the people who worked for them and far more important than the people contracted by the building to wipe down the toilet seats and pick up the cigarette butts and tomato sauce packets that were squashed into the ground, just outside the automatic doors.

  He did all the things a receptionist did, only, unlike other receptionists, he wasn’t a girl and he had a torch on his belt. And he had a walkie talkie and a shiny black stick, for hitting people with.

  Linda smiled. It wasn’t a real smile. It was the kind she saved for relatives that she didn’t like and strangers she had to sit in front of on buses or stand next to in queues and whose attention she eventually crossed. It was a polite smile and it was important to be polite. And if you didn’t like a person, it was especially important.

  So Linda smiled, looking only for a second before looking back at her shoes as she shuffled through the main entrance, her legs pinned together as if she really had to go to the bathroom and was amidst an urgent yet restrained flight towards the closest restroom, which for her, had to be her own. Public bathrooms were disgraceful and it was always hard to go, especially when there was someone making noises in the stall beside her, or worse yet if they were completely silent.

  That was just the worst.

  Linda didn’t say hello back. She smiled like everyone did, being polite and not wanting The Guard to follow her on his cameras and put her up against a wall when she was alone and in a part of the building where people hardly visited. It wasn’t often, and she didn’t even know where that would be, but just because she didn’t know where it was, it didn’t mean that it didn’t exist and just because The Guard smiled and said good morning, it didn’t mean he didn’t think about bad things when she walked past and he could see the round of her buttocks through her white pants, which was why she shuffled the way she did, so that her buttocks didn’t swing and shout attention, like all the other loose ladies around the building.

  Linda entered the elevator and quickly pressed the button for the ninth floor, the same that she lived on. She pressed it ten times, then twenty then so many that to the people about to get on, it looked like she was trying to make it go without them.

  “Come on, come on, come on, go, go, go, go, go” she cheered along in her head, wishing the stupid elevator would just close already so she could unclench her buttocks and let go of her belly and breath normally for once, without having to worry about all the other people thinking she breathed too loud or that her bum had an odd shape or that she wore grandma panties that, even though they were comfortable, they looked silly outlined in her white pants.

  The doors closed and she stepped back, relaxed and relieved, so much that when she let go, she passed wind – nothing loud or obnoxious, just a little toot, like a tiny trumpet, blowing somewhere very far away.

  Then the doors opened.

  The people all rushed in and most of them, the ones that had been running for the elevator when Linda was bashing at the buttons, they all gave her this satisfied look as if there was no way on earth that she was ever going to be invited to sit at the table. And it was about the second floor when somebody sniffed and made and angry ticking sound, the kind Linda’s mother would make, whenever she brought mud into the house or spilled her drink on the floor.

  There were people everywhere, getting off on all floors. And on every floor, there were people around and beside and behind her, all pushing and shoving and pretending to be polite, trying to get past her before the doors closed and why the hell did they have to go to the back of the elevator? If they were getting off first, why did they have to go to the back? Why couldn’t they just wait for other people to get on and then get on last, closer to the door? Then they wouldn’t have to bug anyone or be stupid and annoying trying to get past and have to say “I’m sorry” all the time.

  It was taking forever and it was worse when there were fewer people.

  Linda held her breath. She stared directly at the buttons and she was almost pulling the elevator up with her desperate hope, but it was taking so god damn mother fuckin
g long. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just, it was taking a long time and Linda, she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, but she sure as heck couldn’t let go and breath normal, people would make fun of her and say that she breathed like an old man, with only one lung.

  So she held her breath.

  And she squeezed her tummy.

  And she tucked in her bum.

  On account of the camera, and The Guard watching her.

  By the time the elevator reached the ninth floor, Linda was about to explode inwards from holding her breath so long. She didn’t know how other people did it, the ones who worked or lived on the fifteenth or even the eighteenth floors.

  “I bet they’re great swimmers,” she thought, getting out of the elevator and exhaling triumphantly, sucking in air wheezily like a beaten up vacuum.

  “You’re late,” said The Receptionist. “Again.”

  She was a real bitch but she was super pretty and the way she acted, you just knew that she knew. She was the first person anyone saw when they came into the clinic and for most people, like for all the patients and the dentists, she would act real polite and she would smile really wide so you could see her bright white teeth and she would always be troubled by her fringe that she would have to tuck behind her ear. Everyone loved that.

  To Linda though, The Receptionist was a real bitch. She had bright white teeth sure, but when she showed them to Linda, they had jagged edges for ends and they could probably gnaw through her little arms if she ever got close enough. She never did, though. She always kept her distance and did her best to hold her ground so she didn’t look upset or scared or anything; like it didn’t bother her at all.

  “Graham wants to see you,” said The Receptionist.

  Linda froze. His name was like an anchor. And it was heavier too when the bitch spoke it. She had the letter in her hand and she was trying not to squeeze her it, so she didn’t wrinkle the paper.

  “Is he in his office?” Linda asked, looking at the ground as she spoke.

  “No, he’s not in yet. I’m just warning you. So don’t go on one of your little walkabouts. He said it’s urgent ok?”

  “What’s it about, do you know? Am I in trouble?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care to tell you the truth. Don’t know what the hell it is with you two” she muttered under her breath, straightening piles of papers on her desk by grouping them together and then smacking them against her table.

  Linda hated the sound. It made her flinch and want to be somewhere else.

  The Receptionist went back to staring at herself in her little hand mirror and lathering her already full and gleaming lips in a thick glossy red. Linda could see why people liked her so much. She was like a famous picture in a museum. From far away, she looked real pretty with her red lips and her wavy hair and her big eyes, always lashing away when she didn’t have an answer for someone. Up close, though, she was smeared and out of focus and you’d have to know her to be able to see her like that.

  “I have this,” Linda said, walking back to The Receptionist with her well-kept letter in her hand.

  “What is it?” sniped The Receptionist, snatching the letter from Linda’s hand, creasing it horribly and making a wrinkly mess, as she clumsily ripped the letter from the neatly folded envelope.

  “I got given this yesterday,” she said. “On my birthday” she continued, thinking maybe The Receptionist had been so busy yesterday that the thought had passed her by and that if she knew, she might not be so mean.

  The Receptionist looked over the letter briefly and then started to laugh, snorting loudly before quickly putting her left hand over her mouth, stopping herself from getting carried away.

  “Is this real?” she said, her words barely audible over her restrained laughter.

  Linda looked concerned, like that time, when one of the boys pulled her dress down in front of the whole school and none of the teachers did anything. They just looked at her, like she was something really cumbersome that none of them knew how to move.

  “Oh, this is classic. Hold on a second” said The Receptionist, turning quickly to put the paper into her scanner, barely able to retrain herself as she snorted away, sounding like crackling pork.

  “That’s not really for anyone to see, just so you…”

  “Oh, this is going on the net. This is hilarious. Smile” she said, lifting her phone and quickly snapping a photo of Linda’s dolorous expression, not giving her a chance to look half as pretty as she did.

  “Do you know what it means?” Linda asked, wishing there was someone kinder.

  “You don’t understand it? The big red stamp? Evicted? Nothing, no? You really are retarded aren’t you? God, I have no idea why Graham hired you. You. Have. No. Home” she said, sounding out each word as if each syllable were a hammer’s strike upon one of the final nails in her coffin. “You’re evicted,” she said. “You have until Friday next week to pack your things by the looks of it.”

  “But I never had this problem before. I never received this letter.”

  “Well, now you did. You gotta pay your rent.”

  “But I don’t pay. It’s very expensive.”

  “Yeah, that might be the reason. You gotta start paying. You can’t just not pay.”

  “My boyfriend, he pays – for my apartment and for other stuff too.”

  “You have a boyfriend? Listen by the looks of this, he stopped paying a few months ago. This is a lot of money that you owe. You get that right? You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “There must be a mistake. I’ll speak to Graham. It’s probably a mistake.”

  “Look, this has nothing to do with Graham. This is your landlord. He’s kicking you out. You have to solve this yourself. This is not like the name calling. Graham can’t fix this. This is your problem. And this is serious.”

  “What do I do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry” she said, handing Linda the letter and almost sounding like she kind of meant it, not really, not entirely, just kind of; almost kind of.

  Linda took the letter and ironed it out with the side of her hand against the thick of her thigh. She tried to get all the wrinkles out, but she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t be able to, not unless she had a real iron, but she didn’t have one of those.

  “Get room one prepared. There’s an extraction at nine am and a root canal in room two at nine fifteen. Just make sure everything is within hands reach. I’ll call you when Graham gets in.”

  She wasn’t being such a bitch anymore, not really anyway. And Linda could see now, even from up close, why other people liked to be around her and why they stared at her like she was some kind of picture because she was; you just had to look at her the right kind of way.

  Linda neatly folded the paper and slipped it back inside the envelope. She wished The Receptionist hadn’t crinkled it the way she had. She said it, in her head. “I wish The Receptionist didn’t go and mess up my letter.”

  And now, for the rest of the day, she’d feel that she had to straighten it out, even when it wasn’t in her hands and especially when she couldn’t see it, if it was in a drawer, or in her bag that she kept in her locker, along with her keys and her cheese sandwiches.

  Linda arranged the two rooms and when the morning patients arrived, she decided by a game of eeny meeny miny moe, which room she would prefer to have herself assist; and it was room three, where there was just a general checkup.

  Linda helped the patient into the chair. He looked like a nice man. He had a nice grey sweater on and he had nice looking jeans on. And his shoes, they were business kind of shoes. They looked fancy. But he wasn’t wearing clothes for business, not the typical business clothes anyway. He looked really fashionable. And when he sat in the chair, and when she pressed the button to make it go back, he looked like everyone looked, really small and awkward and kind of like a child looks when the world is shifting beneath them and they don’t know how big they are anymore.

  Everyone looked t
he same when the chair moved. Their hands all gripped at the ends when they started to slip back as the chair dipped and though they all probably thought they looked normal as if nothing was happening, they all had the same expression, as if they were about to fall; like a dog being flipped onto its back.

  When The Dentist arrived, Linda stood close but not in the way. All his instruments were aligned perfect and at a comfortable distance. Linda knew this about every dentist. She knew how tall they were, so she knew how high to have the chair and how far back to have the patient leaning. And she knew how big each dentist was and how long their arms were so she was always able to put their instrument table in the best position so they didn’t have to strain or try hard, to pick up or put down their instruments.

  “When was your last visit?” asked The Dentist, like a scorned priest.

  The man made a sound. Linda didn’t understand what it was. The Dentist did, though. It must have been a time or something because The Dentist shook his head as if the man had just admitted to having been stupid.

  “You need to brush at least three times per day. And floss.”

  The man mumbled and gurgled something again.

  “Don’t lie to me?” said The Dentist. “I can tell.”

  The Dentist sounded really mad. He hated when people didn’t look after their teeth. He hated too that there wasn’t a law that made people have to do it and that there wasn’t police that could enforce it. Or maybe he was just mad about something else and he just expected the man to take better care for something that he had made his whole world out of.

  As The Dentist scraped at the man’s teeth and at the yellow plaque that grew like moss from his bleeding gums, Linda stood close, close but not in the way, watching and listening as The Dentist cleaned the man’s teeth and talked about things that bothered him.

  “Do you play golf?” he asked.

  The man mumbled.

  “I’m a member at Morumbi Country Club. It’s a beautiful club. Wonderful greens. A great back nine.”

  The man mumbled some more.

  “Yes, it’s very exclusive, well it was…”

  The man mumbled once more, like a questioning mumble.

  “Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not racist or anything but…”

  Linda’s attention was caught by the sound of scraping on the window outside. She turned, still leaning over near the instrument table, and saw, hanging on a strange contraption, a man with a bottle in one hand and a squeegee in the other.

  Linda waved, but the window cleaner didn’t wave back. Maybe he didn’t see her. He was so focused on getting rid of a yellow stain on the window that was in one of the corners. He was straining so hard and his face was all scrunched up so it looked like he was blowing angry kisses to his own reflection, probably practicing so he knew what it looked like, when he was in a bar, doing it to a pretty woman who was sitting alone and across from him. He didn’t know, though, that the stain was on the inside.

  Linda stood back for a moment and for a second; she could see both The Dentist and The Window Cleaner at the same time without having to look at either one. She was looking between them so she could see them both at the same time. And they both looked identical. They both had really important jobs; scraping and scratching and scrubbing and making things really clean and nice to look at. She wondered, though, if The Window Cleaner had someone too, to help him with his instruments and whether he played golf too and if he thought that it wasn’t right either, that that black family was allowed to join the club, even though they had all that money and the father had that important title, because the club wouldn’t be exclusive anymore, not if they opened their doors to just anyone.

  “I’m all for equality,” said The Dentist. “But there’s a line you know?”

  Linda thought he was so smart. All of the dentists were. They knew so much and they did so many things and they were all really rich and drove fancy cars and they all had such nice families and they probably went on the best holidays.

  There was a polite knock on the door.

  “Come in,” said The Dentist.

  “I’m sorry Dr. Stevens,” said The Receptionist, smiling. “Linda,” she said, “Graham will see you in his office now.”

  “But I need to finish here,” said Linda.

  “You can go,” said The Dentist.

  “But I have to…”

  “Thank you Linda,” said The Dentist.

  He didn’t sound thankful, though. People normally smiled when they said thank you. Or they looked at you when they said it. Sometimes they even shook your hand. Not The Dentist. He kept scraping away and didn’t at all seem like it mattered that everything he needed was so close that he didn’t have to work hard to get at it, but not so close that it got in the way. He didn’t even notice.

  As she left, Linda dropped a pen off the table. It was a loud bang and The Dentist looked up. And so did The Window Cleaner. Then The Dentist and The Window Cleaner looked at each other. And they both had their cleaning instruments in their hands. And they both looked at each other, like two wolves, peering over an icy lake. But Linda didn’t see, though, she just walked towards Graham’s office, having stopped by her locker quickly to take the letter that was addressed to her.