Then We'd Be Happy Read online

  THEN WE’D BE

  HAPPY

  A NOVEL

  AL RISKE

  LUMINIS BOOKS

  LUMINIS BOOKS

  Published by Luminis Books

  65 County Road 207

  Durango, Colorado, 81301, U.S.A.

  Copyright © Al Riske, 2017

  PUBLISHER’S NOTICE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-495627-59-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  LUMINIS BOOKS

  Meaningful Books That Entertain

  Also by Al Riske:

  Precarious

  Sabrina’s Window

  The Possibility of Snow

  Advance praise for Then We’d Be Happy:

  “Reading Then We’d Be Happy is like riding a train

  through an unknown countryside. The scenery flies by,

  framed by telephone poles into small vignettes, each of

  which tells a small story on its own and hints at what

  lies ahead. Riske is a master at giving glimpses and

  leaving hints, at employing implication and innuendo,

  and creating enormous spaces with very few words.”

  “Once you start your journey through these pages, you

  will be unable to stop until you arrive at its terminus,

  amazed that a trip over so much terrain required such

  little effort and provided such a rich reward.”

  —Doug Edwards, author of I’m Feeling Lucky

  “A refreshingly unorthodox tale of the challenges

  facing modern, lower-middle-class twenty-somethings.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “In Then We’d Be Happy, Al Riske leads us on an

  episodic journey with scenes that seem to be as

  effortless in their grace and simplicity as they are

  eternal in their weight and meaning.”

  —Greg Bardsley, author of Cash Out and The Bob

  Watson

  Praise for The Possibility of Snow:

  “Roommates Steve Bourne and Neil Fischer have a lot

  in common and enjoy their time together until Steve’s

  growing attachment to Neil creates tensions that

  reverberate not only in their own lives but in the lives

  of their friends and fellow students at the small college

  they attend.”

  “In The Possibility of Snow, Al Riske explores the

  boundaries of male friendship, inviting the reader to

  consider the limits of loyalty, companionship, and

  love.”

  — Barbara Shoup, author of An American Tune and

  Looking for Jack Kerouac

  “In a deceptively simple tale of friendship, Al Riske

  does a great job of exploring the boundaries of what

  we can expect from and be to each other.”

  — Judy Clement Wall, Goodreads

  Praise for Sabrina’s Window:

  “Al Riske’s writing is a gift. With uncommon grace and

  clarity, he arranges the details of our everyday lives into a sort

  of poetry. In Sabrina's Window, seventeen-year-old Joshua and 31-

  year-old Sabrina are searching for themselves when they find

  each other, forming a bond that is as unlikely as it is deep and

  abiding. Reading Riske’s novel, I was reminded of how fragile

  and magnificent we humans are, how silly and petty . . . and

  absolutely generous we can be.”

  — Judy Clement Wall, Zebra Sounds

  “This book invites you in and then shuts the door quietly

  behind you, allowing you to share moments between characters

  in a private space with an atmosphere of intimacy that may leave

  you afraid to breathe for fear of intruding.”

  — Douglas Edwards, author of I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of

  Google Employee Number 59

  “Sabrina’s Window is a pure pleasure to read. Al Riske does

  an excellent job of creating colorful, realistic characters.”

  — Paige Lovitt , Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “Al Riske has packed so much emotional punch in this 217-

  page slice-of-life novel that I’m still thinking about the people

  that inhabit the pages . . . Reading it was much like hearing a

  piece of music. I know I’ll read it again, and re-discover the

  nuances of something beautiful.”

  — Katherine Adams , Goodreads

  “With his trademark grace, elegance and economy, Al Riske

  captures the heart and teases the imagination in Sabrina’s Window.

  Where so many others turn right, this novel turns left . . . and

  then hooks a U-turn, accelerates into oncoming traffic and

  cruises toward a scandalous conflict that presents no obvious

  answers. And that’s exactly the kind of book I love to read.”

  — Greg Bardsley, author of Cash Out

  “Al Riske captures the currents of love, desire and

  temptation coursing through all of us, and shows us how an

  unlikely friendship helps a boy become a man.”

  — Robert Baty, author of Vintage Conner and The Girl in the MGA

  “It’s what’s not said in Sabrina’s Window that makes its

  characters and story so effective. With a spareness, a

  simplicity that’s as much writing style as it is a reflection of the

  Taos, New Mexico desert setting, Al Riske weaves together a

  series of moments in a story where the beats between those

  moments are as important as what’s actually happening.”

  — Michelle Jenkins , Goodreads

  “As you read, you become entangled in their lives, cringing

  when they miss an opportunity or make a bad emotional

  decision. You also find yourself—wrongly, guiltily, I know, but

  all the same—wanting these two to get together. They get each

  other in ways that no one else does. What if they were different

  ages? Would she wait for him?”

  — Laura Hamlett , Playback: STL

  Praise for Precarious:

  “The art of the short story is alive and well in the hands

  of Al Riske, who understands how to walk the

  tightrope of subtle emotional resonance.”

  — Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward, Love

  in the Present Tense, Chasing Windmills, and many others.

  “Riske’s characters brim with the fears, desires, and

  idiosyncrasies of real, complex human beings. In the

  collision of spiritual and sexual concerns that plague

  them, we find a truth that makes us believers in the

  power of his fiction.”

  — Laura Matter , Blue Mesa Review

  THEN WE’D BE

  HAPPY

  Mad Enough

  WE’RE IN THIS DENNY’S on El Camino somewhere. We’re

  ravenous and loud. Wired but also tired.

  Spencer says: “Women need to understand the

  difference between being friendly and flirting, because

  most men take it as being into them, and then they want

  to punch a baby.”

  The hostess who seats us gives him a sad-eyed look as

 
; she passes out the menus.

  Marty says: “Fuck, yeah, brother!”

  “Had to be said.”

  We watch the hostess walk away. She’s older but kind

  of hot.

  “Already have a boyfriend? Let me know that up front,

  before I get my hopes up,” Spencer says to no one in

  particular—to womankind at large.

  Nita, who hangs with us sometimes, gives Spencer the

  same sad- eyed look the hostess did.

  “Awww,” she says.

  AL RISKE

  We like Nita because she wears skin-tight tank tops and

  has a tattoo of Bart Simpson on her left shoulder. Some of

  us like her bright pink hair, some don’t.

  Spencer says: “Going to walk outside right now, find

  the nearest stroller, and punch the baby in it.”

  He starts to stand but he’s hemmed in and nobody

  makes any effort to let him out of our horseshoe booth.

  Marty says: “I’m going to kick a puppy.”

  I say: “I’m going to strangle an endangered species.”

  I say it for solidarity, even though, for the past two

  weeks, I’ve been flirting with a hot redhead from the plant

  who has no idea I’m already in a serious relationship. (I

  live with a beautiful young woman named Tanya Alvarez,

  who isn’t here because she’s in night school.)

  The waitress comes and we order eggs, bacon, hash

  browns, toast, pancakes, extra butter, extra syrup, orange

  juice, coffee—a feast—because we’re famished and

  because it’s morning, technically. Saturday morning.

  Nita says: “I wouldn’t condone punching a baby.”

  “What if it’s ugly?” Spencer asks.

  “Maybe a baboon,” she says. “I might punch a

  baboon.”

  “You’re a terrible person.”

  “I have a baby,” she says, “so I’m obligated to steer you

  in a different direction.”

  2

  THEN WE’D BE HAPPY

  We know her mom looks after the kid (not really a

  baby anymore) so Nita can hold down a job and have a

  little fun once in a while. Like tonight. Nita is not in a

  hurry tonight. Everyone is asleep at this hour anyway, and

  we all need to come down from the pulse of Goo Goo

  Doll guitars still echoing through our brains.

  “I never said YOUR baby.”

  “Fine, then. Whatever.”

  Nita clearly doesn’t have the energy for this anymore.

  “Line them up,” Marty says. “I’m knocking them

  down.”

  3

  Where We Live

  THIS IS WHERE WE live.

  El Camino Real, a.k.a. The Royal Road, a.k.a. The

  King’s Highway.

  Could be San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain

  View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park . . . El Camino connects

  them all.

  Drive this road and you’ll pass from one town to the

  next without even knowing it.

  You’ll see McDonald’s, Taco Bell, TOGO’S, Pizza Hut,

  KFC and pretty soon you’ll see them again.

  You’ll see dealers selling Fords, Toyotas, Jeeps, and

  BMWs.

  You’ll see Pet Smart, Toys R Us, Jiffy Lube, Walgreens,

  and BevMo.

  You can rent a truck from U-HAUL, a car from Hertz,

  Avis, or Enterprise. You can stay in a Hilton or a Motel 6.

  You can get your hair cut, your car washed, your teeth

  fixed, your nails done, your laptop repaired.

  THEN WE’D BE HAPPY

  If you don’t see what you want, keep driving.

  5

  Wood Work

  MONDAY COMES TOO SOON.

  We punch in at 6 a.m. Twenty-minute break at 9:30.

  Forty-five minutes for lunch at noon. Off at 2:30, unless

  there’s overtime, in which case we take a ten-minute break

  and work until 4:30.

  We wear E*A*R plugs, spongy yellow cylinders we roll

  between our fingers. Once they compress, we jam them in

  our ears where they expand to block out the noise of all

  the panel saws, table saws, drill presses, and pin routers in

  the machine shop. The boards we cut and drill are used to

  make cabinets for kitchens and bathrooms, lockers for

  health spas, and other storage units for whatever the

  customer wants.

  In addition to E*A*R plugs, we wear non-toxic particle

  masks, white bubbles that are held over the nose and

  mouth by a blue rubber band. They’re custom-fitted by

  pinching the thin metal strip across the bridge of the nose.

  THEN WE’D BE HAPPY

  They keep most of the sawdust out of our lungs but

  sneezing is awkward.

  Finally we wear a sort of welder’s mask made of clear

  plastic. Often they’re scratched up and hard to see

  through, but everyone wears one because it’s no fun

  getting sawdust or a flying wood chip in your eye.

  The main difference between a panel saw and a table

  saw is this: In the first the saw moves through the board.

  In the second the board moves through the saw. The

  panel saw has a huge table area and is used mainly for

  cutting huge sheets of plywood or pressboard. It’s

  especially good, I guess, for making square corners,

  because the square corner is always marked with a pencil

  and stacked in a certain direction so that corner can be fed

  carefully into the table saw. You simply line the board up

  against the fence, as the guide is called, and feed it under

  the three red rubber wheels that pull it across the table and

  through the spinning blade.

  We work in pairs, one person cutting, the other

  stacking, until a pallet is done and we trade places. But you

  have to be at least eighteen to operate a saw, so if you’re

  paired with a seventeen-year-old you’ll be sawing all day,

  which is more interesting but also more taxing. Most days

  now I work with Spencer, so it’s not an issue for us.

  There are air hoses by every saw and we use them

  frequently to blow away excess sawdust. There are also big

  7

  AL RISKE

  vacuum pipes that suck up most of what falls under the

  saw. Water sometimes condenses in the air lines and you

  wind up spraying water on your table. That makes a sticky

  mess with the sawdust and you have to clean and wax the

  table. I never would have thought to put wax on a metal

  surface, but it works wonders.

  A SIGN IN ONE of the office windows says: “Measure

  twice, cut once.”

  Measurements are done with a floppy metal ruler called

  a scale. The scale divides each inch into tenths,

  hundredths, and thousands—and it’s not unusual for

  specs to go three digits to the right of the decimal point.

  Tolerances—the allowable margin of error—are equally

  fine. That doesn’t mean a board can be either a little small

  or a little large. Sometimes the tolerance goes only one

  way, and not too far at that.

  The hard part for me is telling the difference between

  12.67 and 12.68 or some such measurement. I stare at the

  scale and I try to focus and I’m never quite sure. Then I

  turn the two black knobs that tighten the fence and itr />
  moves a fraction. So I loosen them, bump the fence,

  tighten the knobs . . . loosen, bump, tighten . . . I’m finally

  learning to gauge how much the fence will move when I

  tighten it.

  8

  THEN WE’D BE HAPPY

  The foreman, Bob, makes his rounds, measuring twice,

  cutting once, and leaving us a sample to periodically

  compare our work to. If you bump the fence too hard you

  can knock it out of adjustment, or if you let too much

  sawdust accumulate next to it, you’re width will be off.

  I don’t tell people I have a college degree but Bob

  knows because it says so on my application. He shows me

  things, like how to set the blades to cut a dado or a rabbit.

  (A rabbit, in case you’re wondering, is a lip cut into the

  side of a board and a dado is a groove cut further in.)

  “Okay, college boy,” he’ll say, “let’s see how smart you

  are.”

  I always listen carefully and usually get it right.

  “Atta boy,” he’ll say, and pat me on the back.

  Bob is alright. He just likes to tease people. He can’t

  keep a straight face, though, so you know right away he’s

  just messing with you.

  IN THE BREAK AREA are six picnic tables, three on either

  side of the ping-pong table. There are pop and candy

  machines against the wall, and a drinking fountain with

  cold water. Coffee is free.

  Most of the workers wear blue jeans, T-shirts, flannel

  shirts, and sweatshirts. Hightop Converse basketball shoes

  9

  AL RISKE