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
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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
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 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 it
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
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AL RISKE