Girlfriend in a Coma

by Douglas Coupland

  "Go on," Richard says.

  Karen continues: "The two princes are wearing blackout sunglasses. The Queen's body is being lowered into a grave. Only a few people are looking through the palace fence. It's dark out—and raining. The grave is all muddy."

  Silence.

  "Karen, do you really have to wear that paper bag over your head?"

  "It's not just one paper bag, Richard, it's three bags. I can't see my visions properly if there's even one speck of light hitting my face. Even candlelight. It's a recognized paranormal fact."

  "You look like a joke wearing it."

  "Yeah, a real triple-bagger, Richard."

  "Richard," Hamilton says, "could you please shut up? Let Karen speak."

  "Hamilton, stop being an alpha male for just one second and let Karen alone."

  "Hey, Wendy, excuse me for being so interested in what is decidedly one great big dung heap of a situation. I thought you were asleep."

  "I'm not going to sleep through this situation no matter how tired I am."

  "He's right, Wen," Pam says, "this is an extremely not good situation. "

  ''''Quiet, everybody. If you want me to tell you what I can see, then be quiet. Could you all put your personalities on hold for just two minutes?"

  Karen is trying to describe the collapse of the world to her friends, who are masking their fear with funeral giggles—a protective, ironic coating. "Okay. Let me see—Pam, did I just hear you yawn?"

  Pam jumps: "Yawn? No! Tired? Not at all." The group is petrified of yawning, physical comfort, and anything that might make them restful or sleepy. Their coffee is strong.

  "Karen," Hamilton says, "do you have a little list of who makes it and who doesn't?"

  "You're being facetious, Hamilton. I don't have a list. And I don't know where my information comes from."

  "Hmmm. I think Mr. Liver needs a drink."

  "Can we get on with this?" Richard asks.

  "Richard, please remove the paper bags from my head. I don't know if this is a good time for me to trance. You people have to stop thinking I have this huge Scoreboard in my head with constant information spewing out that I'm not telling you. It's not like that. I tell you facts whenever I can."

  The rooms goes silent. "I need a break. Linus, can you turn on the generator again? Let's scan the radio and watch that CNN tape again."Linus activates the Honda generator and Karen's house on Rabbit Lane regains electric light. The radio squawks out only predictable news: Every human activity has shut down—hospitals, dams, the military, malls. All machines are turned off. Once again, they watch the CNN VHS tapes Karen recorded earlier that afternoon before the power failed. The tape plays and again Pam and Hamilton blanch as they see the images they witnessed in stereo last Halloween play themselves out on screen: Dallas; India; Florida … They have no idea what to make of them.

  Sleep that night is dodgy. Helicopters buzz the trees; a military jet strafes the mountain then crashes somewhere down near Park Royal. Blankets and duvets are brought downstairs and the fire is stoked and everybody camps there. Unspoken is the agreement to not display fear. Yet in spite of the fear, Richard is excited by the fantastic changes of the day. They all are. Richard remembers a few years ago on the Port Mann bridge where he witnessed a five-car pileup coming the other way—that same combination of being special and thrilled. He remembers being the only child in his third-grade class not to get a flu one year.

  Before lights out, Linus asks for helpers to collect water samples to check with the Geiger counter. Shadows of neighbors can be seen walking out in the rain while the quacking sound of ostriches can be heard down the block.

  Karen remembers the exact point of the day when the Great Change began. She'd been sitting alone in the TV room waiting for the noon news rotation on CNN. She was feeling partially angry, restless, and bored, as well as somewhat silly over telling Richard not to go to California.

  "Karen, stop beating yourself up over this," Richard had said during one of the many arguments on the subject. "Nothing's going to happen. If I don't go to Los Angeles, then I'm just enabling your paranoia."

  "Huh?" Karen remembered that modern people occasionally lapse into a strange jargon of emotional claptrap and hooey. "Richard, I'm only telling you what I saw and heard in my heart.""Please, Karen, don't make this any harder—please."

  And so Richard went to Los Angeles. Lois had gone out shopping and George was down at the auto shop; Megan was out with Jenny; and the gang were all out in the world on the one day she knew they oughtn't be.

  Chilly, she wore three sweaters and a pair of Richard's gray work socks; her legs that morning were sore and hard to move. She was listlessly watching CNN while trying to unscrew a coffee thermos, at which point the TV screen fuzzed into snow and then flared a brilliant white. She looked up and dropped the thermos. Other lamps in the TV room as well as the kitchen pulsed brightly then browned out while the entire house bumped and wavered as though it were an improperly docking boat.

  "It's you," Karen said. "You. You're finally here."

  Yes.

  To her right, the glass patio door jiggled as she watched its hook unlatch itself—clack. With a rusty dry squeaking, the glass slid across its floor runner and the rain blew a cluster of brown leaves inside. Karen began to caterpillar her body across the room, a throw rug caught on her numb senseless legs like sacks of potatoes strapped onto her waist. Brisk wet air and rain slapped her face as she neared the sliding door. Oh God, the glass is so heavy. Go away. A tug of war began between herself and the door's mass.

  Show yourself, Karen said, her weak spindly hands aching as she pushed the door closed ever so slowly. Why'd you do this? Why'd you take my youth? Go away. I know you're here. That should be enough.

  She was crying, her face wet, her hands red, feeling as though the tendons were peeling like ribbons from her bones. With a final jolt, the door slammed shut and she fell exhausted onto the linoleum's ancient daisies. There. And then came a crash from the outside, like a tackled football player, oomph, the sliding door's glass shattering into a spider's web lace, a million tiny shards in a fraction of a second—yet only a few tiny shards tinkling out from the middle, allowing the wind to whistle through the small remaining hole. Karen screamed and thenwent silent, laid back on the floor, stared at the ceiling, and waited for what could only be bad news. She grabbed a cool, soft cushion that had fallen from the couch and used it to calm her eyes, holding it over her face. The TV resumed its babbling in the background; Karen found the remote button and began recording a tape.

  She thinks: I had so little time to enjoy the world and now it's soon to be over. I don't want to live in what this world is about to become. I yearn to leave my body. I yearn to leave this life quickly and cleanly, as though falling into a mine shaft. I want to climb a mountain—any mountain—and put the world behind me, and when I reach the top turn into a piece of the sun. My body is so weak and scrawny. I miss holding things. I miss wiggling my toes and I miss my period. I never held Megan as a baby.

  She thinks: I used to ski once. The sky would be so cold it ached, but I was warm and I sped down the snow like a dancer. I used to jump and twirl. And I've never complained until now—not once. But I wanted to enjoy the world a bit more—just a little bit more.

  She can hear a helicopter overhead and booms from downtown. It's happening quickly, isn't it?

  She closes her eyes and she sees things—images of blood and soil mixed together like the center of a Black Forest cake; Grand Canyons of silent office towers. Houses, coffins, babies, cars, brooms, and bottle caps all burning and draining into the sea and dissolving like candies. There's a reason for this, she's sure. She sees a convenience store in Texas, and a black-and-white monitor camera shows two children lying on the floor covered in slush drinks. She sees a nerve gas explosion at Tooele, Utah, a yellow ghost rising to haunt the continent. She sees work cubicles—an office in Sao Paolo, Brazil, yellow sticky notes falling like leaves from a tree onto the
carpeting.

  This is the moment she's been waiting for and dreading. Now it's here.

  26 PROGRESS IS OVER

  The next day, Richard and Megan drive through the water-soaked mountain, through ten-thousand ranch homes, some of them burnt or burning, past forlorn souls staggering through the landscape firing pistols at the horizon, their faces haggard and failed.

  Few other cars are driving. Many houses have their doors wide open and the urban animals—the dogs and raccoons and skunks— have been quick to enter. A car is parked in the middle of a lawn; two dead dogs rest upon a driveway's end.

  All the people we've ever known, think Richard and Megan, the best-looking girl in high school; favorite movie stars; old friends; lighthouse keepers and lab technicians. Am-scrayed.

  On Bellevue Avenue, they find Richard's parents' condominium blandly indifferent to the world's transformation. Inside, the clocks still tick; two coffee mugs sit unwashed on the drain board; a calendar reads: 2:3 o Crown fixed olive oil chicken stock asparagus Bellingham w. Sinclairs

  They can hear the ocean outside the front windows. Upstairs in the main bedroom, the odor of Richard's parents is strong. Their bed has the feel of a memorial stone. Parents.

  They were the engines and the rudders of suburban life. Richard's and Pam's parents will never return from the States, nor will Hamilton's father return from Kauai or his mother from Toronto. Linus's parents and Wendy's father are sixty miles away, which might as well be a million. Karen's parents haven't come home, and Karen has given the impression they are not to be expected.

  Megan sits on her grandparents' bed and sniffles, then hits herself.

  "Why'd you do that, Meg?"

  "For being too weak to cry like a real human being."

  "Oh, honey …"

  Richard puts his arm around Megan's shoulder and he allows her to blubber; he can do so himself later. Once she's cried out, Richard says, "Let's collect some things right now. Some to bury and some to keep."

  Megan stands up and halfheartedly shuffles about. A pair of house slippers; a pearl necklace; a pipe; framed photos. Megan clutches a pillow so that she can remember her grandmother's smell.

  They walk out onto the deck and look across the water to downtown. The sky is overcast and smoky, tinged with burning wood and scorched brake pads. As Richard looks at the view, Megan goes inside and returns shortly with one of Richard's mother's diamond clip earrings. "Here," she says, "bend down, Dad." Megan takes thediamond and presses it into the center of Richard's palm. He looks at the crackles of white light that glint from within it and he remembers a day long ago with Megan down at Ambleside Beach, a bright day. He was gazing at the sun and the light on the water and had thought that there is a light within us all—a light brighter than the sun, a light inside the mind. He had forgotten this and now he remembers, there on the balcony.

  The roads are clear and silent as Linus, Wendy, Hamilton, and Pam drive up the slope of Eyremont Drive. Once at the top, the city lies before them, a glinting damaged sheet of pewter, with fires burning like acetylene pearls fallen from a broken choker. Ropes of smoke rise from the ground as though tethered to the damage; in the harbor, oily gorp has spilled into the waves and burns a Bahamian turquoise blue.

  "The ocean's on fire," Hamilton says. "Like a sea of burning whiskey." Linus captures the image on Hi-8.

  As of yet, nobody shows signs of mourning; they are still shell-shocked. What exactly is a citizen to do? they wonder. What possible purpose or meaning could there be in this strange situation?

  "I was in a train once," Pam says, "in England, returning to London from someone's country house near Manchester." She lights a cigarette. "It was morning and I was deadly hung over and had to get back to London. At eleven o'clock, the train pulled to a stop—it was Remembrance Day morning—and all machinery stopped and all noises and voices stopped, and the world went silent. There was silence for one minute as everybody closed their eyes. A whole country shut its eyes. I felt as though the world had stopped. In my head I thought, So this is what the end of the world is like. I thought, So this is what it's like when time ends. I kind of feel that way now."

  The breeze changes direction. "What's that smell?" Hamilton asks. Already they can smell—the smell. Hamilton says, "Uh-oh—Leakers."

  Pam screams and throws a camera at him.

  Having returned from her grandparents' condo, Megan feels the need to do something productive. She walks to feed the ostriches at the Lennox house a few doors over. The birds' hungry quacking grows louder as she walks across the wet grass and through the Lennox's cheerfully wreathed front door. In the utility room, she finds sacks of corn piled on top of the washer and dryer. Through the opened upper half of the Dutch door leading into the garage, Megan is unable to see the big birds, and then from the side edge of the garage prance two angry, silly faces with Maybelline eyes. They cluck and bobble, making her smile. They're ravenous; she quickly slits open a sack, opens the door, and drags it into the garage. While the ostriches gobble their meal, she fills a bucket of water from the goldfish pond out back. On returning, the two ostriches peck at Megan's hands, eager to have the water for themselves. Megan is enchanted with these frantic, funny animals and she sits on the garage stoop to enjoy them.

  The garage is so grotty, she thinks. These poor creatures haven't seen light for days now. She walks inside the garage to the door, wondering if she can open it just slightly so that light and air can come in through the bottom. Bang! The ostriches run through the Dutch door and enter the house, knocking over chairs and tables, quacking and hissing about the living room, and then head out the front door, which Megan had forgotten to close. Oh shit, she thinks, another rodeo.

  She storms out onto the lawn, where the two birds are joyfully bouncing about, fluffing their silly little wings. The ostriches vanish into the forest as surely as they had fallen into a river with weights on their knotty legs.

  That night the steady hum of Linus's gas generator offers a false sense of stability with its precise rhythms.

  Karen places the paper bag on her head and resumes her visions of events around the world: "Skeletons sitting on plastic seats outside a Zurich Mövenpick restaurant."

  "Skeletons? Already?"

  "No. It's in the future. Oh—I see an Apple computer smashed on the floor of a Yokohama branch of a Sumi … Sumi … Sumitomo Bank. This is all random stuff. I see … morning glories growing outof an Ecuador sewer line and entwining onto a human femur. I see … five brightly-dressed skiers frozen asleep on their skis on the slopes of Chamonix; a Missouri railway car sidled off its tracks, with millions of scratch 'n' play lottery tickets spilled into an overflowing creek. In Vienna, two teenage girls are entering a bakery and filling their pockets with chocolates. And now … now … there. They've just fallen asleep."

  "Can't you focus in on our own specifics, Kare?" asks Wendy. "What about my dad?"

  "Give me your hand." Wendy grabs Karen's hand. Karen speaks: He's asleep. On his bed. He had no idea what happened. He was napping and fell asleep while he was sleeping. Does that make sense?"

  "Yeah."

  The others want to know about their families and bustle toward Karen. Hamilton's father fell asleep on the beach and was pulled out with the tide. His mother in Toronto fell asleep in a downtown shopping arcade. Richard's parents fell asleep in a lineup trying to cross the border. Pam's parents got out of the car and walked across, but only got a half a mile or so into Canada before sleeping. Linus's parents died in a car crash on the highway near Langley.

  After a silence, Richard asks, "What about Lois and George?"

  "Asleep. Mom in Park Royal and Dad in his shop."

  "Oh."

  The generator huffs and stutters and kicks out and then back in. The lights flicker. They now feel fragile, and the youthful sense of infinity that got them to this moment in their lives is gone. "Richard, please remove the paper bags from my head. I want all of us to go out for a walk."

 
; "But the rain—"

  "What is your point? Get some flashlights and rain gear."

  Minutes later, the seven walk through the street, where a rain of stunning proportion turns the sky into a sea. "Look," Pam says, "each drop is like a glass of water." Nobody can remember the last time it rained so hard. Water clobbers them on the head; water renders them deaf. Down the street they march, without lights, Karen inher wheelchair, soaked and sad, down the street until they reach the bottom. Richard says, "Karen, can you tell us what's going on—why we're here?"

  "Richard—" In spite of the water that gullies down her hood, she looks him calmly in the eye. "The world was never meant to end like in a Hollywood motion picture—you know: a chain of explosions and stars having sex amid the fire and teeth and blood and rubies. That's all fake shit."

  "So exactly what are you saying?"

  "I'm saying, shh!" Karen whispers as they stand in the rain, drenched, on the pavement at the foot of Rabbit Lane bordering the entrance to the forest. "Listen: There is an older woman in Florida. She's in her kitchen and she hears her wind chimes tinkle. On the kitchen chairs are bags of groceries bought yesterday but never placed in their cupboards. It's cool out and she is wearing a nightie. She walks out of the kitchen door and down to a nearby dock where a warm wind sweeps over her head and through the fabric she's wearing. She sits down and looks at the sky with its stars and satellites and thinks of her family and her grandchildren. She's smiling and she's humming a song, one that her grandchildren had been playing over and over that week. "Bobo and the Jets"? No—"Benny and the Jets." Suddenly, she's sleepy. She lies down on the deck and closes her eyes and sleeps. And that's that. She is the last person. The world's over now. Our time begins."

  PART 3

  27 FUN IS STUPID

  Jared here, one year later…

  … lock up your daughters. And your smutty magazines. And your sofa, for God's sake, because you never know, I may go and hump it like a Great Dane. Har bar. Listen to my friends and you'd think I was the world's biggest perv. Right. And take a look at them now, will you—one year later: useless sacks of dung they are, slumped around Karen's fireplace watching an endless string of videos, the floor clogged with Kleenex boxes and margarine tubs overflowing with diamonds and emeralds, rings and gold bullion—a parody of wealth.