Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

«You told my mother ?»

«Of course.»

John paused. «Another drink, Ivan?»

As he looked for ice cubes in the kitchen's two deep freezes, John considered Ivan and Nylla. He heard them talking back in the living room. They were now discussing carpeting: prices per square yard, World Book Encyclopedia —style. «I want the good type,» said Ivan, «the kind that looks like pearl barley packed together. Really smooth.»

«But if the wool's too smooth, it looks like Orlon. It needs character. A bit of sheep dung mixed into it maybe.»

«We're going to have Beverly Hills's first Hanta virus carpet?»

«Sheep don't get Hanta virus. Just rodents, I think. And raccoons.»

John listened in and ached to have somebody to discuss rugs and raccoons with. He felt intact but worthless, like a chocolate rabbit selling for 75 percent off the month after Easter. But it went beyond that, too. He felt contaminated, that his blood stream carried microscopic loneliness viruses, like miniscule fish hooks, just waiting to inflect somebody dumb enough to attempt intimacy with him.

His mind wandered. There had to be hope — and there was. He remembered the woman in his hospital vision had made him feel that somewhere on the alien Death Star of his heart lay a small, vulnerable entry point into which he could deploy a rocket, blow himself up and rebuild from the shards that remained.

In the second freezer John found the ice cubes clumped frozen together inside a sky blue plastic bag. He opened up the bag and tried to pry a few cubes away from the lump. Daydreaming, he wondered if he could ever be unselfconsciously chatty and loose with someone. If Ivan=Nylla, then John= blank. Maybe his mother Doris's years of prayers had begun to inch their way onto God's «To Do» list: Dear Lord, please take care of the late Piers Wyatt Johnson, a king among men. Also bless the pesticide industry, our boys in Vietnam, (still, even at the century's end) and please find a nice young wife for John, preferably one who doesn't mind the smell of cigarette smoke, which is so hard to find in California… .

He heard Krista and Cindy come downstairs and begin chatting with Ivan, then returned his attention to the ice. He lifted up the bag of fused ice cubes and dropped it, shattering its contents into individual cubes. The noise was fearsome, and Ivan called from the living room asking if John was okay, and John called back, «Fine — couldn't be better,» and it was easy to take as many cubes as he liked.

Standing alone on the sidewalk, John watched the police car drive Susan away. He was as still as a statue as the sun went down behind the hill. Had he left a car at the restaurant? No, Nylla had dropped him off there. So he decided to walk the rest of the way home. Home was temporary digs in Ivan's guesthouse, the house he grew up in and in which his mother still lived. John had been staying there since his return two months earlier from his disastrous experiment in hobodom.

He headed along Sunset Boulevard and was oblivious to the stares of passing drivers, many of whom punctuated their cell phone calls with such comments as:

* «Good Lord — it's John Johnson — walking — yes, that's right, with his feet — on Sunset!»

* « Yow, he looks like crap — what were the numbers on Mega Force in the end? — yeee — that much?»

* «Maybe he's doing his walking thing again — I mean, he looks like a Mexican gonna sell you a bag of oranges at a streetlight for a dollar.»

* «Yes, I'm absolutely sure it's him — he looks really thin, or should I say, not sort of bloated like he was before detox number 239.»

* «Wasn't he in the hospital? — pneumonia? AIDS? — no, if it was, we'd all know.»

* «Maybe he's gone and found God again. Whatta case.»

Ivan spotted John from his Audi and pulled over just past the corner at Gretna Green. «John-O, what the fuck are you doing? Hop in.»

«Ivan, what do you know about Susan Colgate?»

«Susan Colgate? TV — rock and roll. Get in the car and I'll tell you. Jesus, you smell like the carpet in a Gold's Gym changing room.»

«I walked here from the Ivy.»

«The Ivy? That's, like, a jeezly number of miles away.»

«Ivan, what do you know about Susan Colgate?»

Ivan cut the car back into traffic. «Later. Later. Did you see the weekend numbers from France and Germany? Whoosh!»

«Ivan — » John was firm: «Susan Colgate.»

«Everybody in town is going to think you've gone crazy again. Walking. On Sunset, no less. Shit.»

«I don't care, Ivan. Susan. »

«What — you want to, uh, cast her in a movie ?»

«Maybe.»

«You're gonna make her a star ?» They both laughed. Ivan pulled the Audi into his driveway, entered a code into his dash panel, releasing the gate. They drove through, depositing the car by the front steps instead of the garage. They got out. Ivan stopped and grabbed John's arm before he walked down the hill to the guesthouse. «God, whatta gorgeous day, John-O. Look at the light coming through that mimosa tree. It looks backlit, like it's on Demerol.»

Both men sat down on the front entryway's limestone pavers and watched the late afternoon's solar aureoles around the plants and birds and insects of Ivan's garden.

«Where were you coming from just now?» John asked.

«Temple, temple, temple.»

«Three times a week still?»

«Sí.» The sprinklers kicked in by a dahlia patch. Ivan said, «So you're in love, then, John-O? With Susan Colgate — ha!»

«I'm in … need. Desperate need.»

«Where'd you meet?»

«The Ivy. Today.»

«Lunch? Today?» He whistled. « That's a quick turnaround.»

«A half-year ago in Cedars when I, you know — she's who I saw when I died.»

Ivan's body locked upon hearing this. «Now, John-O — I thought you were over that stuff.»

«Over what, Ivan? I have no regrets, but what I did only took me so far. But Susan — she's it. She's gotta be the one.»

Ivan was both worried that John was relapsing back into his despondency of the months before, and slightly excited at the idea his friend might be making an emotional connection, something he'd never done before. «What do you know about her, John-O?»

«That's what I've been asking you. »

«I think her agent's Adam Norwitz. She was with Larry Mortimer until a few years ago. An ugly split. She stalked him. And I don't think she's worked since the grunge era. Say, 1994. A slasher flick? No, wait, it's some new one — Dynamite Bay ? I'm glad for you, but I've gotta say up front, John-O, she's real C-list. She can't act her way out of a paper bag.»

«Ivan, you ought to know not to slag somebody's loved one to his face.»

« Loved one?»

«Word games.»

They heard steps behind them — Nylla, holding a silent baby. «Having our funzies out here on the front steps, are we, boys?»

«Hey, Nylla.»

«John, hello. Will you be eating with us in the big house tonight?»

«Nah. Thanks. I'm having Metrecal and celery with Ma down at the house.»

«Congratulations on the French numbers over the weekend. Ooh-lah- lah .»

«We did okay over there?»

«John-O, I tried to tell you back when I picked you up at Gretna Green. Hey Nylla, guess what — John-O's in love! Lovesy-dovesy. Susan Colgate.»

«Susan Colgate!» said Nylla. «Oh John, that's so weird. So exciting. I used to love her in that old show of hers, Meet the Blooms. »

John's face confirmed the truth.