Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

John beamed. «Happy birthday, Susan!» He then shook her hand in a parody of heartiness, but secretly savored how cool her palms were, like a salve on a burn he didn't even know he had.

The novelty of strolling in their city rather than barreling through it inside air-conditioned metal nodules added an unearthly sensation to their steps. They heard the changing gears of cars headed toward the Beverly Center. They listened to birdcalls and rustling branches. John felt young, like he was back in grade school.

«You know what this feels like — our leaving the restaurant like that?» Susan asked.

«What?» John replied.

«Like we're running away from home together.»

They walked across a sunbaked intersection where a Hispanic boy with a gold incisor was selling maps to the stars' homes. John asked Susan, «You ever been on one of those things?»

«A star map? Once, for about two years. I was deleted in a reprinted version. Cars would drive past my place and then slow down to almost a stop and then speed up again — every day and every night. It was the creepiest thing ever. The house had good security, but even then, a few times I was spooked so badly I went and stayed at a friend's place. You?»

«I'm not a star.» Just then the Oscar Mayer wiener truck drove by and cars all around them honked as if it were a wedding cortège. Screwing up his courage, John asked, «Susan — Sue — speaking of curveballs, here's one for you. A simple question: do you think you've ever met me before?»

Susan looked thoughtful, as though ready to spell out her reply in a spelling bee. «I've read about you in magazines. And I saw a bit of stuff about you on TV. I'm sorry things didn't work out for you — when you took off and tried to change yourself or whatever it was you were trying to do. I really am.» The wiener hubbub had died down, and Susan stepped in front of John to survey him. His eyes looked like those of somebody who's lost big and is ready to leave the casino. «I mean, I've been pretty tired of being “me” as well. I sympathize.»

John moved as if to kiss her, but two cars behind them squealed their tires in a pulse of road rage. They turned around and the walk resumed.

«You were a beauty queen, weren't you?» John asked. «Miss Wyoming.»

«Oh Lord, yeah. I was on the beauty circuit since about the age of JonBenet-and-a-half, which is, like, four. I've also been a child TV star, a has-been, a rock-and-roll bride, an air crash survivor and public enigma.»

«You like having been so many different things?»

Susan took a second to answer. «I never thought of it that way. Yes. No. You mean there's some other way to live?»

«I don't know,» said John.

They crossed San Vicente Boulevard, passing buildings and roads that once held stories for each of them, but which now seemed transient and disconnected from their lives, like window displays. Each recalled a bad meeting here, a check cashed there, a meal… .

John asked, «Where are you from ?»

«My family? We're hillbillies. Literally. From the mountains of Oregon. We're nothing. If my mother hadn't escaped, I'd probably be pregnant with my brother's seventh brat by now — and somebody in the family'd probably steal the kid and trade it for a stack of unscratched lottery cards. You?»

In a deep, TV-announcer voice he declared, «The Lodge Family of Delaware. “The Pesticide Lodges.” » His voice returned to normal. «My maternal great-grandfather discovered a chemical to interrupt the breeding cycle of mites that infect corn crops.»

A light turned green and the boulevard was shot with traffic and the pair walked on. Susan was wrapped in a pale light fabric, cool and comfortable, like a pageant winner's sash. John was sweating like a lemonade pitcher, his jeans, gingham shirt and black hair soaking up heat like desert stones. But instead of seeking both air-conditioning and a mirror, John merely untucked his shirt and kept pace with Susan.

«You'd think our family had invented the atom bomb from the way they all lorded about the eastern seaboard. But then they did this really weird thing.»

«What was that?» Susan asked.

«We went through our own family tree with a chain saw. Ruthless, totally ruthless. Anybody who was found to be socially lacking was erased. It was like they'd never even lived. I have dozens of great-uncles and aunts and cousins who I've never met, and their only crime was to have had humble lives. One great-uncle was a prison warden. Gone. Another married a woman who pronounced “theater” thee-ay -ter. Gone. And heaven help anybody who slighted another family member. People weren't challenged or punished in our family. They were merely erased. »

They were quiet. They'd walked maybe a mile by now. John felt as close to Susan as paint is to a wall. John said, «Tell me something else, Susan. Anything. I like your voice.»

«My voice? Anybody can hear my voice almost any time of day anywhere on earth. All you need is a dish that picks up signals from satellite stations that play nonstop cheesy early eighties TV shows.» They were outside a record store. Two mohawked punk fossils from 1977 walked past them.

John looked at her and said, «Susan, have you ever seen a face, say — in a magazine or on TV — and obsessed on it, and maybe secretly hoped every day, at least once, that you'd run into the person behind the face?»

Susan laughed.

«I take it that's a yes?»

«How come you're asking?»

John told Susan about a vision he'd had at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center the year before that led him to make a drastic life decision. He told Susan that it was her face and voice that had come to him during his vision. «But what happened was that months later, after I'd gone and completely chucked out all of my old life, I realized I didn't have this great big mystical Dolby THX vision. I realized that there'd merely been some old episode of that TV show you used to star in playing on the hospital's TV set beside my bed. And it must have melted into my dream life.»

It made a form of sense to Susan that this man with sad, pale eyes like snowy TV sets should have seen her as a refuge and then found her. Years before she'd stopped believing in fate. Fate was corny. Yet with John that long-lost tingle of destiny was once again with her.

A leaf blower cut the moment in two, and just as John was about to raise his voice, Cedars-Sinai came into view far in the distance, between a colonnade of cypress trees and a billboard advertising gay ocean-liner cruises. John's shirt was now soaked through with sweat, so they stopped at a convenience store and bought an XXLI -LOVE-LAwhite cotton shirt and two bottles of water. He changed out in the parking lot to the amused ogling of teenage boys who yelled out, «Boy supermodel steals the catwalk!»

John said, «Fuck 'em,» and they crossed Sunset. It was getting to be late in the afternoon, and the traffic was crabby and sclerotic. They entered a residential neighborhood. Susan was feeling dizzy and sleepy and said, «I need to sit down,» so they did, on the curb before a Wedgwood-blue French country-style house under the suspicious gaze of an Asian woman on the second floor.

«It's the sun,» said Susan. «It's not like it used to be. Or, I can't take as much as I used to.» She lay back on the Bermuda grass.

Suddenly worried he'd been the only one spilling the beans, John said, «Tell me about the crash. The Seneca crash. I'll bet you never talk about it, do you?»

«Not the full story, no.»

«So tell me.» Susan sat up and John put his arm around her. Staring at the pavement, like Prince William behind his mother's coffin, she told the story. And she might have talked to him all night, but two things happened: the lawn sprinklers spritzed into frantic life, and a Beverly Hills police patrol car soundlessly materialized. Two grim-faced officers got out, hands on weapons on hips. Soaked, Susan started to stand up, but her tired knees buckled. John helped pull her up, saying, «Jesus, we try and take a quick rest and in comes the SWAT team. Who pays your salaries, you goons? I pay your salaries… .»