Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

Eugene looked at number 72. Something was wrong — what? He figured it out: buttons didn't exist a hundred years ago. Or did they? What did people do back then — did they pull chains? Turn cranks? What did they have that they could turn on? Nothing. Electric lights? Eugene didn't think so. Not back then. He made a correction:

No. 72: By pushing a single lever, it's possible to kill five million people in just one second.

He looked at his clock — deepest night — 3:58A .M. He dropped his pen and marveled at his body, lying on the bed, still well proportioned and lean, still dumbly beautiful and betraying no evidence of inner weariness.

His bedsheets felt dry but moist, like the time he lay down on a putting green in North Carolina. Surrounding him was that month's art project — thousands of the past decade's emptied single-portion plastic tublets of no-fat yogurt, their insides washed squeaky clean, stuffed inside each other, forming long wavy filaments that reached to the ceiling like sea anemones. The finished piece was to go inside Renata's old gift-wrapping room, a concept she'd stolen from Candy Spelling, Aaron Spelling's wife — a whole room devoted to wrapping the nonstop stream of trinkets and doodads from her old gown business.

Eugene had to take his weekly bag of trash out to the curb. He looked at his clock — 3:59A .M. now. He procrastinated and added to his list:

No. 73: Bad moods have been eliminated.

No. 74: You almost never see horses.

No. 75: You can store pretty well all books ever published inside a box no larger than a coffin.

No. 76: We made the planet's weather a little bit warmer.

Trash time. Since the episode with the crazy pageant mother back in Saint Louis, giving any thing away to the trashman was cause for personal alarm. Trash night had never been the same since. To make his current bag of garbage seem fuller and hence more normal, he fluffed up its contents and carried the full bag, weighing no more than a cat, down to the front door. Eugene paused and tightened his robe, which bore the embroidered logo of the Milwaukee Radisson Plaza Hotel from which it was stolen during a meteorological conference. He darted out to the curb, lobbed the bag onto the concrete, then ran back to the door.

On the way back to his room he beamed with a creator's joy at his three pillars made of Brawny paper towel shipping boxes, a trio that filled the front hallway from floor to ceiling. Take that, Andy Warhol.

Cozily back in bed, Eugene heard an unmistakable thump from downstairs. He knew the noise couldn't be a tumbling mound of his art — he stacked his goods in stable piles, the way he'd seen them stacked in museums. Perhaps a raccoon had snuck in during his brief trash haul. Eugene reached for his gun in the bedside drawer and released the safety. Seated on the floor between the wall and his bed, he plotted his strategy.

Then came another bump from below. Confident and collected, he slipped through the Brawny towel box totems. Sliding on his buttocks, he lowered himself into the foyer, lit only by the candle power of a half moon in the clear sky. He crouched behind some of the totems and scanned the living room. Somebody or something was rooting behind a 1:4-scale Saber fighter jet made of Bumble Bee tuna and SpaghettiOs tins.

Eugene swept across the foyer like a cartoon detective. Stealthily he maneuvered to the base of the statue, its wheels resting atop a plinth built of stabilized Kraft Catalina saladdressing boxes. He was calm. He stood up and, with kickboxing speed, lunged over to the other side of the base shouting «Freeze!,» and pointed the handgun onto what appeared to be a drifter — a wino — who yipped like a squeak toy, and cowered against the boxes. Eugene flipped on the light switch, shocking the room and flaring his retinas. «Well fuck me, » he said. «If it isn't Miss Wyoming.»

«Put down the gun, Ken Doll.»

«Lordy! Miss Congeniality.»

«Yeah, like I always keep a speech about world peace prepared.»

«Hey — » The adrenaline was wearing off. He grew confused. «You're supposed to be — »

«Dead?» she laughed. «Well, technically yes. »

Eugene paused and crossed his arms while studying Susan, now hoisting herself up. «Boo,» she said. «I'm not a ghost. I'm real. I promise. Nice place you have here.»

Perplexed, Eugene asked how she got in.

«I scampered in while you were on the curb. I was sleeping outside your front door.»

«You were sleeping outside my front door?»

«No. I was waiting in the soundproof booth to answer a skill-testing question.» Eugene was still digesting the scene before him and was silent. Susan wanted a reaction and added, «Gonad.»

He lit a cigarette and relaxed just a smidge. «I can see you're a feisty one. Ten out of ten for deportment.»

«Oh, let it rest. I came here on purpose. What do you think. »

«You came here ? Why here ? And as I said, you're dead. I saw the crash on TV a hundred times.»

Susan stood up and removed the scarecrow's down jacket. «You've been doing weather for how many years now, Eugene — how many times are you ever right?»

«I was a good weatherman.»

« Was? I guess your station saw the inside of your house and decided to can you.» Susan was both pleased and surprised that she and Eugene so quickly fell into patter. More to the point, the sense of powerful first-crushiness initiated with «the wink» back in St. Louis was in no way diminished by the physical sight of an aged Eugene. He'd aged in the crinkly, weather-beaten manner of action heroes, sheepherders and five-star generals. His eyes remained as gemlike and clear as she'd remembered. He was also a kook and already kind of fun.

«Susan, what could you possibly have come to me here for? I've never even met you.»

«Where's Renata?»

«Renata's not here anymore.»

A good sign. Susan's insides thrummed. «You two split?»

«Years ago. You didn't answer my question. Why did you come here of all places? You've gotta know dozens of people within hours of the crash site.» He threw up his arms. «Shit. Look at me, trying to be logical with somebody who's supposed to be a ghost, fer Chrissake.»

Susan wondered herself why she had come there. All she'd known along the way was that she was in the Midwest and that Eugene's house seemed like the only safe place between the two coasts. She had no plan prepared for what came next. As this dawned on her, the lack of immediate response goaded Eugene.

«So let me get this straight — you thought Renata and I would give you a blanket, some Valiums and a phone line to 911? Your crash was a week ago, Miss Wyoming. Something's not right here. If you wanted blankets and cocoa, the time limit on that expired five days ago.»

Meanwhile, all Susan knew was that since her initial crush on Eugene she'd spent her life trying to find him in some form or another, mostly through Larry, and maybe now she wanted to see what the real goods were like. «Maybe I'm not sure myself why I'm here.»

«Oh, this is nuts!» He let out a breath. «Are you okay? After the crash? No broken bones? No bruises?»

«I'm fine.»

«You're going to tell me what happened?»

«Of course. Not now. Later.»

«You hungry?»

«Thirsty.»

«Come on. I'll get you some water.»

Susan brushed herself off and looked at Eugene's sculptures. «All this stuff made of trash. But it's so clean. How do you keep it all so clean?»

«It's my art. It's what I do. Come on. Kitchen's this way. How'd you get here from Ohio?»

The house was warm and dry. «It's pretty easy to get anywhere you want to in this country. All you have to do is find a truck stop, find some trucker who's flying on amphetamines, hop in the cab, drive a while, and then start foaming about religion — that way they dump you off at the next truck stop and you don't even have to put out.»