Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

«I remember seeing you on that stage, you know.»

«You do ?» Susan was thrilled.

«Hell, yes. The night you won, you would have even if your mother hadn't done her little blackmail routine.»

Susan didn't want to dwell on Marilyn. «I'm thirsty, Eugene.»

Eugene gave her some water. The kitchen ceiling's lights wore milk carton shades, beacons of missing children, and cast a yellow light on the sink. She checked the expiry date on one of them. «April 4, 1991. That's when you started to become Picasso?»

«Sunshine, you're crazy as a fucking loon. And your voice. Your manner. You probably don't even know it, but you've become your mother. I only met her for maybe five minutes, but baby, you're her. »

Susan closed her eyes. She had a small puff of recognition. «Oh God — you know what, Eugene? You're right. I actually do feel like her right now, the way she moves. Funny — this has never happened to me before. It took me a plane crash to bring out my inner Marilyn. All it took her was fifteen years being the youngest daughter in a hillbilly shack full of alcoholics.» She put down her glass. «Now where am I going to go sleep?» They could hear a garbage truck outside, bleeping and throbbing.

Eugene was curious but exhausted. They inched back into the dining room. «My brain feels like Spam. Are you sure you're okay?»

«Yeah.»

Eugene became officious. «How'd you manage to survive that crash?»

Susan took a sip. She was beginning to feel level. The sense of having taken flight was gone. «You know, I've been thinking about that for seven days solid. I drew ticket number 58-A and won. I don't think there's anything more cosmic to it than that. There just isn't. I wish I could say there was, Eugene.»

«But where were you this past week?»

Susan yawned and smiled. «Save it for the morning. I've been up thirty-six hours.»

Eugene was too tired to probe further. «There's still a guestroom with furniture in it. Probably a bit dusty, but it ought to be fine.» Eugene led her there. Susan, meanwhile, was inwardly glowing: Eugene was single, retired and, like her, didn't have too much interest in the outer world. Once in the room, she lay her aviator glasses down on the bedside table and sat on the bed.

«You know, if it hadn't been for Mom pulling that stunt with you, then I never would have stolen your 8-X-10 and fallen in love with you.»

«Love!» Eugene seemed amused but then yawned. He said to Susan, «I phone in my grocery order tomorrow afternoon. Think of what you want to eat over the next week.»

«Why not go out and just buy them?»

«I don't like leaving the house.»

Susan hadn't heard such good news in years. It was all she could do to contain her sense of sleeping on Christmas Eve. «Good night, Eugene. Thanks.»

«Night, sunshine.»

Eugene sighed and walked down the hall. He loudly thumped the top of a totem. «And the winner is …» he said, «Miss Wyoming. What a fucking ride. »

At noon the next day Susan awoke to the sound of an electrical rhythmic thunking sound coming from the basement. Eugene's house. She rolled over and faintly purred.

A minivan drove by outside. The rumbling beneath her, precise and gentle, continued. She found an old housecoat on the guestroom door peg and walked down to a paneled oak door beneath the main staircase. Blazing green-white chinks of light escaped from around the door's edge, as though the door were shielding her from invading aliens. She opened it and discovered the basement. Eugene was dressed in slacks, socks and a polo shirt, orchestrating the Xerox 5380 console copier's collation of hundreds of mail-outs. There were shelves of blank paper, file folders and CD-ROM's containing thousands of U.S. and Canadian names and addresses Susan would soon learn were culled by a demographics research firm in Mechanicsville, Virginia, accompanied by information on incomes and spending patterns.

Eugene glanced up at Susan on the stairs. «Good morning, sunshine. Dressed for casual Friday, I see.»

On the walls surrounding Eugene's work area were dozens of wood and velvet plaques of clouds and sun and snow and temperatures ranging from 230 up to 120. She walked down the steps and picked up a velvet sun. «Whoo-ee! I'm all sunny today.» She noted Eugene's flash of disapproval and placed the sun back in its correct orbit.

«Thank you,» said Eugene, who continued with his clerical chores. Susan came up close to get a better peek at his documents, backing into Eugene.

He turned around. «Can you work a copier?»

«Back on the set of Meet the Blooms, whenever the writers got pissy and superior, I used to bring script production to a halt. You know how I did it? I wroteOUT OF ORDER on a sheet of scrap paper and taped it onto the copier's lid. All these people with IQs higher than Palm Springs temperatures, and not once did they consider challenging my paper signs.» She picked up a wooden plaque numbered 110º. «Did you ever use this one much?»

«Near the end. A few times. Once the weather got wrecked.»

«I guess you'd know.» She sat down on a stacking chair and watched Eugene. «When the show was canceled, Glenn, the head writer, loaded a commissary drinking straw with NutraSweet. Back on the set, he opened the copier's top and blew the NutraSweet into the machine, onto the drum. Killed the machine dead. They had to throw it out. It's like the worst thing on earth for copiers.»

«This house is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. We'll be having none of your white-collar sabotage during your stay here.» But he couldn't hold back a smile.

The copier created a relaxing rhythm. Susan's eyes glazed and her thoughts wandered. «Did your TV station can you because you were nuts?»

Eugene, sorting papers, spoke: «Nah. They didn't can me. I was injured on the job. I took early retirement.»

«You were injured doing the nightly weather?»

«As it happened, yes. You want to know what happened? I was crushed by a Coke machine.»

«On the job?»

«In the studio, so it was insured and unionized up the ying-yang. They installed a talking Coke machine which weighed, like, a ton more than a normal mute Coke machine. So this ugly little twerp with hockey hair shakes the machine back and forth, getting a rhythm going, until a can or two pops out, and the thing toppled down on top of him and it crushed him like a piñata. I happened to be passing by and my right foot got smashed. Look …»

Eugene removed his sock, and Susan bent down to look at Eugene's right foot, which, with its scars and stitches, resembled a map of Indiana divided into small, countylike chunks. «Ouch City, Arizona,» said Susan.

«You said it, baby. The kid was a goner, and I didn't walk for maybe seven months afterward. In the meantime they brought in a new guy with a fresher, perkier smile than me, who also focus-grouped like a royal wedding. I didn't have it in me to flog my butt around to the other stations. Too old. And if you're old in the weather biz, you either turn into a wacky eunuch real quick, or take a hike. So I hiked.»

«Let me see your foot more closely.» She sat down. «Put it in my lap.»

Eugene turned off the copier, and silence, like solidified Lucite, filled the air. He sat on a chair opposite Susan and hoisted his leg up and dropped it into Susan's lap.

Susan said, «Mom trained me never to say a word or a sentence without imagining that a pageant judge is out there secretly listening in. So my whole life I've been followed by this invisible flotilla of soap opera actresses, Chevy dealers, costume designers and TV weathermen who scan my every word. It's a habit I can't shake. It's like those people whose parents made them chew food twenty times before swallowing, and so the rest of their life becomes a hell of twenties.» She looked Eugene in the eyes: «Does it hurt when I do that ?» The atmosphere for Susan took on the it's-not-really-happening aura of life's better sex.