Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

Lunch was a blur. Afterward, Susan left with Larry, ostensibly to test for a new TV show. Once inside his Jaguar, Aunt Barb and Dreama out of sight, Larry told Susan that the test was actually for the next day. He then looked up at the sky innocently. Susan wasn't fazed. She told Larry this was pretty much what she'd figured. Oh God, she thought to herself, I'm a jaded harpy and I'm only seventeen. Mom did this to me. She's gone and turned me into … her.

Larry asked, «So where do you think we might go now?»

Years later, with hindsight, Susan would find it appalling that Barb had left her so readily in the hands of an L.A. predator.

Later that night, after Susan and Larry had exhausted themselves in Larry's bed, they would briefly chuckle over the clunky roving eye Aunt Barb had focused on Larry, then phone Barb and say, «Barb? Larry Mortimer here. We're late like crazy. We didn't even get a chance to audition. The tests were slowed down by a union walkout. It'll have to be tomorrow. We'll be back at your hotel in an hour. Here. Susan wants to speak with you.» He passed the phone over the sheets to Susan.

«Barb? Wasn't lunch today a dream ?»

The next day at the actual audition, Susan clarified in her own mind one of the larger lessons of her life so far, the one which states that the less you want something, the more likely you are to get it. As she uttered her very first line, «Dad, I think there's something not quite right with Mom,» the character of Katie Bloom, two years younger than her, melted onto Susan Colgate's soul, and as of 1987, the public and Susan herself would spend decades trying to separate the two. Katie Bloom was the youngest of four children, a distant fourth at that. Her three on-screen siblings were played by a trio of better-known TV actors who couldn't seem to make the bridge into film, and they chafed madly at any suggestion that their Bloom work was «only TV.» Off-screen, the three were patronizing and aloof to Susan. On-screen they looked to their younger free-spirit sister Susan to give them a naive clarity into their problems, and as the years went on, their problems became almost endless.

When Susan emerged as the keystone star of the series, it was in the face of outright mutiny by her costars. At the beginning she thought their coldness was the angst of tormented actors. Then she realized it was essentially fucked-up bitterness, which was much easier to handle. Far more difficult to handle was the issue of Marilyn's continued involvement in her life. The procedure, for insurance reasons, demanded that Susan live with a family member near the studio. The glimmer of TV fame quickly outshone the gloom of pageants lost. Marilyn and Don rented the upper floor of a terrifyingly blank faux-hacienda heap in deepest Encino. Susan did the easier thing and lived in Larry's pied-à-terre in Westwood. Thus, Marilyn's presence was minimized to that of a bookkeeping technicality.

Larry was like all of the pageant judges in the world rolled into one burly, considerate, suntanned package. He knew how the stoplights along Sunset Boulevard were synched and shifted his Porsche's gears accordingly. He had a writer fired who called Susan an empty Pez dispenser to her face. He made sure she ate only excellent food and kept her Kelton Street apartment fully stocked with fresh pasta, ripe papayas and bottled water, all of which was overseen by a thrice-weekly maid. He lulled Susan to sleep singing «Goodnight, Irene,» and then, after he nipped home to sleep with his wife, Jenna, he arrived at work the next day and saw to it that Susan received plenty of prime TV and film offers.

When she thought about her new situation at all, it was with the blameless ingratitude of the very young. Her life's trajectory was fated, inevitable. Why be a wind-up doll for a dozen years if not to become a TV star? Why not alter one's body? Bodies were meant to photograph well. Mothers? They were meant to be Tasmanian devils — all the better reason to keep them penned up in Encino.

Every night she took two white pills to help her sleep. In the morning she took two orange pills to keep from feeling hungry. She loved the fact that life could be so easily controlled as that. Inasmuch as she had a say in the matter, she was going to keep the rest of her life as equally push-button and seamless. In the mornings when she woke up, she couldn't remember her dreams.

John, Vanessa and Ryan were driving from Vanessa's house to Randy Montarelli's out in the valley. The three were crammed into the front bench seat, Vanessa in the middle. John was sweaty and pulled a pack of cigarettes out from the car door's side pocket and lit one.

«You smoke?» Vanessa asked. She made a serious, unscrutinizable face.

«As of now, I've started again. I'm worried about Susan. I can't unstress.»

Once in the Valley, John pulled the Chrysler into an ARCO station for gas and gum. He went to pay at the till, and on returning to the car found Ryan and Vanessa in the front seat giggling like minks.

«Christ, you two.»

«We're young and in love, John Johnson,» Vanessa teased.

«People like you were never young, Vanessa. People like you are born seventy-two, like soft pink surgeon generals.»

Driving along in the accordion-squeezed traffic of Ventura Boulevard, John said, «So, are you two wacky kids gonna get married or something?»

«Absolutely,» said Ryan. «We've even got our honeymoon planned.»

John considered this young couple he was driving with across the city. They were like rollicking puppies one moment, and Captain Kirk and Spock from Star Trek the next. Both seemed bent on discovering new universes. John thought that they were, in a way, the opposite of Ivan and Nylla, who he was convinced had married in order to compact the universe into something smaller, more manageable.

«Where are you two clowns going to honeymoon then, Library of Congress?»

«Chuckles ahoy, John,» Ryan replied. «We're actually going to Prince Edward Island.»

«Huh? Where's that — England?» John was driving at an annoyingly slow speed in order to torment a tailgater.

«No,» said Vanessa. «It's in Canada. Back east — just north of Nova Scotia. It has a population of, like, three.»

«We're going to dig potatoes.»

John put his hand to his forehead. «Dare I even ask … ?»

«There's this thing they have there,» said Ryan, «called the tobacco mosaic virus. It's this harmless little virus that's lolling about dormant inside the Prince Edward Island potato ecology, not doing much of anything.»

«Except,» said Vanessa, «it's highly contagious, and if it comes in contact with tobacco plants, it turns them, basically, into sludge. So what we're going to do is rent a van and fill it up with infected potatoes and then drive down to Virginia and Kentucky and lob them into tobacco fields.»

«We're going to put Big Tobacco out of business,» said Ryan.

«Romantic,» said John, «but it does appeal to my Lodge pesticide genes.»

«Vanessa's dad died of emphysema.»

«Don't make me sound like a Dickensian waif, Ryan, but yes, Dad did hork his lungs out.»

«Vanessa likes to fuck things up with the information she finds,» said Ryan with a note of pride.

«You know what, Ryan? I have an easy time believing that. I'm also going to light up another cigarette. Sorry, Vanessa, but I'm flipping out here.»

Ryan shouted, «Hey — that's Randy Montarelli's street over there,» and John pulled into a leafy suburban avenue. The tailgater whizzed off in a huff. Randy's wood-shingled house was pale blue and tall cypress tree sentinels were lit with colored floodlights.

«Well,» said Ryan as they parked across the street and peeked at the house. «We're here.»