Douglas Coupland: Miss Wyoming

She zapped off the TV and upstairs tried on some of Karen Galvin's clothes, her own size, but a bit on the athletic side. A few pieces of okay jewelry — her husband's taste?

Later that week, Susan caught a snippet of her memorial service on Entertainment Tonight , with Chris Thraice, flown in from Germany to lead well-wishers at the Westwood Memorial Chapel in a painful, rockified version of «Amazing Grace» that sounded like a Live Aid hugging anthem. She was ashamed of the shallow, pathetic tribute arranged by God only knows whose people — Chris's probably — but then realized that it would have been the PR people for her action-adventure movie, masterminding some contorted variation of a pity fuck to get people into the theaters and pump up the third weekend's gross.

Her mother and stepfather, interviewed again after the service, had become key figures in the class-action suit being launched against the airline. «We'd sacrifice anything we might gain from this suit just to have our precious Suzie back in our fold.» Suzie? Marilyn had called Susan many things before, but Suzie had never been one of them.

In more local crash news, the airline had paid the sorghum farmer for three years' worth of crops and, using sifting devices borrowed from a local mine, had already sanitized the site of all fragments. The county coroner admitted that many passengers had been too badly charred to be identified, and any fears Susan might have had that authorities had noticed her absence were scotched by an interview with a teary-eyed gate attendant who recounted how thrilled she'd been showing Susan into the jet ramp («So real! And in coach class, too»). The gate attendant's testimony was the one moment of sincere warmth during the whole memorial charade.

At any rate, Susan was taking a risk that the Galvins, as a thrifty, bulk-purchasing family, would remain in Orlando for the fully-paid-for extent of their holiday, regardless of having one of North America's largest civil aviation disasters a short walk from their back door. The fridge calendar indicated an arrival in Columbus the next day at 6:10P .M., in Seneca by 8:00.

On the morning of the Galvins' scheduled return, she went around the house with rags and Windex to wipe clean any surface that might conceivably bear her fingerprints. She washed sheets and towels and restored them to their original positions. She rearranged the remaining foods in the cupboards and deep freeze so that they appeared undepleted.

She then selected items stuffed in the back of Karen Galvin's wardrobe, and from boxes where evidence indicated garments that looked rarely if ever used. Also at the back, buried behind shoes and a stack of energy-rich athletic candy bars, she found ash blond wigs in a style she associated with women connected in some way to second- and third-generation entertainment money. She placed some of the wigs and a selection of clothes into a disused athletic bag from a shelf beside the washer and dryer, along with a box of energy bars, some older cosmetics, and a pair of Karen's almost touchingly practical shoes. She improvised a look for the day to come, and then nodded to the mirror.

Done.

Now she had one more job to do. She went into Mr. Galvin's liquor cabinet and selected what she thought would appeal most to teenagers — Jack Daniels — and poured three-quarters of the bottle down the sink. She took the partially filled bottle as well as some emptied beer cans and arranged them in a semicircle around the TV set. Then, with a thick-pointed Sharpie in what she hoped was teenage boy-looking handwriting, she scribbled on the TV screen, «Metallica rocks on.» She also put out six drinking glasses tinged with Jack Daniels, two of them with lipstick traces. She mussed up the couch and a few pieces of bric-a-brac. The returning family would find evidence only of a low-threat minor occupation by teens.

Bewigged and sporting Karen's clothes, Susan was feeling good as she walked out the unlocked patio door, onto a back lane, where she heaved a plastic bag of her week's garbage into a stranger's trash can. She tried to think of a place to go. She chose Indiana.

In the hospital John woke up long enough to hear the doctor tell a nurse that his lungs were plugged up with «about five cans of cream-of-mushroom soup,» followed by, «Christ, he looks awful. I've eaten steaks healthier than this guy. He's down to what, sixteen T cells? He looks familiar. Movie guy?»

«Johnson. He did Bel Air PI. »

«No way. What else?»

«Bel Air PI 2.»

«Oh yeah — that was one of the few sequels better than the original.»

«Yeah, sure, but did you see The Wild Land ?»

«Nope. Never heard of it.»

«Join the club. Didn't even go to video. I think it went, like, straight to Malaysia.»

«Wait — didn't this guy do The Other Side of Hate ?»

«Guilty. It went straight to in-flight. They might as well have shipped the dailies directly up to the Boeing factory.»

«He deserves Holy Retribution for that one. I flew across the country about eight times one year and that movie was like a curse on my life. It haunted me no matter what flight or which direction I was flying in.»

«At least it paid for Fun Boy's toy box. Check the rope burns on the wrists and ankles.»

The doctor and nurse inspected his body like it was a skimpy Christmas tree. «Well, like I say, whatever floats your boat. Time to Hoover out the lungs again. And monitor his CNS for the wobblies. This guy's pill soup. Christ, whatta mess. He's like the undead Sno-Kone that is Walt Disney.»

The nurse turned on a suction tube, but turned it off when John made a noise. «Didnaw go vee-oh.»

«He's saying something. What's he saying?»

«Didnaw go vee-oh.»

«It sounds like mush. Listen harder …»

«I think he's saying, “It didn't go straight to video.” »

«What didn't?»

«Wile Lann.»

«The Wild Land.»

«Yoo azzhoe.»

«Well, Doctor, I think he just called you a prince.»

That it was something bacterial, and not, say, an overdose of five different prescription drugs mixed with cognac and two Slimfast strawberry shakes that nearly killed him was a fact not lost on him, regardless of what his medical team thought.

The night he died was to have been a typical Thursday evening: out of the house around 11P .M., party with a friend of Ivan's who was coming in from New York, some guy with a hot play for sale — maybe take him up to Melody's for a quick hug or two. But John woke up around midafternoon feeling achy and nauseous, his thinking foggy, and he mistook this to be a bad reaction to the previous evening's methamphetamine, Serax and bondage. After all, a leather hood had chafed his Adam's apple. He seemed to recall a rope he pulled too hard. There was a sore at the base of his penis — ouch — was the skin surface broken? And the Vasarely ashtray as-expensive-as-a-new-small-car had been cleaved into three valueless chunks.

Kay finished cleaning the kitchen and Saran-wrapped his lunch around sunset. He heard her car exit the driveway. A pulse of seasickness surged, and his breathing grew limp. He dragged his torso to the shower stall to vomit, afterward grabbing and chewing a stray Serax tablet lying beneath the sink's kick. He stripped while leaning crumpled against the slate tiles, then ignited the hot water faucet and felt what little food he'd had that day — seaweed, basmati rice, grapefruit, algae drink and six Kit Kats. Rinsing off his skin, he blacked out.

When he came to, the water dowsing him was nearly cold and the sky outside had gone fully dark. He turned off the faucet. He was shivering and realized he was merely sick — sick! He hadn't been sick in decades, but his heart leapt with the knowledge that it wasn't drugs or excessive living that had his jaws chattering like a tree full of birds. He reached for the wall phone beside the toilet to slap the speakerphone button with his palm, triggering a dial tone that sliced the silence like a razor.