Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming

«Do you have any idea what Vanny's doing right now, Ryan? She's going to get fired for using this MSP thing.»

Ryan said, «You call her Vanny?»

John waved his hand in a well-of-course-I-do manner. Ryan then asked John, «Well, we knew she might get fired. Is she doing it for me, or is she doing it for you?»

John laughed a single blast of air.

Ryan fiddled with the rearview mirror outside the passenger door. «You know, John, when you grow up these days, you're told you're going to have four or five different careers during your lifetime. But what they don't tell you is that you're also going to be four or five different people along the way. In five years I won't be me anymore. I'll be some new Ryan. Probably wiser and more corrupt, and I'll probably wear black, fly Business Class only, and use words like “cassoulet” or “sublime.” You tell me. You're already there. You've already been a few people so far.

«But for now — for now me and Vanessa — Vanny, really do love each other and maybe we'll have kids, and maybe we'll open a seafood restaurant. I don't know. But I have to do it now — act quickly, I mean — because the current version of me is ebbing away. We're all ebbing away. All of us. I'm already looking backward. I'm already looking back at that Ryan that's saying these words.»

They sat and stared at the low-slung corporate-plex. The tension of waiting for Vanessa was becoming too much. They didn't talk. They tried the radio, but it came in choppy so they turned it off. A bus stopped beside them and John and Ryan watched the passengers inside it, all of them focused forward and inward. The bus pulled away and they saw Vanessa burst out of the company's front door carrying a cardboard bankers' box. Her stride was off as she speed-walked to her parked car. She pulled away onto the main road, up beside John's car. She rolled down her window and said, «C'mon, let's go to the airport.» Her eyes were red and wet.

«Are you okay?»

«Just go. I'll meet you there.» She sped away.

By the time they reached Vanessa at the Santa Monica Airport's parking lot, she'd composed herself. «Shall we go to Cheyenne, then?» she asked.

«Honey?» said Ryan.

«It's okay,» Vanessa said. «I didn't like it there anyway.»

«I never even got to see your cubicle.»

Vanessa opened up the bankers' box and Ryan looked inside. There was a Mr. Potato Head, a framed four-picture photo booth strip of her and Ryan, a map of Canada's Maritime region, and several plump, juicy cacti.

Ivan was at the airport. John slapped him on the shoulder and introduced him to Ryan and Vanessa. Ten minutes later they were up in the air.

«I found her,» Vanessa said.

«Where?» said John.

«She's working for a defense contractor. In the paralegal pool. Radar equipment. Guess what name she's using.»

«Leather Tuscadero.»

«Ha-ha.» She looked out the window below at the warehouse grids of City of Industry. «Fawn Heatherington.»

«That's so corny,» Ryan said. «It's like something right out of The Young and the Restless .»

«Ivan,» said John, «make sure we have a car waiting for us on the tarmac at the other end. And make sure there's a map inside it. We'll be there in a few hours.»

Vanessa said, «There's something else strange I found out.»

«What?» asked John.

«Judging from various spikes in her typing speeds and frequencies compared against her other data — she used to do data inputting for the Trojan nuclear plant up on the Columbia River back in the late eighties — particularly as regards her use of SHIFT key and the numbers one to five, I'm going to make an educated guess here.»

«What would that be?»

«Marilyn's going through menopause.»

John looked at Vanessa and then turned to Ivan. «Ivan, Vanessa now works for us. »

«Good,» said Ivan. «What will Vanessa be doing for us?»

«Running our world.» John felt a bit better for having conspired to make Vanessa lose her job. He was smoking furiously now.

«I thought you quit last year,» said Ivan.

«I smoke when I'm worried. You know that.»

Ivan noticed that John made no connection between his current posture in the jet, alert and driven, versus the crumpled heap he'd been on the floor months previously.

They landed in Cheyenne. An airport worker directed them to their car. Ivan asked Vanessa to be navigator. «No time to start your new job like the present.» She sat in the front, and Ivan leaned over and whispered to Ryan, «The secret to success? Delegate, delegate, delegate — assuming you've hired somebody competent to begin with.»

Ryan felt like a thirteen-year-old being given advice by a cigar-chomping uncle.

They drove through the city. It was a cold hot day on the cusp of a harsh autumn. The air felt thin and they managed to hit every red light as they wended through this essentially prairie town that was more Nebraska than Nebraska, certainly not the alpine fantasia conjured up by the name Wyoming, or from John's prior experience in the deepest Rockies filming The Wild Land.

«Over there,» said Vanessa, «the blue sign. Calumet Systems — purchased just last week by Honeywell.»

They encountered yet another low-slung corporate glass block surrounded by a parking lot full of anonymous-looking sedans and a wire fence topped with razor wire. A security Checkpoint Charlie precluded their entering the lot. Vanessa made John pull the car into the Amoco station across the street. John said, «Ivan, did you bring the binoculars like I asked?»

John looked, but didn't know what to expect to see — Marilyn making coffee in the cafeteria? Filing a letter? Readjusting her Peter Pan collar?»

«Can I see those, John?»

He handed Ryan the binoculars and Ryan scoured Calumet's lot. John turned on the radio and settled on a Spanish dance station, which Vanessa turned off. «This is no time for the Cheeka-Chocka.»

Ryan said, «I can see her car.»

«Bullshit,» said John.

«No. I do. It's a maroon BMW. I remember it was in the news footage when Susan went home to her mother's.»

John said, «Paralegals for prairie defense contractors don't drive BMWs.»

Ryan continued staring at the car through the binoculars. «John, you forget the settlement Marilyn made and then lost with the airline after the Seneca crash. She's clinging to her last remaining item of wealth like a lifeboat.»

«It was a claret-colored BMW,» said Vanessa, adding, «So what's the deal, John? I mean, we find Marilyn and then what? We trail her all day and all night? To what end?»

«She'll lead us to Susan.»

«How do you know that? My professional finding instincts are baffled.»

«We don't know where Susan went that year — nobody does. But Marilyn vanished, too, and now suddenly we find she's Fawn von Soap-Opera working here in Cheyenne at a defense plant. I mean, two people in a family vanish? That's no coincidence. Defense contracting? Spying? Espionage? Who knows. But there's a link. A strong one.»

«Oh my, » said Ryan. «I don't quite believe this myself, but La Marilyn has left the building. She's walking toward her car. Jeez, what a mess she is.»

«Let me see,» said Vanessa. «Work isn't over until five. Why's she leaving early? Shit — Ryan's right. It is her — with a $6.99 hairdo and a pantsuit ordered from the back of a 1972 copy of USSR This Week. I thought she was supposed to be stylish or something.» She kissed Ryan. «Agent 11, you are good. »

John started the engine to follow Marilyn, who was pulling out of Checkpoint Charlie. They turned onto the main strip, just then plumping up with the beginnings of rushhour traffic. They skulked three cars behind her for many miles, past a thousand KFCs, past four hundred Gaps, two hundred Subways and through dozens of intersections overloaded with a surfeit of quality-of-life refugees from the country's other larger cities, with nary a cowboy hat or a crapped-out Ranchero wagon to be seen in any direction. They drove out of Cheyenne's main bulk, and into its fringes, where the franchises weren't so new and the older fast-food outlets were now into their second incarnations as bulk pet-food marts, storage facilities and shooting ranges. Marilyn pulled the car into the lot of the Lariat Motel. She got out of the car and ran into room number 14.