Douglas Coupland - Hey Nostradamus!

That's how I "met" Jason the first time. On TV back in the 1980s; he was at a press conference just after he'd been absolved of any wrongdoing. I was homesick in Windsor, watching TV at my place with two neighbors who were also from Vancouver. We were drinking beer and feeling alienated from the massive quilt of autumn leaves outside. My neighbors said Jason was lying his ass off, but I said no way, and I stuck up for him, even back then. Imagine telling the truth about something as gruesome as that massacre, and having only half the world believe you; I don't think you could ever trust people again. So when I encountered Jason at the Toys R Us, he looked familiar as well as sad, but at first I couldn't peg why.

But I was going to discuss Friday. It's what started me going on this. I was downtown on my lunch break from the courthouse. I was in a drugstore getting a few things for this weekend with the kids. My cell phone battery was dead, so I went to a pay phone and checked my messages, and there was just one, a woman's voice - nice enough, maybe fiftyish - and she had something to tell me she said was both unusual and urgent. And then she hung up, no phone number or anything. Well what was I supposed to make of that? I listened to the message again. She didn't sound evil, and believe me, I've seen and heard so much evil in the courtroom that by now you could use my blood as an anti-evil vaccine. Who was this woman, and what exactly was she on about - telemarketing?

If it had been something to do with Jason, I figured she would have used a different voice with a different tone. Meaning what, Heather? Meaning, this woman didn't sound like the type to deliver ransom instructions or notify the cops to go looking in the Fraser River for a corpse rolled up in a discount Persian carpet. I know that voice, and it wasn't hers.

So I spent the rest of the afternoon slightly distracted, trying to pinpoint the nature of her voice, in the process even making some boo-boos on the court transcript - but it's a dull-as-dishwater property suit, and the chances of anyone consulting the record are zero. I could sit there pumping out the Girl Guide Pledge all afternoon, and nobody would ever know. This is both a plus and a minus of my job: my work is important, and yet it isn't. To be honest, they should just wire everybody up, stuff the room with cameras and fire me, except that the electronics would cost far more to maintain and service. So my job's safe for a while yet.

At five o'clock, I made the dash across the bridge and got to Barb's just in time to take charge of the twins as Barb raced out to the airport. The two boys were ravenous. Dinner became the next thing, and then they wanted to show me their computer games, which was a snoozer for me, and then I headed back to the kitchen for a sip of white wine and my first calm moment since the morning.

I phoned and checked my messages. None. So I call-forwarded my number to Barb's and sat at the kitchen table where I picked at the kids' leftover hot dogs and tried to enjoy the silence. Then the phone rang. It was the woman.

"Hello, is this . . . Heather?"

"Yes, it is. Who's this?" I kept my tone friendly.

"I'm Allison."

"Hello, Allison. You're the one who said you had some information for me?"

"Well, I do and I don't."

"You're losing me."

"Do you have five minutes?"

What the heck. "Sure." I poured another glass and sat on the bar stool by the flecked black marble counter.

"I guess I should tell you right off, Heather, I'm a psychic."

I was about to hang up.

"Don't hang up."

"You're a good psychic. You read my mind."

"No. It's common sense. I'd hang up, too, if some woman saying she was a psychic called me."

"Allison, I'm sure you're a nice person, but . . ."

"Oh, I say."

"What?"

"Oh, I say."

"Oh, I say" was Gerard T. Giraffe's unfunny entrance line, like the ones people have in sitcoms which are supposed to be funny, but really aren't, like when Norm enters the bar on Cheers, and everyone says, "Norm!" She was even using the correct Gerard tone of voice, baritone and bumbling.

" 'Oh, I say' . . . Does that mean anything to you?"

I kept silent.

"'Oh, I say."'

"Who are you, Allison? What do you want?"

"I don't want anything. I don't. But all day I've been getting this voice coming through my brain in the middle of whatever I'm doing, saying 'Oh, I say,' and it's freaking me out, and I'm supposed to be used to this sort of thing."

"How did you connect the voice to my name?"

"That's almost the easiest part. I emptied my head and used a pencil on white paper in a dark room and your name and number came out. It's not too far a stretch to get a phone number when you get such a weird, specific message like 'Oh, I say' delivered in a Rex Harrison baritone."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Heather, I'm sorry you feel this way. But there's no game-playing going on here. I don't want money. I don't want anything. But there's still these words pumping out of wherever. I just want to make sure I'm not cracking up. Oh, I say. Oh, I say. Oh, I say."

I was silent. In the other room the kids were bickering.

"Heather, look. I've never told anyone this before, but I'm not really a psychic. I'm a fake psychic. I look at people's faces, their jewelry and scars and footwear and shirts and you name it. I pretty much feed them what they want to hear. You don't even need too much intuition to do it. I'm surprised there aren't millions of psychics out there. It's a total racket."

So much for me being a living lie detector. "How can you mess with people's lives like that?"

"Messing? Not at all. I give them hope, and I never raise their expectations too high. The only thing most people want is a bit of proof, however flimsy, that people they once knew are thinking of them from the great beyond."

"Most people? What do the other people want?"

"They want a conversation with the dead, but I can't do that for them. Because I'm a fake. And even if I could, a conversation with someone in the great beyond might not be the smartest thing to facilitate."

"But you're a fake. You said so yourself."

"I am, Heather. But this 'Oh, I say' thing - it's the only potentially real signal I've ever picked up on my antenna, and frankly it's scaring me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just tell me that it means something - that it means something real."

"Allison, give me a second here."

I put the wineglass down on the counter. There were lipstick stains on it. Why was I wearing lipstick to baby-sit the kids? The icemaker rumbled and stopped, and the fridge's humming entered second gear.

"Okay," I said, "It means something."

"Oh, thank God."

"Wait. Hold on a minute. When you get your messages or whatever, is it a voice in your head? Or is it like a text message on a computer screen?"

"It's sort of both and neither. It's more a thing that passes through you, like when you leave the house and you realize the stove is still on. It defies words, and yet at the same time, it is words."

That sounded real enough. "Do you see his face?"

"No. But I can definitely feel him near."

"So you can't tell me what he looks like - it's not like I want proof - I'm just curious."

"Okay. I'd say he's taller than you - six something -mouse-brown hair, not thinning, gray-green eyes. That's not much to go by. I could have made that up."

"It's close. Very close." It was bang on.

Allison asked, "What does it mean, then? It's a weird message."

"I can't tell you."

"Okay. Fair enough."

"Tell me, Allison, does a person have to be dead in order to send you voices or words?"

"From what I've read, not necessarily."

"Does this voice say anything else to you?"