Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

Coincidences, omens, and luck relentlessly continued. Our film crew was on location in the agricultural flatlands of Chilliwack, a ninety-minute drive away. On the drive there, we witnessed not one but two spectacular car crashes on the other side of the freeway. A few miles on, a pair of hawks circled the freeway chasing a pigeon.

While driving, I won twenty-five dollars on a scratch-and-win lottery ticket that had been lying on the dash for weeks. Then we learned that all three people in my car had the same birthday.

A mile before we arrived at the location, a rogue cow sat stupidly in the thin road's center. We stopped and got out of the car; we saw a rainbow, and the cow ran away. The moment we arrived on locationa hailstorm began. My cell phone rang and it was Megan calling to tell me she loved me.

The next call was George phoning from Lions Gate, where Karen had been transferred the previous week with a slight respiratory problem. Apparently she was well again and would be returning to Inglewood some time next week.

While we waited for the hail to melt, we had a rock-throwing contest to try to hit a telephone pole across the field—I hit the pole on my first try.

The day just wouldn't quit. I was being swept down a river of grace and wonder. The weather turned dry and crisp with Indian summer sparkle. The crew were hoping we'd wrap early so they'd have time to gussy themselves up for a Halloween party in North Vancouver later that night over at Hillary Markham's, a prop lady living near the Cleveland Dam.

The coincidences continued: I found a gold ring in the grass at the side of the field. One of the actors, the coach character, was an old high school friend, Scott, who told me that a girl we knew in high school had just died of stomach cancer.

A fumbled football landed in the ditch, and as I went to pick it up, three snakes slithered around the ball and then melted into the reeds. To the right of the ball grew a sequoia-like marijuana plant, which I traded to a coworker named Barton in lieu of money for his stereo system that I'd been wanting to buy.

In my jacket's breast pocket I found the house key I thought I'd lost the month before. I began to feel almost drunk with karma. The shoot went swimmingly; we finished almost two hours earlier than scheduled. I returned to town with Tina and two other staffers. I popped by the studio and borrowed a silver Apollo astronaut's suit used several episodes earlier. I drove home to change and relax before the party.

After a quick nap, I started to dress. I was in such a fine mood— such a day! I couldn't have known that putting on my silver jacket in my quiet house that crisp October afternoon was going to be tke last truly calm moment I would ever have—the last silently normal moment of my life.Before going to the party I drove up to Linus's house. He'd placed various rather terrifying monsters around his yard and arranged lighting so that after the trick-or-treaters had finished and were walking down the driveway, the monsters would flare up. I stayed to watch the festivities and a few trick-or-treaters. The first were two sweet little kids and their dad. One of the kids was barely six. Linus gave them each a Crunch bar, and as they scurried away, he lit up the monsters and the kids began to wail in fear. Linus hadn't anticipated this. The father yelled, "What are you, some kind of freak? Jesus, these are just little kids!"

Pang of conscience; monster floodlighting switched off. ("Oops!") The monsters tucked away.

Linus left his bowl of candy outside the door and fetched his costume, a cardboard U-Haul box painted black. I asked him what he was and he said he was going as the Borg. I just don't get Trekkies.

The Halloween party began just after dark and was a smashing good time. Everybody arrived dressed up as an aspect of their subconscious: a Wonder Woman, a hobo, a cat, a Hell's Angel. These costumes reminded me of a cartoon I'd seen years before, one in which an Acme Hat Company delivery truck crosses a tall bridge. While doing so, it unleashes hundreds of hats that float to the ground and land on the characters, who suddenly become whichever hat had landed on their heads: pilgrims, Valkyres, toreadors, gangsters, and ballerinas. Wendy was working at the hospital's emergency room that night. I wondered what her hat might be: Joan of Arc's armored hood? Florence Nightingale's white nursing hat?

My astronaut's costume was a smash. I don't think I'd ever had as many people, male or female, hit on me the way they did that night— its silver skin seemed to truly ooze sex. I began wondering about ways to further the astronaut look in daily life. A crew cut? An orange Corvette Stingray?

But Hamilton and Pam were the ones who stole the show with their costumes that night. Pam walked in the door wearing two large red cardboard hearts—one on her back and one on her front. ("I'm acinnamon candy!") Behind her was Hamilton, who zombie-walked through the door making the party go silent. Pam and Linus had done a remarkable job of transforming him into a rotting zombie with gobbets of flesh hanging down his arms and legs, his skin a map of olive green, ochre lesions and eruptions of vile mashed-potato goo. Black plague sores dotted his body like island outlines on a map of Southeast Asia. After waiting a moment for his costume to make full impact, Hamilton chirped up: "I'm a Leaker!"

We all said, "Wha— ?"

"A Leaker. You don't know what a Leaker is?"

No's all around.

"Oh, I must tell you. Oh—wait a second—" He reached for his eye. "Oops! My eye just fell out." Everybody screamed in good-natured horror as Hamilton squished his left eye shut and held up a glass eye. The music turned down slightly. He pretended to reinsert the eye and said, "There. That's better. Now, a cocktail, methinks. Mr. Liver is thirstier than usual." A tray of martinis came by; Hamilton grabbed one and plopped in the eyeball.

The party started up again and Hamilton and Pam joined Linus, Tina Lowry, and me. Tina said, "No fair, Hamilton. You have to tell us what a Leaker is."

"With pleasure," Hamilton said. "I first discovered Leakers maybe fifteen years ago—back when I was living down in that Gastown apartment building. Eighty-one? Eighty-two? I forget. Anyway, my neighbors were mostly a mixture of poor arty types and senior citizens on fixed incomes."

"Get to the Leakers, Hamilton!" Tina said.

"Okay. All right, already. Well, what would happen is this: I lived there for two years, and each August during the annual heat wave, a senior citizen on an upper floor would pay his rent, lock all of his doors and windows, watch TV, and promptly die. But because they were old or didn't have friends or what have you, nobody noticed them from one month to the next. And so—"

"I don't think I want to hear this," Tina said.

"And so—one morning I was walking over the cobblestones,returning from a pierogi breakfast at Gunther's Deli, and there were not one but three fire trucks out front of the building, as well as cop cars and two inhalator trucks. The firemen were wearing ventilator masks normally used for toxic spills, they had hatchets and crowbars, and they were carrying piles of construction debris they chucked into a specialized van."

"Oh, God—" said Tina, holding her stomach.

"That's right," said Hamilton. "Unit 403. Mrs. Kitchen. The people in the suite below were reporting something black making a stain on the ceiling right above their TV set. The landlord went upstairs to investigate. There was no answer, and so he opened the door and was whomped on the nose by the absolute worst smell in the known universe—shit and piss and vomit, but a thousand times worse. The firemen arrived and had to remove every single object in the apartment and burn the rubbish. Even the Formica kitchen counter and the dry-wall were impregnated with the smell. The suite below had to be gutted, too. That's where Pamela here comes in."