Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

"You were this puppy-young once, too."

"It was a long time ago." "Yeah."Linus looks me over more. "You missed so much that happened in the world after you died. Did you see any of it?"

"Enough, I guess. I've been busy, kinda."

"We threw your ashes out into the ocean. Your dad chartered a sailboat. The day was clear like today. We said prayers on the boat."

"I was there."

"Yeah. It was beautiful. Your parents were so nice." Linus scans the plume again. "We never got used to your dying, you know. Richard especially. And then Karen went into the coma and I think it wrecked Richard's life. I guess there must be a connection between you and Karen. I mean, here you are now."

"Here I am."

"Can you tell me what that connection is? I mean, between you and Karen and the rest of the world going away."

"Blunt or what! Okay, Linus—I'm going to be telling you things soon enough, but not right now, okay?"

"Jeez—you and Karen. Why does everything need to be so mysterious? Me, I've tried to make sense of everything over the past year and haven't been able to descramble it at all."

"It's not anything you might expect. By the way, what has the past year been like for you?"

"Scary. Lonely. And quiet! So amazingly quiet. I keep on waiting for people to emerge around a corner or to see plane fly or a moving car. But I never do. I'm still not used to it yet."

"From what I can see, the group of you are handling the situation calmly."

"Let's just thank the drugs for that, thank you. And the videos. And the booze and the canned goods. In some ways it feels as though the world is still the same. At the start, I used to think we'd all feel as if we were waiting to die. Instead it feels as if we're simply waiting— for what I don't know. Waiting for you? I miss so many things about the old world—the way the city used to light the clouds from below, making them all liquid pearly blue. I miss the smell of sushi. And electricity. Fridges. Shopping. New ideas. Oh—I'm married now, too, to Wendy. And I was working in TV.""Yeah, I know about all that."

"Sometimes we all used to feel like a creepy Neil Simon play. Hamilton tried to think of a title and show tunes to go with it. His best title was Five Losers."

"Hamilton—always the witty fellow."

"He's so wacky."

"A real nut."

"He slays me. He really slays me." Linus gathers his breath and looks out at the volcano. He sighs, then says, "Jared, tell me something: Is time over?"

"Huh? Meaning what?"

"I've been thinking about this so much. When I say time I mean history, or … I think it's human to confuse history with time."

"That's for sure."

"No, listen. Other animals don't have time—they're simply part of the universe. But people—we get time and history. What if the world had continued on? Try to imagine a Nobel Peace Prize winner of the year 3056, or postage stamps with spatulas on them because we ran out of anything else to put on stamps. Imagine the Miss Universe winner in the year 22,788. You can't. Your brain can't do it. And now there aren't any people. Without people, the universe is simply the universe. Time doesn't matter."

"Linus, you spent years roaming the continent looking for all sorts of answers, didn't you?"

"I did. In Las Vegas especially. It was a shithole, but it gave me space to think. And you're not answering my question, Jared."

"I will. Did you reach any conclusions in Las Vegas?"

"No. Not really. I thought I was going to see God or reach an epiphany or to levitate or something. But I never did. I prayed so long for that to happen. I think maybe I didn't surrender myself enough—I think that's the term: surrender. I still wanted to keep a foot in both worlds. And then this past year I've still been waiting for the same big cosmic moments, and still nothing's happened—except you're here and instead of feeling cosmic, it simply feels like we're cutting gym class and coming up here for a butt. Your arrival seems somehowappropriate; I wish I could feel more awe. I wish you could be here all the time. We're so bloody lonely."

Another smaller rumble tickles the ground and we can see lava flows treacling down Mount Baker's slope. Linus wants to blurt words so I let him: "Jared, I know God can come at any moment in any form. I know we always have to be on the alert. And I know that day and night are the same to God. And I know that God never changes. But all I ever wanted was just a clue. When do we die, Jared?"

"Whoa! Linus—it's not that easy. I don't have that kind of exact answer."

"Nobody ever seems to dish out the real answers."

There's a strangely uncomfortable pause, and I try and switch moods: "Look at Mount Baker," I say. "Remember that ski weekend there when we trashed the transmission in Gordon Streith's Cortina?"

"I kept the gear-shift knob as a souvenir."

The lava now burns gullies through the mountain's glaciers and steam rises as high as a satellite. Linus feels calm and his voice becomes gentle: "I guess this is what the continent looked like to the pioneers back when they first came here, eh Jared? A land untouched by time or history. They must have felt as though they were walking headlong into eternity, eager to chop it down and carve it and convert it from heaven into earth. Don't you think so?"

"Yeah. The pioneers—they believed in something. They knew the land was holy. The New World was the last thing on Earth that could be given to humankind: two continents spanning the poles of Earth— continents as clean and green and milky blue as the First Day. The New World was built to make mankind surrender."

"But we didn't," Linus says.

"No, we didn't."

"But time, Jared—is it over? You never said."

Linus knows he's on to something, but I'm unable to give him an answer. "Not quite yet."

"Again, nobody has full answers. Where's everybody else now— the people who fell asleep? What are we supposed to be doing now?""Linus—buddy—I'm not trying to dick you around. There's a reason for everything."

"Always these eternal mysteries," says Linus. "I don't think human beings were meant to know so much about the world. All this time and all this exposure to every conceivable aspect of life—wisdom so rarely enters the picture. We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age."

"Wait a second, Linus." I approach him and place my hands on top of his head, making his body jiggle like a motel bed. I say, "There." Linus goes rigid, grows limp, and then swoons to the pavement; I've shown him a glimpse of heaven. "You'll be blind for a while now," I tell him. "A week or so."

Linus is silent, then mumbles, "I've seen all I've ever needed to see."

"Good-bye, Linus." With these words I pull backward, up into the sky, smaller smaller smaller into a blink of light, like a star that shines in the day.

"Well, Hef, I grant you that these seats are comfy, but not nearly as comfy as being dragooned through the grottoes of Fez on a litter carried by four of Doris Duke's seven-foot Nubians."

"Babs, you sassy vixen—make me jealous."

"Shush, Hef—I need to make a transatlantic phone call to the Peppermint Lounge. 'Pardonez moi—est-ce-que je peut parle avec Monsieur Halston?'"

"Sure—call Halston. Last week / had lunch with the Princess Eugenie, Joe Namath, and Oleg Cassini. Lobster Thermador, Cherries Jubilee, and Crepes Suzette. Ha!"

"You tire me, Hef. Please leave."

Hamilton and Pam lounge on the front seat of an unsold Mercedes 450 SE inside the dusty dealership showroom on Marine Drive. The car doors are shut, the tires are flat, and on the seat between the two sits a trove of bric-a-brac connected to their drug use as well as cartons of cigarettes and stray unopened tequila bottles. I appear outside the front window, hovering in the middle of the pane. I glow.Pam shivers. "Umm—honey—I think maybe you should look out the window."