Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

Hamilton is weighing various cones of powder and says, "I'm busy, Babs. I'm hiding my stash of dental-grade cocaine inside Gianni Agnelli's leather ski boots."

"Hey goofball—look up!" I shout; Hamilton turns and I shatter the showroom window and float above the shards through the now-open air toward their car.

"Ucking-fay it-shay," Pam says.

"Oh man, it's Jared."

I lower myself down onto the dealership's floor and then walk across the showroom and into the engine so that my body is half inside the car. "Hi, Pam. Hi, Hamilton."

"Um—hi, Jared," Pam says. The two feel slightly silly being surrounded by so much contraband. Pam giggles.

"Jared—buddy. This is so Bewitched."

"No, Hamilton, it's real life. What are you guys doing inside the car here?"

"We wanted to smell the interior. We miss the smell of new things," Pam says with further titters. "There's nothing new anymore. Everything just gets older and older and more worn down. One of these days there'll be nothing new-smelling left in the world. So we're taking whatever newness we can get." She looks at the dashboard. "Older older older." She lapses into a child's song.

"Old old old," Hamilton adds. "Everything's old. We'd kill for a new newspaper, a freshly mowed lawn, or a fresh coat of paint on something. By the way, great light show this morning at the Save-On. It was like you lifted a rock and everything underneath scurried to burrow into the crap underneath."

They're high and not responding soberly. "Tell me, where else have you been today?" I ask.

"Just you come and have a look." Hamilton and Pam slither out of the car and we go to their pickup truck outside the building. The bed is filled with gems, gold coins, cutlery, jewelry, and other treasures."We raided the safe-deposit boxes at the Toronto Dominion Bank in Park Royal," Hamilton says.

"It's not as treasure-ish as you might think," adds Pam. "There were things like locks of hair, Dear John letters, fishing trophies, blue ribbons, keys, garter belts—not pricey stuff. More like stuff you'd expect to find left over after a garage sale."

"Oh—here's a strange one …" Hamilton says, lifting a plaster casting of a large phallus. On its bottom is felt-penned a date, November 4, 1979, and no other information.

"Must have been a good day for somebody," I say as Pam starts pouring handfuls of diamonds back and forth between her hands and the occasional stray tinkles down onto the pavement, clicking like a camera's shutter. She tosses the diamonds onto the center pile, one at a time. "Pear-shaped, suncrest, radiant, marquise, baguette, my little best friends." She looks toward me: "You're real, Jared, aren't you— it's not just the drugs?"

"I'm real. I'm like a biology test come back to haunt you."

"Oh, wow," Hamilton says.

"Oh wow? I come back to life and all you can say is, 'Oh wow?"

"Jared," Hamilton says, "Mellow out. I seem to remember you were the one who had fourteen people toking their brains out inside your parents' Winnebago the night Elvis died."

"Exposing hypocrisy in itself doesn't make you a moral person," I say.

"Huh?" Pam says.

"Oh, don't be so thick, Pamela," Hamilton says. "He never did have a sense of humor. Jocks never do. Listen to what Jared's say-ing … "

"Don't so-thick me, Heffy-Weffy. I'm the one who cracked the safe today."

"Hurt me, hurt me—"

"Oh Lord. You guys want a miracle to make you go 'oh wow' for real?"

"Deal us in, big boy," Hamilton says.

"Very well." I approach them and tap them each on the head."You touch us on the head? That's a miracle? Jared, I—" Pam stops, touches her cheeks, and looks at her body. Hamilton puts his hands to his ears and then falls down on his knees. "No. No. Oh, my. It's—it's real, isn't it, Jared?" Pam asks.

"It's real."

The two go silent; Hamilton crawls across the pavement and lowers his head to the ground, inspecting the dust.

Pam bursts into tears and grabs Hamilton's shoulders and tries to lift him up. Hamilton looks both lost and found at the same time. "Is it what I think it is?" he asks.

"Yes."

He moans. "You mean—we're clean?"

"Yes, you are clean. Your addictions are gone. No withdrawal. No pangs. Nothing." The two unclasp and then come over to me and try to touch me, but as with Linus earlier on that day, they end up batting each other's arms. After this, they stand and do leg squats and stretches and run around the parking lot and spin and look at the cellophane sky.

"It is a miracle. I can think! I'm clear! So clear! I haven't been this clear since—ever. The six wives of Henry VIII! The Fibonacci number sequence! How to make a smooth nonlumpy cream sauce …"

"It's so clean!" Hamilton echoes. "My head inside is clean as a lake! Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon; August, 1969—American talk show host, Merv Griffin launches his late-night CBS show in direct competition with Johnny Carson. Opening night guests include Woody Allen and Heddy Lamarr, but scheduled athlete Joe Namath is a no-show."

"Oh Hamilton—look at the world!"

"It's …"

"Yes …"

The two fall silent; their bodies slacken as though they've realized a friend has betrayed them. Sitting down on the truck's lowered tailgate, they swat diamonds from underneath their bottoms and sit limp.

"Well, well—here we are," Pam says."Clean," Hamilton says. "And I don't feel like getting high. You?"

"No," replies Pam. "I like being inside my own skin again." A seagull shrieks above them and they look up. "There's still birds," Pam says.

"But no people."

"No people. The world's over, isn't it, Jared?"

"Pretty well."

"You're real, aren't you?"

"Yep."

Silence falls where in other days traffic would have hummed and honked. "This is life, then, isn't it? I mean, this is it."

"Basically."

Hamilton and Pam hold hands. Pam says, "What do we do now, Jared? Is this it forever—silence? It's so quiet down here. Lonely. You're the ghost. You're the expert."

"Your brains are as tender and fresh as a baby bird's. Walk home. Enjoy your clarity. Go romp in a hot tub. You count; you were meant to exist. I'll be seeing you again."

And with this I vanish.

Richard was my best friend growing up, although we did grow apart over the years. He was one of the people I missed most when I died, so I'm kinda choked to see him again. But there are severe limits on how much I'm allowed to reveal to the living, so I can't be as gooey with Richard—or the others—as I'd like.

Richard is huffing up Rabbit Lane with a shotgun, so I slide down the hill to meet him. "Hey, Jared—thanks for fixing Karen's legs. That was beautiful."

"It was the least I could do."

"We came home and played splits on the front lawn with a steak knife for an hour. She's just so high on life now. Good trick with the lighting system down at Save-On, too."

"You flatter me shamelessly. Where are you walking to?"

"Out for a stroll before the sun sets to get a good view of Mount Baker. And the weather—it's so beautiful today. It's the end of December and it might as well be June. But then again there could be a snowstorm in three minutes. Weather's random these days."

"So I've heard." I walk alongside Richard.

"Were you alive when Mount St. Helen erupted, Jared?"

"No. Missed it."

"That's right. It was huge. And you missed new wave and alternative rock. Rap. Grunge. Hip-hop. People wore some pretty stupid clothes. Cars got really good, though."

"I didn't miss out on earthly things entirely, Richard. Check this out—I can do the 'Moonwalk.'"

"No way. This I've got to see."

"Just you watch me now …" I slinkily Moonwalk up the road while Richard belly-laughs. "Am I doing something wrong?" I ask.