Douglas Coupland - Girlfriend in a Coma

"Did Richard say he'd have the heater and the water fixed by the afternoon?" Pam asks, and Wendy says no. "Oh pooh. My hair feels all matted like a wad of Slim Jims. I'm getting a club soda. You want one?"

Wendy declines and strolls onto the patio where Linus is bundled up as though in a Swiss tuberculosis sanitorium. "Hey, Linus, are you sure you're wearing enough white terry robes? You look like Bugs Bunny in Palm Springs."

"Tee hee." Linus is still recovering from a wicked cold garnered from the three-day-long blind walk home from up on the mountain where I gave him pictures of heaven.

"Brrr. It's cold out," Wendy says. "But the sky looks pretty."

"I can tell by the sound of your voice," Linus says, "you're hiding something. Wait—let me guess. Yes, you've checked the Geiger counter, haven't you?"

"Guilty as charged. Chattering like maracas."

"Some surprise."

They Stand silent for a second, then Wendy says, "Jane is starting to reject her food. I'm not feeling so hot, either.""You sound fine," Linus says. "Jared's back tonight. He'll tell us what to do."

From the living room they can hear Hamilton cursing the cold, throwing a Yellow Pages into the fireplace for a meager dollop of heat.

"Oh—look!" Wendy says. "Up there—a bald eagle—still alive. Flying."

"I'll take your word for it. This pesky blindness, you know."

"I mean, it's so large—the big white head, the yellow beak. It's so big I can see the color from here."

"I'll live. I'm going inside now." He has difficulty finding the latch.

Inside the living room, Linus feels his way past Hamilton, asking, "What are you reading?"

"I'm taking my minty fresh new brain out for more test drives. Industry and Empire by Eric Hobsbawm—about the English Industrial Revolution. Also, One More Time by Carol Burnett. The funny lady of television and films remembers her beginnings. The coast-to-coast bestseller that warmed the hearts of millions."

"Well it's cold in here. We should find a smaller house that's easier to heat."

"No. Maybe we can just start putting bits of this house into the fire, and when we run out of this house we can find another big house."

At that moment, Megan's bedroom explodes with a top-forty hit from 1997. "Bloody hell." Hamilton sits bolt upright then stomps down the hall to Megan's door. "Turn down the bloody boom box, Megan. We can't think out here." Megan makes no response, so Hamilton nudges open the door and finds Megan and Jane sitting on the bed where they've stationed themselves for the past two weeks—a landscape of half-used Gerber jars, cigarette butts, CD's, and batteries. Hamilton turns the music down to a low level. Hamilton glowers at Jane, who gawps right back at him. Hamilton has the spooky sensation that Jane is far more aware of the world than any of the others. "Are you coming out for dinner tonight?" Hamilton asks. "It's a

Sunday dinner. A good one."

"Maybe. How do you know it's Sunday?""Wendy's PowerBook."

"Right." Megan turns off the stereo and picks up Jane. The two look out the window onto the driveway, where Richard has parked the car and is carrying cases of tinned foods into the house. "Oh goody-goody," says Megan, "more canned food. No, excuse me—I see a few boxes there, too. Lucky us—such variety." Richard sees Megan and suddenly Megan feels badly for Richard, who is the one person trying hard to maintain civility and comfort during the entire fucked up and crazy year. She calls out the window, "Dad, do you want me to help you with those?"

"They're nearly all in, Sweetie. Thanks anyhow."

Richard places the final box down on the garage floor. Walking into the house, he sees Karen by the small pool, which in the course of a year has converted itself into an enormous science project on algae. "You okay down there?" he asks.

"I'm fine. I went for a small run. Now I'm just taking in the air. It turned warm a few minutes ago."

Richard goes inside and Karen resumes her sentry over the gone-to-seed backyard. The sky is oranging and she is sad because her voices have departed. She can no longer see into the future or even try to explain the unexplainable. She is merely mortal, and a frail mortal, too. But we've all had our hopes returned, she thinks. Jared will know what to do next.

From somewhere in the house comes the sound of rattling paper. It's Linus feeling his way back out to the patio carrying a bag of charcoal briquettes. "It's gotten warm out all of a sudden," he shouts, "let's barbecue, methinks." Within minutes, the ball barbecue is opened, the briquettes lit, the embers are glowing, and spirits are raised.

The darkening sky is becoming a warm, dead Xerox and the winds blow forcefully as though aimed from a hair blower. Yet there is no sound—a warm river flowing over the skin; the amplified sound of the Moon. It is summer in mid-winter.

My old friends are seated on the back patio, toasting marshmal-lows and joking around. They know that my two weeks are up and I'll be returning shortly.

Richard asks Linus, whose eyesight is just now returning, to count how many fingers he's holding up. Karen darts about serving drinks and flaunting her new legs ("Shirley MacLaine in Irma La Douce"). Hamilton and Pam sit calmly, their facial muscles loose, their crow's-feet vanished. They listen to the voices of the others with the peace of small children. Wendy helps Linus guide his stick near the flames; she is silent about her pregnancy by me, having kept details of our encounter hush-hush. Megan, seated on a faded folding chair, beams as baby Jane gurgles and clicks with her continuing enchantment with the gift of sight, not crying once since her encounter with me. Richard, bearing a marshmallow-clumped trident at his side, is simply pleased to see his friends so jolly.

"I can smell the skins burning," Linus says. "Carbon."

"Isn't it just the prettiest thing?" Pam adds. "Hey, King Neptune— start toasting your prongs."

As I look down at them from the sky, their barbecue is the only speck of light on Earth for hundreds of miles save for the lava that oozes down Mt. Baker's slope and a small forest fire north of Seattle. I become a star in the sky and grow until Megan sees me and says, "Look. I bet that's Jared now."

Seconds later, I appear at the patio's edge and Megan smiles, saying, "Jane, say hello to Jared," making Jane twitter birdishly.

"Are you able to eat, Jared?" asks Karen. "Marshmallows—a bit stale, but they plump the moment they burn."

"Hey, Kare, no food, thanks, no."

"A dance, perhaps?" She sweeps around the patio, her dress twirling and her eyes flashing because she is in love with the world.

"How about some lemonade?" asks Hamilton. "Num num. Made from a powder, of course, but lemony fresh nonetheless."

"Thanks again, but no, Ham." I move a bowl of potato chips and sit down on a stump Karen's father once used as a chopping block.

Linus, semi-blind, holds up his glass in my general direction and says,"A toast to Jared." The others join in with a cloud of hear-hear's. "Our miracle man."

I blush. Wendy, who's heavily dolled herself up for the night, sugars moonily, "Helloooo, Jared."

"Hey, Wen, looking good." And then there's a pause as in the old days when we made bonfires down at Ambleside beach, a bonfire's flames with embers hypnotic and silencing. "Guys—I need to speak with you all," I say, and I receive seven smiling faces in return—eight, now that Jane, as well as Linus, has vision. "Please listen."

The fire spits as insects kamikaze inward.

"It's hard for me. It's hard stuff. It's about all of you."

"Us?" Karen asks.

"Yup. All of you. And just because I'm able to speak more clearly than when I was alive doesn't mean I feel any more comfortable doing it. Cut me some slack. I'm here to speak to you about transforming your lives and yourselves. Making choices and changing who you are."