Girlfriend in a coma (19 page)

"What about your friends, Karen? How do you feel to see them all aged seventeen years overnight? Do you still hang out with them?""They're my life, really. Them and my family. If they weren't here, I don't think I could handle the world." Karen is disgusted with the platitudes she's dishing out. She sounds to herself like a Miss America contestant allowed out of the soundproof booth and given thirty seconds to answer questions that will, to a large degree, define future directions of her life.

Gloria looks peeved.
We need more drama.
A woman named Randy comes over; she and Gloria have a hushed discussion over notes on Gloria's crisp red lap. Pam powders Karen's face. "How's it going, Kare?"

"I think I'm a dud. And they're furious about losing the crying scene."

Karen thinks over what Pam blurted out in the car the other day - about how people expect her to be a thousand years old now, not just thirty-four. She knows this is what Gloria wants to get at.
"Karen - " Gloria returns. "Let's just do a few more questions. This must be tiring for you."
"It's my pleasure. When are you interviewing Megan?"
"After you," says Gloria. "And then we'll do the two of you together. Everything is out of sequence, but we patch it all together in post-production." Gloria's face looks harsh, unwilling to spare any niceness energy until production noises are made. The board claps and once again she becomes "Gloria."
"Karen." Gloria puts on her serious look, cradles her chin atop her hands, and looks deeply at Karen. "The world is curious - and I
know
this is a simple question, but I need to ask it - how does it
feel
to be a modern Rip Van Winkle? Almost twenty years asleep. My
my.
What's it like inside your head? What's it like to be
you
right now?"
"You know what I feel? I feel useless in this modern world. I'm unable to do anything but lie around. I feel like I'm the only person on Earth who relaxes anymore. And then I think about all the bad stuff that's about to happen and I feel sorry for the world because it's nearly over."

Cut!

Assistants run over. "Karen, what on
Earth
was that?"Karen blinks and looks out the window at the sky, competing for attention with the camera lights. "I'm not sure. It just came out." Richard slips around a corner and motions for Wendy to come over. He tells her what happened.

"Karen," Gloria says, "let's try that one again. Maybe we can ask about the, er, bad stuff with another question. Agreed?"
"Sure. It's your show."
Rolling. . .
"Karen." Gloria again looks deeply at Karen and repeats word-perfectly, "The world is curious and I
know
this is a simple question but I need to ask it - how does it
feel
to be a modern Rip Van Winkle? Twenty years asleep. My
my.
What's it like inside your head? What's it like to be
you
right now?"
"I feel useless as tits on a board. I sit around all day doing dick-all while everybody else runs around like crazed cartoon characters."
A semi-defeated silence follows. Gloria asks, "Anything else?"
"Seeing as your asking, yes. The world's going to be over soon."
Cut!
"Karen, I Excuse me a second." Gloria darts outside. An assistant, Jason, comes in to play good cop. He's a slow walker; his eyes have seen something. He doesn't discount the odd and he sees a possible miracle where others see dreck. "Karen," he says, motioning the film crew to keep rolling, "when you say the world's over, what, exactly, do you
mean!"
"What I said. I ..." There is a pause and a voice speaks, the voice of Karen who was away all these years. "Three days after Christmas. That's when the world goes dark. There's nothing that can be done and there's no escaping. I saw it happen in 1979. By accident, some doors had been left open and I got a peek. I wasn't snooping. I just saw it at the right time. I thought I could sleep my way out of it - I wasn't sure of the date it was going to happen. I wanted to be asleep forever. It's not the same as death, but it's the only way we have to escape time. That's what makes us different from every other creature in the world - we have
time.
And we have choices." Jason is quiet. The camera still rolls. Richard, Pam, and Wendywatch. In the lull, they can hear Gloria's voice saying, "What am I supposed to do when she keeps shutting down and spouting claptrap. Does she not have the word 'retake' in her vocabulary?"
"Gloria, she's been in a coma for twenty years almost. People expect her to be odd."
"I can't believe we lost the tear shot."
Jason says, "Are there any details you can give, Karen. Places? names? Is it a bomb or is it - "
"It's sleep. Nearly everybody falls asleep and then they go. It's painless. Where do you live?"
"New York."
"You'll go. Gloria goes. Everybody there goes."
"And this doesn't make you sad?"
"It hasn't happened yet. I won't know until it's over."
"What about you and your family and friends. Don't you worry for them?"
"There's nothing I can do to help them one way or another. All of this was decided a long,
long
time ago. And I don't know
specifically
who lives and who doesn't. So I can't tell you people, really, I can't."
"And you?"
"Me? I get to live. I know that for sure." Karen seems to have no more to say on this subject.
Jason's face is thoughtful. "Thanks for telling me this."
"I might as well." And then Karen wakes up while still asleep. She startles: "Wha - ? - I spaced out again there. I dreamed I was telling you the world was going to shut down."
"A dream?"

"No. Not really. I suppose not."
21 YOUR DREAMS OF WAR
Karen feels release and confusion. She knows that her words have annoyed the Americans and baffled - perhaps even slightly frightened - her friends.

She knows that she is in the center of some sort of mass transformation - one larger than just her mere reawakening. But how big will this change be? Miracles always have limits. When one is granted wishes, one is granted only
three
wishes - not four or five or ten. What will be the limits here?

Karen feels trapped inside the biggest déjà vu in the world. Her behavior seems preordained, like a queen who spends her day cutting ribbons, judging flower shows, and overseeing state dinners - all of

170
these activities preordained. And she has decided, somewhere between her co-interview with Megan and the camera crews' taping the two of them hobbling down Rabbit Lane, that she'll try and play it dumb about her on-camera statements of impending doom. Already she is detecting that Richard and Wendy think her comments might be evidence of incipient madness. Oh
God.

She misses running and she misses her hair and she misses being normal, being absorbed by the crowd. She has decided that the best way for her to go through life is for her to view even her smallest actions and gestures as coincidental, charged, and miraculous. It was the way she remembered life felt at the age of sixteen and it is a way she is determined to re-create.

Beef south/chicken north.

The night of the TV shoot, Karen goes to bed almost immediately, thus precluding any discussion of what she had told Gloria and then Jason. She is still asleep when Richard leaves for work the next day. During the day, when he calls home, there is no answer - Christmas shopping. He phones Wendy at her office and the two of them convene at Park Royal for coffee, where dispirited Christmas mall music serenades their baffled conversation. Wendy stirs the sugar in her coffee thirty times and says, "I think that Karen's memory and thought processes maybe aren't as clear as we'd hoped for, Richard. Are you scared - about going south?"

Richard, obligated to visit Los Angeles, says yes. He leaves on the twenty-seventh and returns on the twenty-eighth.
"Can't you go some other time?"
"No. We're behind schedule as it is. Besides, it's so preposterous. If I stay home, I'll only reinforce whatever fantasy or phobia it is Karen's going through." He bites a muffin. "It
is
fantasy, right?"
"Who's to say? It's like those cartoons of guys with long beards holding a sign on a street corner saying THE END IS NEAR; there's always a little part of you that wonders,
what if?
Yeah, it's spooky. Have you spoken about this with her yet?"

"No. It's been crazy. I will tonight. Holidays throw everything intoa mess. But one question,

Wendy, if you were me, would you go?"
"I'd probably go, too."
Later that evening, Richard and Karen have their first real fight, which colors the entire

next week. "The twenty-eighth is
not
going to be a good day, Richard."
"Karen you can't just say,
'Oh, something awful's going to happen.'
You have to tell me
why.
You have to tell me what you know. And why."
Karen sighed. "What about trust?"
"Karen, whether or not I believe you on this particular issue has
nothing
to do with whether
or not I love or trust you. Karen - look at it from my point of view."
"How do you explain what Wendy told us about Pam and Hamilton in the hospital
their stereo freak-outs?"
"I can't."
"Doesn't that note I gave you back before my coma mean anything?"
"Of course it does."
"The fact that I'm on TV on the twenty-seventh doesn't sway you? You can't stay here for
moral support?"
"It's bad luck. I'll watch it down there. I'll watch it on speaker-phone with you." "So you're still going to go?"
"I will - unless you can get a helluva lot more specific about what's going to happen and
when. The sleep thing doesn't cut it."
"Richard, I
want
to be able to tell you. I'm not being a cow and keeping something away from you on purpose. There are these background voices I hear. The only time they became
clear was on film with Gloria."
Richard looks at her as calmly as he can, worrying that something is going wrong with
Karen after her miraculous wake-up. "It's only for one day, Karen. One piddly little
overnight; I promised the office
I'd do it months ago. They're not going to be able to find someone to
go instead of me during Christmas week."

"What are you doing there that's so important?"Richard then feels he is arguing with a teenager. "I have to go over sets and budgets with the crew down there. It has to be done and it has to be done in person."

"Whatever."
"Please don't whatever me."
"Whatever."
In spite of tensions, a truce is called and Christmas and the engagement party continue as

planned. It is a day of small gifts and gentle surprises. Megan hand-made a roomful of decorations using construction paper and silver hearts. The windows are slightly steamed and the air is tinged with eggnog. Pam and Wendy boo-hoo shamelessly over the toasts, and even crusty old Hamilton has a lumpy throat while Linus seems concerned about the structural integrity of the meringue cake.

One truly odd moment occurs halfway through the event. Guests hear a galvanizing
crack crack!
on the living room window, where an ostrich pecks the glass with a cruel, hilarious beak. It is as though everybody fell into a deep warm dream. Then another ostrich appears and begins clacking its beak onto the living room window while the room devolves into guffaws and chaos. Karen loves it: "Oh,
Richard,
this is just the bee's knees. Did you plan this just for me? It's so
sweet.
"

Mr. Lennox from the house around the corner scoots into view with a coil of rope. A small mustachioed man, he apologizes profusely. "They escaped from the garage. I was supposed to take them out to Abbotsford, but everything's closed for the holidays."

Megan asks, "What does anybody need with a pair of dorky-looking ostriches?" "Why Megan - they're the meat of tomorrow. Lean as tofu and tasty like beef. They're my retirement fund. Please, can you hold on to that rope for me?"

A well-cheered ostrich rodeo ensues. Poor Mr. Lennox is petrified that his investment might be damaged. "Oh, Christ - just don't Jet them get into the forest. Then we're doomed. They'll break their legs or get eaten by coyotes. They're that stupid."By late afternoon, the sky has gone black and cold and the core group of friends sit by the fire eating huckleberry muffins.

Later, the doorbell rings. Linus answers. It is Skitter, but Linus doesn't know him by face. "Megan here?"
"Megan, your friend's here." Megan and Jenny soundlessly gloss over to the front door,

into their coats, and out of the house. Richard, looking at CD's by the Christmas tree, hears nothing. Minutes later, Linus asks, "Who's biker dude?"
"Huh?"
"The guy Megan just left with. The guy with the scar."
"Guy with a scar?" Richard clues in.
"Shit."

Flying home from Los Angeles, the captain allows Richard to peek out the front cockpit window a few minutes after takeoff. Richard sees the view of God: a dappled sky like a baby's giggles, volcanoes stretching up the coast, the Earth's gentle curve at the horizon. Back in his seat, while idly flipping through a two-week-old
Newsweek
and rereading an article about Karen, Richard mentally reviews the past week only to find himself chilled. A drop of cool sweat crawls like a slug through his hairline and into his eye.

Richard's plane ride continues - a cold ride: the airlines are saving money by not heating the cabins as they once did. Dinner service comes and goes. The sun, low on the horizon, is wan and colorless: a December sunset; even sunlight feels dark.

Richard thinks about last night in his hotel room, watching Karen's TV appearance on a speakerphone with the family. It was a tight little production and Gloria had managed to orchestrate a predictable level of syrupy rudeness.

Afterward, he and Karen spent nearly an hour on the phone apologizing to each other, whispering endearments, and feeling close in that special way that only phones provide.
I think this darkness stuff
is all in my head, Richard, I'm not going crazy and I'm sure these
voices and stuff will soon be gone.