Girlfriend in a coma (30 page)

Pam watches him from the corner of her eye.
Poor Hamilton
- Hamilton who has always felt unsophisticated having grown up so far away from the centers of metropolitan glamour. But Pam knows of the blankness at the core of that world, and she's aware thatthrough her, Hamilton has learned this, too. She thinks back on the past crazy year on drugs and then the miracle of becoming clean. She looks at the city's skeleton through the charred forest. If this is the world, then take it.
I hated Milan. I hated catwalks. I bated my face for taking me the places it did. Let the insects fight for the remains.
"Hamilton, get over here," she calls.

Hamilton shakes his head. "I can't."

"You knelt at Jared's memorial service, didn't you?" Hamilton nods. "Then you can bloody well kneel here." Hamilton comes, kneels beside Pamela, and looks up at the sky.
Linus clacks together the ostrich femurs and the noise rattles comfortably across the spillway and into the canyon below. Jane squeals and then falls silent.
And so it's here, on this dam, where this group, for the first time since the beginning of their lonely year, align their thoughts on the Great Beyond. This is where I enter. Linus clacks the femurs together:
clack clack.
"I'm back." I appear before them, hovering slightly above the spillway.
"Jared!"
"What are we going to do, Jared?" Megan wails.
"Guys - hey - don't freak out. You think you've been forsaken that the opportunity for holiness is gone, but this isn't true. Time
is
over; the world
is
gone.

"You've got just one option left. You blew it this year, but
you can make good. As I said, there's still Plan B."
34 STOP BREATHING

I want to squish my friends into my heart, as though they could help me grout a troublesome crack. They wonder,
How did life ever come to this?
They're not bozos; they know everything's over. They're naked parachutists waiting be pushed out of the plane and into the sky. Such is birth.

A warm sooty wind blows up the dam's face, its dark dead confetti floating through me, then shining. I'm a wall of light. "Guys! Feel the
air,"
I say. "Across your skin. It's like icing sugar. So sweet. And feel the charged wind in your lungs - it
does
feel like the end of the world, doesn't it? Come on - drag your butts up.
Huddle!
And while you're at it, look at all the water pouring down the spillway - it's like melted lime Jell-O. And hear the water growl - like a cougar inside an unlocked cage. Oh! And remember that night at Linda Jermyn's party? Remember when we found that TV set in the alley and brought it here and hucked it off the edge." My friends stand up and circle around me as I hover above the commotion.

265
"Correction, Jare," Hamilton says,
"I'm
the one who did the actual hucking. If I remember correctly, you and Richard were off on the sidelines sniveling."
"You
wish,
Hamilton," Richard says. "
I
sweet talked the RCMP into thinking you'd thrown a half-melted ice swan off the edge. I mean, they saw you throw
something.
Jared and Pam were horking in the rhododendrons over by the parking lot."
"It was that home-brew of yours, Jared," Pam says. "It was like Liquid Plague. It's the absolute sickest I've ever felt. Even worse than methadone. And you were so
sick
that night, Jared - so sick that you couldn't even hit on me."
Ping!
At this moment a phenomenon in the sky captures my friends' awe and attention a web of shooting stars now visible through a parting hole in the sky - a crosshatched ceiling of shooting stars as hasn't been seen on Earth since 1703 in the southern part of the African continent.
"Look at the sky," Linus says. "This is so
Day of the Triffids."
"Everything's a light show for sixteen-year-olds, isn't it?" Richard says.
Even with all the hoo-haw and thunder of the past week, my friends find wonder and
ahhhs
in the spectacle. Young Jane reaches up to the sky as though it were a wise and generous person and not merely light. Jane, the planet's newest genius, is counting stars, her brain already advanced beyond mere numbers.
Warm, slightly stinky air, like air pushed forward by a subway car, sweet and full of adventure, whooshes over us. "And here we are all these years later," I say, "at the end of the world and the end of time."
"How fucking ironic," Hamilton says.

"Oh, come on, Hamilton," I say, "get
some
drama out of this. I mean,
all
of you noticed how 'time' feels so different here at the world's end - how weird it is to live with no clocks or seasons or rhythms or schedules. And you're all correct, too - time is a totally human idea
- without people, time vanishes. Infinity and zero become the same thing.""Gee," Hamilton says.
"Why just before all this happened," I say, pointing out the brightly lit black suburban

dust, "nobody we knew had a second of free time remaining. All of it was frittered away on being productive, advancing careers and being all-round efficient. Each new advance made by 'progress' created its own accelerating warping effect that made your lives here on earth feel even smaller and shorter and more crazed. And now . . . no time at all."

"Hey - " Wendy says.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing. I just wanted to stop Hamilton from making some cynical crack." "It's okay, Wendy," I say. "It's nice to think back on old times and be with old friends. I

mean, we were all so
lucky
living when and where we did. There was no Vietnam. Childhood dragged on forever. Gasoline, cars, and potato chips were cheap and plenty. If we wanted to hop a jet to fly anywhere on Earth, we could. We could believe in anything we wanted. Shit we could wear a San Diego Chicken costume down Marine Drive while carrying a bloody rubber head of Richard Nixon if we wanted - that would have been just
fine.
And we all went to school. And we weren't in jail.
Wow."
The stars are suddenly stained pink as a tiny waft of chemical residue from a long exploded Yokohama paint factory passes over.

"I remember running through the neighborhood in little more than a jockstrap. I remember being able to read
Life
magazine and making up my own mind on politics. I remember being in a car and thinking of a road map of North America and knowing that if I chose, I could drive anywhere. All of that time and all of that tranquillity, freedom and abundance.
Amazing.
The sweet and effortless nodule of freedom we all shared - it was a fine idea. It was, in its own unglamorous way, the goal of all of human history - the wars, the genius, the madness, the beauty and the grief - it was all to reach ever farther unclouded

points on which to stand and view and think and evolve and understand ever farther and farther and, well,
farther.
Progress is real. Destiny is real.
You
are real." The pink passes on."And so that's why we're all here tonight - today - whatever day it is: Thursday - six weeks from now - 1954 - three days ago - one million B.C. It's all the same. I mean, I
know
you're wondering what was wrong with the way you were living your lives in the first place what your Jimmy Stewart-esque crisis was - and I know you're wondering why you had to spend the past year the way you did. You say your lives weren't in crisis, but you know deep down they were. I was up there hearing you."

"You nark'ed on us?" Megan asks, ever alert.
Richard darts in, "Megan, drop it, okay?"
The water behind the dam is luminous Day-Glo green. It looks electric. Radioactive. "So,

yes, here all of us were, living on the outermost edge of that farthest point. People elsewhere people who didn't have our Boy-in-the-Bubble lifestyle - they looked at us and our freedoms fought for by others, and these people expected us with our advantages to take mankind to the next level . . . newer, smarter, innovative ways of thinking and living and being. They looked at us and hoped we could figure out what comes . . .
next."

Wendy sneezes three pistol-crack snorts. "Bless you," I say. "And bless all of you, too." The light in the sky is so bright it's like daylight. "And weren't we blessed, too, with options in life - and didn't we ignore them completely? - like unwanted Christmas gifts hidden in the storeroom. What did life boil down to in the end? . . .
Smokey and the Bandit
videos. Instead of finding inspiration and intellectual momentum there was . . . Ativan. And overwork. And Johnny Walker. And silence. And - I mean,
guys,
just
look
at the situation. And it's not as if I was any better. I never looked beyond the tip of my dick."

"Get to a point," Richard says. He knows we're close to an answer.
"This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of

everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people."A thousand years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids stand. One hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours."

"The pioneers - they conquered the world," Linus says quietly.
"They did, Linus. The New World isn't new anymore. The New World - the Americas - it's over. People don't have dominion over Nature. It's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die - it's all melted together. Death isn't an escape hatch the way it used to be."
"Well fuck
me,"
Hamilton says.
"Your destiny's now big enough to meet your jaded capacity for awe. It's now powerful enough for you to rise to the task of being individuals."
The meteorites disappear and the pulsing white sky goes black as though unplugged. Richard asks me, "Jared, wait a second - wait wait
wait.
You're going too quickly. Way earlier you said we could return to the world. What did you mean - the world as it was before - all this?"
"Exactamundo, Richard. You can return to the world the way it was - back to the morning of November 1, 1997. There'll have been no Sleep, and your lives will continue, at least in the beginning, as they were."
"Bull." Wendy says.
"I shit you not."
"Jared - are we gonna forget all this past year? the Sleep?" Linus
asks. "Will I lose the pictures of heaven you gave me?"

I say, "You'll remember every single thing, Linus: everything that was lost and everything that was gained.""Jane," Megan says, "What about Jane?"
"Jane will be whole."
"My
our
- baby . .." puffs Wendy.
"Born," I say. "And Hamilton and Pam, you'll be clean."
Eyes are wide before me - all save for Karen's. Karen has pulled back from the group,

biting her finger, sucking in breath, closing her eyes and standing with her arms and legs pulled in as tightly as possible - as though she wished to become a thin line, so thin as to be invisible. The gang doesn't notice this; they're riveted by my words.

"You said that in the beginning our lives will be the same," Wendy says. "I sense there's some
kind of deal happening here. We have to change somehow. There's a catch. How
will
our
lives
be changed. What's your Plan B?"
35
3
2
1
ZERO

"Plan B is this:
"You're to be different now. Your behavior will be changing. Your thinking is to change.
And people will watch these changes in you and they'll come to experience the world in your
new manner."
"How?" Richard asks. "How do we change?"
"Richard, tell me this: back in the old world, didn't you often feel as if the only way you
could fully
truly
change yourself in the powerful way you yearned for was to die and then start
again from scratch? Didn't you feel as if all of the symbols and ideas fed to you since birth had
become worn out like old shoes? Didn't you ache for change but you didn't know how achieve
it? And even if you knew how to do it,

271
would you have had the guts to go forth? Didn't you want your cards shuffled a different way?"
"Yeah Sure. But didn't everybody?"
"No. Not always. This feeling is specific to the times we lived in."
"Okay ____ "
"And Richard, haven't you always felt that you live forever on the brink of knowing a great

truth? Well, that feeling is true. There
is
the truth. It does exist."

"Yes. Well, now it's going to be as if you've died and were reincarnated but you stay inside your own body. For all of you. And in your new lives you'll have to live entirely for that one sensation that of imminent truth. And you're going to have to holler for it, steal for it, beg for it - and you're never to stop asking questions about it twenty-four hours a day, the rest of your life.

"This is Plan B.
"Every day for the rest of your lives, all of your living moments are to be spent making others aware of this need the need to probe and drill and examine and locate the words that take us to beyond ourselves.
"Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe.
Ask.
"Ask questions, no,
screech
questions out loud - while kneeling in front of the electric doors at Safeway, demanding other citizens ask questions along with you while chewing up old textbooks and spitting the words onto downtown sidewalks - outside the Planet Hollywood, outside the stock exchange, and outside the Gap.
"Grind questions onto the glass on photocopiers. Scrape challenges onto old auto parts and throw them off of bridges so that future people digging in the mud will question the world, too. Carve eyeballs into tire treads and onto shoe leathers so that your every trail speaks of thinking and questioning and awareness. Design molecules that crystallize into question marks. Make bar codes print out fables, not
prices. You can't even throw away a piece of litter unless it has a