September 28, 1997
Who does Megan think she is? Just because she’s dating an older guy she thinks she’s Mrs. Hot Shit. His name is Skitter and it’s not like he’s a big catch or something. He’s got nice legs and he’s buff, but he’s so crude and he dresses like a metal-head and a druggie. Please give me a ten-foot pole.
Won our grass hockey game today. 5to 3against Hillside and I got a goal. We rock!
“Jenny, you cow. You were jealous from the word ‘go,’ and you know it. You tried to worm your way into everything me and Skitter did. Skitter’s nickname for you was ‘The Remora Fish.’ I pitied you.”
October 13, 1997
Megan got dumped by Skitter, but she tries to make it sound like she left him. As IF. She’s really far away in her head these days, so it’s no wonder she got the boot. I think it’s because of that loser school she goes to—the school for losers down in North Van. I’m going to try and think of a way to call Skitter without looking like a slut. Maybe I’ll call and ask him where I can score some hash. I’ve still got his number.
“Now this is really too much. Way too much. I left him, thank you. Because he was a cheating tightwad bastard and I ended up buying everything he asked for and I realized he just uses women—even having high school girls pay for his own cigarettes.” Megan finds herself missing Jenny dreadfully.
November 2, 1997
Wow! Megan’s mother came out of her coma. Wow!!! She’s been in it as long as I’ve known Megan, which is my whole life, which is a pretty long time. It was in the papers and on TV and everywhere, but Megan’s family won’t let anybody take pictures so they keep showing that creepy high school photo Megan’s dad keeps in the den. I guess this means Megan is going to be ignored even more by her family. Ha HA. Now she’ll know how it feels to be left out in the cold like me. I tried to call, but the phone was busy all day.
Later on I went with Skitter to one of his friends, but they weren’t there so he pried open the door and we made out for 3hours and it was really sexy being in somebody else’s house.
“Jenny, you are so crude. You take my mom’s waking up and twist it into something about you. You had nothing to do with it, and as for Skitter and other people’s houses, he was a real perv and went out of his way to do it in cool places like the changing room at Le Chateau, which, I have to admit, was a real turn-on.”
December 26, 1997
Megan and I are friends again, and to show it she invited me to a party down at Lois’s and I got to see KAREN for the first time close-up. She was so scary looking—like she was anorexic to the point of death and it’s so sick to think of Richard and her making it. Ick-o-rama. Maybe Richard’ll wait a few months until she puts some meat on. She looked at me like she knew my secrets or something. She’s just really really creepy.
Returned most of my Christmas presents today. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I could really use the cash to buy the tool kit Skitter keeps talking about. His birthday’s next week.
“I’m not even going to dignify your comments about my sacred mother by replying to your adolescent filth. And as for Skitter, hey, it looks like you’re falling into his ‘buy-me-something-or-I-leave-you’ act. Sucker.”
December 27, 1997
Bought Skitter’s tool kit, but it was so expensive I nearly freaked out and I had to go sit and hyperventilate for fifteen minutes afterward in the Subway sandwich place and then I ate too much.
“The Remora” and her Mom and Lois were on TV and they looked way better than they do in real life, and Megan looked like such a goody-two-shoes and you never would have known to look at her that she did Warren and Brent on the SAME NIGHT last year at the Burnside Park party.
“That does it, Jenny—you are no longer my friend. One of the best days of my life, and then you go and hang out with me the next day as if you hadn’t put all this crap into your diary!” She pauses and breathes. “I miss you.”
A wall glows golden, and then I appear from within a mirror.
“Oh,” Megan says, “it’s you.”
“Such a warm reception, Megan. Do you get many visitors from the dead every day?”
“Go away. You’re probably not even a real ghost. You’re probably something cheesy way down the food chain, like a sprite or a wisp.”
“Me? A sprite? I think not.”
“Go away. Go say ‘boo’ to people, Casper.”
“What did I ever do to bug you so much?”
“If you’re such a big ghost, why don’t you take me away from this slag heap of a world and on to someplace better?” “Because I personally can’t do that.”
“Just as I thought. You’re a sprite. Go twinkle somewhere else. Don’t bug me, transparent loser.”
“Whoa, man! What’s with this angry little stance? Don’t you want to see a miracle or something?”
“I’ve had enough miracles for one lifetime, thank you.”
I change subjects: “Your baby’s pretty. How old?” “Six months.”
“Why did you name her Jane?”
“Jane seemed like the name of somebody who never has a damaged life. Janes are always calm, cool, and up to date.” “Nice eyes.”
“They’re Skitter’s eyes—crazy eyes. They’re blind. Hamilton said that looking at Janie’s eyes was like looking at a full moon and then realizing that it’s just one day short of being truly full. That was before we figured out she was blind.”
“Hamilton’s been saying stuff like that since kindergarten. I knew him and your father my whole life.”
“You at least had some friends. I don’t even have one anymore. I miss Jenny real bad.” She hands me a wad of Jenny’s CD’s and says, “Want a CD collection? Lots of dance mixes.”
“No thanks.”
“Go away.”
“What’s wrong, Megan?” “I said go away.” “Are you lonely?” “No!”
“You can tell me if you are. Do you miss Jenny?” “That treacherous scag bag?” “Yes, that treacherous scag bag.”
Megan stays silent for a minute and I give her all the time she needs. “I miss her. I’m lonely. I want to change the subject.” “To what?”
“I dunno. You choose.”
“Fair enough. Let me ask you a small question: Tell me, what is it like to be living in the world the way it is now?” “That’s a small question?” “Well, it’s a good question. Give it a shot.”
“You sprites just never quit. Okay. Let me think.” She closes Jenny’s diary and leans back against the wall, Jane on the bed by her side. “The world right now—gee, Jared, it’s one party after another. Funzies. Ooh. I’m having so much fun it hurts.” She feigns stitches. “What do you think, bozo? Every day is like Sunday. Nothing ever happens. We watch videos. Read a few books. Cook food that comes out of boxes or cans. No fresh food. The phone never rings. Nothing ever happens. No mail. The sky stinks—when everybody died, they left the reactors and factories running. It’s amazing we’re still even here.”
“Were you surprised when the world ended?”
Megan pulls her body up into a more comfortable position on the bed. “Yes. No. No—I wasn’t. It was kind of like the whole world went into a coma. I’m used to that. I’m not saying that to make you pity me. It’s just the truth.” She lights one of Jenny’s year-old cigarettes. “Still tastes menthol fresh. Did you ever smoke?”
“Me? No. I was a jock.”
“You’re kind of cute. Did you ever make it with anybody?”
“Here and there. Why are you curious?”
“There’s kind of a cute guy shortage down here.”
I come closer and see Megan more clearly: pink windburnt skin, eye whites clear as ringing chimes. “Do you ever—” I say, not finishing the sentence.
“Wait,” Megan says, “Are you hitting on me?”
“Me? What?” I’ve been caught.
“You are! I don’t believe this—I’m being hit on by the dead.” Jane squawks; Megan gives her a bottle of formula and a
yanks small cotton bunny from the pack. “Look, Mr. Ghost …”
“Jared.”
“Whatever. This isn’t the time or place. I’m flattered, but no. I prefer real meat.”
“I can take a hint.”
Megan folds up Jenny’s diary with a snap, then looks at me. “So how come we were abandoned here? Why us?” “There’s a reason.” “Which is?”
“Oh, God. I can’t tell you right now.” “You’re pulling a Karen. Stupid sprite.”
“Oh, grow up.”
“You, a sixteen-year-old telling me to grow up. Ha. So then tell me this—is there anybody else left down here besides us? Karen said there wasn’t, but I’m not so sure.”
“Karen’s only allowed a few facts, but those she has are always true.”
“I was right! Linus kept on trying to ham-radio weird places like oil rigs in the middle of the Indian Ocean and scientists at the South Pole. Now he owes me a bucket of Krugerrands.”
“A bucket of gold?”
“It’s a joke really. There’s so much gold it’s silly. We huck it off of bridges. We have money fights. Money’s over.” “I guess so.”
“Hey, Jared, what’s heaven like?”
“Heaven? Heaven’s like the world at its finest. It’s all natural—no buildings. It’s built of stars and roots and mud and flesh and snakes and birds. It’s built of clouds and stones and rivers and lava. But it’s not a building. It’s greater than the material world.”
“Well. Isn’t that something. Do people get lonely there?”
“No.”
“Then it really is heaven.” We’re quiet for a second as I stand close to her. “Sorry I can’t take up your offer, Stud Boy. It’s not like I get many others.”
“I know.” I slap my forehead: “Hey—I need to go now. I liked speaking with you.”
“No. Don’t go—you’re somebody new.” “Here,” I say. “Hold Jane out to me.” “Why?”
“You’ll see.” Her arms are like a set rat trap ready to spring back in case I do something weird, which I don’t. I breathe gently into each of Jane’s eyes and then I touch my tongue to the space between her eyes. I am the first thing she sees on Earth. “Your kid is whole. She’s more than whole—she’s a genius; she’ll be wise. And you are now her servant.”
Speechless, Megan watches as I shrink into nothing and disappear.
29
INFINITY IS ARTIFICIAL
There are things I miss about Earth. I loved the way my mother made a pork roast and I loved getting up in the mornings super early and being the first to see the sun, jogging around the neighborhood in nothing more than terry underwear knowing that everybody else was sleeping. Once in summer 1978 I ran my daily jog naked and if anybody saw me, they never phoned the cops. Even more than sex, that solitary jog remains my most potent body memory of Earth—the air and the sun and the pads of my feet landing on Rabbit Lane. What else? Oh, there was an owl that lived in the tree behind the house. Its roost was bang outside my window and each night around sunset it came out and swooped its long floppy wings—like an Afghan hound’s ears. It used to fly into Karen’s yard on the hill below mine and catch mice. I used to watch Mrs. McNeil feed it meat scraps but she never saw me, but I know for sure Mrs. McNeil was watching me quite clearly the summer afternoon before eleventh grade when I was mowing the back lawn in my red Speedo. Saucy old broad! I popped a rod and I know she noticed it.
Regrets? I have no regrets about life. I didn’t live long enough to make a mess of it. But then I never really had any pictures in my head of adulthood. Had I made it that far I probably would have floundered like the rest of the gang.
I’ve been watching my friends over the past year or so—ever since Karen woke up. Karen can’t remember, but she was with me for much of the time she was in her coma. She receives her ‘extra’ information in the same way I do—in fits and snatches that make no sense at the time, filled with maddeningly blank stretches.
The technicalities of my visits are strict. My current appearances are only allowed to be brief—I’m allowed only X amount of time to visit the old crew and in these brief stretches I have specific goals that have to be met.
Goals—that word sounds like I’m crew chief at McDonald’s or something. But you know, every second of our life we’re reaching goals of some sort. Every single second of our lives we’re crossing a finish line of some sort, with heaven’s roaring cheers surrounding us as we win our way forward. Our smallest acts—crossing a street, peeling an apple, giving Miss January the one-hand salute—are as though we are ripping an Olympic ribbon to thunderous applause. The universe wants us to win. The universe makes sure we’re winning even when we lose. I wish that I could have run naked through the streets every moment of my life.
But I think I’m ahead of myself now. Now I have to go see Linus, up on the highest point of the mountain suburb where one can see far over the curved ends of the Earth, the United States and over to the Olympic Peninsula. The sky is clear as a lens. To the east stands Mount Baker a hundred miles away—an American Fuji: solid as lead, white as light.
Linus is thinking about me, and he’s thinking about time—about death, infinity, survival, and those questions he sought answers to back when he was so young. He was the only one of us who ever asked questions bigger than where the night’s party was scheduled to take place. I’ve always respected his opinion.
He’s sitting on the warm hood of his Humvee, which is parked at the top of the driveway of the film shoot location from a year ago. The film trucks and trailers are still parked on the street. The silent city, pocked with burns and sores and rashes, is spread below him.
In the midst of this serenity comes a surflike roar and then a catastrophic bang. An image flashes through his mind: his drunken father slamming the dinner table with a fist. The ground booms and Mount Baker in the east erupts with a fire pole of lava shooting up into gray, cabbagey Nagasaki ash clouds. A shock wave ripples across the land and throws Linus onto the ground with another boom. The glass in nearby houses shatters.
“Oh, man—”
The spectacle is gorgeous and voluptuous and sad. Sad in that so few people will ever even see it or know about it. Linus isn’t even sure if an erupting volcano counts as news. “News” no longer exists, and Mount Baker might just as well have erupted on Jupiter. This is the point when I appear.
“Hey, Linus.”
“Jared—hey!—I mean, look at that! I mean—oh man, I sound like a cretin, but look at that volcano.”
“I know. It’s cool. So beautiful it almost hurts.”
Mount Baker stops shooting lava, but continues blowing staggering plumes of ash and steam that are now melting ever so slightly in the easterly winds, off toward Alberta, Idaho, Montana, and the Dakotas. Linus is torn between watching the eruption and speaking with me. “Jared! Man, I missed you so badly.” Linus tries to hug me, but he ends up hugging himself around his chest. “Jared—let me look at you.” I hover above the ground, shining and radiant as always. “You look so young, Jared. Like a puppy, so young.”
“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 wh
at! 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.”
Girlfriend in a Coma: A Novel Page 22
