Girlfriend in a Coma Read online

  Wendy, eager for any excuse to not have to be around her aging churlish feed-me-my-gruel father, visited Linus every night after her shift at Lions Gate Emergency. One night at a Halloween party in North Van, Wendy curled herself into Linus's lap and smiled love's smile. "Good for them!" we all said. Wendy began spending less time at the hospital; she resumed kibitzing about with our old crowd.

  I bumped into Wendy on Moyne Drive one afternoon. Seemingly dancing on air, she held a Safeway paper bag. I asked her what it was, and she opened it to show me. "It's a pile of sulfur that Albert gave me."

  "Albert? Oh—that's right—it's Linus's real first name."

  "Isn't he sweet?"

  Wendy soon moved in with Linus and that summer the two were married, as were Pam and Hamilton. A week after the ceremony it was a rainy day and Wendy and I were sitting on cardboard boxes in the living room, rain thumping the rooftop. I asked Wendy why she and Linus had never gotten together before. She said, "All my life I've had this problem of being lonely all day. Then one night loneliness began creeping into my dreams. I thought I was jinxed or spooked or voodoo'ed into a life of eternal loneliness. Then Linus told me that he had the same problem. Oh, the relief I felt! It dawned on me that maybe we were the same in other ways."

  Pam said, "They both had solitary natures, neither needs to explain themselves to the other. Added bonus? They're comfy with each other. So who'dathunk?"That fall I began living in Linus's house, too. I'd lost my driver's license, which made me take taxis in whose comfortable interiors I could drink even more. Drinking made me a shameful salesman; I was broke and needed a cheap place to crash. Linus rented me a basement room—a small room with one lamp and a window that overlooked the tool shed.

  "I think," Linus said on moving day, "you drink because you want to kill time until Karen wakes up. Correct?"

  I told him to mind his own business, although he was probably right. "But I don't think it's just one thing." We discussed my drinking problem as though it were a cold.

  I was the last of our crew to return to the neighborhood. Hamilton began living at Pam's house. Our situation felt wildly regressive. The Loser's Circle. Pam asked me one day on a forest walk if we were all winners or losers. "Where do we fit in, Richard? We're all working. We all have jobs but… there's something missing."

  "We're empty, maybe," I said. Some birds screeched.

  "I don't think so. But no kids—that must mean something. Oh— stupid me. I mean there's Megan, of course. Hopefully, I'll have a little brute some day. It's like that thing you told me—the line from that post card Linus wrote you: Why does life feel so long and so short at the same time? Why is that?" Rain was starting to spit.

  "I think we live in this world, but we don't change the world. No, but that's wrong. We're born; there must be a logic—some sort of plan larger than ourselves."

  We walked farther. We had all awakened X number of years past our youth feeling sleazy and harsh. Choices still existed, but they were no longer infinite. Fun had become a scrim, concealing the hysteria that lay behind it. We had quietly settled into a premature autumn of life—no gentle mellowing or Indian summer of immense beauty, just a sudden frost, a harsh winter with snows that accumulate, never to melt.

  In my head I wanted to thaw the snow. I wanted to reorder this world. I did not want to be old before my time.

  The two of us arrived at a long, clear stretch of the path. Pam said,"Watch this." She began to catwalk down an invisible runway. "Calvin Klein. Milan. Fall Collection, 1990. What's in my head as I walk the catwalk? I'm worried my legs look too scrawny. Will there be free coke afterward? The supermodel's mind, eh?"

  We forded a stream and entered a mossy patch lit by a shaft of sun cutting through the rain.

  That night, I went on a bender for no real reason except that there was nobody home and nobody was reachable on the phone. I was rehashing the day's conversation with Pam and I felt the loneliest I'd ever felt, because I was getting old and I was alone and I saw no chance of this ever changing.

  I remember nothing that happened after I opened the evening's second vodka bottle (no pretense of flavor or finesse … just getting it in). I awoke the next morning, my head flopped inside the toilet bowl like a pile of meat at the butcher's. I'd vomited onto, then into my stereo, I'd cut the chain on my exercise bike and shitted all over my sheets, some of which was rubbed onto the wall. No memory at all.

  Wendy found me and talked to me while I was still on the floor. Linus came in. Wendy said, "You can't go on like this, Richard." Linus ran the bath and he and Wendy placed me in it. The two of them cleaned my room for me as I sat in the bath, still slightly drunk—a blank, angry hangover beginning to thunder inside my cranium. They stuffed me into Wendy's 4-Runner and took me to the hospital. That was the end. "But I want to pass out," I shouted at Wendy.

  "No you don't," she calmly replied.

  "I want to be where Karen is."

  "No you don't."

  "I do."

  "You're not allowed there."

  "lam."

  "Grow up," Linus said. "Be a man."

  On New Year's Eve, 1992, the five of us were sitting in Linus's under-heated igloo of a kitchen around a Formica table playing a lazy pokergame, trying to make each other feel noble about the fact that our lives had the collective aura of a fumbled lateral pass.

  Rain was pelting the windows; we were using candles, not electric light. Hamilton, His Grumpiness, was saddled with a leg cast after falling thirty feet off a cliff up Howe Sound the month before. As well, he'd been recently nabbed "borrowing" some blasting materials from the company's warehouse and was asked to resign rather than be fired. His life was, if not in tatters, certainly ripped.

  I asked, "Ham—what on Earth were you going to do with blasting caps and plastic explosives? Bomb the mall?"

  "No, Richard, I was going to drive up to the interior to blow up rock formations. It's my art form. How am I going to develop my talent if I don't take artistic risks? My palette is dynamite, rock is my canvas. Piss. What am I going to do now?'

  Linus was also in a grumpy mood, which was interesting in itself as he never seemed to have moods. Pam was riding her "monthly train to hell," and Wendy was underslept after having been on call the whole of Christmas week. I had a bizarre headache from having inhaled too much helium from a clown-shaped canister given to me as a gag gift from Hamilton. As well, I'd been guzzling zero-alcohol eggnog; my stomach felt fur-lined. My not drinking was a challenging bore.

  Hamilton was theorizing about work. "Well kids, in order for the system to work, there must be glittering prizes. Another card, Richard, and not from the bottom, I'm watching. A highly competitive society must have simple rules and terrible consequences for not obeying the rules. I fold. There must be losers on the edge to serve as cautionary tales for those in the center. Nobody likes to see the losers—Wendy's deal—losers are the dark side of society and they frighten people into submission. I must have more plonk. Linus? I must have more of that yellow swill! Now! Mush!"

  Linus gave Hamilton a sneer. Pam said, "Hamilton, fetch it yourself, you one-legged pig. And once you're there, fetch me some, too." Cards remained on the table. Wendy arranged her chips into tiny Angkor Wat towers, the same way she'd arranged stones on grad night years before. The evening's theme continued: an intensescrutiny of everything we had become up until now—relentless self-criticism—adding, subtracting, looking at the lives of others. It reassured us to hear that other people's lives were proving to be as unstable as our own. I put forth the question, "Do animals have leisure time? I mean, do they ever go 'hang out'? Or is everything they do connected to food and shelter?"

  "There are hawks," Linus said, "who ride the thermals in the mountains without moving a wing for hours. Not even dive-bombing for rodents—just riding the wind."

  "Dogs have leisure," said Pam. "Chasing sticks. Having tussles on the carpet. Great fun."

  "I don't know," said Wendy. "Hawks are always alert fo
r food. Dogs chasing sticks is pack mentality reinforcement. Besides, animals don't even have time. Only humans have time. It's what makes us different." Wendy dealt like a croupier goddess, massaging the whole deck rather than shuffling—a treat to watch.

  Linus sipped his drink and said, "You know, from what I've seen, at twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star. Three's are wild this round. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional." Wendy pecked Linus on the cheek. "And by thirty, a darkness starts moving in—you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. Pam, are you folding? Wake up, girl. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate. God, do I have a shitty hand. My cards, I mean."

  Pam said, "Hamilton, my plonk? Oink?"

  Pam had at least accomplished her dream of being a model. Hamilton—what dream had he made real? He stumped to the table with the bottle. "Oinks to you, Pamela."

  The game lapsed into banter, which is all we really wanted. If we'd been serious, we'd all have owed Linus ten million dollars long ago. Linus always won. Card-counting during his stint in Las Vegas?

  "I read about this study," Wendy said. "The researchers learned that no matter how hard you tried, the most you could possibly change your personality—your self—was five percent.""God, how depressing," said Pam.

  "Crap," said Hamilton. "No way."

  Wendy's fact made me queasy. The news reminded me of how unhappy I was with who I was at that point. I wanted nothing more than to transform 100 percent.

  A few minutes later, Linus interrupted his poker-faced silence: "What I notice," he said, "is that everybody's kind of accusing everybody else of acting these days. Know what I mean? Kind of, uh, not being genuine." He looked at his Kahlua coffee. ("A teenager's drink," Hamilton had heckled.) "Nobody believes the identities we've made for ourselves. I feel like everybody in the world is fake now—as though people had true cores once, but hucked them away and replaced them with something more attractive but also hollow. Play your card, Wendy—" We pokered for a while, all feeling odd at Linus's lengthy barrage of insight.

  "Amen, Reverend," said Hamilton. "Three jacks and the kitty is mine. Richikins, your deal. Or are you really Richikins? Prove to me that you're you, you impostor."

  "Hamilton, you talk funny," barked Linus in a voice so new it startled us. "You talk in little TV bits. You're never sincere. You're never nice. You used to be a little bit nice once. I don't think you've ever had a real conversation in your life." We were all still: "When you were young, you were funny, but now you're not young and you're not even boring. You're just kind of scary. When was the last time you had a real conversation with anybody?"

  Hamilton scratched an itch beneath his leg plaster. "I don't need this shit."

  "Well? When was the last time?"

  Hamilton looked to Pam for backup, but Pam had placed her cards down on the table to investigate the elegant floor wax sheen of the Queen of Diamonds. "I…" Hamilton was off guard. "Pam and I have conversations all the time. Don't we, Pam?"

  Pam kept looking at her cards. "I'm not in this particular pissing contest, fellas."

  "Thanks a lot, honey. So what are you driving at, Linus—that I'ma phony because I enjoy 'light conversation'? You ought to look into a mirror at yourself sometime. A real lulu you are."

  "I look in the mirror every day, Hamilton. I'm saying that you're shutting the last door that might save you—kindness and honesty. You have thirty-five more years to go; life's all downhill from now on."

  "What the … ?" Hamilton lifted himself up and reached for his crutches that leaned over by a pile of boots and a kitty litter box in the corner.

  "Cor fricking blimey. No one needs this." (Hamilton was in his phase of only renting British VHS tapes, thus Anglicizing his diction.) "I'm getting out of preacher-man's house, and then I'm gonna hobble home. Pam? Are you coming or are you going to stay here to be real with Jesus and our chums here?"

  Pam looked him in the face. "Yes. I'm going to stay a while."

  "Very well, luvvie. I'll toddle off now." Wendy helped Hamilton with his crutches. He walked out the door and into the rain, where he shouted "Feck off" to all of us and grunted back to Pam's house, then most likely into a Demerol fog. We sat around the table and quietly packed up the chips and cards.

  "He'll forget all this ever happened," Pam said. "He's not the sort of person who changes." She picked up three glasses at once with her fingertips. "And would somebody please tell me why fucked-up guys are sexy? I'm lost."

  I said, "Hey, Linus. What was all that about?"

  He said, "I just don't know. I had to say it. I'm worried. I'm worried that we're never going to change. I'm worried that we might not even be able to change. Do you ever worry about that?"

  I said, "Yes."

  The next morning all was forgotten.

  While walking over to Hamilton's, I bumped into Megan. She was with two other thirteen-year-old girlfriends and one boyfriend, all puffing away on ciggies, the boy wearing baggy pants and the girls wearing clones of each other's fashions, groomed to the point ofalmost biological sameness (just as Karen and Pam and Wendy had once been). I said, "Where you off to today, Meg?"

  "Out."

  ""Whereabouts out?"

  "Good deeds, Dad. We're delivering Easter baskets to crack babies." Her friends sniggered. I realized that for the first time Megan was embarrassed to be seen with me. I understood, but nevertheless the barb stung.

  "Don't forget dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's tonight."

  She rolled her eyes, her friends looked the other way, and she said, "Right, Dad."

  Torturous teen. To think I once believed teen-rearing would be so easy; like most parents, I thought I had the "magic touch" that would make my own teenager be my pal instead of my enemy. No such luck.

  12 THE FUTURE IS MORE EXTREME THAN YOU THINK

  Our film careers began one soggy Tuesday morning in early 1993, the daffodils still asleep within the grass, the clouds like soaked dishrags squeezing out gray wet glop. Pam, then doing makeup and styling for the exploding local film and TV industry, had arranged for Hamilton, Linus, and me to visit her on location at a "Movie of the Week" being shot just up the hill from Rabbit Lane—a film of the mom-loses-tot-gets-tot-back genre we soon came to know all too well.

  The January housing market was dead; I took a few more days off to play cards and waste time. Linus, a consultant, could take off whatever hours he wanted. We decided to walk up the hill to Pam's shoot while Hamilton drove. We shortcutted through the golf course and had a golf-ball fight, which landed Linus in the espresso-colored water traps up to his knees. "A dissolute lifestyle has its rewards," said Linus, peeling a bulrush frond from his shins, a leech cuddling into his calf.

  We arrived at the location on Southborough Drive be-mucked, resembling extras and feeling like outsiders. Hamilton's Javelin ka-chunk'ed onto the road's shoulder and soon we three bumbled pointlessly amid the necklace of white vans and utility trucks that border any film location. We found Pam. "Go grab a bite at the catering truck. Wait for me there."

  "Where are the stars?" Linus asked.

  "What were you expecting, kids," Pam said, "chorus-line girls carrying enormous foam boulders? Roman centurions riding along in golf carts? I'll tell you the official credo of film: Hurry up and wait. See you in five."

  We ate cold pasta, watched thick white lighting cables being hauled into a front doorway, and became thoroughly bored. "This blows," Hamilton said. "Let's amscray."

  We were set to amscray when Tina Lowry, an old classmate of mine, called, "Richard! Richard Doorland, is that you? It's me. Tina." Tina, like most people in the film and TV industry, had that slightly on-the-run-can't-talk-long look on her face. A tiny patch of blue sky allowed sun to sparkle the light meter that hung around her neck.

  "Tina. You're here?"

  "Heya, Richard, what are you doing on set
? Crew? Extras?"

  "No. I just live nearby. A friend of ours, Pam, is doing makeup here. Are you directing or something?"

  "Not yet. I'm a production assistant here—a PA. We're scum on the food chain, but the job rocks. You know Pam?"

  "We grew up just down the hill. Hamilton here," I indicated the soggy beanpole to my right, "is her meat puppet."

  She gawped at Hamilton. "I use to cut out the pictures of her in

  Vogue and stuff. I wanted to be her so badly and now I'm working with her. It's trippy. What are you doing these days, Richard?""You mean right now—right here?"

  "No, like in your life—and stuff."

  I'd learned it was easier to say "nothing" than to mention real estate. "Nothing. Taking it easy." I awaited the usual strained, "Ohhh …" signaling embarrassment. Tina surprised me.

  "You need work?"

  "Uh, sure … maybe … doing what?"

  "We'll find something for you. We're short-staffed and need bodies quick. I'll help you with union stuff. Phone me." A horn honked. "Gotta go." Like most film people, she vanished in a little cloud of cartoon dust.

  Once again, for the first time in what seemed like a decade, the city was a place of enchantment for me. Voila! Hamilton, Linus, and I became location scouts, and for two cigarette-packed weeks, we rollicked about the city and countryside in Hamilton's Javelin running over trash cans, drag racing yuppies, and "tailgating hair triggers," those agitated souls Hamilton seemed to locate with such ease: "Gronks itching to kill, barflies with pickled brain stems, meatheads fresh from the gym—how easily inflamed they are." We found every location required by the director within minutes, mainly as a result of my having sold real estate and growing up here. We felt useful.

  Scott, a production guy from Los Angeles, told us that "they film everything here because Vancouver's unique: You can morph it into any North American city or green space with little effort and even less expense, but at the same time the city has its own distinct feel. See that motel over there? That was 'Pittsburgh' in a Movie of the Week."