Girlfriend in a coma (10 page)

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 for 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."
"
Where
abouts
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

86
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."

Scott, like us, had never trained to be in film. Like everybody in the local industry, he arrived from another realm. Mathematicians, lawyers, dental assistants, ex-hippies - all of these people winging it. The energy was addictive.

Life became very
cha-cha-cha.
"My oh my," Hamilton WOllld preen verbally, "aren't
we
just the niftiest, coolest, hippest, grooviest, sexiest, most with-it, and most happening people we know?""Yes, Hamilton," we would reply as androids.
"You
certainly are."

Then came word that Fox was filming a series pilot in Vancouver, one of dozens filmed here annually. Phone calls were made and shortly Pam, Hamilton, Linus, and I wound up working on a new show in which conspiracies, be they alien, governmental, paranormal, or clerical, impacted on the lives of everyday people. These visitations would in turn be investigated by a male detective who has belief in the paranormal and a female detective who has her doubts. It was a simple formula, but one that resonated with us.

TV pilots are crap shoots. We enjoyed our location scouting as much as we could, making hay while the sun shined and we located dank, dense, evergreen versions of Florida, California, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. "It's a good thing not too many botanists watch this show," Linus said with grating frequency. "Or weathermen, for that matter." As it rains a fair deal in Vancouver, so it rained a great deal on the show. Critics applauded the show's rainy "noir" atmosphere. Whenever this issue was raised, Pam merrily twittered, "Giggle giggle."

After a few weeks, Tina introduced Hamilton and Linus to the world of special effects at an FX house across town called Monster Machine. Their eyes lit up; within a week, they left Fox to score jobs with Monster Machine, entering a sub-world of flash pods, latex limbs, buckets o' blood, and blue screening. Their combined explosive and electrical knowledge was impossible to refuse. Me? I stayed on the set of my weekly paranormal drama. It hadn't become a hit yet, but I liked its vibe and it was the most polite set I'd worked on.

Soon enough Pam stopped doing makeup work and joined Hamilton and Linus at the special effects firm; the three became known locally as quality special effects people. Their specialties were latex body molds and convincing explosions. Pooling their skills, they helped create aliens, zombies, vampires, Mafia-shot corpses, humans in all states of decay, mummification, terror, and explosion. They traveled frequently, usually to California to take courses with the masters, and returned to Canada with Ziploc bags full of smuggled,tissuewrapped, German ceramic eyeballs. "Aren't they
wunderbar?"
squeaked Pam in my car driving back from the airport.