Girlfriend in a Coma

I asked Karen, who was also trying to gauge the impact of what we'd just done together in the woods, if she was happy. This is never, as I have since learned, a good question to ask of anyone. But Karen smiled, giggled, and blew silky smoke into the deep blue darkness. Ithought of jewels being tossed off an ocean liner over the Marianas Trench, gone forever. Then she turned her head away from me and looked into the forest that lay to the right, trees visible to us both as only a darker shade of black. I could tell something was now wrong with her, as though she were a book I was reading with pages tanta-lizingly removed. Her small teeth bit her lower lip and her eyebrows lowered.

She jittered with a delicate jolt, as if she'd tried to start her Honda Civic with her house key.

The realization dribbled into my own head: Karen had been off kilter all afternoon and into the evening, fixating over dumb things like the olive-colored dial telephone in my parents' kitchen or a bouquet of crummy gladiolas on the kitchen table, saying, "Oh, isn't that just the most beautiful �" then trailing off. She had also been looking at the sky and the clouds all day, not just glancing, but stopping and standing and staring, as if they were on a movie screen.

Karen's back arched just faintly, and her face stiffened just so. I said, "What's up, Pumpkin�regrets? You know how I feel about you."

And she said "Duh, Richard. I love you, too . , . goonhead. Nothing's wrong, really, Beb. I'm just cold. And I want the lights to come back on. Soon." She called me "Beb," a snotty contraction of "Babe."

The absence of light frightened her. She pulled up my wool ski cap and kissed my waxy, cold ear. So I held her tighter and once more asked her what was the matter, because she still wasn't okay.

She said, "I've been having the weirdest dreams lately, Richard. So real� I guess it sounds kind of loser-ish, me saying that, doesn't it? Best forgotten." Karen shook her head and blew out a puff of tobacco smoke that spider-webbed against the dark night. She stared at the chairlift's stalag towers, unable to light the slopes with man-made sun. She changed the subject: "Did you see Donna Kilbruck's pants tonight? God�so tight�she had walrus-crotch. The horror. It, too, best forgotten."

"Hey, Beb, don't change the subject. Tell me," I said, with anunexpected curtness. I was mad at myself; I was growing up and was at the stage where smart-ass one-liners were no longer in and of themselves adequately meaningful to sustain a conversation. Karen and I rarely had conversations of true depth. The closest we ever got to hearing each other's deeper thoughts was during stoned group philosophizing sessions�which is to say not much at all. But then we were young and glibness was our armor. We yearned for better thoughts. I vowed to try to bring myself closer to her. "C'mon. Please�tell me."

Karen said, "Nope. Sorry Beb. It's too complicated to explain." Again I felt excluded. Minutes before I had been so totally one with her. A wind scraped by, our bodies shivered, and then she said, "Well maybe it wasn't a dream. You promise not to laugh?"

"Huh? Yes. Of course I promise."

"Well, I was asleep when it happened�but it was more realistic than any dream. Maybe a kind of vision."

"Go on."

"It wasn't like a dream at all, more like movie clips�like a TV ad for a movie, but with still photos, too, but just barely developed, like a blur that becomes a face when I develop them in the photo lab at school. I think it was supposed to be the future."

I could kick myself now for having said what I said, an ill-timed stab at being funny: "So how was the future? Vietnam conquers Earth? Aliens for dinner? Pods for everybody? Maybe that explains your being a space cadet all day." I thought I was being witty here�a real center box on Hollywood Squares. But Karen's falling face showed that I'd grossly misjudged. She looked spooked and let down.

"Okay, Richard. I see. I knew I shouldn't have trusted you with that. That's one mistake I won't be making again." She looked away. Chills.

I felt like a farmer watching his field flattened by hail. "No. Shit. Karen. Please. I'm a shit. Big-mouth strikes again. I didn't mean that. You know I didn't. I was being a jerk. I don't like it when I'm like that. Shit. I was only trying to be funny. Please tell me. C'mon. I want to hear about your vision. Please."

"Your groveling has been noted, Richard." She flicked away hercigarette; her tone indicated probation. She was silent awhile. We were beyond chilly, quite cold now. Our eyes adjusted to the dark. She continued: "It had texture. For example, I could feel plants and clothes and things when I touched them. Especially last night. It was set in our house on Rabbit Lane, but everything had gone to seed. The trees and grass � and the people, too. You, Pam � really dirty and grungy."

Suddenly, she had clarity. "These things are all in the future." She sniffed back a moist bead of goo dripping from her nose. "The air seemed smoky. There weren't any flying cars or outer-space clothing. But cars were different, all smooth and round. I drove in one. It had a new brand name � Airbag? Yes�Airbag. It was on the dashboard."

"You didn't happen to pick up a Wall Street Journal and notice any big market trends in the future�or any stock prices�or anything like that, did you?

She nogged herself on her forehead. "I get shown the future and all I paid attention to is cars, haircuts, and �" She rolled her eyes. "I'm blanking, Richard, I can't help you there. Stop being crass. Wait� yes�yes: Russia isn't an enemy anymore. And sex is�fatal. Ta-da!"

The ski-lift chair jiggled�engines up the hill were sending rumbles. Karen continued trancing: "Earlier this week, I saw the future and there were these machines that had something to do with money� people seemed to be more � electronic. People still did things the regular way, too, like they had to pump gas and � and � oh, shit, I can't believe this, I see the future and it sounds just like now. I can't even remember how it was different. People looked better. Thinner? Better clothes? Like joggers?"

"And � ?"

"Okay, you're right. Details are kinda patchy�but there's bad news, too. It's a good news/bad news thing." She paused and said, "There's a � darkness to the future." She paused and bit her lip. "That's what's scaring me now."

"What kind of darkness?" That night, I had worn only jeans, no long Johns. I shivered.

"The future's not a good place, Richard. I think it's maybe cruel. Isaw that last night. We were all there. I could see us�we weren't being tortured or anything�we were all still alive and all � older � middle-aged or something, but � 'meaning' had vanished. And yet we didn't know it. We were meaningless."

"What do you mean, 'meaningless'?"

"Okay. Life didn't seem depressing or empty to us, but we could only discern that it was as if we were on the outside looking in. And then I looked around for other people�to see if their lives seemed this way, too�but all the other people had left. It was just us, with our meaningless lives. Then I looked at us up close�Pam, Hamilton, you, Linus, Wendy�and you all seemed normal, but your eyes were without souls .. . like a salmon lying on a dock, one eye flat on the hot wood, the other looking straight to heaven. I think I need to stop now."

"No�don't!"

"I wanted to help us, Richard, but I didn't know how to save us, how to get our souls back. I couldn't see a solution. I was the only one who knew what was missing, but I didn't know what I could do about it."

Karen sounded as though she were about to cry. I was quiet and had no idea what to say; I put my arm around her. Below us on the left I could see skiers gathered in the dark, toking up and passing wineskins while hooting.

Karen spoke again: "Oh! I just remembered! Jared was there last night! In the vision�he was! So maybe it's not a real vision of the future, but a vision of what might be�a warning, like the ghost of Christmas Future."