Megan butts in, as though imparting hot gossip, "Hamilton and Pammie OD'd on heroin last night. They're down in Intensive Care. They're, like, complete heroin addicts now. Linus was at a party with them. Wendy fixed them up an hour ago."
"Thank you, Megan," Wendy says.
Karen thinks. "They're doing heroin? At thirty-four? That's so old. That's my age."
"Heroin's big these days," says Linus.
"Ugh."
All of the dramatic things Wendy and Linus had once planned on saying upon Karen's reawakening have vanished—poof. Instead, they discuss the commonplace. "Hey, Wendy—do I still smoke?"
"Not anymore, hon." Then Wendy says, more to herself than to anyone present, "You know, I just can't understand the coincidences—Ham and Pam, Megan, Linus, and then you. That leaves Richard, I suppose. No doubt he'll be traipsing in soon."
Karen looks at her arm, bony, defleshed, and prisoner-of-war-useless looking. "Shit. Just look at me, Wendy. I was gonna go to Hawaii. Whatta disaster. I look like a praying mantis." Karen is nowoddly objective about her body—her self. She looks up at Wendy. And then she yawns. "Hey there, Wendy—I saw you watch me yawn. Don't sweat it. I'm going to be falling asleep soon. But it'll only be normal sleep. I won't be going into deep freeze ever again." She blinks. How does she know this?
Wendy asks again how Karen feels. "Woozy—and thirsty, too. Is there lemonade here? I get really thirsty here in 1997. There's a tube in my belly button!" A small kerfuffle explodes in the corridor and Gatorade and a straw are produced from somebody's lunch bag. "My tongue," she says. "It feels like a box of cotton. Linus, can you go get my parents? I don't want them to hear about this over the phone. Can you do that?"
"Sure."
"Good. When they arrive, if I'm asleep, don't wake me up." She pauses. "That sounds sick. Just ask them to wait. I'll be back."
Megan gives Karen a peck on the cheek, then resumes lying against her mother.
Wendy tallies all of Karen's vital signs now. Everything, given the extraordinary conditions, is about as normal as can be. Megan is resting like a papoose against Karen's back. "Look—I got your fingernails," Megan says. "And your hair, too. Well, it's gray now. We'll dye it together. My friend Jenny's really good."
"Why are you dressed in all black?" Karen asks.
Megan now feels immature. She doesn't want to tell her mother that she views herself as Death—the cause of so much darkness. "It's a phase. It's over now."
Linus is on a chair beside the bed, happy. Linus thinks the world is a cruel place, and in his mind he is thinking of the deserts he used to walk through, the endless crappy little small towns and the meanness of the world, and yet here, from nowhere really, blooms a flower. Such moments are so rare, as rare as a ruby plucked from a salmon's guts as he remembers from childhood. That ruby—it had been only a piece of taillight plastic found when gutting the salmon on the docks up at Fender Harbour, but to Linus it was a ruby.
Karen attempts to stay awake and savor her new consciousness.She is glad to have friends nearby and her magical daughter talking beside her. The staff have been shooed away, and among the four in the room, a tension exists—a sense of giddiness shared by all, giddiness from having witnessed an emotional reawakening not unlike the thawing of Niagara Falls, the sheaths of ice calving off the shale in thick, glorious blocks. The people in the room feel enchanted— chosen.
"We're going to have to move you as soon as possible, Karen. The media's changed quite a bit since 1979 and we don't want them vul-turing around you." Wendy makes a phone call. "Yes. Full. Normal. Immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Thirty minutes. Just try to do it. Thanks."
Richard is no longer drunk. He is a silver-clad astronaut climbing up a dirt bank, the soil rich and crumbly and moist as canned dog food. He reaches Capilano Road above and then lumbers at a pronounced clip through the roads and the subdivisions, counting the colorful dead fireworks and fragments of pumpkin craniums at his feet. Above him, the sun rises under a sky the color of a navel orange. Tangy. Richard walks along Edgemont Boulevard to Delbrook, then down across the Westview overpass. A taxi driver going off duty slows and asks if he needs a lift, and soon he is at the hospital's front, where the local news vans are parked. Richard's costume in itself has become another unusual sight on what has already been an extraordinary day. He sees a camera crew and press people making a silent scrum toward the elevators. A nurse who has known Richard for over a decade admits him into the elevator. Somebody asks, "Hey, who's her
"It's the boyfriend. Hey, you—boyfriend—what can you tell us?"
Richard exits the elevator on Karen's floor. The nurses recognize him anxiously and hold their breath as he walks down the corridor, silver, powerful and serene, breathing deeply, as an astronaut might well do on a foreign planet. He hears his breath from inside his chest.
He walks in the room and sees Wendy and Linus there. They smile and politely leave the room. Richard kisses Karen on the lips. "Hey, Beb. I'm back," Karen says."Hi, honey. Welcome home," Richard says. "I missed you always." He lowers himself onto his knees before her and kisses her again.
Silence. They stare into each other's eyes with all the intensity of two people in the flush of first love. "They haven't allowed me to look in a mirror, Richard. I know I look like a rat's ass."
"You're beautiful."
"Flatterer. So much for Hawaii."
"I see you met our daughter."
Megan props herself up on an elbow beside her mother. "Hey, Dad."
"Hey, sugar-cakes."
An awkward silence ensues. "This is whacked," Megan says. "Come on. Get up. Hop onboard. There's just enough room."
Richard unzips and removes the top of his astronaut's outfit, which peels away from his body down to his belly button like a chrome banana skin. He climbs onto the bed and Karen becomes a human hot-meat sandwich, a witch on one side, an astronaut on the other. Karen feels as if they are all in a row boat, floating, going someplace new. This is a dream, but it's not. Richard feels as though he has found a vein of gold inside his heart, a klondike of feelings he had thought long buried.
Karen says, "You smell sweaty, Richard."
Richard says, "I walked over here from Cleveland Dam." A pause. "It's a long story."
"We're all tired now, aren't we, gang?" Karen says. "Wanna sleep?"
And they do want to sleep as they realize that they're all tired from walking, from hoping, from waiting, from losing faith and from finding it once more. Richard has his arm under Karen's head. "Yeah, let's go to sleep. It's been so long. And we're tired."
"Look at us," Megan whispers to both Karen and Richard with a happiness she once long ago reserved exclusively for small animals, birthday cake, and roller coasters: "We're a real family. At last. And forever. And I'm not Death anymore, am I, Dad?"Richard whispers back, "No, but you never were."
And the three drift toward sleep.
"And what's with the costumes?" Karen asks almost inaudibly before falling asleep.
"Costumes? What costumes?" Megan and Richard answer in stereo, drifting along with Karen in their boat that will not tip.
16 THE FUTURE AND THE AFTERLIFE ARE DIFFERENT THINGS ALTOGETHER
Stereo.
Floors away, Hamilton and Pam are now entering new thought cycles. While their brains are too taxed to generate pictures, they are, however, able to hear words, sounds, and music. A choir. Noises as though from heaven: sweet and seductive and lush. Words. Anyone looking at their Intensive Care'd bodies would never know of the concerts akimbo within their minds. Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement…