Miss Wyoming Part 1

Douglas Coupland.

Miss Wyoming.

Chapter One.

Susan Colgate sat with her agent, Adam Norwitz, on the rocky outdoor patio of the Ivy restaurant at the edge of Beverly Hills.Susan was slightly chilly and kept a fawn-colored cashmeresweater wrapped around her shoulders as she snuck breadcrumbs to the birds darting about the ground. Her face was flaw-lessly made up and her hair was cut in the style of the era. She was a woman on a magazine cover, gazing out at the checkout-stand shopper, smiling, but locked in time and s.p.a.ce, awayfrom the real world of squalling babies, bank cards and casualshoplifting.

Susan and Adam were looking at two men across the busyrestaurant. Adam was saying to Susan, "You see that guy on theleft? That's 'Jerr-Bear' Rogers, snack dealer to the stars and thehuman equivalent of an unflushed toilet."

"Adam!"

"Well, it's true." Adam broke open a focaccia slice. "Oh G.o.d,Sooz, they're looking at us."

"Thoughts have wings, Adam."

"Whatever. They're both still staring at us."

A waiter came and filled their water gla.s.ses. Adam said,"And that other guy-John Johnson.

Semisleazebag movie pro-ducer. He vanished for a while earlier this year. Did you hearabout that?"

" It sounds faintly familiar. But I stopped reading the dailies awhile ago. You know that, Adam."

"He totally vanished. Turns out he OD'd and had some kindof vision, and then afterward he gave away everything he had-his house and cars and copyrights and everything else, andturned himself into a b.u.m.

Walked across the Southwest eatinghamburgers out of McDonald's dumpsters."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. Hey . . ." Adam lowered his voice and spoke out the side of his mouth. "Oh Lordy, it looks like John Johnson'sfixated on you, Sooz, gawping at you like you were Fergie orsomething. Smile back like a trouper, will you? He may be gaga,but he's still got the power."

"Adam, don't tell me what to do or not to do."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abc.l.i.t.html "Oh G.o.d. He's standing up. He's coming over here," saidAdam. " Lana Turner, be a good girl and tuck in your sweater.Wow. John Johnson. Whatta sleazebag."

Susan turned to Adam. "Don't be such a hypocrite, Adam, likeyou're so pure yourself? Know what I think? I think there's a touch 'o the 'bag in all of us."

John was by then standing a close but respectful distancefrom Susan. He looked at her with the unsure smile of a highschool junior bracing himself to ask a girl one social notchabove him to dance at the prom, his hands behind his back like a penitent child.

"h.e.l.lo," he said. "I'm John Johnson." He stuck out his rightarm too quickly, surprising her, but she took his hand in hersand slid her chair back onto the flagstones so that she could sur-vey him more fully-a sadly handsome man, dressed in clothesthat looked like hand-me-downs: jeans and a frayed blue ging- ham s.h.i.+rt, shoes a pair of disintegrating desert boots with adifferent-colored lace on each foot.

"I'm Susan Colgate."

"Hi."

"Hi to you."

"I'm Adam Norwitz." Adam lobbed his hand into the mix.John shook it, but not for a moment did he break his gaze onSusan.

"Yes,"' said John. "Adam Norwitz. I've heard your namebefore."

Adam blushed at this ambiguous praise. "Congratulations onMega Force," he said. Owing to John's radical decision of the pre-vious winter, he was not making a single penny from his cur-rent blockbuster, Mega Force. In his pocket were ninety $20 bills,and this was all the money he had in the world.

"Thank you," said John.

"Adam told me that you're a sleazebag," said Susan. John,caught completely off guard, laughed. Adam froze in horror,and Susan smiled and said, "Well, you did say it, Adam."

"Susan! How could you-"

"He's right," said John. "Look at my track record and he'd bebang on. I saw you feeding birds under the table. That's nice."

"You were doing it, too."

"I like birds." John's teeth were big and white, like pearls...o...b..by corn. His eyes were the pale blue color of sun-bleachedparking tickets, his skin like brown leather.

"Why?" Susan asked.

"They mind their own business. No bird has never tried tosneak me a screenplay or slagged me behind my back. And theystill hang out with you even if your movies tank."

"I certainly know that feeling."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abc.l.i.t.html "Susan!" Adam interjected. "Your projects do well."

"My movies are c.r.a.p, Adam."

Across the terrazzo, Jerr-Bear made the ah-oooo-gah, ah-oooo-gahnoise of a drowning submarine in order to attract John's atten-tion, but John and Susan, alone among the annoyed lunchtimecrowd, ignored him.

Adam was trying to figure a way out of what he perceived asa dreadful collision offaux pas , mixed signals and badly tossedbanana cream pies, and said, "Would you and your, er, col-league, like to join us for lunch, Mr. Johnson?"

John suddenly seemed to realize that he was in public, in a restaurant, surrounded by people bent on eating food and gos-siping, and that this was the opposite of the place he wanted tobe. He stammered, "

I-".

"Yes?" Susan looked at him kindly.

"I really need to get out of here. You wouldn't want to comewith me on a-I dunno-a walk, would you?"

Susan stood up, catching Adam's bewildered eyes. "I'll callyou later, Adam."

Staff scurried about, and in the s.p.a.ce of what seemed like abadly edited film snippet, John and Susan were out on NorthRobertson Boulevard, amid sleeping Saabs and Audis, in daz-zling sunlight that made the insides of their eyeb.a.l.l.s bubble asthough filled with ginger ale.

"Are you okay for walking in those shoes?" John asked.

"These? I could climb Alps in these puppies." She smiled."No man's ever asked me that before."

"They look Italian."

"I bought them in Rome in 1988, and they've never let medown once."

"Rome, huh? What was going on in Rome?"

"I was doing a set of TV commercials for bottled spaghettisauce. Maybe you saw them. They were on the air for years. Theyspent a fortune getting everybody over there and then they shot it inside a studio anyway, and then they propped it with cheesyItalian stuff, so it looked like it was filmed in New Jersey."

"Welcome to film economics."

"That wasn't my first lesson, but it was one of the strangest. You never did commercials, did you?"

"I went right into film."

"Commercials are weird. You can go be in a reasonably suc-cessful TV weekly series for years and n.o.body mentions it to you,but appear at threea.m. in some G.o.d-awful sauce plug, and peo-ple phone to wake you up and scream, 'I just saw you on TV!' '

A mailman walked by, and once he'd pa.s.sed John and Susan,in cahoots they copied his exaggerated stride, then made devil-ish faces at each other.

"You gotta hand it to him," Susan said about the mailman, now out of earshot, "for a guy his age, he sure works it."

"How old do you think I am?" asked John.

Susan appraised him. "I'll guess forty. Why do you ask?"

"I look forty?"

"But that's good. If you're not forty, then it means you've ac-crued wisdom beyond your, say, thirty-five years. It looks goodon a man."

"I'm thirty-seven."

"You still haven't told me why you asked."

"Because I think about how old I am," John replied, "and Iwonder, Hey, John Johnson, you've pretty much felt all the emotions you're everlikely to feel, and from here on it's reruns. And that totally scares me. Doyou ever think that?"

"Well, John, life's thrown me a curveball or two, so I don'tworry about the rerun factor quite so much.

But yeah, I dothink about it. Every day, really." She looked over at him. "Forwhat it's worth, today is my twenty-eighth birthday."

John beamed. "Happy birthday, Susan!" He then shook herhand in a parody of heartiness, but secretly savored how coolher palms were, like a salve on a burn he didn't even knowhe had.The novelty of strolling in their city rather than barrelingthrough it inside air-conditioned metal nodules added an un-earthly sensation to their steps. They heard the changing gearsof cars headed toward the Beverly Center. They listened to bird-calls and rustling branches. John felt young, like he was back ingrade school.

"You know what this feels like-our leaving the restaurantlike that?" Susan asked.

"What?" John replied.

"Like we're running away from home together."

They walked across a sunbaked intersection where a His-panic boy with a gold incisor was selling maps to the stars' homes. John asked Susan, "You ever been on one of thosethings?"

"A star map? Once, for about two years. I was deleted in areprinted version. Cars would drive past my place and then slowdown to almost a stop and then speed up again-every day and every night. It was the creepiest thing ever. The house had goodsecurity, but even then, a few times I was spooked so badly Iwent and stayed at a friend's place.You?"

"I'm not a star." Just then the Oscar Mayer wiener truck droveby and cars all around them honked as if it were a weddingcortege. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his courage, John asked, "Susan-Sue- speaking of curveb.a.l.l.s, here's one for you. A simple question: doyou think you've ever met me before?"

Susan looked thoughtful, as though ready to spell out her re-ply in a spelling bee. "I've read about you in magazines. And Isaw a bit of stuff about you on TV I'm sorry things didn't workout for you-when you took off and tried to change yourself orwhatever it was you were trying to do. I really am." The wiener hubbub had died down, and Susan stepped in front of John tosurvey him. His eyes looked like those of somebody who's lost big and is ready to leave the casino. "I mean, I've been prettytired of being 'me' as well. I sympathize."

John moved as if to kiss her, but two cars behind themsquealed their tires in a pulse of road rage. They turned aroundand the walk resumed.

"You were a beauty queen, weren't you?" John asked. "MissWyoming."

"Oh Lord, yeah. I was on the beauty circuit since about the ageof JonBenet-and-a-half, which is, like, four. I've also been achild TV star, a has-been, a rock-and-roll bride, an air crash sur-vivor and public enigma."

"You like having been so many different things?"

Susan took a second to answer. "I never thought of it that way. Yes. No. You mean there's some odier way to live?"

"I don't know," said John.

They crossed San Vicente Boulevard, pa.s.sing buildings androads that once held stories for each of them, but which nowseemed transient and disconnected from their lives, like win-dow displays. Each recalled a bad meeting here, a check cashed there, a meal. . . .

John asked, "Where are you from?"

"My family? We're hillbillies. Literally. From the mountains ofOregon. We're nothing. If my mother hadn't escaped, I'd proba-bly be pregnant with my brother's seventh brat by now-and somebody in the family'd probably steal the kid and trade it fora stack of unscratched lottery cards.You?"

In a deep, TV-announcer voice he declared, "The Lodge Familyof Delaware. 'The Pesticide Lodges.' "

His voice returned to nor-mal. "My maternal great-grandfather discovered a chemical tointerrupt the breeding cycle of mites that infect corn crops."

A light turned green and the boulevard was shot with trafficand the pair walked on. Susan was wrapped in a pale lightfabric, cool and comfortable, like a pageant winner's sash. John was sweating like a lemonade pitcher, his jeans, gingham s.h.i.+rtand black hair soaking up heat like desert stones. But instead of seeking both air-conditioning and a mirror, John merely un-tucked his s.h.i.+rt and kept pace with Susan.

"You'd think our family had invented the atom bomb fromthe way they all lorded about the eastern seaboard. But thenthey did this really weird thing."

"What was that?" Susan asked.

"We went through our own family tree with a chain saw.Ruthless, totally ruthless. Anybody who was found to be sociallylacking was erased. It was like they'd never even lived. I havedozens of great-uncles and aunts and cousins who I've nevermet, and their only crime was to have had humble lives. One great-uncle was a prison warden. Gone. Another married awoman who p.r.o.nounced 'theater' thee-ay-ter.

Gone. And heavenhelp anybody who slighted another family member. Peopleweren't challenged or punished in our family. They were merelyerased."

They were quiet. They'd walked maybe a mile by now. Johnfelt as close to Susan as paint is to a wall.

John said, "Tell me something else, Susan. Anything. I like your voice."

"My voice? Anybody can hear my voice almost any time ofday anywhere on earth. All you need is a dish that picks up sig-nals from satellite stations that play nonstop cheesy early eight-ies TV shows." They were outside a record store. Two mohawkedpunk fossils from 1977 walked past them.

John looked at her and said, "Susan, have you ever seen aface, say-in a magazine or on TV-and obsessed on it, andmaybe secretly hoped every day, at least once, that you'd run into the person behind the face?"

Susan laughed.

"I take it that's a yes?"