The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [25]
He glanced at Gloria, who was wearing the pleasant, tuned-out expression used by presidential wives during dinner speeches and idly fondling her spleen.
“When is dinner?” he asked.
Glove Pond
As Kyle Falconcrest asked his semi-rude question about dinner’s readiness, Gloria was thinking about lipsticks. She was thinking about the massive industrial base that had to exist in order for her to purchase a single tube of Ruby Tuesday at the town’s sole remaining non-Wal-Martized department store, a doomed and dispirited brick heap not far from her stationery dealer. Lipstick makers had to secretly kill thousands of whales without Greenpeace looking on, and then they had to flense the blubber from the carcass and stuff it into zinc canisters to ship to her favourite cosmeticians’ factories. The blubber then had to be boiled into bacteria-free goo, at which point a staggering amount of pigment and stabilizers and texturizers had to be added, after which the coloured muck had to be solidified, inserted into chromed flexi-rods, vacuum sealed into a perverse amount of packaging, and then trucked out into the world along complex interstate freeway systems and rail lines, their voyages heralded by massive print and electronic ad campaigns that made the world’s Glorias bay with desire.
What if everybody on earth suddenly turned stupid? What if we couldn’t make lipstick or anything else? That would be the end of the world, wouldn’t it? What if everybody’s IQ simultaneously dropped fifty points? For the first hour or so, nobody would notice, but then it would become obvious. Hey—who forgot to turn off the nuclear power plant? Boy, this fuel tanker sure is hard to navigate through these rocky bodies of water. Does anybody here remember how to work this fire ladder? I’m sorry, kids, I was going to make wiener schnitzel for dinner, but I forgot the recipe, and besides, the butcher couldn’t slice any veal because the machine jammed and nobody knows how to fix it.
From there it would be only a brief amount of time before the planet “cracked open like an egg,” a line she remembered from an old Planet of the Apes movie.
Oh humanity!
How tenuous is our plight!
Gloria delivered those made-up lines in her mind as though they were lines in a play—a play starring Gloria. This, in turn, reminded her of her inability to remember her lines as Lady Windermere, a shortcoming that was bringing her fellow cast members close to mutiny. People, how can I bring Lady Windermere to life if you don’t give me time to fully express myself?
Leonard had taken her aside. “My frisky little schnitzel, you have until Monday to get your lines straight. Yes, I enjoy banging you as much as the next guy, but there’s only so long I can cover for you. Take some B vitamins, lock yourself in a motel room and learn your frigging lines.”
Philistine.
Gloria does not require vitamins to memorize her lines.
She idly fondled her spleen. Why would a spleen suddenly become puffy and inflamed? How unusual. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.
And what about dinner for young Kyle and Brittany? Not to worry. They’re young. They don’t need much nutrition. They could live on their body fat alone for weeks. Gloria then waxed nostalgic for the recent past: My, those last few pickles really were tasty. I should buy some more some day.
In the end, it was easier simply to ignore Kyle’s question.
Glove Pond
As Steve described