The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [71]
This makeup is annoying me.
Brittany remembered applying it up in Gloria’s pink boudoir, remembered how strangely liberated she felt once she put it on—the way it allowed her to briefly reincarnate as someone new who wasn’t so wrapped up in the world and its problems. But she was tiring of it now. It was a brief phase in her life; she already felt herself entering a new one.
Meanwhile, Steve and Gloria were going through “Kendall’s” toys, one by one.
“Ah,” said Steve. “Kendall’s novelty scooter, emblazoned with a cartoon fish to help him roar out into the world.” The fish was from Walt Disney’s Finding Nemo, which would have made Kendall at most, twelve.
“Isn’t this precious!” said Gloria, holding a thrashed yellow loop. “Kendall’s favourite hula hoop!”
“He loved that hula hoop, didn’t he?” said Steve with the zest of a teenager who’s learned a new swear word. “Newfangled things. Took us all by surprise, they did.” Steve looked at Brittany and Kyle, their brains rigorously calculating an estimate of Steve’s age. “I’m kidding,” Steve said. “I’m not that old.”
Gloria pounced on a small Fisher-Price choo-choo train, stripped of its primary colours by too many winters and too much sun, its plastic palpably disintegrating. “Watch what happens when I run this along the floor,” she said, falling to her knees on the Persian rug, “It makes this darling little toot-toot noise.” The little choo- choo train’s beeps made it sound like it had emphysema. Gloria and Steve beamed like proud parents.
Extreme empty nest syndrome? Alcoholic psychosis?
Steve sat down on the floor as well, spilling a drop of Scotch on his pants. “Look at this!” he said. “A plastic puppy!”
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Brittany said. She fled to the guest bathroom, a dusty little place with one functioning light bulb. Kyle’s first chapter was lying atop the cistern. She ran the water. The hot wasn’t on, so she rinsed her face with cold water, then looked around for soap, finding only the vintage soap shards.
She scrubbed at her face and watched the residue vanish down the drain like milk until finally the water was clear. There were no guest towels. Under her breath she said, “No disrespect, Kyle,” and used his first chapter to sluice the water from her skin.
Shaking her hands to hasten drying, she left the bathroom, grabbed her coat and went out the front door.
“I’m just getting a bit of fresh air, guys. Back in a short while.”
She stepped out into what had become a night so cold it made the stars vibrate.
Bethany
Hey Roger,
Glove Pond is back—thank you. And it was genius that you FedEx’ed it to me from your place. I think Mom’s boss truly is going to shit nickels when he gets the FedEx bill, but so what. As Gloria says, art must come first. And it’s funny to think that, during the night, it had to fly all the way to Kentucky or wherever first before coming back here.
I lost six pounds this week. Not bad. All these shifts and my gym membership are paying off royally, and I don’t think it’s bad or scary for me to take an interest in my body. I can become strong. I can. I can become something lean and cat-like, someone whom the world will look at and go, Whoa, there’s one ass-kicking wench.
I couldn’t sleep last night and there was this old Stephen King movie on channel 62 in which almost everybody on a jumbo jet headed to Boston vanishes in mid- flight except for these six people who were asleep. So these six people wake up, and in the seats where all of the vanished passengers had been sitting was the clothing and shoes they’d been wearing. I suppose the director wanted us to think, Ooh, their bodies left, but only their bodies. Everything that wasn’t a part