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Authors: Douglas Coupland
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before, but with his two flop movies and his Kerouac routine, it seemed his instincts now only failed him despite
Mega Force's
current stamina. Yet with Susan he felt only pure emotion. There was nothing strategic about the attraction. It was a rush of feelings that could only be satisfied by establishing further closeness. He wouldn't make money from his feelings. He wouldn't achieve cosmic bliss — he would only be …
closer to Susan.
MacKenzie began to bellow like a Marine World exhibit, and Nylla and Ivan carted her up to her nursery. John picked up
TV Guide
and scanned its pages trying to locate reruns of
Meet the Blooms,
growing frustrated as he was unable to locate any.
Chapter Eight
John's mother, Doris Lodge, had fallen in love with John's father, Piers Wyatt Johnson, a solemn Arizona horse breeder without family or history whom she met at a stable in Virginia, and whom she bumped into again by accident in Manhattan outside the Pierre Hotel, where he'd emerged having just brokered his first five-figure sperm contract. She fell in love with him because she saw this coincidental meeting with him as fateful, but more specifically because of a fairy tale he liked to tell Doris after they'd made love in Doris's one-room apartment on the fifth and top floor of a Chelsea walk-up, an apartment of the sort that had been attracting young Mary Tyler Moores with tams on their heads since the dawn of the skyscraper era. The room, the rental of which had required much finagling on Doris's part, was her first place of her own («Mummy,
anything
but the Barbizon — this is 1960, we have atom bombs, fer
gawd
sake»). Doris loved the apartment in the way all fresh young metropolitans love the simplicity of orange-crate side tables, and improvised spaghetti dinners eaten by the light of votive candles («Only a dollar ninety-nine for a box of forty-eight! My
Lord,
those Catholics have
invented
bargains») — this in an era when spaghetti in non-Italian households had the same subversive allure as stashed military blueprints and smuggled parakeets.
«You see, it's like
this,
» Piers would say, beginning the tale, stretching his milky-white glute muscles on the lumpy mattress of Doris's brass four-poster, her only concession to her froufrou upbringing, «There was this lonely young heiress who was her father's prisoner on their estate out in the country. There was a large brick wall covered in ivy that circled the family's property.»
«What was her name?» Doris would ask at that point. It was part of the ritual.
«Marie-Hélène.»
«That's so pretty,» Doris would say.
«And she was indeed pretty. She was a
catch.
»
«It's hard to be a catch,» Doris would sigh. Sunlight would stream in through the window, which overlooked a generic brick alleyscape of water tanks and a syringe-poke of the Empire State building above, a bevy of trash cans below, all of which seemed to cry out for wide-eyed sad painted kittens, perched and yowling. Piers's body hairs would catch the sunlight, like light filtered through icicles.
«Absolutely,» Piers would add. «Abso
lute
ly.» Piers's stomach was taut as a snare drum, and he encouraged Doris to tap it with her fingers while he talked. «So anyway, Marie-Hélène spent her days devising schemes to escape, but her family was onto her. They hired extra guards and mortared broken glass onto the top of the brick wall. But then one day she was walking through the many halls of the family's mansion, despairing, when she passed an old oil painting of a forest scene with a hunter, and something about it caught her eye.»
«What did she see? Tell me again.»
«When Marie-Hélène looked at the young hunter, a strapping lad, she saw him wink at her. And then he spoke to her. He said, “Marie-Hélène, come in here — come here inside this painting with me — this is your escape route — through this painting.” Marie-Hélène was frightened. She asked the hunter, “How can I come live
Mega Force's
current stamina. Yet with Susan he felt only pure emotion. There was nothing strategic about the attraction. It was a rush of feelings that could only be satisfied by establishing further closeness. He wouldn't make money from his feelings. He wouldn't achieve cosmic bliss — he would only be …
closer to Susan.
MacKenzie began to bellow like a Marine World exhibit, and Nylla and Ivan carted her up to her nursery. John picked up
TV Guide
and scanned its pages trying to locate reruns of
Meet the Blooms,
growing frustrated as he was unable to locate any.
Chapter Eight
John's mother, Doris Lodge, had fallen in love with John's father, Piers Wyatt Johnson, a solemn Arizona horse breeder without family or history whom she met at a stable in Virginia, and whom she bumped into again by accident in Manhattan outside the Pierre Hotel, where he'd emerged having just brokered his first five-figure sperm contract. She fell in love with him because she saw this coincidental meeting with him as fateful, but more specifically because of a fairy tale he liked to tell Doris after they'd made love in Doris's one-room apartment on the fifth and top floor of a Chelsea walk-up, an apartment of the sort that had been attracting young Mary Tyler Moores with tams on their heads since the dawn of the skyscraper era. The room, the rental of which had required much finagling on Doris's part, was her first place of her own («Mummy,
anything
but the Barbizon — this is 1960, we have atom bombs, fer
gawd
sake»). Doris loved the apartment in the way all fresh young metropolitans love the simplicity of orange-crate side tables, and improvised spaghetti dinners eaten by the light of votive candles («Only a dollar ninety-nine for a box of forty-eight! My
Lord,
those Catholics have
invented
bargains») — this in an era when spaghetti in non-Italian households had the same subversive allure as stashed military blueprints and smuggled parakeets.
«You see, it's like
this,
» Piers would say, beginning the tale, stretching his milky-white glute muscles on the lumpy mattress of Doris's brass four-poster, her only concession to her froufrou upbringing, «There was this lonely young heiress who was her father's prisoner on their estate out in the country. There was a large brick wall covered in ivy that circled the family's property.»
«What was her name?» Doris would ask at that point. It was part of the ritual.
«Marie-Hélène.»
«That's so pretty,» Doris would say.
«And she was indeed pretty. She was a
catch.
»
«It's hard to be a catch,» Doris would sigh. Sunlight would stream in through the window, which overlooked a generic brick alleyscape of water tanks and a syringe-poke of the Empire State building above, a bevy of trash cans below, all of which seemed to cry out for wide-eyed sad painted kittens, perched and yowling. Piers's body hairs would catch the sunlight, like light filtered through icicles.
«Absolutely,» Piers would add. «Abso
lute
ly.» Piers's stomach was taut as a snare drum, and he encouraged Doris to tap it with her fingers while he talked. «So anyway, Marie-Hélène spent her days devising schemes to escape, but her family was onto her. They hired extra guards and mortared broken glass onto the top of the brick wall. But then one day she was walking through the many halls of the family's mansion, despairing, when she passed an old oil painting of a forest scene with a hunter, and something about it caught her eye.»
«What did she see? Tell me again.»
«When Marie-Hélène looked at the young hunter, a strapping lad, she saw him wink at her. And then he spoke to her. He said, “Marie-Hélène, come in here — come here inside this painting with me — this is your escape route — through this painting.” Marie-Hélène was frightened. She asked the hunter, “How can I come live
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