Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Oh. So, um - what are you up to lately?<br />
You know. Work.<br />
Oh.<br />
Well.. .<br />
See you one of these days.<br />
'<strong>By</strong>e.<br />
* * *<br />
I've gone through my memory with a lice comb, and I still can't find any evidence that Jason was<br />
connected to ugliness or violence that might in some way have led to his disappearance. I've seen killers<br />
galore in the courtroom, and despite all of those he-was-just-a-quiet-man-a-perfect-neigh-bor things you<br />
hear on TV, the fact is that killers have a deadness in their eyes. Their souls are gone, or they've been<br />
replaced with something else, like in a body-snatcher movie. I was always happy to be invisible in a<br />
courtroom when a murder trial was happening, but it was always the killers who tried hardest to make<br />
eye contact with me. During a month-long trial I'd typically look in their direction just one time, and there<br />
they were, meeting my glance head on. So no, Jason was no killer. I knew his eyes. He had a fine soul.<br />
Did Jason have a secret life before me? No, nothing scary. He was a contractor's assistant. He picked<br />
up drywall, he cut tiles, and he did wiring. His friends weren't truly friends but glorified barflies. The more<br />
they wanted to know about the massacre, the less Jason spoke with them. I'm sure they must have been<br />
spooked by this, but nobody was ever surprised. His boss, Les, was a good-time Charlie whose wife,<br />
Kim, monitored him like the CIA. We had a few barbecues and company picnics together. Les is about<br />
as dangerous as a squeak toy.<br />
I tried asking Jason to open up about his past. This was surprisingly hard to do. I know that most guys<br />
aren't talkative about themselves, but Jason, good God, it was like pulling teeth out of Mount Rushmore<br />
getting him to tell me what he did before he got hired by Les. He'd been working in a<br />
kitchen-cupboard-door factory, it turned out.<br />
"Jason, my two cousins work for Canfor's wood panel division. What's the big deal?"<br />
"Nothing."<br />
I pushed and prodded and pleaded, and finally it turned out he was ashamed because he'd only taken a<br />
factory job so that he wouldn't have to speak with people during work.<br />
"There's nothing wrong with that, Jason."<br />
"I went for almost four years without having a real conversation with any other human being."<br />
"I -"<br />
Page 101