Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

It was becoming windy, and our voices were being swept away. Allison said to me, "Heather, please
don't tell me anything about yourself. Please. If I'm going to be genuinely psychic here, I don't want the
results to be influenced."
Just then the kids found a dead crow and shouted, "Aunt Heather!" and I looked at Allison and said,
"Well, now you know at least that much."
I suggested we go talk someplace warm. We went to the caféadjacent to the ball pit at Park Royal mall,
where the twins romped among filthy colored-plastic balls with germ loads reminiscent of the Black
Plague.
Allison said, "I'll be frank with you. I don't know if you're married or single or divorced or lesbian or
anything else. And I'll say it again: I don't know where I got these voices, or why."
She paused. I tried to conceal my hunger for more contact from Jason. "Allison, did you get any more,
uh, messages last night or this morning?"
Allison said, "I did. One."
"What was it?"
She sighed. "I can tell you, if you like, but I have no idea what it means."
"What is it? What did you hear?"
She screwed up her head as if she was about to sing an aria, but instead she spoke in a high, cartoonish
voice: "Hey! I'm in dreamland and I got the best table here." She repeated the phrase and then relaxed
her head. "That's what I heard."
"Hey, I'm in dreamland and I got the best table here" was a running gag of Froggles, which we used at
night before going to sleep. Hearing the words made me high and low at the same time, like a cough
syrup high. My face felt like it was morphing into some other face, and my emotions were trying to
escape through my bones.
Allison asked me, "Shall I say it for you again?"
"No!" I fairly yelled. I asked Allison to watch the kids for me and I ran out of the small caféarea beside
the pit and headed to the bathroom, where I sat for ten minutes and cried. It's a credit to the human race
that several women knocked gently on the door and asked if there was anything they could do. But there
wasn't. I sat on the toilet and finally realized that Jason is probably dead; to keep thinking otherwise is
simply delusional. The effort I've been putting in, being the rock, keeping it together for the sake of Barb,
the kids, Reg and Jason's mom. Nobody else has to go back to an apartment where there's a man's
wallet with credit cards collecting dust on the counter by the banana bowl, or a bar of orange English
soap that's begun to crack beside the bathroom window. I've been trying to keep Jason's aura alive, but
every night after work I walk into that apartment and it's leaked away just that much more. His clothes
don't look like they're ever going to be worn again, but I can't give them away. So I keep his stuff there. I
dust his shoes so they don't look . . . dead. I keep his wallet beside the fruit bowl because it looks
casual, so when he returns he can say, "Ha-ha, there's my wallet!"
Just listen to me. I'm crazy. I wasn't going to let this happen to me. I wasn't. I was going to be cool, but
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