Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland

Author:Douglas Coupland
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Canada, Fiction
ISBN: 9780671755065
Publisher: New York : Pocket Books, c1992.
Published: 1992-04-15T03:03:17+00:00

33

Imagine the person you love saying to you, “Ten minutes from now you are going to be poked with a sharp stick. The pain will be excruciating and there isn’t a single thing you can do to prevent it.” Well then—the next ten minutes would be next to unendurable, would they not? Maybe it’s good we can’t see the future.

“Anna-Louise, what you do for those kids is fantastic.” “Don’t talk to me like a telethon, Tyler. Not today.” “Okay. Fine.” Anna-Louise has been a total ice goddess since we left the mall to skim through Lancaster inside the Comfortmobile’s matte-black luxury.

Out east I see power lines down in the middle of a harvested barley field. Oddly, the cables on either side of a transmission tower have been severed and drape from the triangulated outstretched aluminum arms like a mother weeping for her kidnapped child, holding forth samples of her missing child’s pajamas to the CNN cameras.

Anna-Louise looks terrible. Anna-Louise, you look terrible. Did you only sleep two hours last night?” Her socks are two different colors, her sweater is pilled, and she has toothpaste residue caked on the corners of her mouth. In her lap she’s clutching her Eightplex uniform inside a scrunched-up white plastic grocery bag.

“I don’t care.”

“I see.”

“I suppose Miss France looks ravishing today?”

I am tactfully mute, emphasizing by default that Stephanie might, in fact, outdo Anna-Louise in a point-by-point grooming comparison. “Everyone has bad hair days.”

Anna-Louise says, “I had Ding-Dongs and gin for lunch today.”

“You went to work drunk?”

Anna-Louise’s posture is rigid. She pops in the never-used cigarette lighter on the dash, reaches into the white plastic bag, pulls out a cigarette, and, much to my surprise, lights it.

“Anna-Louise, what are you doing? Smoking is for poor people.”

“What?”

“It’s true. You never see rich people smoking. Truly rich people. Ever. Just like the way rich people never have fluorescent lighting in their houses. Bulbs only. Or candles.”

“How would you know any of that, Tyler?”

Dare I bring up the wisdom of Frank E. Miller as expressed in his epic biography, Life at the Top? “It’s obviously true. Smoke, and you might as well move into a trailer park immediately. And wear a sandwich board over your neck saying I HAVE NO AMBITION.”

“So maybe I just like smoking.”

“It’s your career.”

Anna-Louise defiantly smokes. The car reeks of a bar and I open my window a crack, causing all of the smoke’s blue streaks to whiz past my face, giving Anna-Louise a small measure of satisfaction. “I sure am looking forward to some power studying today,” I say.

A terse inhale is my reply.

“Say. Is that a New Yorker in your bag there? You should hold it outside the bag—strangers will know you’re upmarket.”

“I pray in a closet, thank you, Dan.”

“Anna, why are you freaking out on me?” I ask. “What’s with the attitude? Something I’ve done?”

A snort in reply. I’m reminded of the standard gag where a wife wakes up one morning and slugs her husband for a crime he committed in

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