Generation A by Douglas Coupland Page A

back, where we keep the piano. Erik and I bought the piano for a song on craigslist from a family warring over who got the dead mother’s Audubon placemats. They were too preoccupied to bargain. As long as we had two hundred bucks and a truck to haul the thing away before sunset, it was ours. We celebrated this deal with gin and tonics at a grill on the edge of town, where people wouldn’t recognize us. Neither of us are drinkers. In that first boozy flush, I asked coded questions about Eva (notice how I hate using her name) to determine if they were happy or not. “Do you guys talk much during dinner?”
    “No, not since she got her promotion as day hostess at that new Beatles theme restaurant. Too much on her mind, I guess.”
    I believed that what was on Eva’s mind was actually Miguel, the Beatles restaurant prep chef, a known rake recently separated from his umpteenth, a shitty little Latin sleaze. I saw him and Eva sharing nachos and refried beans at Mexicali Rosa’s one night, and they weren’t discussing shepherd’s pie or thirty-percent-off coupons for seniors.
    Then I asked, “Any kids on the way?”
    “You’d think there would be, but we’re having problems in that area—sorry, I shouldn’t really be talking about this.”
    “I’m Switzerland. Consider me a neutral middle party. All I care about is you and Eva and the flock. I gave up on things of the flesh after Andy.”
    Andy is my ex, a probably gay guy with major father issues and a set list of twenty sugary guitar songs he plays at social gatherings upon the slightest provocation. He smells of Rogaine and failure. Andy and I were never much of anything, but maybe it makes people more comfortable to think I’d at least had someone in my life.
    I found myself telling all of this to Sandra from the Emerging Blood-Borne Agents Division of Winnipeg’s Level-4 lab, one of only fifteen Level-4 labs in the world: thirty coats of paint on every surface, with an epoxy floor three inches thick. Marburg? Tallahassee-B flu? Screw that —they cleared out the entire place for me . I was H5N, SARS -Guangxu and holy retribution all snarled up into one friendly little bee sting that left the facility in shock. And Sandra was my admitting nurse. Or scientist. Or . . . who knows what anyone does in these places.
    I said, “Listen to me talk and talk. I feel like I’ve just unloaded twenty clowns from a Volkswagen bug.”
    Sandra said, “Not to worry. How are you feeling right now?”
    I’d been flown the twelve hundred miles to Winnipeg inside a plastic bubble like a child’s swimming pool. “I feel fine. It was good to vent about Erik and all that. Thank you for listening.”
    I must add that Sandra was on speakerphone on the other side of a two-inch-thick Lucite window.
    “Anything else unusual happen lately?” she asked. “Anything that stands out? A new perfume? An old box you found in the attic?”
    I had a vision of my house being taken apart like it was made of Lego. It was the one thing I owned that I actually cared about, an inheritance from my paternal aunt. It was an early 1960s rancher, and boring as dirt, but I loved it.
    “Your house is fine. You’ll never know we were there.”
    I was creeped out—was she reading my mind? But Sandra just looked down at her papers. I asked her, “Sandra, what do you know that I don’t?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “When I got here, I looked at the guy pulling the syringe’s plunger when I gave my first blood specimen. He was treating my blood like it was Elvis come back to life and performing at Aloha Stadium. His fingers were practically vibrating. Something big’s going on.”
    “I really can’t say.”
    “I’m just wondering . . . when a blackfly bites you, it goes deep . When a bee stings you, it’s maybe the top layer of skin and a few nerves—it’s pretty superficial. How much damage can one bee sting do?”
    Sandra said, “Zack’s body nearly exploded from one little