Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

My main memories of those two weeks when I was under suspicion are of moving from one spartanly
furnished room to another - a cell, a motel room or an interrogation room. I was what you'd now call a
person of interest, living in a legal netherworld, neither free nor in custody. I remember eating mostly
takeout Chinese or pizza, and having to hide in the bathroom when it was delivered. I remember always
having to dial 9 before phone calls to my lawyer, and there was this chestnut-colored kiss-curl wig given
to me by a woman from the RCMP. I was to wear it when we drove from place to place, but no matter
how many times we rinsed it, it smelled like a thrift store. Potential angry mobs or not, it was stupid and I
chucked it in the trash. There was this one interrogation room that smelled like cherry cola, and
everywhere, the same yearbook photos being endlessly recycled on TV and in the papers.
I remember coming back from a questioning session one morning to find my mother opening the motel
door with a large vodka stain shaped like Argentina on her blouse. And I wondered if I'd need to take a
death certificate to Nevada to become officially unmarried. Is there even a name for this -"widowered"
sounds wrong.
I ate chocolate bars from the Texaco for breakfast. Kent and I drove once to the cemetery where
Cheryl had been buried, but there were TV vans, so we didn't go in. All over the embankment beside the
police station I saw magic mushrooms sprouting, which seemed funny to me. And I remember Kent
returning from the house where he'd gone to clean up the eggs and paint, and how he refused to discuss
it.
One thing Kent did during this time was, as ever, not take sides. He never said it in so many words, but
he spent hours on the phone with Alive!ers and could only have been placating them.
"They think I organized it, don't they?"
"They're curious and angry like everybody else."
"But they do."
"They're just confused. Let it go. You'll be cleared soon enough."
"Do you think I was involved?"
Kent waited half a second too long to answer this. "No."
"You do."
"Jason, let it ride."
The thought of my brother not really being on my side frightened me so much that I did let it ride.
In any event, I remember the days becoming shorter, and Halloween approaching, and chipping my
tooth on the police station drinking fountain.
One further thing I remember was Mom going on a Nostradamus kick. She was trying to find the
massacre foretold in his prophecies somewhere. As if.
Hey Nostradamus! Did you predict that once we found the Promised Land we'd all start offing each
other? And did you predict that once we found the Promised Land, it would be the final Promised Land,
and there'd never be another one again? And if you were such a good clairvoyant, why didn't you just
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