Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

kitchen table where I picked at the kids' leftover hot dogs and tried to enjoy the silence. Then the phone
rang. It was the woman.
"Hello, is this . . . Heather?"
"Yes, it is. Who's this?" I kept my tone friendly.
"I'm Allison."
"Hello, Allison. You're the one who said you had some information for me?"
"Well, I do and I don't."
"You're losing me."
"Do you have five minutes?"
What the heck."Sure." I poured another glass and sat on the bar stool by the flecked black marble
counter.
"I guess I should tell you right off, Heather, I'm a psychic."
I was about to hang up.
"Don't hang up."
"You're a good psychic. You read my mind."
"No. It's common sense. I'd hang up, too, if some woman saying she was a psychic called me."
"Allison, I'm sure you're a nice person, but . . ."
"Oh, I say."
"What?"
"Oh, I say."
"Oh, I say" was Gerard T. Giraffe's unfunny entrance line, like the ones people have in sitcoms which are
supposed to be funny, but really aren't, like when Norm enters the bar on Cheers, and everyone says,
"Norm!" She was even using the correct Gerard tone of voice, baritone and bumbling.
" 'Oh, I say' . . . Does that mean anything to you?"
I kept silent.
"'Oh, I say."'
"Who are you, Allison? What do you want?"
"I don't want anything. I don't. But all day I've been getting this voice coming through my brain in the
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