Eleanor Rigby. Douglas Coupland

booked off the following week and was preparing myself accordingly: Jell-O and tinned food and broth soups. The videos were part of a verklempt-o-thon movie festival I planned to hold for myself. If painkillers were going to make me mushy, best to take control of the situation. I wanted to blubber shamelessly, and do so for seven straight days.

      The next morning, Mother gave me a ride to the dental surgery clinic down on Fell Avenue, and although her life was as empty as mine, she made it seem as if I’d just made her reschedule her Nobel Prize acceptance ceremony in order to drive me. “You know, I was supposed to have lunch with Sylvia today. The portable kennel she bought for Empress broke in the first five minutes, and the woman is so weak-willed I have to go into Petcetera when she takes it back and be her bad cop.”

      “Mother, I’d have taken a cab if it was allowed, but it has to be a family member or friend to pick you up. You know that.”

      It was decades past the point where Mother chided me for my lack of friends. She said, “Empress is a lovely dog.”

      “Really?” Empress, from my experience, was a shrill, yappy, neurotic varmint.

      “You should get a dog, Elizabeth.”

      “I’m allergic, Mother.”

      “What about a hypoallergenic breed, a poodle?” “The hypoallergenic thing is a folk tale.”

      “It is?”

      “It is. You can minimize reactions, but that’s all. And it’s not the fur that’s the issue. It’s the dander, saliva and urine on top of the fur.”

      “Pardon me for trying to help you out.”

      “I looked into pets long ago, Mother. Trust me.”

      Our arrival at the clinic put a quick end to that conversation. It was an eight-storey building from the sixties—one of those buildings I’ve driven by a thousand times and never noticed, sort of like the architectural version of myself. Inside, it was cool and smelled of sanitation products. The print on the elevator’s DOOR CLOSE button was almost worn off. I pointed it out to Mother and said, “I bet there are a few psychiatrists in this building.”

      “What makes you say that?”

      “Look at the button.”

      “So?”

      “In the elevator industry, a DOOR CLOSE button is called a pacifier button. They’re installed simply to give the illusion of control to your elevator ride. They’re almost never hooked up to a real switch.”

      “I still think you should get a dog.”

      I have to admit that I love hospitals, clinics and medical environments. You enter them, you sit in a chair and suddenly all the burden of having to remain alive just floats away—that endless brain-churning buzzing and second-guessing and non-stop short-term planning that accompanies the typical lonely life.

      I’d never met the day’s exodontist before, a hearty Australian who rustled up jokes and cheer even for my sad little face under its laughing gas mask.

      “So where’d you go to school then, Lizzie?”

      “Liz. Here in North Van—Carson Graham for high school.”

      “Ho ho! And after that?”

      “Oh God. BCIT. Accounting.”

      “Marvellous. Lots of partying there?”

      “What?” The anaesthetist clamped the mask harder onto my face.

      “You know. Letting loose. Getting down.”

      “My life is not a beer commercial …”

      That’s when I went under. A second later I opened my eyes and the room was empty save for a nurse putting away the last of a set of tools. My mouth felt packed with sand. I smiled because it had been such a great thing to be conked out like that—one moment you’re dealing with an Australian comedian, the next you’re … gone. One more reason to no longer fear death.

      In the car on the way home, my conversation with Mother consisted mostly of her sighing and me mumbling like a faraway radio station. She dropped me off outside my condo, and before she raced off to Petcetera she said, “Really think about a dog now, Elizabeth.”

      “Let it go, Muddah.”

      It was a hot dry day. August. The building’s entryway smelled of sun-roasted cedar-bark chips and underwatered junipers. Inside, it was cool, smelling instead of the lobby’s decaying nylon rug. Once inside my place, three floors up, I had the eerie sensation that I was watching a movie version of a still room. There was nothing in it that moved or denoted time’s passage—no plants or clocks—and I felt guilty to be wasting all of that invisible film, ashamed that my condo was so boring. But then again, the right kind of boring can be peaceful, and peace was my new perspective on the world. Just go with the flow.

      My head throbbed and I went into my bedroom and laid it down on a cool pillow. The pillow warmed up, I turned it over to the cool side and then I fell asleep. When I woke up it was past sunset, but in the sky up above the mountain there was still some light and colour. I cursed because an afternoon nap always leads to an endless night. I touched my face: both sides swollen like the mumps. I fell back onto the mattress and my tongue explored the two new salty, bloody socket holes and their thorny stitches.

      The Liz Dunns of this world tend to get married, and then twenty-three months after their wedding and the birth of their first child they establish sensible, lower-maintenance hairdos that last them forever. Liz Dunns take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli. They own one sex toy, plus one cowboy fantasy that accompanies its use. No, not a cowboy—more like a guy who builds decks—expensive designer decks with built-in multi-faucet spas—a guy who would take hours, if necessary, to help such a Liz find the right colour of grout for the guest-room tile reno.

      I am a traitor to my name: I’m not cheerful or domestic. I’m drab, crabby and friendless. I fill my days fighting a constant battle to keep my dignity. Loneliness is my curse—our species’ curse—it’s the gun that shoots the bullets that make us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.

      Where does loneliness come from? I’d hazard a guess that the crapshoot that is family has more than a little to do with it—father’s a drunk; mother’s an agoraphobic; single child; middle child; firstborn; mother’s a nag; father’s a golf cheat … I mean, what’s your own nature/nurture crap-shoot? You’re here. You’re reading these words. Is this a coincidence? Maybe you think fate is only for others. Maybe you’re ashamed to be reading about loneliness—maybe someone will catch you and then they’ll know your secret stain. And then maybe you’re not even very sure what loneliness is—that’s common. We cripple our children for life by not telling them what loneliness is, all of its shades and tones and implications. When it clubs us on the head, usually just after we leave home, we’re blindsided. We have no idea what hit us. We think we’re diseased, schizoid, bipolar, monstrous and lacking in dietary chromium. It takes us until thirty to figure out what it was that sucked the joy from our youth, that made our brains shriek and burn on the inside, even while our exteriors made us seem as confident and bronzed as Qantas pilots. Loneliness.

      The message on my answering machine the next morning was from The Dwarf To Whom I Report. His name is Liam.

       I hope your surgery went okay, Liz. You didn’t miss too much here at the office. I’m having Donna courier you over a few files for you to pick away at over the next week while you recover. Sorry I missed you. Call any time.

      What? I didn’t miss anything? Heaven forbid anything even quasi-dramatic might occur in the cubicle farm of Landover Communication Systems …

       Liz, there was a fire …

       Liz, we all got naked at lunch hour and interfered with each other …