Free JPod by Douglas Coupland Page A

the clones I made this season." She sat down heavily in a kitchen chair.
    Dad said, "Kids. All they do is wreck stuff."
    "Where is your new girlfriend, dear?"
    "She's in Greg's old bedroom."
    "Why?"
    "She's kind of baked."
    "So let me guess, then—she smoked the bud?"
    "Kinda."
    "Ethan, how could 'you go out with a druggie? Did she steal my earrings, too? Should I check my jewellery to make sure it's all there?"
    "You're making too big a deal of this, Mom. It was a first date. Last date, too."
    Mom stood up and began removing dinner ingredients from the fridge and freezer. She turned around. "You know what, dear? I don't want to see your girlfriend or know her name. This is your get-out-of-jail-free card. Just pack her up and take her away. I think we've all learned our lesson for the day."
    Dad turned to me. "Ungrateful litde bastard." He winked. "Come on, I'll help you get her to the car."
    Dad and I lugged Ellen out to her car, plunking her in the back seat along with a one-third-empty box of Dad's headshots, which he made me promise to drop off at his agent's. He wrote down Ellen's address. "Just park it in her garage. When she wakes up, she'll figure things out."
    "What about me?"
    "Oh, right." He reached into his pocket. "Here's a twenty. Take a cab, but keep the receipt, as I can claim it on taxes."
    So I drove Ellen to her condo in Kitsilano, not far from the beach, and put her inside on her bed. I cabbed to pick up my car, then finally got home to my dishevelled but lovable three-storey dump in Chinatown. When I got the door open, a wave of relief flooded me. I could have a long bath and forget turdes and bodies and Steve and Dad and Ellen and . . .
    I turned on the light to find maybe twenty stick-thin Chinese people huddled on my floor: men, women and children. I dropped my keys and turned around, only to bump into my brother.
    "Greg, what the hell's going on in there?"
    "Chill out. They're friends of mine. I just needed a place to put them for a few hours."
    "What do you mean, friends? They look like refugees."
    "They are refugees."
    "What the hell are you doing with—refuge? And in my place, too."
    "I owe a friend a favour."
    "What kind of friend is that?"
    "Stop acting like a little girl. They're only here for a few hours, and then they ship out."
    "I—" Words failed me. Meanwhile, I looked at the refugees. "Shit, Greg. I gave you a copy of my key for emergencies. Don't get me caught up in your weird business shit. And why aren't you in Hong Kong? Mom said you were in Hong Kong."
    "I told them not to touch any surface or object, and trust me, they won't." The refugees looked at Greg in a way that said he was alpha dog, and not to be crossed.
    "There, look—they're not even sitting on your furniture."
    "What's that smell?"
    Greg barked a question in Mandarin, and a woman replied.
    "They've been shitting in a cardboard box off the kitchen. They didn't know how the toilet worked."
    "Get them out of here now, or I phone the government."
    Greg turned frosty on me. "That's not something that's going to happen, Ethan."
    "Wait a second. These people aren't really refugees, are they?"
    "That depends how you define 'refugee.' And if you mean 'noble fellow world citizens searching for a better life on a new continent'—"
    "Greg, you're people-smuggling."
    "Keep your voice down. I'm not the one who's people-smuggling. My friend, Kam Fong, is the, uh, businessman here. He messed up a connection, and I owed him one."
    "How did they get here?"
    "A truck dropped them off six hours ago."
    "You're the world's biggest asshole."
    "Ethan, it was either that or have my real estate licence revoked. Kam Fong is well connected."
    "Kam Fong? Isn't that the name of the guy who played Steve McGarrett's sidekick on Hawaii Five-0}"
    "It is. Isn't that a gas?"
    "Have these people had anything to eat in the past week?"
    "What am I—a flight attendant? How should I know?"
    "They have to eat something. They're so skinny."
    "I'd order