The Heart Goes Last (10 page)

Now she has to think about Stan. Stan in real life. “Max,” she says. “I need us to be serious.”

“I am serious,” says Max, moving his mouth down her neck.

“No, listen. I think he suspects me of something.” Why does she even think that? Because Stan’s been looking at her, or rather looking through her, as if she’s made of glass. That’s scarier than if he’d been crabby or angry, or outright accused her.

“How could he?” says Max. His head comes up: he’s alarmed. If Stan walked in through the front door, Max would be out the window like a shot. That’s what he’d do, she knows by now; that’s the realistic truth. She shouldn’t spook him too much, because she doesn’t want him fleeing, not before there’s a need. She wants to clutch him against her, the way kids clutch their stuffed animals: the thought of letting him go makes her sadder than anything.

“I don’t think he knows,” she says. “Not knows. As such. But he looks at me funny.”

“Is that all?” says Max. “Hey. I look at you funny too. Who wouldn’t?” He takes hold of her hair, turns her head, gives her a brief kiss. “Are you worried?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. He has a temper,” she says. “He might get violent.” That has an effect on Max.

“I would,” he says. “Hey. I would love to get violent with you.” He raises his hand; she flinches away, as he wants her to. Now they’re entwined again, snarled up in random cloth, falling down into namelessness.

Eyes closed, getting her breath back, she realizes how worried she is really: on a scale of one to ten, it’s at least an eight. What if Stan really does know? And what if he cares? He could get ugly, but how ugly? He could turn threatening. His brother Conor is that way, from what Stan’s told her: he’d think nothing of bashing a girl senseless if she cheated on him. What if Stan has a bad part like that hidden inside him?

Maybe she should protect herself now, while she can. If she saved just a little from each Procedure vial – if she pocketed one of the needles instead of depositing it for recycling – would anyone notice? She’d have to slide the needle in while Stan was asleep, so he’d be denied a beatific exit. Which would be unfair. But there’s a downside to everything.

What would she do with the body? That would be a problem. Dig a hole in the lawn? Someone would see. She has a wild thought of stashing it in her pink locker, supposing she could even drag it down there: Stan is quite heavy. Also she might have to cut part of him off to make him fit in, though the lockers are big. But if she left him there it would make a horrible stench, and the next time Max’s wife, Jocelyn, came down to the cellar to open her purple locker she’d be sure to smell it.

Max has never said much about Jocelyn, despite Charmaine’s gentle pestering. At the outset she’d vowed never to be jealous, because isn’t she herself the one Max truly wants? And she isn’t jealous: curiosity isn’t the same as jealousy. But whenever she asks, Max stonewalls her. “You don’t need to know,” he says.

She pictures Jocelyn as a rangy, aristocratic woman with her hair skinned back from her head, like a ballerina or a schoolteacher in old movies. A distant, snobby, disapproving woman. Sometimes she has the feeling that Jocelyn knows about her and is contemptuous of her. Worse: that Max has told Jocelyn about her, that they both think she’s a credulous pushover and a dime-a-dozen little slut, that they laugh together about her. But that’s paranoid.

She doesn’t think Max would be much help with Stan, supposing Stan was dead. Yes, Max is overpoweringly sexy, but he doesn’t have backbone, he doesn’t have grit, not the way Charmaine herself has them. He’d leave her holding the bag, the bagful of danger. The bagful of Stan, because she’d have to put Stan into a bag of some kind, she wouldn’t be able to look at him in cold blood that way. Lying inert and defenceless. She’d remember too much about how it was when they were in love, and then when they first got married, and had sex in the ocean, and he had that green shirt with the penguins on it … Just thinking about that shirt while at the same time thinking about Stan being dead makes her want to cry.

So maybe she does love him. Yes, of course she does! Think of how lucky she was to meet him, after Grandma Win died and she was all by herself, since her mother was gone and her father was gone in a different way, plus she had no wish to see that person ever again
.
Think of everything she and Stan have been through together, of what they had, what they lost, what they still had in spite of those losses. Think of how loyal he’s been to her.

Be the person you’ve always wanted to be,
they’d said at Positron. Is this the person she’s always wanted to be? A person so slack, so quick to give herself over, so easily rendered helpless, so lacking in, lacking in what? But whatever she’s lacking in, she would never want to harm Stan.

“Roll over, dirty girl,” says Max. “Open your eyes.” At some moments he likes her to watch him. “Tell me what you want.”

“Don’t stop,” she says.

He pauses. “Don’t stop what?” It’s such pauses that will make her say anything.

Has she been a fool? No question, yes. Has it been worth it? No. Maybe. Yes.

Or yes, right now.

On the evening before the December 1 switchover day there’s another Town Meeting. Not that anyone actually meets up: they watch on closed-circuit TV, whether they’re inside Positron Prison or out of it. The Town Meeting is to let everyone know how well the Consilience/Position experiment is doing. Their collective Healthy Interaction scores, their Food Production goals, their Dwelling Maintenance rates: things like that. Pep talks, Zing ratings, helpful feedback. Admonishments kept to a minimum, a few new rules added in at the end.

These Town Meetings emphasize the positives. Incidents of violence are way down, they’re told today – a graph pops onto the screen – and egg production is up. A new process will soon be introduced at Poultry: headless chickens nourished through tubes, which has been shown to decrease anxiety and increase meat growth efficiencies; in addition to which it eliminates cruelty to animals, which is the sort of multiple win that Positron has come to stand for! Shout-out to the Brussels Sprouts team, which has exceeded its quotas two months in a row! Let’s raise the bar on rabbit production in the second half of November, there are some great new rabbit recipes coming soon. More attention to the sorting for the Waste Recycling program, please; it won’t work unless we all pull together. And so on and so on.

Headless chickens, no fucking way I’d eat that, thinks Stan. He’s downed three beers before the meeting started: the Consilience brewery is up and running, and the beer is better than nothing, though he can imagine what Conor would say about it.
You’re joking. It’s not beer, it’s horse piss. What’s it made out of, anyway?

Yeah, what, he thinks, taking another swig. He lets his attention drift; Charmaine, sitting beside him on the sofa, chirps up with “Oh, the eggs are doing well! That must be you, hon!” He talks to her, off and on, about his work in the chicken facility, but she hasn’t been similarly forthcoming about her own work, which has made him curious about it. What exactly is it that she does, over at Medications Administration? It’s more than just giving out pills, but when he asks questions, her face goes blank and she shuts the conversation down. Or she says everything is just fine, as if he might think it isn’t.

There’s something else about Charmaine that’s been bothering him. During their town times, he’s tracked the scooter off and on, just to make sure his two-phone system is working. Everything was as expected: Charmaine spent her time bustling here and there, to the bakery, to the shops, back to the house. But then, on the switchover days he’s monitored, she’s been making detours. Why would she have gone to the seedier part of town, where the unreclaimed houses are located? What was she doing? Checking out future real estate? That must be why she spent so much time inside the houses: she must’ve been measuring the rooms. Is she in nesting mode? Is she going to start pushing for them to get another transfer, move into a bigger house? Is she planning a baby? That’s most likely her game plan, though she hasn’t brought up the subject lately. He isn’t sure how he feels about that: a baby might interere with his Jasmine plans, not that these are crystal clear. He hasn’t imagined much beyond that first sulfurous encounter.

He now knows where Jasmine goes during her time as a Consilience citizen: she gets on the very same pink-and-purple scooter and heads to the gym. She must work out a lot. How lithe and toned and strong her body must be.

That alarms him: she might put up a struggle when he surges out of the

swimming pool like a powerful giant squid and wraps her in his wet, naked arms. But she won’t struggle for long.

He’s taken to going to the gym himself, checking around. Not that Jasmine would be there, she’d be inside Positron. But the weight machines, the treadmills: her alluring bum must have reposed on one of the former, her agile feet must have walked upon one of the latter. Though he knows it’s impossible, he half expects to find signs of her: a dropped handkerchief, a glass slipper, some fuchsia bikini briefs. Magical signs of her presence.

Sometimes when he’s loitering he feels watched; perhaps by the shadowy face at the window one floor up, overlooking the gym’s swimming pool. That’s where the upper-management supervisors are said to get their exercise, so naturally they’d have a Surveillance person somewhere around. That thought makes him nervous: he doesn’t want to be singled out, he doesn’t want to be of special interest. Except to Jasmine.

The Town Meeting today skips the preliminary shots of happy workers and pie charts and focuses right in on Ed, who’s in full pep-talk mode. How well they are all doing with their Project tasks – beyond Ed’s highest expectations! They must be so proud of their efforts and achievements, history is being made, they are a model for future towns just like theirs; indeed, there are now nine other towns that are being reconstructed according to the Consilience/Positron model. If all goes well, soon that model will be deployed wherever the need is great – wherever the economy has flagged and left hard-working people stranded!

Better still, thanks to this model and its reordering of civic life, and the construction dollars that have been generated and the waste that’s been saved, the economy in those areas is pulling out of the slump. So many new initiatives! So much problem-solving! People can think so creatively when given the chance!

Hold on, thinks Stan. What’s underneath all the horn-tooting? Some folks must be making a shitload of cash out of this thing. But who, but where? Since not that much of it is trickling down inside the Consilience walls. Everyone’s got a place to live, true, but no one’s richer than anyone else.

So are they all being lied to, played for suckers? Sucked into doing the work while others roll around in the cash? Conor always said Stan was too trusting, that he could never sniff out a bent motive, that given the choice he’d pay top dollar for a baggie full of baking soda and stuff it up his nose. Fuck, said Conor, he’d probably even get high on it.

So how much of a dickwit have I been? Stan wonders. What exactly did I sign away? And is there really no way out except in a box, as Conor warned? That can’t be true: those at the top must be able to come and go at will. But apart from Ed, he doesn’t know who those people are.

He really wants another beer. But he’ll wait until this show is over, because what if the TV can see you?

Stan, Stan, he tells himself. Cool the paranoia. Why would they be interested in watching you watch them?

Now Ed has put on a fatherly frown. “Some of you,” he says, “and you know who you are – some of you have been dabbling in digital experimentation. Now, you all know the rules: phones are to be used for personal intercommunication with your friends and loved ones, but no more. But we take boundaries very seriously here at Positron! You may believe you’re engaging in private entertainment, and that your attempt to invade the private space of others is harmless. And so far no harm has been done. But our systems are very sensitive; they pick up even the faintest of unauthorized signals. Disconnect now – again, you know who you are – and we will take no action.”

The Consilience theme song comes on – it’s the barn-raising music from
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
– and the slogan zooms up: DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE. CONS + RESILIENCE = CONSILIENCE.

Stan feels a chill. Sober up, he tells himself. That message from Ed seemed aimed at several people, so they might not be on to him personally. Still, he’ll take that phone out of the scooter immediately. Never mind, he’s got Jasmine in his crosshairs. On switchover days, it’s first stop the house, next stop the gym.

It won’t be the gym, he decides: that would be too public. Instead it will be right here, at the house. On switchover day Charmaine will leave on her scooter and possibly inspect more real estate, after which she’ll park the scooter at Positron Prison, after which Jasmine will get onto it and drive it here. Meanwhile, he himself will stash his pile of clean, folded clothes in the green locker, key himself out of the house, and then, instead of heading right to the prison, he’ll wait in the garage. When Jasmine turns up he’ll watch her go into the house. Then he’ll follow, and the inevitable red-hot encounter will take place. They might not even make it upstairs, so overpowering will be their lust. The living room sofa; no, even that’s too formal. The carpet. Not the kitchen floor, though: that would be hard on the knees.

They won’t be interrupted by Max, because how can he get here without the scooter he shares with Stan – the red-and-green one? Which is supposed to be arriving at Positron about now, but which is still in the garage. He takes satisfaction in the thought of Max cooling his heels and checking his watch while his wayward, insatiable Jasmine is winding her arms and legs around Stan.

Now he’s in the garage. It’s warm for December 1, but he’s shivering a bit: it must be the tension. The hedge trimmer is hanging on the wall, newly cleaned, battery charged, ready for action, not that scum-bucket Max will appreciate the care Stan has taken. The hedge trimmer would make a good weapon, supposing Max makes it to the house by some other means and there’s a confrontation. The thing has a hair-trigger start button; once at full throttle, with its sharp saw whizzing around, it could take off a guy’s head. Self-defence would be his plea.

If that doesn’t happen and instead he gets involved in some heavy tangling with Jasmine, he’ll be late for check-in. That’s frowned on, but he’ll have to risk it because he can’t go on the way he’s been going. It’s eating him up. It’s killing him.

There’s a crack in the front door of the garage. Stan is peering through it, waiting for Jasmine to drive up on her pink scooter, so he doesn’t hear the side door opening.

“It’s Stan, isn’t it?” says a voice. He jerks upright, whirls around. His first instinct is to go for the hedge trimmer. But it’s a woman.

“Who the fuck are you?” he says. She’s on the short side, with straight black hair down to her shoulders. Dark eyebrows. A heavy mouth, no lipstick. Black jeans and T-shirt. She looks like a dyke martial arts expert.

There’s something familiar. Has he seen her at the gym? No, not there. It was the workshop, when they’d just signed on. She was with that dork of an Ed.

“I live here,” she says. She smiles. Her teeth are square: piano-key teeth.

“Jasmine?” he asks uncertainly. It can’t be. This isn’t what Jasmine looks like.

“There is no Jasmine,” she says. Now he’s confused. If there is no Jasmine, how does she know there’s supposed to be one?

“Where’s your scooter?” he says. “How did you get here?”

“I drove,” she says. “In the car. I’m parked next door. By the way, I’m Jocelyn.” She holds out her hand, but Stan doesn’t take it. Shit, he thinks. She’s in Surveillance, which is the only way she could have a car. He feels cold.

“Now maybe you’d better tell me why you hid that phone in my scooter,” she says, withdrawing her hand. “Or the scooter you thought was mine. I’ve been following it around, your clever tracker. It shows up well on our monitoring equipment.”

Somehow they’re in the kitchen – his kitchen, her kitchen, their kitchen. He’s sitting down. Everything here is familiar to him – there’s the coffee machine, there are the folded tea towels Charmaine set out before she left – but it all seems foreign to him.

“Want a beer?” she says. A sound comes out of his mouth. She pours the beer and one for herself, then sits down opposite him, leans forward, and describes to him in way too much detail the movements of Charmaine on switchover days. In and out of the vacant houses, for months now, in conjunction with Jocelyn’s husband, Max. Conjunction is the word she uses. Among other, shorter words.

Though Max isn’t her husband’s real name. His name is Phil, and she’s had this kind of problem with him before. She always knows about it, and he knows she knows but is pretending not to know. He knows about the cameras hidden in the vacant houses, he knows she has access to the footage. That’s part of the attraction for him: the certainty that he’s performing for her. He’ll stray off-track – it’s an addiction like gambling, it’s an illness, doesn’t Stan agree, you have to feel sorry – and she’ll let him run with it for a while. It’s an outlet for him: in a gated city with one-way gates, outlets are limited for a man like him. He’s tried to get help with this sex addiction of his, he’s tried counselling, he’s tried aversion therapy, but so far nothing has worked. It doesn’t help that he’s so good-looking. Women with overactive romantic imaginations more or less throw themselves at him. There’s no shortage.

When she thinks whatever he’s mixed himself up with has gone far enough, she confronts him. That shuts it down: he cuts it off with the woman in question, no loose ends. Then, after an interval of promising to go straight, he’ll start on another one. It’s been humiliating for her personally, even though he assures her that he’s loyal to her in his heart, it’s just that he can’t control his impulses.

“But there’s never been a wild card before,” she says. “Not one of our own Alternates. Mine and Phil’s.”

Stan’s so fucking addled he can’t think straight. Charmaine! Right under his nose, the slutty cheat – withholding sex from him, or doling it out in chilly slices between clean sheets. It must’ve been her who wrote that note, sealed it with a fuchsia kiss. How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being? And with some dipshit named Phil, married to a lady wrestler! On the other hand, how dare anyone else tag his wife as a mere outlet? “Wild card,” he says weakly. “You mean Charmaine.”

“No. I mean you,” she says. She looks at him from under her eyebrows. “You’re the wild card.” She smiles at him: not a demure smile. Despite her lack of makeup, her mouth looks dark and liquid, like oil.

“I need to be getting along,” he says. “I need to check in before curfew, over at Positron. I need –”

“That’s all taken care of,” she says. “I control the identity codes. I’ve rearranged the data so Phil’s going there in your place.”

“What?” says Stan. “But what about my job? It takes training, he can’t just –”