The Heart Goes Last (18 page)

“Thank you,” says the head. The plastic key slides out of the slot at the bottom of the box. Charmaine puts it into her lab coat pocket, waits for the slip of paper with the details of the Procedure printed on it: room number, Positron name, age, last dose of sedative, and when administered. It’s necessary to know how alert the subject may be.

Nothing happens. The head is staring at her with a meaningful half-smile. Now what? thinks Charmaine. Don’t tell me the dratted data bank has messed up my identity numbers again.

“I need the Procedure slip,” she says to the head. Even if it’s only a canned image, her request will surely register.

“Charmaine,” the head says to her. “We need to talk.”

Charmaine feels the hair stand up on the back of her neck. The head knows her real name. It’s talking to her directly. It’s as if the sofa has spoken.

“What?” she says. “What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” the head says, “yet. But you’re on probation. You must undergo a test.”

“What do you mean, probation?” says Charmaine. “I’ve always been good at this job, I’ve never had any complaints, my job assessment score has been …” She’s twisting the latex glove in her right-hand pocket; she tells herself to stop. It’s bad to show agitation, as if she’s in some way guilty. She’s up for their darn test, whatever it is: she’s willing to bet her technique and fulfillment against anybody’s. They can’t fault her, except for not wearing her face mask, but who in their right mind would care about that?

“It’s not your competence that’s in question,” says the head. “But Management has had some misgivings about your professional dedication.”

“I’ve always been extremely dedicated!” Charmaine says. Somebody must have been gossiping about her, telling lies. “You have to be dedicated to do this job! Who says I haven’t been dedicated?” It’s that bitch Aurora, from Human Resources. Or someone in her knitting group, because she wasn’t peppy enough about those darn blue bears. “I love my job, I mean, I don’t love having to do what I do, but I know it’s my duty to do it, because it has to be done by someone, and I’ve always taken the best care and been very meticulous, and …”

“Let’s call it loyalty,” says the head.

Why did the head say
loyalty
? Is
loyalty
about her and Max? “I’ve always been loyal,” she says. Her voice sounds weak.

“It’s a matter of degree,” says the head. “Please pay attention. You must carry out the Procedure as usual today. It is very important that you complete the task that has been assigned to you.”

“I always complete the task!” says Charmaine indignantly.

“Today, this time, you may encounter a situation that you find challenging. Despite this, the Procedure must be carried out. Your future here depends on it. Are you ready for that?”

“What kind of situation?” Charmaine asks.

“You have an option,” says the head. “You can resign from Medications Administration right now and go back to Towel-Folding, or some other undemanding form of work, if you feel you are not up to the test.” It smiles, showing its strong, square teeth.

Charmaine would like to ask if she could have some time to think it over. But maybe that wouldn’t be taken well: the head could see it as a flaw in her loyalty.

“You must decide now,” says the head. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” says Charmaine. “I’m ready.”

“All right then,” says the head. “You have now chosen. There are only two kinds of people admitted to the Medications Administration wing: those who do and those who are done to. You have elected the role of those who do. If you fail, the consequences to yourself will be severe. You may find yourself playing the other role. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” says Charmaine faintly. That was a threat: if she doesn’t eliminate, she’ll be eliminated. It’s very clear. Her hands are cold.

“Very well,” says the head. “Here are the details of your Procedure for today.” The slip of paper slides out of the slot. Charmaine picks it up. The room number and the sedative information are there, but the name is missing.

“There isn’t any name,” Charmaine says. But the head has vanished.

Stan lets his mind float free. Time is passing; whatever will happen to him is about to happen. There’s not a thing he can do about it.

Are these my last minutes? he asks himself. Surely not. Despite his earlier moment of panic, he’s now oddly calm. But not resigned, not numbed. Instead he’s intensely, painfully alive. He can feel his own thunderous heartbeat, he can hear the blood surging through his veins, he can sense every muscle, every tendon. His body is massive, like rock, like granite; though possibly a little soft around the middle.

I should have worked out more, he thinks. I should have done everything more. I should have cut loose from … from what? Looking back on his life, he sees himself spread out on the earth like a giant covered in tiny threads that have held him down. Tiny threads of petty cares and small concerns, and fears he took seriously at the time. Debts, timetables, the need for money, the longing for comfort; the earworm of sex, repeating itself over and over like a neural feedback loop. He’s been the puppet of his own constricted desires.

He shouldn’t have let himself be caged in here, walled off from freedom. But what does freedom mean any more? And who had caged him and walled him off? He’d done it himself. So many small choices. The reduction of himself to a series of numbers, stored by others, controlled by others. He should have left the disintegrating cities, fled the pinched, cramped life on offer there. Broken out of the electronic net, thrown away all the passwords, gone forth to range over the land, a gaunt wolf howling at midnight.

But there isn’t any land to range over any more. There isn’t any place without fences, roadways, networks. Or is there? And who would go with him, be with him? Supposing he can’t find Conor. Supposing, unthinkable, that Conor is dead. Would Charmaine be up to such a trip? Would she even want him to smuggle her out? Would she consider it rescue? She’s never liked camping, she wouldn’t want to do without her clean flowered sheets. Still, he has a brief flash of longing: the two of them, hand in hand, walking into the sunrise, all betrayals forgotten, ready for a new life, somewhere, somehow. With maybe some strike-anywhere matches, and … what else would they need?

He tries to visualize the world outside the walls of Consilience. But he has no real picture of that world any more. All he sees is fog.

Charmaine keys herself into the dispensary, locates the cabinet, codes open its door. She finds the vial and the needle. She pockets them, snaps on her latex gloves, then walks along the corridor to the left.

These corridors are always empty when she’s on her way to a Procedure. Do they do that on purpose, so nobody will know who has terminated which person? Nobody, that is, except the head. And whoever is behind the head. And whoever may be watching her right now, from inside a light fixture or through a tiny lens the size of a rivet. She straightens her shoulders, adjusts her face into what she hopes is a positive but determined expression.

Here’s the room. She opens the door, steps quietly in. Removes her facemask.

The man is lying on his back, attached to the trolley bed at five points, as he should be. His head is turned a little away from her. Most likely he’s staring at the ceiling, whatever part of it he can see. And most likely the ceiling is staring back at him.

“Hello,” she says as she walks over to the bed. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Look at all the lovely sunshine! I always find a sunny day is really cheering, don’t you?”

The man’s head turns toward her, as far as it can turn. The eyes meet hers. It’s Stan.

“Oh my god,” says Charmaine. She almost drops the needle. She blinks, hoping the face will change into the face of someone else, a total stranger. But it doesn’t change.

“Stan,” she whispers. “What are they doing to you? Oh, honey. What did you do?” Has he committed a crime? What kind of a crime? It must have been very bad. But maybe there was no crime, or just a little one, because what sort of a crime would Stan have done? He’s sometimes grumpy and he can lose his temper, but he’s not mean as such. He’s not the criminal type.

“Did you try to find me?” she says. “Honey? You must have been crazy with worry. Did you …” Has his love for her driven him over the edge? Has he found out about Max and killed him? That would be terrible. A fatal threesome, like something she’d see on the TV news, back at Dust. The sleazier news.

“Uhuhuhuh,” says Stan. There’s a trickle of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth. Tenderly she wipes it away. He’s killed for her! He must have! His eyes are wide: he’s pleading with her, silently.

This is more horrible than anything. She wants to rush out of the room, run back to her cell and shut the door and throw herself onto the bed and pull the covers over her head, and pretend that none of this has ever happened. But her feet don’t move. All the blood is draining out of her brain. Think, Charmaine, she tells herself. But she can’t think.

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you,” she says as she usually does, but it’s as if her mouth is moving by itself, with a dead voice coming out. Though the voice is trembling.

Stan doesn’t believe her. “Uhuhuhuh,” he says. He’s straining against the bands that hold him in place.

“You’re going to have such a great time,” she says to him. “We’ll have this done in a jiffy.” There are tears running out of her eyes; she blots them away with her sleeve, because such tears won’t do and she hopes no one has seen them, not even Stan. Especially not Stan. “You’ll be home really soon,” she tells him. “And then we’ll have a lovely dinner, and watch TV.” She moves behind him, out of his line of vision. “And then we’ll go to bed together, the way we used to. Won’t that be nice?”

The tears are coming harder. She can’t help herself, she’s flashing on the two of them when they were first married, and planning – oh, so many things for their new life together. A house, and kids, and everything. They were so sweet then, so hopeful; so young, not like the way she is now. And then it hadn’t worked out, because of circumstances. And it was a strain, so many tensions, what with the car and everything, but they’d stayed together because they had each other and they loved each other. And then they’d come here, and at first it was so lovely, so clean, everything in its place, with happy music and popcorn in front of the TV, but then …

Then there was that lipstick. The kiss she’d made with it. Starved. Her fault.

Get hold of yourself, Charmaine, she tells herself. Don’t be sentimental. Remember it’s a test.

They’re watching her. They can’t be serious about this. They can’t expect her to – not kill, no, she will not use the
kill
word. They can’t expect her to relocate her own husband.

She strokes Stan’s head. “Shhh,” she says to him. “It’s okay.” She always strokes their heads, but this time it’s not any old head, it’s Stan’s head, with his bristly haircut. She knows every feature of his head so well, each eye, each ear, and the corner of the jaw, and the mouth with Stan’s teeth in it, and the neck, and the body that’s attached to it. It’s almost glowing, that body: it’s as clear to her as anything, each freckle and hair, as if she’s looking at it through a magnifying glass. She wants to throw her arms around that body to hold it still, keep it in this present moment, because unless she can do that it doesn’t have a future.

She can’t do the Procedure. She won’t do it. She’ll march out of here, back to Reception, and demand to talk with the woman’s head in the box. “I’m not falling for this,” she’ll say. “I’m not doing your stupid test, so just take a flying leap.”

But wait. What will happen then? Someone else will come in and relocate Stan. The bad thing will happen to him anyway, and whoever it is will not do it in a considerate and respectful way, not the way she does. And what will become of her, Charmaine, if she fails the test? It won’t just be back to Towel-Folding, it will be into the plastic cuffs and the hood and the shackles, like Sandi; then onto the gurney with the five straps. That must be why they put Sandi in her cell: as a warning. She’s cold all over now. She can hardly breathe.

“Oh, Stan,” she whispers into his left ear. “I don’t know how things got this way. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Uhuhuhuh,” says Stan. It’s like a dog whimper. But he’s heard her, he understands. Is that a nod?

She kisses him on the forehead. Then, taking a big chance, she kisses him on the mouth, a heartfelt, lingering kiss. He doesn’t kiss her back – his mouth must be paralyzed – but at least he doesn’t try to bite her.

Then she sticks the needle into the vial. She watches her hands, in their latex gloves, moving like seaweed; her arms are heavy, as if she’s swimming in liquid glue. Everything’s in slow motion.

Standing behind Stan, she feels gently for the vein in his neck, finds it. His heart beats like percussion under her fingertips. She slides in the needle.

Then a jolt, then a spasm. Like electrocution.

Then she hits the floor.

Blackout.

When Stan wakes up, he’s no longer strapped down. He’s curled up on his side, lying on something soft. He’s dizzy, and he’s got a crashing headache, like three prime hangovers all at once.

He unglues his eyelids: several pairs of big white eyes with round black pupils are staring into his. What the shit are these? He struggles to sit up, loses his balance, flounders in a mound of small, yielding, fuzzy bodies. Enormous spiders? Caterpillars? Despite himself, he yelps.

A grip, Stan, he tells himself. Get two, they’re cheap.

Ah. He’s lying in a large bin filled with knitted blue teddy bears. Those are the white round-pupilled eyes watching him. “Fuck,” he says. Then he adds, for good measure, “Fucking hell!” At least he’s got his voice back.

He’s in a warehouse with metal rafters and a dim strip of fluorescent lighting overhead. Peering over the side of the bin, he scopes out the floor: cement. That must be why they put him on top of the teddy bears: there’s nothing else in this place that’s in any way soft. Someone’s been thoughtful.

He feels around his own body: parts all accounted for. Thank crap they got rid of the diaper or whatever that was, though it’s humiliating to visualize the removal process. They’ve even put some new clothes on him: an orange Positron boiler suit plus a fleece jacket. And thick socks, because it’s cold as a witch’s tit in here. Stands to reason: it’s February. And why heat a warehouse with nothing in it but teddy bears?

What next? Where is everyone? Not a good idea to shout. Maybe get up, find the exit? But wait: one of his legs is tethered to the side of the metal bin with, yes, a nylon cuff. That must be to keep him from wandering around, leaving this warehouse, bumping into whoever’s outside the door. Nothing to do but wait until Jocelyn comes and tells him what the fuck he’s supposed to do.

He checks over the warehouse interior once again. More bins like the one he’s lying in, arranged in a row. That’s a freaking large number of teddy bears. Also – over toward what he’s now identified as the doors, a small one for people, a big sliding one for trucks – there are some stacks of long boxes that look a lot like coffins, narrower at one end. He sure hopes he’s not shut up in here with a bunch of soon-to-be-rotting corpses.

Which is what Charmaine must think he already is himself, the sad bitch. Her distress wasn’t faked: those tears were real. She was shaking when she felt his neck and then stuck the needle into it: she must’ve truly believed she was murdering him. She must’ve passed out right after that: in the split second before the drug hit him and he went out in a blissful swirl of coloured lights, he’d heard the impact as she did a vertical face-plant onto the floor.

If he’d had money on the proposition that Charmaine would never go through with it, he’d have lost the bet. She’s amazing in her own way, Charmaine; under all that fluff she has guts, he has to give her that. He thought she’d let love get in the way, that she’d lose her nerve and start whimpering and back off. That she’d maybe throw herself onto him, wreck the plan. So much for his ability to second-guess: Jocelyn’s fix on Charmaine had been better than his.

Poor Charmaine, he thinks. She must be putting herself through hell right now. Remorse, guilt, and so forth. How does he feel about that? Part of him – the vengeful part – is saying, Serves her right. Her and her cheating heart, and he hopes she writhes in anguish and boo-hoos her angelic blue eyes out. Another part is saying, To be fair, Stan, you’ve cheated on her too, both in intention and in deed. True, you thought you were chasing a different purple passion than the one you caught. With whom you had sex on many occasions, and though your heart may not have been into it, your body was. Or into it enough. So let bygones be bygones and wipe the slate.

Yeah, says the vengeful part, but dumb Charmaine doesn’t know about Jocelyn, so if you ever get back together with her you can hold her fling with Max/Phil over her head forever. Tell her you’ve seen the videos. Repeat back to her the things she says on them. Turn her into a handful of soggy tissue. Wipe your boots on her: there would be some satisfaction in that. Not to mention the fact that she murdered you. She’ll be your slave, she’ll never dare say no to you, she’ll wait on you hand and foot.

Either that or she’ll put rodent poison in your coffee. There’s a steely side to her. Don’t discount it. So maybe you should strike first, given the chance. Dump her. Toss her clothes onto the lawn. Lock the door. Or hit her on the head with a brick. Is that what Conor would do?

You forget, he tells himself. I’ll probably never be back inside that house again. Unless something goes wrong once I’m outside the walls, I’ll never be back in Consilience. That life is gone. I’m supposed to be dead.

Should he be angry about that? Maybe not: being dead is for his own good. On the other hand, he didn’t ask to be dead, he didn’t wish it upon himself. He’s simply been assigned, as if he’s a member of an army in which he’s never enlisted. He’s been fucking drafted, against his will, and meanwhile he’s in here chained to a binful of knitted bears, and that sadistic bitch Jocelyn seems to have forgotten all about him, and despite the headache he’s starting to feel hungry. Plus he’s freezing his nuts off. It must be near freezing: he can see his breath in front of him.

He lies down again, covers himself with blue teddy bears. They’ll be some insulation. The only thing to do right now is go to sleep.

When Charmaine wakes up, she’s alone. And she’s back in her house. Their house, hers and Stan’s; or rather hers and Stan’s once, but now only hers, because Stan will never be in this house again. Never, never, never, never, never. She starts to cry.

She’s lying on the sofa, the royal blue one with the pretty off-white lilies; though with her face up close to it like this, she can see that it needs a cleaning, because someone’s been spilling coffee on it, and other things. She can remember pretending to dislike this pattern, pretending to want to change it, pretending she was going to look at fabric swatches as an excuse to leave the house early on switchover days so she could be with Max. Stan could be counted on to take no interest whatsoever in slipcovers or wallpaper or any of those things. His lack of interest once annoyed her – weren’t they supposed to be home-building together? – but after that she’d welcomed it, because it was a blind spot of his that gave her some time with Max. Now it makes her cry because Stan is dead.

There. She said it.
Dead
. She cries harder. She’s sobbing, her breath coming in staccato gulps. Stan, what have I done to you? she thinks. Where have you gone?

Though she’s crying as hard as she can, she nevertheless notices a strange thing: she’s no longer wearing her orange boiler suit. Instead she has on a peach-and-grey checked outfit in a light wool weave, with a flared skirt and a fitted jacket. There’s supposed to be a matching blouse, which is peach imitation silk, with peach flamenco dancer ruffles on the front, but that isn’t the blouse she has on, which is a blue floral print and doesn’t go with the outfit at all. She selected the peach-and-grey ensemble with care from the “Smile in Style” section of the digital catalogue just after she and Stan signed into Consilience. It was a choice between the peach and grey and the other combos, the navy blue and white, which was a little too Chanel for her, and the lime green and orange – no contest there because she can’t wear lime green, it washes her out.

Plus she folded up this outfit and stored it in her pink locker in the cellar along with her other civilian clothes right before going in for her latest stint at Positron. So someone has the code to her locker, and someone has been rummaging through her things. The very same somebody must have taken off the boiler suit and dressed her up in the checked outfit, with the wrong blouse.

“Feeling better now?” says a voice. She looks up from the sofa. Holy heck, it’s Aurora from Human Resources, with the overdone face job that makes her look like a gecko: unmoving cheek muscles, pop eyes. Aurora is about the last person she wants to see, not only here and now but ever.

Aurora’s carrying a tray – Charmaine’s tray, she picked it herself, from the catalogue’s tray options – with a teapot on it. Charmaine’s teapot, though it came with the house. Charmaine feels invaded. How dare Aurora barge into her home while she herself is passed out on the sofa and simply take over the kitchen as if she owns it?

“I’ve made you some nice hot tea,” says Aurora with a pitying, maddening demi-smile. “I understand you’ve had a shock. You hit your head when you fainted, but they don’t think you were concussed. You should have an X-ray though, just to be sure. I’ve arranged that for you, later today.”

Charmaine can’t get out a word. She struggles to control her tears. She’s heaving, she’s gasping; snot is running out of her nose. “Go ahead, have a good cry,” says Aurora, as if granting royal permission. “A good cry clears the air. Not to mention the sinuses,” she adds: her version of a joke.

“Did you open my locker?” Charmaine manages to squeeze out.

“Now why would I do that?” says Aurora.

“Someone did,” says Charmaine. “Because I’m wearing different clothes.” The thought of Aurora changing her clothes like a Barbie doll’s while she was out cold gives her a shuddery feeling all over.

“I expect you did it yourself, and just don’t remember it. You must have had an episode of temporary amnesia,” says Aurora in that know-it-all voice of hers. “A shock like the one you’ve had can bring on a fugue state. You were on the sofa when I got here ten minutes ago.” She sets the tea tray down on the coffee table. “The brain is very protective, it decides what we choose to remember.”

Charmaine feels anger flooding her, pushing out the grief. If she’d been down in the cellar getting stuff out of her locker she’d remember it, in addition to which she never would’ve picked this blouse. What kind of a fashion loser do they think she is? Who brought her back here from Medications Administration, anyway?

She pulls herself upright, swings her legs down onto the floor. She absolutely, totally does not want Aurora to see her in this state, the state of a mud puddle. She wipes her nose and eyes on her sleeve since a tissue is lacking, brushes the damp hair back off her forehead, pulls her face into a semblance of order. “Thank you,” she says as crisply as she can. “Actually, I’m fine.”

Does Aurora know about what Charmaine has done to Stan? Maybe she can bluff, conceal her weakness. Say she fainted because she had her period or low blood-sugar or something.

“Well, that’s very strong of you,” says Aurora. “I mean, not many people would have such a firm sense of duty and loyalty.” She sits down on the sofa beside Charmaine. “I have to admire you, I really do.” She pours the tea into the cup – Charmaine’s cup, with the pink rosebuds that Stan never liked. But he never liked tea anyway, he was a coffee kind of guy, with cream and two sugars. She represses a sob.

“I really should apologize, on behalf of management,” says Aurora, setting the cup down on the coffee table in front of Charmaine. “It was so tactless of Logistics.” She’s put a cup for herself on the tray; she busies herself with filling it. Charmaine takes a gulp of tea. It does help.

“What do you mean?” she says, though she knows perfectly well what Aurora means. Aurora’s enjoying this. She’s relishing it.

“They should have booked you for someone else’s Procedure,” says Aurora. “They shouldn’t have put you through such an ordeal.” She measures the sugar into her own cup, stirs it.

“What ordeal?” says Charmaine. “I was just doing my job.” But it’s no use: she can see that in the tidy non-smile on Aurora’s over-lifted mask of a face.

“He was your husband, wasn’t he?” says Aurora. “Your most recent Procedure. According to the records. Whatever the state of your private life together, and that is none of our business and I don’t want to pry, but whatever that state, carrying out the Procedure must have been … truly a difficult decision for you to make.” She cranks up her smile, a smile of smarmy understanding. Charmaine feels like whacking her across the face. What do you know about it, you shrivelled-up prissy-pants? she would like to yell.

“I just do my job,” she says defensively. “I follow the prescribed routine. In all cases.”

“I appreciate your desire to – shall we say – blur the outlines,” says Aurora. “But we happen to have taped the entire process, as we do at random, for quality control. It was very … it was touching. Watching you struggle with your emotions. I was moved, I really was, we all were! We could see you faltering, it was only natural, I mean, who wouldn’t? You’d have to be inhuman. But you did overcome them, those emotions! Don’t think we haven’t noted that. The overcoming. Of the emotions. In fact, our chief himself, Ed, would like to thank you in person, and a little bird told me, it’s not official, but I think there might be a promotion in the offing, because if anyone deserves it for the heroic –”

“I think you should leave now,” says Charmaine, setting down her cup. In one more minute she is going to throw that cup and everything in it. Smack-dab in the middle of Aurora’s prefab face.

“Of course,” says Aurora, with a half-smile like a perfectly symmetrical slice of lemon. “I do feel your pain. It must be so, well, so painful. The pain that you feel. We’ve booked a trauma counsellor for you, because of course you will be experiencing survivor’s guilt. Well, more than just
survivor’s
guilt, because with a survivor, all they did was survive, whereas you, I mean …

Charmaine stands up abruptly, knocking over her cup. “Please get out,” she says as steadily as she can. “Right now.”

Go on, says her little inner voice. Bash this teapot over her head. Cut her throat with the bread knife. Then drag her downstairs and hide the body in your pink locker.

But Charmaine refrains. There would be telltale bloodstains on the rug. Plus, if they’d videoed her with Stan and the needle, they might have a way of doing that inside this house as well.

“You’ll feel differently tomorrow,” says Aurora, standing too, still smiling her flat, stretched smile. “We all adjust, in time. The funeral is on Thursday, that’s in two days. Electrical accident at the chicken facility is the explanation we’re giving; it will be on the news tonight. Everyone at the funeral will want to offer condolences, so you should be prepared. I’ll arrange a car for six-thirty, to pick you up for your concussion X-ray; it’s after hours, but they’ll be waiting for you specially. In your state, you shouldn’t be driving your scooter.”