The Heart Goes Last (24 page)

The bag has a zipper. Stan undoes it. Inside, staring up at him with its round blank eyes, is a blue knitted teddy bear.

Charmaine makes it through the reception somehow. She manages the receiving line and the hand-clasping and the meaningful glances, and the arm strokings, and even the hugs from both of her teddy bear knitting groups. That second group hardly talked to her at all, as if she’d done something wrong; but now that she
has
done something wrong they’re all mushy and huggy, with their breaths of egg salad sandwiches. Which just goes to show, as Grandma Win would have said. But what does it go to show? That people are delusional?

We’re so sorry for your loss
. Buzz off! Charmaine wants to yell. But she smiles feebly and says to each one of them,
Oh, thank you. Thank you for all your support.
Including when I really needed it and you treated me like puppy throw-up.

Now they’re in Aurora’s car, and Aurora’s in the front seat, and Charmaine is eating the asparagus pinwheel she wrapped in a paper napkin and tucked into her clutch bag when no one was looking, because despite everything she has to keep up her strength. And now they’re at Charmaine’s house, and Aurora is removing her unflattering black hat in front of the hall mirror. And now she’s saying, “Let’s just kick off our shoes and get comfortable. I’ll make some tea, and then we can start your grief therapy.” She smiles with her stretched-back face. For a fleeting instant, she looks afraid; but what has she got to be afraid of? Nothing. Unlike Charmaine.

“I don’t need any grief therapy,” Charmaine mutters sulkily. She feels bodiless and also unbalanced, as if the floor is tilting. She teeters over to the sofa on her high heels and plunks herself down. She’ll be darned if she lets these mean, lying people give her grief therapy. What would they want to therapize about? The way Stan is supposed to have died or the way he really did die? Whichever, it will be a major brain mess.

“Trust me, it will do you good,” says Aurora as she disappears into the kitchen. She’ll put a pill in the tea, thinks Charmaine. She’ll blot out my memory, that’s likely their idea of grief therapy. In the kitchen the radio turns on: “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Charmaine’s neck prickles: are they playing that on purpose? Do they know about her habit of humming her favourite cheerful tunes while she readies herself to do the Procedures?

Aurora enters in her stocking feet, carrying a tray with a plate of oatmeal cookies and three cups. Not two, three. Charmaine feels cold all over: who’s in the kitchen?

“There,” says Aurora. “Girls’ tea party!”

Jocelyn saunters out of the kitchen. She’s holding a blue knitted teddy bear. Her expression is – what? Sarcastic, Charmaine would once have said. More like inquisitive. But concealing it.

“What’re you doing in my kitchen?” Charmaine says. Her voice is squeaky with outrage. Really it’s too much! Privacy invasion! Ease up, she tells herself: this woman could obliterate you with one word.

“In point of fact, every other month it’s
my
kitchen,” says Jocelyn. “I happen to live here when I’m not working from Positron.”

“You’re my
Alternate?
” says Charmaine. “So you must be …” Oh no. “Max’s wife! Or Phil, or whatever he. …”

“Maybe we should have our tea first,” Aurora offers, “before we get into the –”

“Never mind which wife is whose,” says Jocelyn. “We can’t waste time on the sexual spaghetti. I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. Many lives will depend on it.” She gives Charmaine a severe stare, like a gym teacher’s. Goodness, thinks Charmaine. Now what have I done?

“First of all,” says Jocelyn, “Stan isn’t dead.”

“Yes, he is!” says Charmaine. “That’s a lie! I know he is! He
has
to be dead!”

“You think you killed him,” says Jocelyn.

“You told me to!” says Charmaine.

“I told you to carry out the Special Procedure,” says Jocelyn, “and you did. Thank you for that, and for your overreaction; it was a great help. But the formula you administered merely induced temporary unconsciousness. Stan is now safely inside a facility adjacent to Positron Prison, awaiting further instructions.”

“You’re lying again!” says Charmaine. “If he’s alive, why did you make me go through that whole funeral thing?”

“Your grief had to be genuine,” says Jocelyn. “Facial expression recognition tech is very precise these days. We needed everyone watching you to endorse a reality in which Stan is dead. Dead is the only way he can be effective.”

Effective at what? Charmaine wonders. “I just don’t believe you!” she says. Is that a butterfly of hope somewhere inside her?

“Listen for a minute. He sent you a message,” says Jocelyn. She fiddles with the blue teddy bear, and out of it comes Stan’s voice:
Hi, honey, this is Stan. It’s okay, I’m alive. They’ll get you out, we can be together again, but you have to have faith in them, you have to do what they say. I love you.”
The voice is tinny and sound far away. Then there’s a click.

Charmaine is stunned. This has to be fake! But if it really is Stan, how can she trust that he’s being allowed to speak for himself? She has an image of him with a gun to his head, being forced to record the message. “Play it again,” she says.

“It self-erased,” says Jocelyn. She’s taken a little square thing out of the bear; she crushes it under her heel. “Security reasons. You wouldn’t want to be caught with a hot teddy bear. So, will you help Stan?”

“Help Stan do what?” says Charmaine.

“You don’t need to know that yet,” says Jocelyn. “Stan will tell you, once we get you out. Or far enough out, at any rate.”

“But he knows I killed him,” says Charmaine, starting to sniffle again. Even if the two of them do get back together outside Positron, how can he ever forgive her?

“I’ll tell him you knew it wasn’t real,” says Jocelyn. “The death drug. But then I can always un-tell him, after which he’ll hate you, and you can stay locked in here forever. Big Ed has a hard-on for you, and he won’t take giggle for an answer. He’s having a sexbot made in your image.”

“He’s making a what?” says Charmaine.

“A sexbot. A sex robot. They’ve already sculpted your face; next they’ll add the body.”

“They can’t do that!” says Charmaine. “Without even asking me!”

“Actually, they can,” says Jocelyn. “But once he’s practised on that he’ll want the real thing. Eventually he’ll tire of you, if history’s top bananas are any guide – think Henry the Eighth – and then where will you end up? On the wrong end of the Procedure is my guess.”

“You can stay here at the mercy of Ed, or you can take a chance with us, and then with Stan. One or the other.”

“That’s so mean,” wails Charmaine. “Where am I supposed to go?”

This is awful, thinks Charmaine. A sexbot of herself, that is so creepy. Ed must be crazy; and despite the message he sent, Stan must be so mad at her. Why does she have to choose between two scary things? “What do you want me to do?” she asks.

What they want her to do is easily spelled out. They want her to snuggle up to Ed, get close to him but not too close – remember, she’s a grieving widow – then report back with anything he says and anything she might come across, for instance in his bureau drawers or his briefcase, or maybe on his cellphone, if he gets careless; but that part – the carelessness part – will be up to her. Encourage him to think with his dick, an appendage not noticeably overloaded with brains. That’s in the short run, and the short run is all they’re asking for right now. Or so Jocelyn says.

“Do I have to, you know,” says Charmaine. “Go all the way?” The idea of having Ed crawl around on her naked body gives her the queasies.

“Absolutely not. In fact, that’s crucial. You need to delay,” says Jocelyn. “If he starts coming on strong, tell him you’re not ready yet. You can plead sorrow for a while. He’s part of the reality in which Stan is dead, so he’ll understand that. He’ll even welcome it. He’s never seen those videos of you and Phil – I’ve made sure of that – so he thinks you’re modest. That’s part of his obsession with you: so hard to find a modest girl these days.” Is that a twitch, an almost-smile? “If you don’t want to help us, we could show him the videos. His reaction would be adverse. At the very least, he’d feel betrayed.”

Charmaine blushes. She
is
modest, it’s just that … The thing with Max wasn’t her true self, it couldn’t have been. Maybe he was using some kind of hypnotism on her. The things he made her say. … All of which have been recorded. This is blackmail! “All right,” she says reluctantly. “I’ll try.”

“An appropriate decision,” says Aurora. “I’m sure you’ll come to realize that, in time. You’ll be helping me – you’ll be helping us – more than you know. Here, have a cookie.”

In the room at Possibilibots where Budge has stashed him, Stan dozes fitfully. He’s dreaming of blue bears: they’re outside the window, peering in at him. They clamber up onto the sill, they wiggle suggestively, they stare at him with their round, inexpressive eyes. Now they’re laughing at him, displaying rows of pointed shark teeth. And now they’re squeezing into his room through the half-open window, dropping onto his bed …

He wakes with a start and a muffled bark but it’s only Veronica, shaking his arm. “Hurry,” she tells him. There’s bad news: over at Ed’s office, IT has discovered that some crucial files have been copied. That would be the files on the flashdrive Stan’s supposed to be taking out. There’s bound to be a thorough search in the morning. Luckily, there’s a rush order: five Elvises are leaving for Vegas at three a.m., and one of them will be him. She and Budge have everything ready and waiting in Shipping, but he needs to come right now.

He pulls on his clothes and follows her. She’s wearing jeans and a T, ordinary-enough clothes, though with her inside them they look like silk. Life is unfair, he thinks, as he watches her undulate through the hallways.

She has all the right passcards as she leads him through a series of doorways to Shipping. “You’ll find everything you need in the Men’s,” she says. “I’ll be in the Ladies’, getting my own outfit on.”

“You’re coming to Vegas too?” he says stupidly.

“Of course I am,” she says. “I’m your minder. Remember?”

There’s not much time to spare. The Elvis outfit is hanging in one of the stalls. Stan shoehorns himself into the costume: it’s half a size too small. Could he have gained that much weight on Positron beer, or was whoever picked this fucking outfit for him a bondage fetishist? The white bellbottoms on the jumpsuit are too tight, the platform shoes pinch his toes, the belt with the big silver and turquoise buckle just barely makes it around his waist. Did Elvis wear a girdle, or what? He must’ve suffered from a permanent case of crotch cramp. The jacket is encrusted with studs and spangles, with a little cape attached; the collar sticks up like a Dracula cloak, the shoulder pads are grotesque.

The black wig is slippery – some sort of synthetic – but he manages to pull it on over his own hair. His head is going to cook in this thing! The eyebrows stick on quite easily, the sideburns less so; he has to try twice. He applies bronzing powder with the brush supplied: instant tan.This is like Halloween, when he was a kid. It’s probably a crappy job, but who’s going to see him? No one, if he’s lucky.

All that remains are the chunky rings – he’ll leave them till last – and the fake lips, top and bottom which come supplied with their own Insta-glue. Not a total success; the lips feel precarious, but at least they stick on.

He poses in front of the mirror, does a lopsided grin; though he barely needs to grin because the lips are doing the grinning for him. Underneath them, his own lips are semi-paralyzed. He wiggles his new black eyebrows, flings back his head, smoothes his hair. “You handsome devil,” he says. “Back from the dead.” The faux lips are hard to manoeuvre, but he’ll get the hang of it. Oddly, he does look something like Elvis. Is that all we are? he thinks. Unmistakable clothing, a hairstyle, a few exaggerated features, a gesture?

There’s a discreet knock: it’s Veronica in her Marilyn getup, her hair hidden under a short blond wig. She’s chosen the black suit from
Niagara
, with the skintight skirt and the white scarf. Her mouth glistens like slick red plastic. He has to admit she looks terrific; she even looks like the real Marilyn. She’s got a large black carry bag, which doubtless contains her knitted blue fetish.

“Ready to go?” she says. “I’ll tuck you into your box, then Budge will do the same for me. Your cargo is in the belt buckle, don’t lose it! We have to hurry. Wait, let me even out your skin tone a bit.” She picks up the brush, powders his face some more. She’s standing way too close; this is torture, but she seems unaware of that. He longs to crush her against him, bury his nose in her Marilyn hair, smash his rubbery mouth onto her bright red lips, futile though that would be. “There,” she says. “Now you’re perfect. You look just like an Elvis bot. Let’s pop you in.”

The transport case is marked ELVIS/UR-ELF in stencilled block letters; it’s one of the set of five stacked on the loading dock, ready for shipment. Beside it are five smaller cases labelled MARILYN/UR-MLF, one of which is standing open. It’s lined with pink satin, with Styrofoam packing moulds to prevent breakage. His own packing case is lined with blue. “Is this safe?” he says as he clambers in. “How will I breathe?”

“There’s air holes,” she says. “They aren’t very noticeable because no real bot would need them. I’m tucking in this hot water bottle, it’s empty. See, it’s right beside your elbow. You should be able to move your arms enough to pee into it, if you have to. Here’s a few pills in case you get pacnicky, they’ll put you right under, don’t take more than three at a time. Oh, and here’s your bottled waters, I’m giving you two, we wouldn’t want you to shrivel up, and a couple of tear-and-shake Little Hottie hand warmers, in case it gets cold on the plane. And an energy bar if you get hungry. I’ll make sure they let you out!”

What if they don’t?
Stan wants to yell. “Okay,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.