The Heart Goes Last (8 page)

“Let go,” Stan said to her once. “Just fucking let go!”

“What did you mean, ‘Let go?’ ” she asked him afterwards in her puzzled, clueless voice, the voice that had once been her only voice. “Let go of what? What are you talking about?” He said, “Never mind” and “Sorry” and seemed ashamed of himself. She did nothing to discourage that. She wants him to feel ashamed of himself, because such feelings of his are a part of her disguise.

He called her Jasmine once, by mistake. What if she’d answered? It would have been a giveaway. But she caught herself and pretended she hadn’t heard. Maybe Stan has fallen in love with her note, with its ill-advised fuchsia kiss. Is that funny, or is it dangerous?

What if Stan finds out? About her, about Max. What would he do? He has a temper; it was worse when they were in the car, but even since coming here he’s thrown some glassware, he’s sworn at things when they don’t work the way he wants: the hedge pruner, the lawn trimmer. He wouldn’t enjoy the discovery that there is no Jasmine really, except inside Charmaine. She would lose him then. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.

She needs to break it off with Max. She needs to keep them both safe – Stan as well as Max – and herself too. Just not yet. Surely she can permit herself a few more hours, a few more moments, of whatever it is. Not happiness; it isn’t that.

It would have been better if Max’s wife, Jocelyn, had found that note. What would she have thought? Nothing too unsafe. She wouldn’t have known who “Max” was because he never uses that name with his wife, according to him, and he doesn’t have sex with her much, or nothing like the sex he has with Charmaine, so there’s no need to be jealous. It’s two different worlds, and Max and Jasmine are in one of them, and the wife is in the other.

For Jocelyn, “Max” and “Jasmine” would just be the Alternates, living in the house whenever she and her husband were in Positron. She would have thought that “Max” and “Jasmine” were Stan and Charmaine, if she paid any attention at all. What else could she possibly have thought?

So, whew! Charmaine tells herself. Looks like you got away with it, so far.

You said what?
She hears Max’s voice in her head, the way she often does when

he isn’t there. She invents him, she knows it; she makes up things for him to say. Though it doesn’t feel like making up, it feels as if he’s really talking to her.
Whew? Like a
vintage funny-paper guy? Baby, you’re so fucking retro, you’re cool! Now I’m gonna
make you say something better with your slutty purple mouth. Ask me for it. Bend over.

Anything,
she answers. Anything inside this non-house, inside this nothing space, a space that doesn’t exist, between these two people with no real names.
Oh anything.
Already she’s abject.

Here it is now, today’s address. Max’s scooter is already parked, discreetly, four derelict doors away. She can barely make her way up the front steps, her legs are so wobbly. If anyone were watching, they’d think she was crippled.

Stan clocks in at Positron, takes a shower, changes into the orange boiler suit, lines up for the routine haircut. They like to preserve the appearance of an authentic prison, though the shorn look for convicts is archaic – it belongs with the head lice of olden times – and they no longer do the full buzz: just short enough so when it’s time to leave again the hair’s a respectable civilian length.

“Have a good month outside?” asks the barber, whose name is Clint. Clint has a big T on his front because he’s playing the part of a Trusty. He’s not one of the original criminals, the ones who were still in here when the Project began: you’d never let a dangerous offender anywhere near those scissors and razors. Outside, when he’s a civilian, Clint does tree pruning. Before he signed onto the Project he was an actuary, but he’d lost that job when his company moved west.

It’s a familiar story, though nobody talks much about what they were before: backward glances are not encouraged. Stan himself doesn’t dwell on his

Dimple Robotics interlude, back when he’d thought the future was like a sidewalk and all you had to do was make it from one block to the next; nor does he dwell on what came after, when he had no job. He hates to think of himself the way he was then: grimy, morose, with the air being sucked out of his chest by the sense of futility that was everywhere like a fog. It’s good to have goals again, among them the discovering and seduction of Jasmine. He can almost feel her in his fingertips – the yielding, the rubberiness, the humid jungle heat.

Steady, he tells himself as he swings himself into the chair. Hands out of the pockets. Don’t give yourself a hernia.

Clint must have learned the barbering here: they’d all had to apprentice, in order to gain or hone a practical skill of use inside Positron.

“Yeah, good month, can’t complain,” says Stan. “You?”

“Terrific,” says Clint. “Did a little work on my house. Went to the committee, got permission, painted the kitchen. Primrose yellow, gave the place a lift. Northern exposure. Wife was pleased.”

“What’s she do, inside?” Stan asks.

“Works in the hospital. Surgeon,” says Clint. “Heart, mostly. Yours?”

“Hospital too, Chief Medical Administrator,” says Stan. He feels a twinge of pride in Charmaine: despite her pink locker, she’s no airhead. It’s a serious position, it comes with power. You need to be dependable, you need to be upbeat, she’s told him. Also stable, discreet, and not given to dark thoughts.

“Must be a tough job sometimes,” says Clint. “Dealing with sick people.”

“Was at first,” says Stan. “Got to her a bit. But she’s more used to it

now.” She’s never told him much about her work, but then, he’s never told her much about his.

“You’d need a cool head,” says Clint. “Not sentimental.”

This calls for no more than a yup. Clint decides on a tactful, snippety-snipping silence, which is fine with Stan. He needs to concentrate on Jasmine, Jasmine of the fuchsia kiss. She won’t let him alone.

He closes his eyes, sees himself as one of those dorky video-game hero princes of his childhood, slashing his questing way through swamps full of tentacled man-eating plants, annihilating giant leeches, hacking through the poison brambles to the iron castle where Jasmine lies asleep, guarded by a dragon, the dragon of Max, and shortly to be awakened by a kiss, the kiss of Stan. Trouble is she’s already awake, she’s super awake, having sex with the dragon. Him and his big scaly tail.

Bad reverie. He opens his eyes.

Who is Max? He could be someone Stan sees often without knowing it. He could be a guy who’s left his scooter with Stan for repair while he spent his month in the slammer, he could be playing a guard right now, locking Stan in at night and saying,
Stay in line
. He could even be Clint: is that possible? Could “Clint” be a fake name? Surely not. Clint is an older guy, with greying hair and a paunch.

“There you go,” says Clint. He holds up a mirror so Stan can see the back of his own head. There’s a bristly roll of fat taking shape at the nape of his neck, but only if he leans his head back. When he finds Jasmine he must remember to keep his head upright. Or forward a little. She might put her hand there, a hand with long, strong fingers tipped with nails the colour of arterial blood. At the mere thought, he feels himself flushing. Clint is whisking off the prickly hairs.

“Thanks,” says Stan. “See you in two.”

Two months – one in, one out – until his next Clint haircut. Before then he’ll be connected with Jasmine, whatever it takes.

He joins the lineup for lunch, which is always the first thing that happens after the haircut. Positron food is excellent, because if the cooking team orders up crap for you, you’ll dish out crap to them the next month to get even. Works like a charm: it’s amazing how many painstaking chefs have sprung into being. Today it’s chicken dumplings, one of his favourites. It’s an added satisfaction that he himself has made a contribution to the production of the chickens, in his Positron role as Poultry Supervisor.

Lunch hour was to be stressful in the months just after he’d signed in. At that time there were still some bona fide criminals in the place. Drug dealers, gang enforcers, grifters and con artists, assorted thieves. Seriously shaved heads, deeply engraved tats that hooked the wearer to their affiliates and advertised feuds. There were shovings in the cafeteria lineup, there were glarings, there were standoffs. Stan learned some ingenious combinations of words he would never have put together himself, even when fighting with Conor, and you had to admire the inventiveness, the poetry, even. (
Pus, cock, liverwurst, mother, dog, strawberry jam:
how did that one go, exactly?) Scuffles broke out over muffins, plates of scrambled eggs were shoved into faces.

Things might escalate: stompings, the cracking of bones. Then the guards would be expected to muscle in, but only some of them had formerly been real guards, so these interventions lacked authority. Tramplings took place, kickings, punchings, chokings, hot coffee scaldings, followed by retribution behind the scenes: mysterious knifings in the showers, puncture wounds traced to double-pronged barbecue forks lifted from the kitchen, concussions caused by men somehow banging their heads repeatedly on rocks, out in the market-garden area, among the sheltering rows of tomato plants.

Throughout those days, Stan hunkered down and kept his mouth shut and tried to be as invisible as possible, knowing he was no Conor – he lacked the skill set for such hardcore games. But that period didn’t last long, because the disturbances caused by the criminal elements were too great a threat to the Project. The initial thinking had been that the criminals would be sprinkled among the volunteers now making up the bulk of the prisoners, which was supposed to have an improving effect on the crims. Not only that, but they too would be let out every second month to take their turns as civilian inhabitants of Consilience, doing town-side tasks or acting as guards at Positron.

This would give them an experience they might never have had before – namely, a job – and would also earn them respect from others and a place in the community, leading to a newfound self-respect. Having prisoners act as guards and the reverse would be positive all round, went the mantra. The guards would be less likely to abuse their authority, as it would soon be their turn to be under lock and key. And the prisoners would have an incentive for good behaviour, since violent acting-out would attract retaliation. Also, there was no longer an upside to criminality. Gang dominance got you no material wealth, and you couldn’t fence anything: who’d want to buy stuff that was replicated in all the Consilience furnished houses anyway? There were no illicit substances that could be bootlegged or pushed, no rackets that could be run. That was the official theory.

But it seemed some criminals wanted to throw their weight around just for the hell of it: top dog was top dog, even if there was no financial payoff. Gangs formed, non-criminals were intimidated by criminals or else drawn into circles of dark power they found newly appealing. There were home invasions in the town, trashing-and-smashing parties, maybe even – it was rumoured – gang rapes. At one point there was a threat of an uprising against management, with hostages taken and ears cut off, but that plan was discovered in time, through a spy.

The outside forces could always have turned off the power supply and the water – any halfwit could figure that out, in Stan’s opinion – but then the bad news would leak out and the Project would go down in flames, way too publicly. The model would be judged worthless. And a shitload of investors’ money would have been wasted.

Once surveillance was tightened, the worst troublemakers vanished. Consilience was a closed system – once inside, nobody went out – so where had they gone? “Transferred to another wing” was the official version. Or else “health problems.” Rumours as to their actual fates began to circulate, in furtive hints and nods. Behaviour improved dramatically.

Lunch completed, Stan has a brief rest in his cell; then, once the chicken dumplings have settled, he works out in the weights room, concentrating on his core strength. Then it’s time for his shift at the poultry facility.

Positron has four kinds of animals – cows, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. It also has extensive greenhouses that stand on the sites of demolished buildings, and several acres of apple trees, in addition to the outdoor market gardens. These, and the soybean and perennial-wheat fields, are supposed to produce the fresh food, both for Positron Prison and for the town of Consilience. Not only the fresh foods but the frozen ones, and not only foods but drink: soon there will be a brewery. Some items are brought in from outside – quite a few items, in fact – but that state of affairs is viewed as temporary: in no time at all, the Project will be self-sustaining.

Except for paper products, and plastics, and fuel, and sugar, and bananas, and …

But still, think of the savings in other areas, such as chickens. The chickens have been an unqualified success. They’re plump and tasty, they breed like mice, eggs roll out of them with clockwork regularity. They eat the leafy leftovers from the vegetables, and the table scraps from the Positron prison meals, and the chopped-up remnants of slaughtered animals. The pigs eat the same things, only more of them. The cows and the rabbits are still vegetarian.

But apart from eating them, Stan has nothing to do with the cows and pigs and rabbits, only the chickens. These live in wire cages but are let out for a run twice a day, which is supposed to improve their morale. Their heating and light are run by a computer inside a little shed, which Stan checks periodically: there was a malfunction once that almost resulted in roast chicken, but Stan knew enough to be able to reprogram and save the day. The eggs are collected via ingenious chutes and funnels, with a digital program counting them; Stan himself has made some improvements that reduced egg breakage, but it’s running fine now. Mainly he spends his four-hour shift supervising the afternoon chicken outing, breaking up the pecking-order squabbles, and monitoring the combs for poor health and moping.

It’s a make-work job, he knows that. He suspects that each chicken has a chip implanted in it, with the real supervision done that way, in a roomful of automated chicken snoopers recording numbers on flow charts and graphs. But he finds the routine soothing.

In earlier days – during the semi-reign of the run-amok real criminals, and before the authorities had put in the spyware cameras overlooking the poultry facility – Stan got daily visitations during his shifts from men inside Positron, his fellow prisoners-for-a-month.

What they wanted was a short time alone with a chicken. They were willing to trade for it. In return, Stan would be offered protection from the furtive gang thuggery that was then running like an undercurrent beneath the orderly routines of Positron Prison.

“You want to what?” he asked the first time. The guy had spelled it out: he wanted to have sex with a chicken. It didn’t hurt the chicken, he’d done it before, it was normal, lots of guys did it, and chickens didn’t talk. A guy got very horny in here with no outlets, right? And it was no fair that Stan was keeping the chickens all to himself, and if he didn’t unlock that wire cage right now, his life might not be so pleasant, supposing he was allowed to keep it, because he might end up as a chicken substitute like the fag he probably was.

Stan got the message. He allowed the chicken assignations. What did that make him? A chicken pimp. Better that than dead.

Conor would have known what to do. Conor would have cold-cocked the guy, turned him into chicken feed. Conor would have charged a higher price. Conor would have been running the thuggery himself. But then, Conor might not have survived, once Management started ironing out the Positron glitches in dead earnest.

Strolling between the rows of cages now, listening to the soothing clucks of contented hens, smelling the familiar ammonia scent of chicken shit, he wonders if he’s ashamed of himself for his chicken pimping, and discovers that he isn’t. Worse, he ponders giving it a try himself, which might ease his tormented desires by wiping the image of Jasmine off his brain with a living feather duster. But there were the surveillance cameras: a man could look very undignified with a chicken stuck onto him like a marshmallow on a stick. Most likely it wouldn’t work as an exorcism: he’d only start having daydreams about Jasmine in feathers.

Cut it, Stan, he tells himself. Block it off. Suck it up. He’s getting way too obsessive. There must be a drug he could take to get rid of this waking dream. No, this waking nightmare: endless tantalization, with no release. Maybe he’ll ask Charmaine about some sort of calming, deflationary pill: she works in Medical, she could get her hands on something. But how can he explain his problem to her –
I’m lusting for a woman I’ve never seen
– much less his needs? She’s so clean, so crisp, so blue and white, so baby-powder-scented. She wouldn’t understand a compulsion as twisted as this. Not to mention so plain bone-ass dumb.