The Heart Goes Last (16 page)

“Just a minute,” says Stan. “Whose body parts? It’s still the same number of guys in Positron, I know them, they’re not being cut up for organs, it’s not as if anyone’s vanishing . Not once we got rid of the real criminals.”

“Yes, Ed thinks it’s a shame we ran out of those,” says Jocelyn. “He’s got plans to import some more, take them off the hands of the public, so to speak. But your guys are the good citizens of Consilience, they keep the place running day to day, they’re the worker ants. The raw material ‘s being shipped in from outside.”

The truck. The hooded, shuffling prisoners. Oh, great, thinks Stan. We’re stuck in a grainy black-and-white retro-thriller movie. “You mean they’re rounding people up, carting them here? Killing them for parts?”

“Just undesirables,” says Jocelyn, smiling with her big teeth. She’s kept some of her badass sarcasm, anyway. “But now
undesirable
is whoever Ed says. Ed says the next hot thing is going to be babies’ blood, by the way. It’s being talked up as very rejuvenating for the elderly, and the margin on that is going to be astronomical.”

“That’s …” Stan wants to say “fucking gruesome,” which doesn’t begin to cover it. Or else he could say, “You’re shitting me.” But he remembers that thing he heard about the mouse experiments; also she seems deadly serious. “Where are they planning on getting the babies?”

“There’s no shortage,” she says with that other smile of hers, the ironic one. “People leave them lying around. So careless.”

“Has anyone heard about this?” he says. “Out there? Have they put it together, shouldn’t they …”

“That’s what Ed’s worried about,” says Jocelyn. “That’s why the ultra-tight security. A few rumours were circulating, but he’s managed to shut them down. Now nobody connected with a news outlet can get within a mile of this place, and as you know, no information is allowed out. That’s why we have to send a person, such as you. You’ll be taking a digitized document dump and some videos, on a flash drive. We’ll try to set you up with a key media target. Someone who’s not pals with Ed’s political friends, and who’s willing to take a chance on breaking the story.”

“So I’m supposed to be what?” says Stan. “The errand boy?” The one who gets shot, he thinks.

“More or less,” says Jocelyn.

“Why don’t you take it out yourself? This document dump.”

Jocelyn looks at him pityingly. “No way,” she says. “It’s true I have a pass, I can go out. I’ve been setting up the outside operations, paying off the people we hire to do the less legal things Ed’s got us involved in. But I’m monitored the whole time. To make sure I stay safe is Ed’s excuse. He trusts me as far as he trusts anyone, but increasingly that’s not much. He’s getting jumpy.”

“Why didn’t you make a break for it? Just get out?” says Stan. It’s most likely what he would have done.

“I helped create this,” says Jocelyn. “I need to help fix it. Now, time’s up. We have to move.”

They’re in the car now; he can scarcely remember walking out to it. In front of them there’s a driver – a real one, not a robot. The driver sits upright, his grey shoulders straight, the back of his head noncommittal. The streets glide past.

“Where are we going?” says Stan.

“Positron,” says Jocelyn. “Our exit strategy for you begins there. Need to get you prepped, then see you through the day. This move is not without risks. It would be very unfortunate if you got caught.”

The driver, thinks Stan. It’s always the driver, in movies. Listening in. Spying on everyone. “What about him?” he says. “He’s heard all this.”

“Oh, that’s only Phil,” says Jocelyn. “Or Max. You’ll recognize him from the videos.”

Phil turns around, gives a brief smile. It’s him, all right – Charmaine’s Max, with his handsome, narrow, untrustworthy face, his too bright eyes.

“He’s been such a help in creating motive,” says Jocelyn. “We chose Charmaine because we thought she might be …”

“Susceptible,” says Phil.

“Sufficient to have stood but free to fall,” says Jocelyn.

“What?” says Stan. This is some slur on Charmaine. He clenches his fists. Steady, he tells himself.

“It was a gamble,” says Jocelyn.

“But she paid off,” says Phil.

The lying bastard, he wasn’t even sincere, thinks Stan. He was shitting poor Charmaine all along. Setting her up. Leading her astray for motives different from the ones you’re supposed to have when you lead someone astray. It’s as if Charmaine wasn’t good enough for him; not good enough for a genuine illicit passion. Which, if you think about it, is actually a criticism of Stan. His hands are burning: he’d like to strangle the guy. Or at least give him a solid punch in the teeth.

“Motive for what?” says Stan.

“Don’t be sulky,” says Jocelyn. “For why I’d want to have you eliminated. I have superiors. I’ll need to account to them for my decision.”

“Eliminated? You’re going to do what?” Stan almost shouts. This is getting more demented by the minute. Underneath the heroic talk, is she a psychopath after all? With designs on his liver as a bonus?

“Whatever you want to call it,” says Jocelyn. “Among our management group, we call it ‘repurposing.’ I have the discretionary power for that, and I’ve made those kinds of decisions before, when things have gone seriously … when I’ve had to. For this particular scenario – the one geared toward getting you past the wall in one piece – anyone likely to be checking up on me, such as Ed, knows power corrupts, they’ll have experienced that first-hand. They’ll see how I’d be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they’ll buy it. The evidence is all there, supposing I might ever need to use it, which I hope I won’t.”

“Such as?’ says Stan. “Evidence?” He’s feeling cold all over and a little dizzy.

“It’s on record, every minute of it – everything you’d need to establish a reason. Phil and Charmaine, their torrid affair, which I have to say Phil threw himself into; but he’s good at that. Then my own degrading and jealous attempts to re-enact that affair and punish Charmaine through you. Why do you think we had to go through all that theatrical sex in front of the TV? Your reluctance was fully registered, believe me – the lighting was good, I’ve seen the clips.” She sighs. “I was a little surprised you didn’t take a swipe at me. A lot of men would have, and I know you almost lost it a couple of times; I worried about your blood pressure. But you’ve shown impressive restraint.”

“Thanks,” says Stan. He has a moment of pleasure at having been tagged “impressive.” Cripes, he tells himself. Get a grip. Are you buying this? Do you believe for one nanosecond that this stone-cold bitch wasn’t getting off big-time on treating you like a fucking galley slave? Do you trust the two of them? No, he answers. But do you have any choice? Pull back, say you won’t do it, and they’ll likely kill you.

“It was a plus that you had to force yourself,” says Jocelyn. “Your reluctance played well, though it was hardly flattering. Anyone watching would conclude it was sex at virtual gunpoint.”

“She’s not really like that, underneath. She can be very attractive,” says Phil gallantly. Or maybe even honestly, thinks Stan. Tastes differ.

“I agree,” he says, because agreement is called for. “It was hardly at gunpoint, it was …”

Jocelyn crosses her legs. She pats Stan’s thigh as if steadying him. “Anyway, those who might have to be shown those videos will see why I might want to get rid of you. And by means of Charmaine, for, after all, she poached my husband, right? Double punishment. It has to be watertight, this stunt. Something that can fool Ed, supposing he’ll go looking. He’d buy that kind of malice, coming from me. He thinks I’m a hardass as it is. That’s why I’m his right-hand gal.”

Is this leading where Stan thinks? His hands are clammy. “What stunt?”

“The part where Charmaine goes in to work in Medications Administration – where on a normal day she administers an exit dose to someone slated for repurposing – and then finds out that the next Special Procedure she has to perform is on you. And then she does perform it. But don’t worry, unlike the others, you’ll wake up afterwards. And then we’ll be halfway there, because you won’t be in the database anymore except in the past tense.”

Stan’s getting a headache. He can hardly follow this. So that’s what Charmaine’s been doing at her confidential job. She’s been. … He can’t believe this. Fluffy, upbeat Charmaine? Fuck. She’s a murderess.

“Wait. You haven’t told her?” he says. “Charmaine? She’ll think she’s killed me?”

“For her, it has to be real,” says Jocelyn. “We don’t want her to act, they’d see through it: they have facial-expression analyzers. But Charmaine will believe the set-up. She’s really good at believing.”

“She enters readily into created fantasies,” says Phil. Is that a grin?

“Charmaine won’t kill me,” says Stan firmly. “No matter …”
No matter how far into her you got, you lying dickshit,
he wants to say but doesn’t. “If she thinks it’ll kill me, she won’t go through with it.”

“We’ll find that out too, won’t we?” says Jocelyn, smiling.

Stan wants to say,
Charmaine loves me,
but he’s not completely sure of that any more.
And what if there’s a mistake?
What if I really do die?
he’d like to ask. But he’s too chickenshit to admit he’s chickenshit, so he keeps quiet.

Phil starts the car, moves them soundlessly along the street toward Positron Prison. He turns on the dashboard radio: it’s the Doris Day playlist, again. “You Made Me Love You.” Stan
relaxes. That crooning voice is such a safe place for him now. He closes his eyes.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” says Jocelyn softly. She pats his thigh again.

He hardly even feels the needle go in; it’s just a slight jab. Then he’s over the edge of the misty cliff. Then he’s falling.

Stan enters consciousness as if coming up from a well full of dark molasses. No, a well with nothing in it, because he didn’t have any dreams. The last thing he can recall is being in the car, the black Surveillance car with darkened windows, with Jocelyn sitting beside him on the back seat and her smug, treacherous dipstick of a husband, Phil, doing the driving.

He has an image of the back of Phil’s head – a head he wouldn’t mind perforating with a broken bottle – and then another of Jocelyn putting her sturdy but manicured hand out to pat his knee in the patronizing way she had, as if he was a pet dog. The black sleeve of her suit. That was his last snapshot.

Then the prick of the needle. He was gone before he knew it.

But look, she didn’t kill him! He’s still in his body, he can hear his heart beating. As for his mind, it’s clear as ice water. He doesn’t feel drugged; he feels refreshed and hyper-alert, as if he’s just chugged a couple of double espressos.

He opens his eyes. Fuck. Nothing. Maybe he’s been sent to the stratosphere after all. No, wait, it’s a ceiling. A white ceiling, with light reflecting down from it.

He turns his head to see where the light’s coming from. No, he doesn’t turn his head, because his head won’t turn that far. Something’s restraining it, and his arms, and yes, his legs too. Triple fuck. They’ve got him strapped down.

“Fuck!” he says out loud. But no, he doesn’t say that. The only sound that comes out of his mouth is a slobbering zombie sound. But urgent, like a car in a snowbank spinning its wheels.
Unhuhuh. Unhuhuh.

This is horrible. He can think, but he can’t move and he can’t speak. Shit.

Charmaine hardly slept a wink all night. Maybe it was the screams; or they might have been laughs – that would be nicer; though if they were laughs, they were loud, high, and hysterical. She’d like to ask some of the other women if they heard anything too, but that’s probably not a good idea.

Or maybe her sleeplessness came from overexcitement, because really she’s super excited. She’s so excited she can only peck at her lunch, because this afternoon she gets to resume her real job. After putting in her morning session of towel-folding, she got to throw away the shameful Laundry Room nametag and replace it with her rightful one: Chief Medications Administrator. It feels blissful, as if that nametag has been lost and now it’s been found; like when you misplace your scooter keys and then they turn up and you get a rush of luckiness, as if the stars or fate or something has singled you out for a win. That’s how happy her rightful nametag makes her feel.

The other women in her section have noticed that nametag: they’re treating her with new respect. They’re looking at her directly instead of letting their eyes slide past her like she was furniture; they’re asking her sociable questions such as how did she sleep, and isn’t this an awesome lunch? They’re handing her small, chatty praises, like what a good job she’s doing with the blue teddy bears they all have to knit in the evenings, even though she’s such a crappy knitter. And they’re smiling at her, not half-smiles either, but full-on total-face smiles that are only partly fake.

It isn’t at all hard for her to smile back. Not like the past weeks, when she was exiled to Towel-Folding, when she felt so lonely and isolated and her own smile felt cracked, as if there was a broken cement sidewalk right behind her teeth, and her mouth felt shrunken and clogged, and the other women spoke to her in sentences of two words because they didn’t know what kind of disgrace she was in.

Charmaine couldn’t blame them, since she didn’t know that herself. She tried her utmost to believe it was just a trivial mistake: you always had to try your utmost to believe the positive, because what did believing the negative ever get you except depressed? Whereas with the positive you found the strength to carry on.

And she had carried on.

Though it had been hard, because she’d been so scared. What were they really planning for her? She’s sure there’s more than one of them. The only one they actually show much of is Ed, but there has to be a whole bunch of them behind the scenes, talking everything over and making important decisions.

Have they been sitting in their boardroom, discussing her? Do they know she’s been cheating on Stan? Have they got photos of her, or voice recordings, or, even worse, videos? She’d said that to Max once – “What if there’s a video?” – but he’d only laughed and said why would there be a videocam in an abandoned house, and he only wished there was so he could relive the moment. But what if he has been reliving the moment, and those other men have been reliving it too?

It makes her blush all over to think of them watching her and Max in those vacant houses. She wasn’t herself with Max, she was some other person – some slutty blonde she wouldn’t speak to if they were standing in a checkout line together. If that other Charmaine tried to strike up a conversation with her she’d turn away as if she hadn’t heard, because you’re known by the company you keep and that other Charmaine is bad company. But that Charmaine has been banished, and she herself – the real Charmaine – has been restored to good standing, and she has to keep it that way no matter what.

She gazes down the table at the rows of women in their orange boiler suits. She doesn’t know them very well because they’ve basically not been speaking to her, but their faces are familiar to her. She scans their features as they chew away at their lunches: isn’t this a warm, fuzzy, grateful feeling she’s getting, because each one of them is a unique and irreplaceable human being?

No, this is not a warm, fuzzy, grateful feeling. To be honest, she doesn’t like these women much. Grandma Win would say she wouldn’t trust any of them as far as she could throw them, which isn’t very far since most of them are overweight. They should burn more energy, take the dancercise classes, or work out in the Positron gym, because sitting on their fat butts knitting those stupid blue bears plus eating the desserts is piling the pounds onto them and they’re blowing up like blimps. And deep down she doesn’t give a crap about each of them being a unique and irreplaceable human being, because they didn’t treat her like one. They treated her like something that got stuck on their shoe.

But that’s the past, and she must not to look back in anger or hold onto grudges, because such behaviour is toxic, as the girl in the pink outfit says on the TV yoga show, so now she’s dwelling on blessings. How blessed they all are to be tucked in here when so many other people are having a bad time outside the wall, where – according to Ed – everything’s going to ratshit. Even more ratshit than it was going to when she lived out there.

The lunch is chicken salad. It’s made with chickens raised right here at Positron Prison, in healthy and considerate surroundings, over at the men’s wing; and the lettuce and arugula and radicchio and celery are grown here as well. Though not the celery, now that she thinks of it – that comes in from outside. But the parsley’s grown here. And the spring onions. And the Tiny Tim tomatoes. Despite her lack of appetite she picks away at the salad, because she doesn’t want to look ungrateful. Or, worse, unstable.

Here comes the dessert. They’ve set it out on the table at the far end of the room; the women get up in order, row by row, and stand in line for it. Plum crumble, the women murmur to one another, made with red plums from Positron’s very own orchard. Though Charmaine has never worked in that orchard herself or even talked to anybody who’s worked in it, so how would she know if it even exists? They could be bringing those plums in here in cans and nobody but whoever opens the cans would be any the wiser.

These skeptical notions about Positron are coming to her more frequently. Don’t be so stupid, Charmaine, she tells herself. Change the channel, because why would you even care about where the plums come from? And if they want to lie about plums to make us all feel better, what’s the harm?

She picks up her helping of plum crumble in its sturdy pressed-glass dish. There’s cream added, from Positron’s own cows; not that she’s ever seen those cows either. She nods and smiles at the other women as she files past them, sits back down at her place, stares at her crumble. She can’t help thinking it looks like curdled blood, but she draws a marker across that thought, blacks it out. She should try to eat just a bit: it might steady her nerves.

She’s been away from the Medications Administration job so long. Maybe she’s lost her touch. What if she makes a shambles of the Special Procedure the next time she does it? Gets cold feet? Misses the sweet spot in the vein, for the needle?

When you’re actually doing the Procedure you don’t have big-picture worries, you exist in the moment, you only want to get it right and do your duty. But over the past two months she’s been at a distance, and from a distance what she does in Medications Administration doesn’t always look the same as what she ought to do, supposing she was just a person.

Are you having qualms, Charmaine? asks the little voice in her head.

No, silly, she answers. I’m having dessert. Plum crumble.

The women at her table are making
mmm
sounds. Red crumbs cling to their lips.

Stan tries again. He uses all his strength, pushing up with his arms and thighs against the straps – they must be straps, though he can’t see them. No dice. What is this, Jocelyn’s warped idea of another kinky sex game?

“Charmaine,” he tries to call. His throat slurs, his tongue is like a cold beef sandwich. Why’s he calling her anyway, as if he can’t find his socks, as if he needs help with his top shirt button? What kind of a help-me-mommy wife-whine is that? Maybe part of his brain is dead.
Dumbass,
he tells himself:
Charmaine can’t hear you, she isn’t in the room.
Or not so far as he can see, which isn’t far.

Oh, Charmaine. I love you, baby. Get me out of this!

Wait a minute: now he remembers. According to Jocelyn, Charmaine is supposed to kill him.

Two o’clock. The first Procedure of the afternoon is scheduled for three. After leaving the dining area, Charmaine heads back to her cell to spend a little quiet time alone. She needs to prepare herself, both physically and mentally; and also spiritually, of course. Do some deep breathing, the way they show it on TV. Fix her makeup, which is energizing. Calmness, positive energy: that’s what she needs.

But when she opens the door to her cell, there’s someone already in it. It’s a woman, in the standard orange boiler suit but with a hood over her head. She’s sitting on the bed. Her wrists are attached together in front with plastic handcuffs.

“Excuse me?” says Charmaine. If it weren’t for the hood and the cuffs, she would have pointed out that this is her cell, and as far as she knows there hasn’t been a change of cell assignment. And then she would have said, Please leave.

“Don’t …” says the woman’s voice, muffled by the hood. Then there’s something else that Charmaine doesn’t catch. She goes over to the bed – risky, because what if this is a maniac who might snap at her or something – and lifts the hood up and back.

This is a shock. This is definitely a shock. It’s Sandi. It can’t be Sandi! Why would it be Sandi? She stares at Charmaine with watery, blinking eyes. “Charmaine, Christ,” she says. “Put the hood back on! Don’t talk to me!”

Charmaine is confused. Sandi never did bad things, apart from the hooking, but that was instead of a job, so why would she need to do it in Consilience? Her hair’s a wreck. Her cheekbones are more prominent than they were: maybe she’s had work done. Did she get busted along with the pushers?

“Sandi! What are you doing in my cell?” she says. That doesn’t sound very gracious, but it’s not as if she meant it meanly. Sandi’s leg is chained to the bedframe, her ankles are shackled, her hands are plasticuffed together in front. This is serious.

“Don’t talk loud,” Sandi whispers. “They must’ve fucked up, stuck me in the wrong place. Pretend you don’t know me! Or you might get in trouble.”

“Are you a, you know. A criminal element?” Charmaine asks – has to ask, though maybe she shouldn’t. Sandi’s a nice girl at heart, she can’t be a criminal element, and anyway the criminal elements she’s used to dealing with at Medications Administration have all been men. She can’t see Sandi murdering anyone, or doing any of the other things that get you strapped down five ways on a rolling bed. “What did you do? I mean, did you do anything?”

“I tried to get out,” Sandi whispers. “I tried to get myself smuggled out in a bag of trash, where they send it down that chute to the truck outside. I had sex with one of those trash guys, the ones in the green vests, you know the ones. He ratted on me but not until after the sex, the fucker.”

“But, honey, why would you want to get out?” Charmaine whispers. That’s mystifying to her. “It’s so much better …”

“Yeah, it was at first, it was going great, I was helping at the gym and then they picked me to make those yoga videos, I got some work done, cheekbones mostly, and they did the makeup, and all I had do do was put on that pink suit and read the script and do a few poses.”

“I thought it was you,” Charmaine says untruthfully. “You were great, it looked like you were an expert!” She’s a little jealous. What an easy job, and with star power too. Not like her job. But hers is more important.

“So then Veronica came back one day,” Sandi whispers. “We were sharing a condo, she was training at the prison hospital, and she was all excited, they’d offered her a promotion, to this special unit they have there.”

“What was it?” Charmaine says. Maybe something bland, like Pediatric.

“Okay, it was in Medications Administration,” says Sandi. “She went the next day to start the training. But when she came back she was upset. Veronica never gets upset normally.” Sandi pauses. “You mind scratching my back?”

Charmaine scratches. “A little to the left,” says Sandi. “Thanks. So she said, ‘Basically they want me to kill people. Underneath all the bullshit, that’s what it is.”

“Oh gosh,” says Charmaine. “Not really!”

“No shit,” says Sandi. “So she told them no, she couldn’t do it. And the next day she was gone. Just gone. Nobody knew where she went, or else they wouldn’t say. I asked at her work, and they looked at me in this weird way and said that information was not available. It was creepy! So I wanted out.”