The Heart Goes Last

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“Well, as I’m sure you’ll agree is necessary,” Aurora cuts in, “considering the uncertainty as to your identity, your codes and cards have been deactivated. For the moment you’re in limbo, you might say. The database crosschecking is very thorough, as it has to be, since I can share with you that we’ve had a few impostors in here. Journalists.” She frowns as well as she is able to with her stretched face. “And other troublemakers. Trying to unearth – trying to invent bad stories about our wonderful model community.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” says Charmaine breathily. “The way they make things up …” She wonders what the bad stories were, decides against asking.

“Yes, well,” says Aurora. “We all have to be very careful about what we say, because you never know, do you? If the person is real or not.”

“Oh, I never thought of that,” says Charmaine truthfully.

Aurora’s face relaxes a millimetre. “You’ll get new cards and codes if” – she catches herself – “when you’re re-verified. Until then, it’s a trust issue.”

“Trust issue!” says Charmaine indignantly. “There has never been any …”

“This isn’t about you personally,” says Aurora. “It’s your data. I’m sure you yourself are completely trustworthy in every way. More than loyal.” Is that a little smirk? Hard to tell on such a wrenched-back face. Charmaine finds herself blushing: loyal. Has Max leaked something, have they been seen? At least she’s been loyal to her job.

“Now,” says Aurora, switching to efficiency mode, “I’m placing you temporarily in Laundry. Towel-Folding – there’s a shortage in that department. I’ve done towel-folding myself, it’s very soothing. Sometimes it’s wise to take a break from too much stress and responsibility, and the after-work pursuits we may” – she hesitates, searching for the word – “the pursuits we may pursue, to deal with that stress. Towel-folding gives time for reflection. Think of it as professional development time. Like a vacation.”

Darn it to heck, thinks Charmaine. Towel-Folding. Her status in Positron has just taken a pratfall over a cliff.

Charmaine changes out of the street clothes she put on hours ago. (Oh shoot, look at that bra, she thinks: bright pink staining under the arms from the sweater, she’ll never get it out.) There was something else. Aurora can’t smile like a normal person, but it wasn’t just the weird smile, it was the tone. Overly mollifying. How you’d talk to a child about to have a painful vaccination or a cow on the way to the abattoir. They had special ramps for those cows, to lull them into walking placidly to their doom.

In the evening, after four hours of towel-folding and the communal dinner – shepherd’s pie, spinach salad, raspberry mousse – Charmaine joins the knitting circle in the main room of the women’s wing. It’s not her usual knitting circle, not the group that knows her: those women left today and were replaced by their Alternates. Not only are these women strangers to Charmaine, they view her as a stranger too. They’re making it clear they don’t know why she’s been stuck in: they’re polite to her, but only just. Her attempts to make small talk have been cold-shouldered; it’s almost as if these women have been told some disreputable story about her.

The group is supposed to be knitting blue bears for preschoolers – some for the Positron and Consilience playgroups, the rest for export, to craft shops in faraway, more prosperous cities, maybe even in other countries, because Positron has to earn its keep. But Charmaine can’t concentrate on her teddy bear. She’s jittery, she’s getting more anxious by the minute. It’s the digital mix-up: how could it happen? The system is supposed to be bug-proof. There are IT personnel working on it right now, Aurora has told her, but meanwhile Charmaine should join some yoga groups in the gym, and stick with the daily routine, and it’s too bad but numbers are numbers, and her numbers aren’t showing her as being who she says she is. Aurora is sure it will work out soon.

But Charmaine doesn’t believe this runaround for one instant. Someone must have it in for her. But who? A best friend or lover of one of her Special Procedure subjects? How would they even know, how would they have access? That information is supposed to be totally classified! They’ve found out about her and Max. It must be that. They’re deciding what should be done with her. Done to her.

If only she could talk to Stan. Not Max: at the first hint of danger Max would vamoose. He’s a travelling salesman at heart. I will always treasure our moments together and keep you safe in my heart, then out the bathroom window and over the back fence, leaving her to deal with the smoking gun and the body on the floor, which might prove to be hers.

Max is like quicksand. Quicksilver. Quick. She’s always known that about him. Stan, though – Stan is solid. If he were here he’d roll up his sleeves and tackle reality. He’d tell her what to do.

Heck. Now she’s made a boo-boo with the neck of the blue teddy bear, she’s knitted where she should have purled. Should she unravel the row, knit it over? No. The bear will just have to wear a little ridge around its neck. She might even tie a ribbon around it, with a bow. Cover up the flaw by adding an individual touch. If all you’ve got is lemons, she tells herself, make pink lemonade.

When she returns to her cell that night, she finds it empty. Her cellmate is gone; it’s her month back in Consilience. But the other bed isn’t made up, it’s stripped bare. It’s as if someone has died.

They aren’t giving her a new cellmate, then. They’re isolating her. Is this the beginning of her punishment? Why did she ever let herself get mixed up with Max? She should have run out of the room the first minute she laid eyes on him. She’s been such a pushover. And now she’s all alone.

For the first time that day, she cries.

Houseboy

“Honey, cheer up, surely life’s not so bad,” Charmaine was in the habit of saying when they were living in their car, which used to grate on him: how could she be so fucking perky, with the shit that was bombarding them from all sides? But now he tries to recall her light tone, her consolations, her reassuring quotes from her dead Aunt Win. It’s darkest before the dawn. He should man up, because she’s right: surely his life’s not so bad. A lot of men would be happy to trade.

Every weekday he goes to his so-called work at the Consilience electric-scooter repair depot, where he’s had to fend off questions from the other guys – “What’re you doing back here? Thought it was your month to be in Positron.” To which he replies, “Administration morons screwed up, they got my info mixed up with some other guy’s. Case of mistaken identity, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

No need to add that the other guy is the douche who’s been jumping his chirpy, treacherous wife, and that the administration moron was a highly placed Surveillance spook who’s recorded her husband’s encounters with Charmaine in grainy but surprisingly erotic videos. Stan knows they’re surprisingly erotic because he’s watched them with Jocelyn, sitting on the exact same sofa where he used to sit with Charmaine to watch TV.

That sofa, with its royal blue ground and overall design of off-white lilies, had meant tedium and a comforting routine; the most he’d ever done on it with Charmaine had been hand-holding or an arm around the shoulders, because Charmaine claimed she didn’t want to do bed things except where they belonged, in a bed. A wildly false claim, judging from those videos, in which Charmaine required nothing more than a closed door and a bare floor to release her inner sidewalk whore and urge Phil to do things she’d never allowed Stan to do and say things she’d never once said to Stan.

Jocelyn, smiling a tight but lip-licking smile, likes to watch Stan watching. Then she wants him to recreate these videos, playing Phil, with her in the role of Charmaine. The horrible thing is that sometimes he can; though it’s equally horrible when he can’t. If he roughs her up and fucks her, it’s because she told him to; if he isn’t up to it, he’s a failure; so whichever it is, he loses. Jocelyn has transformed the neutral sofa with its harmless lilies into a nest of tortuous and humiliating vice. He can barely sit down on it any more: who knew that a harmless consumer good made of fabric and stuffing could become such a crippling head-games weapon?

He hopes Jocelyn has been recording these scenes, and will make Phil watch them in his turn. She’s mean enough for it. No doubt Phil’s wondering why he’s still in prison, and is trying bluster – There’s been a mistake, I’m supposed to be leaving now, just let me contact my wife, she’s in Surveillance, we’ll get this straightened out. Stan takes an acidic pleasure in imagining this scenario, as well as the stonewalling stares and hidden snickering among the guards, because haven’t they got their orders, which come from higher up? Just cool it, buddy, look at the printout, Positron identity numbers don’t lie, the system’s hackproof. That twisted fuckwit Phil had it coming.

Holding this thought keeps Stan going during his sexual command performances with Jocelyn, which are a good deal more like tenderizing a steak than anything he finds purely pleasurable.

Oh, Stan! comes the pert, giggly pseudovoice of Charmaine. You get a kick out of it, you must! You know you do, well, most of the time anyway, and every man has those letdown moments, but the rest of the time don’t think I can’t hear those groans, which have to be enjoyable for you, don’t deny it!