The Heart Goes Last

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“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.

VII | WHITE CEILING White Ceiling

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.