The Heart Goes Last

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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.

Hood

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.”