Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“Now maybe you’d better tell me why you hid that phone in my scooter,” she says, withdrawing her hand. “Or the scooter you thought was mine. I’ve been following it around, your clever tracker. It shows up well on our monitoring equipment.”

Somehow they’re in the kitchen – his kitchen, her kitchen, their kitchen. He’s sitting down. Everything here is familiar to him – there’s the coffee machine, there are the folded tea towels Charmaine set out before she left – but it all seems foreign to him.

“Want a beer?” she says. A sound comes out of his mouth. She pours the beer and one for herself, then sits down opposite him, leans forward, and describes to him in way too much detail the movements of Charmaine on switchover days. In and out of the vacant houses, for months now, in conjunction with Jocelyn’s husband, Max. Conjunction is the word she uses. Among other, shorter words.

Though Max isn’t her husband’s real name. His name is Phil, and she’s had this kind of problem with him before. She always knows about it, and he knows she knows but is pretending not to know. He knows about the cameras hidden in the vacant houses, he knows she has access to the footage. That’s part of the attraction for him: the certainty that he’s performing for her. He’ll stray off-track – it’s an addiction like gambling, it’s an illness, doesn’t Stan agree, you have to feel sorry – and she’ll let him run with it for a while. It’s an outlet for him: in a gated city with one-way gates, outlets are limited for a man like him. He’s tried to get help with this sex addiction of his, he’s tried counselling, he’s tried aversion therapy, but so far nothing has worked. It doesn’t help that he’s so good-looking. Women with overactive romantic imaginations more or less throw themselves at him. There’s no shortage.

When she thinks whatever he’s mixed himself up with has gone far enough, she confronts him. That shuts it down: he cuts it off with the woman in question, no loose ends. Then, after an interval of promising to go straight, he’ll start on another one. It’s been humiliating for her personally, even though he assures her that he’s loyal to her in his heart, it’s just that he can’t control his impulses.

“But there’s never been a wild card before,” she says. “Not one of our own Alternates. Mine and Phil’s.”

Stan’s so fucking addled he can’t think straight. Charmaine! Right under his nose, the slutty cheat – withholding sex from him, or doling it out in chilly slices between clean sheets. It must’ve been her who wrote that note, sealed it with a fuchsia kiss. How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being? And with some dipshit named Phil, married to a lady wrestler! On the other hand, how dare anyone else tag his wife as a mere outlet? “Wild card,” he says weakly. “You mean Charmaine.”

“No. I mean you,” she says. She looks at him from under her eyebrows. “You’re the wild card.” She smiles at him: not a demure smile. Despite her lack of makeup, her mouth looks dark and liquid, like oil.

“I need to be getting along,” he says. “I need to check in before curfew, over at Positron. I need –”

“That’s all taken care of,” she says. “I control the identity codes. I’ve rearranged the data so Phil’s going there in your place.”

“What?” says Stan. “But what about my job? It takes training, he can’t just –”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” says Jocelyn. “He’s not good with his hands, not like you, but he’s all right with digital. He’ll take care of your chickens for you, both ends. He won’t let anyone interfere with them.”

Fuck, thinks Stan. Both ends. She knows about that thing with the chickens. How long has she been keeping an eye on him?

“Meanwhile,” she says. She puts her head on one side as if considering. “Meanwhile, you’ll be here, with me. You can tell me all about your interest in Jasmine. If you want to, we can listen in on Max and Jasmine, during their little vacant-house rendezvous. I’ve got the recordings, the surveillance videos. The sound quality’s excellent, you’d be surprised. It’s quite exciting. We can have a twosome of our own, on the sofa. I think it’s time I got a turn at playing Phil’s game, don’t you?”

“But that’s …” He wants to say, “That’s fucking warped,” but he stops himself. This woman is upper-level management, she’s in Surveillance: she could make his life truly disagreeable. “That’s unfair,” he says. His voice is going all wussy.

She smiles again with her slippery-looking mouth. She has biceps, and shoulders, and her thighs are alarming; not to mention the fact that she’s a sick voyeur. What has he done to himself, to his life? Why has he done it? Where is bland, perky Charmaine? It’s her he wants, not this sinister and most likely hairy-legged ball crusher.

Surreptitiously he checks out the exits: back door, door to the front hall, door to the cellar stairs. What if he were to shove this woman into his green basement locker, then make a run for it? But run to where? He’s blocked his own exits. “Seriously. This won’t work, it’s not … I’m not … I need to go,” he says. He can’t bring himself to say please.

“Don’t be worried,” she says. “You won’t be missed. You’ll get an extra month here at the house. Then, next month, when Charmaine comes out of Positron, you can go in.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t want …”

She sighs. “Think of it as an intervention to avoid possible violence. You’ll have to admit you feel like strangling her, anyone would. You’ll thank me later. Unless, that is, you want me to turn in a report on the rules you’ve broken. Want another beer?”

“Yeah,” he manages to say. He’s falling deeper and deeper into the hole he dug for himself. “Make it two.” He’s trapped. “What else do I have to do?” To avoid the consequences is what he means, but he doesn’t have to explain that. She’s fully aware that she’s twisting his arm.

She takes her time answering, drinks, licks her lips. “We’ll find out, won’t we?” she says. “We have lots of time. I’m sure you’re very talented. By the way, I switched the lockers. Yours is the red one now.”

Chat Room

On the January 1 switchover day, Charmaine is told by one of the behind-the-counter clerks to stay behind at the prison, because Human Resources needs to talk to her. She has a sinking feeling right away. Do they know about Max? If so, she’s in trouble, because how many times were they told it was absolutely not allowed to fraternize with the Alternates that shared your house? You weren’t even supposed to know what they looked like. Which was one of the things that made seeing Max so thrilling for her. So forbidden, so over the line.

Seeing Max. What an old-fashioned way of putting it! But then she’s an old-fashioned girl – that’s what Stan thinks. Though her times with Max haven’t involved much actual seeing. They’ve been close-ups, in half-light. An ear, a hand, a thigh.

Oh please, let them not know, she prays silently, crossing her fingers. They never spelled out what would happen if you disobeyed, though Max had reassured her. He’d said it was nothing much: they just gave you a little slap on the hand and maybe changed your Alternate. Anyway she and Max were being so careful, and none of those houses had spyware in it; he should know, it was his job to know all about those houses. But what if Max was wrong? Worse: What if Max was lying?

She takes a breath and smiles, showing her small, candid teeth. “What’s the problem?” she asks the clerk, her voice higher and more girly than normal. Is it something about her job as Chief Medications Administrator? If so, she’ll learn how to improve, because she’s always wants to do the very best possible and be all that she can be.