Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“It doesn’t feel like I could do that,” says Charmaine. “As if I could live it to the fullest. It feels like my life is over.” It would be shockingly rude to remove her hand. It would be like a slap. His hand covers hers: it’s damp. Pat, pat, pat, squeeze. Then, thankfully, withdrawal.

“We’ve got to get the roses back in your cheeks,” says Ed. Now he’s being fatherly. “That’s why I ordered steak. Bump up your iron.”

And here’s the steak in front of her, seared and brown, branded with a crisscross of black, running with hot blood. On the side, three mini-broccolis and two new potatoes. It smells delicious. She’s ravenous, but it would be folly to show it. Tiny, ladylike bites, if any. Maybe she should let him cut it up for her. “Oh, it’s so much,” she breathes. “I couldn’t possibly …”

“You need to make an effort,” says Ed. Will he go so far as to pop a morsel into her mouth? Will he say, “Open up?” To head him off, Charmaine nibbles a sprig of broccoli.

“You’ve been so kind,” she says. “So supportive.” Ed smiles, his lips now glossy with fat.

“I’d like to help you,” he says. “You shouldn’t go back to your old work in the hospital, it would be too much of a strain. Too many memories. I believe I have a job you might like. Nothing too demanding. You can ease yourself into it.”

“Oh,” says Charmaine. She must not sound eager. “What sort of job?”

“Working with me,” says Ed. “As my personal assistant. That way, I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you’re not overstrained.”

You don’t fool me, thinks Charmaine. “Oh, well, I’m not sure … That sounds …” she says as if wavering.

“No need to discuss it now,” he says. “We have lots of time to do that later. Now eat up, like a good girl.”

That’s the role he’s chosen for her: good girl. She feels a sudden wave of longing for Max. Bad girl was what she was for him. Bad, and deserving of punishment. She leans forward to cut up a potato, and Ed leans forward too. She knows exactly what the view is from his vantage point: she’s rehearsed the angles in the mirror. A curve of breast, with an edging of black lace.

Is he sweating? Yes, make that a definite. Is that his knee, giving her own knee the gentlest of nudges under the table? Yes, it is: she knows a knee under the table when she feels one. She moves her own knee away.

“There,” she says. “I’m eating. I’m being good.” She looks at him over the rim of her wineglass: her blue-eyed look, her child’s look. Then she takes a sip of wine, pursing her lips into a pout. Maybe she’ll leave a lipstick kiss on the glass for him, as if by accident. A pale kiss, a shadow of a kiss, like a whisper. Nothing too blatant.

Shipped

Stan wakes and sleeps, wakes and sleeps, wakes. He’s taken one of the pills Veronica gave him, which conked him out though not for long enough, and now he’s hyper-alert. He doesn’t want to take any more pills, because what if the plane lands soon? He can’t be asleep for that: he may need to spring into full-throttle action, though he’s got no image of what kind of action. Saving the world in a blue cape and an Elvis ducktail doesn’t convince him, even as a fantasy. But it would have an element of surprise if the enemy thinks he’s a robot.

What enemy? Back at Positron the enemy is Ed – control-freak body-parts salesman, potential baby-blood vampire –, but who will the enemy be once he gets to Las Vegas? In the pitch-blackness a parade of potential enemies marches across his eyeballs. Corrupters of Charmaine, kidnappers of Veronica, platoons of slavering men much more lecherous than he is, with scaly skins and clawlike fingernails and slitty-pupilled lizard eyes. In addition to which they have superhuman strength and can walk up the sides of skyscrapers as if they were human silverfish.

There goes one of them now, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, Charmaine under one arm, Veronica under the other. But it’s Stan to the rescue. Luckily his blue Elvis cape and his silver belt buckle have magic powers. “Drop those women or I’ll sing ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ It won’t be pretty.” The monster shudders and clutches a hand to either pointed ear; while he’s distracted, Stan presses his silver buckle and a lethal ray shoots out of it. The monster screams and disintegrates. Both scantily clad beauties tumble, their diaphanous garments fluttering. Stan vaults forward, flies through the air, and catches the wilted lovelies in his outstretched arms. They’re too heavy, he’s losing altitude, they’re about crash! Which wilted lovely should he save? And which will therefore go splat? He can’t save both of them. Considering that Veronica will never hump anyone but a stuffed animal, maybe he should stick with Charmaine.

So much for that daydream, which lands him right back in the breakfast nook with him and Charmaine fighting over which one of them has cheated the most, and then whether Charmaine really wanted to kill Stan, and then tears. “How could you believe that about me! Don’t we love each other?” Yes or no? Maybe isn’t allowed. No matter how he plays it, he’ll come out an asshole. Or else a wimp. Are those his only choices?

He eats the energy bar, which tastes like coconut-flavoured sawdust. It’s freezing cold in here. How long is this fucking flight going to go on? Why doesn’t he have a light-up watch? It’s totally dark, not to mention noisy. He knows – he knows with the rational part of his mind – that he’s inside a satin-lined shipping crate, which in turn is strapped into place, along with four other Elvises, inside an aluminum Unit Load Device, which in turn is in the cargo hold of a transcontinental plane; but with the other part of his mind – by far the larger part at the moment – he thinks he’s been buried alive. Get me out! Get me out! he screams silently. As if in answer, there’s the muffled barking of a dog. Some gloomy pet, the slave and toy of a bejewelled concubine, herself no doubt the gloomy pet of a sadistic plutocrat. He sympathizes.

Like a fool, he’s drunk both of the bottles of water packed for him by Veronica, and now, of course, of course! he needs a piss. Veronica’s instructions were that he was to pee into the empty hot-water bottle, but where the fuck is it? He gropes around, locates it snarled up in his cape, unscrews the top. Why didn’t they give him a flashlight? Because he might forget to turn it off, and then the light beams coming through the air holes would give him away, and they’d unsnap his cover, guns at the ready. Yo! Bro! This Elvis is not a robot, this Elvis is alive! Undead Elvis! Get the garlic and the spike!

Calm down, Stan, he orders himself. Next contest challenge: unzipping Elvis’s fly. He fumbles around. The zipper sticks. Of course! Of course! “Fuck, shit,” he says out loud.

“Stan, is that you?” comes the whisper in his ear. Veronica, over their Virtual Private Network; her voice, even her whispering voice, sends a jolt of sexual electricity through his spine. “Keep your voice down, there may be monitor bugs in the cargo hold. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he whispers back. He’s not about to tell her he couldn’t get his dick out of his white flares, result being he’s just wet himself.

“Why are you awake? Are you worrying?”

“Not really, but …”

“It’s all arranged. They won’t ask you anything. Just follow the plan.”

What fucking plan? Stan wants to ask but doesn’t. “Okay, cool,” he says.

“Did you take a pill?”

“Yeah, I did, earlier. But I don’t want to take another, I need to stay alert.”

“It’s okay, take one if you want to. Take two, it’ll be fine. Are your hands cold? Remember you’ve got those Little Hotties. You just tear the package open and give it a shake, and it heats up.”