Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

“National Association of Broadcasters. TV, radio, all that. The see exhibits and listen to talks in the day, drink horrible coffee, the usual; then they hit the shows at night. Lot of single women, not always young. Stan, up for that?”

“Up for what?” says Stan cautiously.

“Escort Elvis. You’ve been doing great at the hospitals, nothing but stars and thumbs-up on the website Comments, so you should be fine. See a show, eat some food, drink some booze. They might hit on you, offer you extra to go up to their rooms. That’s where being gay can come in handy.”

“I can see that,” says Stan. “Maybe I need some of those gayness lessons.”

“But we need the client to have an overall positive experience. We’re all for gender equality. If the ladies want sex-for-cash, we provide it.”

“Wait a minute,” says Stan.

“Not you,” says Rob. “You’ll just give us a call on the cell, over at the UR-ELF Nightline, and we send one of the Elvis bots. Big markup on those! Like a super-dildo, only with a body attached. Vibrator built in, optional.”

“Wish I felt like that,” says Pete.

“Then you chat with them, pour them a drink, tell them you wish you were straight. When the Elvis arrives, you switch him on and he hums a little tune while you run over the instructions with the client: he responds to simple voice commands like love me tonight and all shook up . Then you wait in the lobby. You’ll have an earpiece, so you can hear it’s unfolding as per plan.”

Oh great, thinks Stan. Parked in a hotel lobby and eavesdropping while some mildewed hen has an orgasm. He’s had enough of insatiable women. He remembers Charmaine, the way she was when they were first married: her quasi-virginal restraint. He didn’t appreciate it enough. “Why wait in the lobby?” he says.

“So you can supervise the re-delivery. Plus, in case there’s a malfunction,” says Rob.

“Right,” says Stan. “How will I know?”

“If you hear too much screaming, time to act. Get up there fast and flip the Off switch.”

“It’ll sound different,” says Rob. “The screaming. More terrified.”

“No one wants to be fucked to death,” says Pete.

Why Suffer?

Ed has still not returned to the office. All that’s happened is that three men with Positron logos on their jacket pockets arrive with a large crate. It’s a stand-up desk, they say, and they have orders to install it in the office of the big boss. Once the desk is in they go away, and Charmaine is left to her own devices, which consist of slipping off her shoes and stockings and painting her toenails, behind the desk in case anyone comes in.

Blush Pink is the colour she’s allowed. Nothing flaming, nothing flagrant, nothing fuchsia. Aurora bought the Blush Pink for her and presented it in that smug way she has. “Here you are, this shade is very popular among the twelve-year-olds, I’m told, so I’m sure it will convey the right message.” Aurora gives a lot of thought to those details, which is helpful, but she can feel herself reaching the moment when she’s going to yell. Darn it, leave me alone! Stop bugging me! Something like that.

Painting her toenails gives her a lift. That’s what most men never understand, how it’s a real pick-me-up to be able to change the colour of your toes. Stan got mad at her once when they were living in the car, because she spent some of her PixelDust tip money – he didn’t say spend , he said fucking blew – on a little bottle of polish in a lovely silvery coral shade. They had a tiff about that, because she said it was her money, she’d earned it herself, and it wasn’t as if the polish cost a lot, and then he accused her of throwing it up to him that he didn’t have a job, and then she said she was not throwing it up, she only wanted her toes to look nice for him, and he said he didn’t give a fucking fuck about her fucking toe colour, and then she cried.

She has a little cry now, remembering it. How bad are things when you can get nostalgic about living in your car? But it isn’t the car that makes her sad, it’s the absence of Stan. And not knowing if he’s mad at her. Really mad, not just fucking fuck toe colour mad. They’re not the same thing at all.

She tries not to think about Stan not being here any more, because what is is, as Grandma Win used to say, and what can’t be cured must be endured, and laugh and the world laughs with you but cry and you cry alone. Maybe it served her right for talking back to Stan, that time in the car.

( I’ll teach you to talk back! Now who said that? And how had she talked back? Did crying count as talking back? Yes, it did, because after that something bad happened. Let that be a lesson to you. But what was the lesson?)

She lets her mind go blank. Then, after a while of staring at the map with red and orange pins all over it like measles, she thinks, Ed will need a lamp for that stand-up desk, which gives her the excuse to go to the Consilience digital catalogue. She browses here and there to find the right section, pausing maybe too long at Ladies’ Fashions and Cosmetic Magic, and orders the appropriate lighting device.

Then it’s time to go home. So she does go home. Not that it’s really a home. More of a mere house, because as Grandma Win said, it’s love that makes a house a home.

Sometimes she wishes Grandma Win would bug off out of her head.

Aurora is ensconced on the living room sofa. She’s having a cup of tea and a date square. Would Charmaine care to join her she asks with her wide, tight smile? As if she’s the darned hostess, thinks Charmaine, and I’m simply a visitor. But she passes over this, because what the hey, she has to get along with this woman, so she’ll suck it up.

“No tea, thank you,” she says. “But I could really use a drink. I bet there’s some olives or something in the fridge too.” There were olives last time she looked, but food has been appearing and disappearing out of that fridge like it has a bad case of gnomes.

“Certainly,” says Aurora as Charmaine sinks into the easy chair, kicking off her shoes. There’s a pause while each of them waits to see if the other one’s going to get the drink. Darn it, thinks Charmaine, why should I be her maid? If she wants to be the hostess here, let her darn well do it.

After a moment Aurora sets down her cup, pushes up from the sofa, takes the olives out of the fridge and puts them in an olive dish, then rummages among the liquor bottles, because there aren’t very many of them. Though more than there used to be: Jocelyn has a special allowance, she’s not limited the way the rest of them are, so it’s her that’s bringing in the booze. Consilience takes a dim view of drunks because they aren’t productive and they develop medical problems, and why should everyone pay because one individual has no self-control? That’s been on the TV quite a lot recently. Charmaine wonders if there’s bootlegging going on, or maybe people making moonshine out of potato peelings or something. Or more drinking because they’re getting bored.

“Campari and soda?” says Aurora.

What’s that, thinks Charmaine, some snobby drink unknown to us hicks? “Whatever,” she says, “as long as it’s got a kick to it.”

The drink is reddish and a little bitter, but now she feels better.

Aurora waits until Charmaine’s drunk half. Then she announces, “I’m staying here this weekend. Jocelyn thought it would be best. I can keep an eye on you, just in case anything unexpected happens.”

Oh heck, Charmaine thinks. She’s been looking forward to having some Me Time. She’d enjoy a long soak in the tub, in behind the shower curtain where the camera can’t see her, and without having to worry about another person who might want to get in there to floss their teeth. “Oh, I don’t want to put you out,” she says. “I don’t think anything unexpected … I’m fine, really. I don’t need –”