Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

It’s stupid, but Stan actually feels nervous. Performance anxiety, he tells himself. What’s there to worry about? This isn’t his real job, or the rest of his fucking life. “So, what exactly do I do?” he says.

“What she’s ordered up,” says Rob. “You don’t even have to do the dinner, it’s just the show. You won’t know about the sex till later in the evening; that can be an impulse buy. But remember to compliment them on their dress. Gaze into their eyes, all of that. At UR-ELF we’re noted for our discreet attention to every detail.”

“Okay, got it,” says Stan.

He goes for his usual stroll along the strip to quiet his nerves, poses for a few photos, collects a few dollars, and one fiver from a big spender from Illinois. When he gets back to the Elvisorium, Rob’s still in the kitchen. “Some guys were here looking for you,” he says. “They had your picture.”

“What kind of guys?” says Stan.

“Four guys. They were bald. They had sunglasses.”

“What’d you tell them?” says Stan. Four bald guys with sunglasses – that sounds ominous. Jocelyn never mentioned anything like that, and neither did Budge or Veronica. His contact is supposed to be just one person. Has Ed traced the data leak to its source, has he pulled off Jocelyn’s fingernails to extract Stan’s whereabouts from her? Are these guys Ed’s heavies? He sees himself being yanked into a car, then tied to a chair in a vacant garage and having the crap smashed out of him until he cries, “It’s in the belt buckle!” Already he’s sweating inside his Elvis carapace. Or sweating more than he was.

“I said they had the wrong address,” said Rob. “I didn’t like the feel of them.”

“What kind of picture?” Stan asks. He gets himself a beer, gulps down half of it in one swig. “Of me. You think it was taken here?” If so, he’s really in trouble.

“Nah, it was old,” says Rob. “You were standing on a beach with a hot blonde, with penguins on your shirt.”

Stan feels his stomach clench. It’s his honeymoon pic, it has to be. The last time he saw a copy of that was at Possibilibots; it was beside Charmaine’s head, and he himself had been deleted. The project is calling the shots on this, for sure. They’ve tracked him down.

Fuck it, he thinks. I’m fucked.

He figures it’s better to stay in crowds – the bald thugs won’t want to call attention to themselves while abducting him – so it’s good he has a client for the evening. Her name is Lucinda Quant, which rings a distant bell. Didn’t Charmaine used to watch a show this Lucinda did, back when they were living in their car? The first time he heard that name he could imagine the locker-room jokes it must have generated in her teenaged years.

He meets her at her hotel, as arranged; it’s the Venetian one. The lobby is crammed with NAB convention-goers, still with their badges on. Some of them look as if they ought to be famous, or have been, once; the others, the scruffier-looking ones, are probably from radio.

Lucinda Quant spots him before he spots her. “Are you my rent-boy Elvis?” she says. He peers down at her tag and growls, “Why yes, little lady.”

“Not bad,” says Lucinda Quant. She’s about fifty, or maybe sixty; Stan can’t tell because she’s so tanned and wrinkly. She grabs Stan’s arm, waves goodbye to a chattering group of her fellow broadcast journalists, and says, “Let’s get out of this freak show.”

Stan hands her into a taxi, goes around to the other side, and slides in beside her. He gives her his best rubbery-lipped smile, which she doesn’t return. She’s skinny in the arms, teeth-whitened, and covered with silver and turquoise ornaments. Her hair’s dyed black, her eyebrows are drawn on with a pencil, and on her head she’s wearing two little horns, like baby goat horns, orange in colour.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he says in his Elvis register. “I sure do admire those horns you got.” It’s as good a way as any of starting social chat.

She laughs the hoarse laugh of a long-time smoker. “Got them here, from a street vendor,” she says. “Supposed to be the horns of Nymp.”

“Nymp?” says Stan.

“It’s a nymphomaniac imp,” says Lucinda Quant. “Some comic book manga thing. My grandkids know about it, they say it’s all the rage.”

“How old are they?” Stan asks politely.

“Eight and ten,” says Lucinda. “They even know what ‘nymphomaniac’ means. When I was their age I didn’t know which end of the lollipop to put in my mouth.”

Is that an innuendo? Stan hopes not. Suck it up, Stan, he tells himself. Be a man. Better still, be some other man. Lucinda reeks of Blue Suede, an Elvis tribute scent Stan has inhaled a ton of lately. A lot of the old babes wear it; it’s must be sort of like cats rolling around on their dead owner’s sweatshirts. It’s weird to wear a perfume named after shoes, but what does he know? The aroma – a little like cinnamon, but with an undertone of leather preservative – wafts up from between Lucinda’s breasts, the tops of which are on display in the plunge neckline of her scarlet hibiscus-flowered dress.

“So first I thought, those horns are for kids,” says Lucinda, “but then I thought, why not? Go for it, gal! Live while you can, is what I say. I’m going to tell you right now this isn’t my real hair. It’s a wig. I’m a cancer survivor, or I am so far, touch wood, and right now I just want to enjoy the hell out of life.”

“That’s okay, these aren’t my real lips,” says Stan, and Lucinda laughs again. “You’re fabulous,” she says. She slides over and positions one of her bony little butt cheeks up against his thigh. Should he say, in his deep Elvis voice, “Whoa, darlin’, we’ve got all night”? No; that would hint, unfairly, of delights to come. Instead he says, “So, since you’ve shared with me, I feel I should tell you that I’m gay.”

She laughs her smoky laugh. “No, you’re not,” she says. She pats his white-clad knee. “But good try. We can discuss that later.”

Here they are at the venue, in the nick of time. The casino is a new one, with a Russian Empire theme; it’s called The Kremlin. Gold onion domes on the outside, servitors in red boots, a line of fire-eaters dressed as Cossacks waiting to welcome them. One of these helps Lucinda out of the car while raising his flaming torch high in the other hand.

White Russians featured at the bars, and dancers in faux-fur pasties bumping to Slavic rock on several of the gambling tables. Four theatres inside: the shows now make more than the gambling, according to Rob, though they make you walk through the gambling on the off chance you’ll be seized by the devil of risk.

“This way,” says Lucinda, “I’ve been here before.” She steers him toward the theatre where their show will shortly begin.

Stan keeps an eye out for any bald guys with sunglasses, but so far, so good. They make it past the slots and the blackjack and the table dancers without mishap, then into the auditorium. He settles Lucinda into her seat; she puts on her rhinestone-studded reading glasses and peers at the souvenir program.

Stan glances around, locates the exits in case he has to run. There are at least a dozen other Elvises present in the auditorium, each with a crone under his wing. There’s also a scattering of Marilyns, in red dresses and silver-blond wigs, paired with elderly dudes. Some of them have their arms around the shoulders of their Marilyns; the Marilyns are throwing back their heads, doing the iconic open-mouthed laugh, flashing their Marilyn teeth. He has to admit it’s sexy, that laugh, even though he knows how fake it is.

“Now we’ll make some conversation,” says Lucinda Quant. “How did you get into this business?” Her voice has the neutrality and edge of a professional interviewer, which is what she claims to be.