Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

They pause in front of a closed dressing-room door with a green star on it. THE GREEN MAN GROUP.

“Wait in here,” says Veronica. “If anyone comes, say you’re auditioning.”

“Who’m I waiting for?” says Stan.

“The contact,” says Veronica. “The handover. The one who’ll take your info to the press. If we’re lucky, that is. You’ve still got the belt buckle?”

“What’s this?” says Stan, indicating his large, ornate midsection adornment. “Kinda hard to miss.”

“Nobody switched it on you? The buckle?”

“Why would they?” said Stan. “It’s crap silver, it’s not real. Anyway, I slept with it under my pillow.”

Veronica shrugs her lovely Marilyn shoulders. “Hope you’re right,” she says. “It wouldn’t be good if they open it up and they’re expecting a flashdrive and there’s nothing inside. They’ll think you flogged it.”

“Who the fuck would I flog it to?” Stan asks. He’d considered such a thing briefly, but he has no leverage. Whoever wanted it and knew where it was would simply take it, then fling him into a ditch.

“Oh, someone would pay,” says Veronica. “One way or another. Now, in you go. I’ve gotta run. Good luck!” She purses her Marilyn lips, blows him a Marilyn kiss, closes the door quietly behind herself.

Nobody’s in the dressing room. There’s a long, lighted mirror, a counter running along underneath it, a bunch of makeup pots, green paint in them. Brushes. A chair to sit in while painting yourself. A couple of Green Man suits on hangers, on the hook in back of the door. Street clothes: denim pants, jacket, black T. Pair of Nikes, large. Whoever’s got this dressing room, his feet are bigger than Stan’s.

There’s only one way out of this room: he doesn’t like that part. He bypasses the chair and sits down on the counter, facing away from the mirror. He’s careful not to turn his back to the door.

Gong for Hire

There’s a knock. What should he do? Nowhere to hide, so he might as well go down trying. “Come on in,” he says, using his Elvis voice.

The door opens. It’s Luncinda Quant. Fuck, how did she track him down? But she doesn’t say, “Where did you get to?” or anything like that. Instead she nips inside, closes the door, strides over to him, and hisses, “Undo your belt!” She’s fumbling at him with her red-tipped fingers.

“Whoa!” he says. “Wait a minute, lady! If that’s what you want, you need to be back at your hotel, and then I can call, we have a service, you’ll love …” The thought of Lucinda Quant in bed with an Elvis bot makes him shudder. Even in her present diminished form, she’d be odds on to win that one.

“Don’t panic, I don’t want your body,” she growls with a derisive laugh. “I want your belt buckle. Right now!”

“Wait,” he says. She can’t be the one! She’s not at all what he was expecting – not a suave double agent in black, not a tough Surveillance guy working for Jocelyn, not – worst case! – a Positron-sent assassin. How can he know this unlikely biddy is the right handover link? “Just a minute,” he says. “Who sent you?”

“Don’t be silly. You know who,” she says, tossing her black wig and orange Nymp horns with a hint of the coyness that must have made her a lethal flirt forty years ago. “This is gonna be my fucking comeback, so don’t screw around.”

Wait, wait, he tells himself. You can’t just roll over. “There’s a password,” he says as sternly as he can.

“Tiptoe Through the fucking Tulips,” she says. “Now do I have to pull your pants off or what?”

Stan unsnaps his belt. Lucinda takes it over to the makeup counter, puts on her reading glasses, and holds the buckle under the light. She’s got a tiny implement, like a little screwdriver. She inserts it into the top of the buckle, gives a twist, and the thing snaps open. Inside there’s a miniature black flashdrive.

She tucks the drive into a small envelope, licks it shut, whips off her hair complete with the horns, and duct-tapes the drive to the top of her fuzzy scalp, which isn’t totally bald, but close. Then she pulls the wig back on and adjusts her horns. “Thanks,” she says. “I’m off. I sure hope this has a major scandal in it. I don’t mind risking what’s left of my neck, so long as it’s worth it. Watch the news!”

She’s gone in a swirl of hibiscus floral print and Blue Suede perfume. What’s next? Stan wonders. Wait until the four guys in sunglasses arrive and start ripping out my molars? I don’t have it! he’ll scream. It’s that wizened-up cancer survivor with horns! She’s duct-taped it to her head! Why can’t life hand him something plausible for a change?

The door opens again: four bald guys file in, except they don’t have sunglasses, and they’re green. They fill the dressing room. “Stan,” says the first one, advancing in back-pat stance. “Welcome to Vegas, bro!”

“Conor!” says Stan. “What the fuck!” They do the pat; something wet comes off on Stan’s cheek.

“Right,” says Conor, smiling greenly. “You remember Rikki and Jerold. It was Jerold let you in backstage.”

Handshakes, grins, whacks on the shoulder. The fourth guy says, “Stan. Well done.” Could it be Budge? Bald and green? Yes, it could.

“You guys freaked me out,” says Stan. “Turning up at the Elvis place, with my picture and all.” His honeymoon photo on the beach, the one he’d sent to Conor. That’s where they’d got it.

“Sorry about that,” says Con. “Thought we could cut some corners, make contact earlier, save time. But we missed you.”

“It came out okay in the wash,” says Budge.

“How’d you get out of Possibilibots?” Stan asks him.

“In a box, like you,” says Budge. “Hard to find an Elvis outfit my size, but we cut it up the back the way the undertakers do; plus the box was cramped, but apart from that it worked without a hitch. Our lady friend closed my lid at the Possibilibots end.”

“Let’s get you out of that dickwit Elvis suit. You look like a twat” says Conor. “Who’s got the razor?”

Stan, wearing a badly fitting Green Man suit, his head newly shaved, his face a seaweed green, is drinking a coconut water in Conor’s dressing room. Conor says the coconut water is a quick energy lift, though Stan really doesn’t need any more energy right now: he’s buzzing like a bad fuse.

On the small, blurry dressing room screen, the second Green Man show of the night is in progress. They run them through in teams, says Conor, because the act takes so much out of you. Not out of the boys, because they’re not really in it, they’re just in disguise. They can come and go backstage because everyone in Team One thinks they’re in the other team and vice versa. But Conor himself has always craved the spotlight, so he’s had himself inserted as a gong player.

“Yeah, I know, it’s moronic,” says Conor. “But you have to admit it’s the best cover while we’re waiting to pull the job.”

“What job?” says Stan.

“Oh. She didn’t tell you? She was extra-fucking definite about you. She said you totally had to be in with us; otherwise, it would be a fail. She said you were the lynchpin.”

“Who says? You mean …” He stops himself from saying Jocelyn’s name. He glances around, then up at the ceiling: is it safe in here?

“I mean her! The Big Wazooka! She said the two of you were fucking joined at the hip.”

The Big Wazooka isn’t how Stan would have thought of Jocelyn, but it kind of fits. Bazooka . “So, I’m the lynchpin,” he says. “Mind if I ask why?”

“Fucked if I know,” says Conor cheerfully. “Been doing odd jobs for her since before Christ. She’s known you were my big brother ever since she saw you at the trailer joint, before you signed into that body-parts wholesaler corral. I warned you about. But I never ask her why she wants what she wants, that’s her business. Deal is I just do the job, no loose ends; then I collect, end of story, have a nice life. But I guess we find out tomorrow, about why you’re so fucking central. That’s when it’s going down.”