Atwood Margaret - The Heart Goes Last

Stan tries to look wise. Is it possible to look wise with your face painted green? He doubts it. “What do I do?” he says. He hopes they aren’t going to rob a bank or kill anyone. “On this job? When it’s going down?”

“Figure we’ll put you on the gong,” says Conor. “Not hard to pick up, you just have to know the cues, then hit the gong with the hammer and look like a dumbass. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

“So I’m onstage?” says Stan. That’s not safe, everyone will be looking at him. But then, so what? He no longer has the thing in the belt buckle; he no longer has even the belt, since Rikki took away his whole Elvis outfit and tossed it into a dumpster.

“Not here,” says Conor. “Place called Ruby Slippers. It’s a retirement home clinic type of thing, lot of rich old farts warehoused or getting themselves cut and sewed. We’re the entertainment.”

“That’s all?” says Stan. “All I have to do is hit the gong?” Though he’s been to that Ruby Slippers branch as Elvis a lot, romancing old ladies, nobody will recognize him; not in his current disguise as a giant pea.

“Don’t be a fucking dummy,” says Conor. “That’s the cover! The real job is a snatch.”

“That place has fucking tight security,” says Stan.

“Hey! This is your brother you’re talking to!” says Conor. He rubs two fingers together. “Those guys get paid off! We just go there, start the green act, knock down the security for the look of it, do the snatch …”

Crap, thinks Stan. They’re kidnapping someone. That could get them shot, not to mention himself. “So, I hit the gong …”

“You got it.” says Conor. “And then, whisk-o!”

“Whisk-o?”

“The big snatcheroonie,” says Conor. “It’s genius.”

In Flight

Ed’s up front, in Business. It would look strange for Charmaine to be there too – after all, she’s only the assistant, officially. That’s Ed’s reasoning, says Jocelyn: he doesn’t want to call undue attention. Thank goodness for that, thinks Charmaine, because she would find it very, very hard to be nice to him or even civil, now that she knows what he intends to do to her. If she were beside him in Business, most likely he’d be squeezing her arm all the way to Las Vegas, plus dosing her with gin and tonic and trying to get his fingers onto her knee or look down her front, though no hope of that because she’s wearing the button-to-the-chin blouse Aurora picked out for her.

And all the time he’d be asking her if she’s feeling any less grief because of Stan. Not that he really cares about Stan, or about anything she likes or loves or doesn’t like or love, because he has no interest in who she is really. She’s mostly just a body to him, and now he wants to turn her into only a body. She might as well not have any head at all.

After feeling so sad for weeks, she’s now really angry underneath. If she had to sit with Ed she’d be sure to snap at him, and then he might figure out that she’s learned about his big plan. And then he might panic and do something weird, right on the plane. He might throw her to the floor and start ripping off her buttons, the way Max used to, but with Max she wanted him to do that, whereas with Ed it would be a very different thing, it would be awkward and quite frankly creepy. Keep your freaking hands off my darn buttons! That’s what she would say.

Well, he couldn’t really do that – the floor thing with the buttons – because the flight attendants would stop him. But what if they turned a blind eye, what if they’re all his employees, what if everyone on the plane is on his side?

Calm down, Charmaine, she tells herself. That’s just foolish. Those kinds of things don’t happen in real life. It’s okay, it’s going to be fine, because Jocelyn is sitting beside her and Aurora is in the row behind them, and there’s another Surveillance person on the plane too, Jocelyn has assured her – a man, back near the exit door. And that man plus Jocelyn and Aurora, they’ll be more than a match for Ed. She doesn’t know what they’ll do, but it might involve a judo kick or something. And they have the advantage of knowing about Ed’s plan, while he doesn’t know a thing about theirs.

Or Jocelyn has the advantage of knowing about Ed’s plan. So far she hasn’t shared too much of it with Charmaine. She’s reading on her PosiPad, making notes. Charmaine has tried for an in-flight movie – how amazing it would be to see a movie that isn’t from the fifties, she hasn’t been able to watch anything like that for ages, and it would take her mind off things – but her screen isn’t working. Neither is the Recline button on her seat, and someone’s ripped most of the pages out of the in-flight magazine. In her opinion the airline people do things like that on purpose, to rub it in that you aren’t in Business. They most likely have a special team that goes through the planes at night, ripping out the pages and messing up the screens.

Charmaine looks out the window: clouds, nothing but clouds. Flat clouds, not even puffy ones. At first it was so exciting to be on a plane – she’s only ever been on one before, with Stan, going on their honeymoon. She reads the remaining piece in the magazine. What a coincidence: “Honeymoon on the Beach.” Stan got such a sunburn the first day, but at least they did one thing he really wanted, which was having sex underwater, or the lower parts of them were underwater. There were people on the beach too. Could they tell? She hoped they could, she remembers hoping that. Then they had to get their bathing suits on again, and Charmaine couldn’t find her bikini bottom because in all the turmoil she’d dropped it, and Stan had to go diving for it, and they laughed and laughed. They were so happy then. It was just like an ad.

Out the window it’s still clouds. She gets up, goes to the washroom for something to do. How thoughtless, the last person didn’t clean the sink. Really, they don’t appreciate their privileges.

It’s better to close the lid when you flush: Grandma Win told her that. Otherwise the germs fly around in the air and go up your nose.

Coming back along the aisle, she wonders which the security man. Right near the exit, Jocelyn said. She glances around but can’t see the heads back there. She reaches her seat, squeezes in past Jocelyn, who smiles at her but doesn’t say anything. Charmaine fidgets some more; then she just has to ask.

“What in the heck was he planning to do? ”

Jocelyn looks over at her. “Who?” she asks, as if she doesn’t know.

“Him. Ed,” Charmaine whispers. “How was he going to …”

“Hungry?” Jocelyn says. “Because I am. Let’s get some peanuts. Want a soda? Coffee?” She looks at her watch. “We’ve got time.”

“Just a water,” says Charmaine. “Please. “

Jocelyn flags the flight attendant, orders some peanuts and a couple of cheese sandwiches, and the bottle of water for Charmaine with a glass of ice cubes, and a coffee for herself. Charmaine is surprised at how hungry she is; she wolfs down the sandwich in no time flat, gulps down a glass of the water.

“He has it all thought out,” says Jocelyn. “I’m supposed to knock you out on the plane, just before we land. A little something in your drink; a bit of Zolpidem, or GBH, or similar.”

“Oh,” says Charmaine. “Like, those date rape drugs.”

“Right. So you’ll go under. Then I’ll say you’ve fainted, and we call a perimedic ambulance to meet the plane and have you carried off on a stretcher. Then you’ll be taken to the clinic at Ruby Slippers Vegas, and after the brain intervention you’ll wake up, and Ed will be right beside you, holding your hand. And you’ll imprint on him and smile at him like he’s God, and throw your arms around him, and say you’re his, body and soul, and what can you do for him, such as a blowjob right there in the clinic.”