The Heart Goes Last - Страница 21

Ram it, he tells her. But Charmaine, with her angel face and devious heart – the real Charmaine – can’t hear him. She can’t know that Jocelyn’s been messing with their lives, paying her back for stealing Phil; but on the first of the month she’ll find out. When she walks into this house, expecting to find Stan, it will be Phil who’ll be waiting for her. He won’t exactly be pleased about it either, would be Stan’s guess, because a quick hit of supercharged nooky snatched on the run is not at all the same as all day every day.

That’s when Charmaine will discover that the fire of her loins is not who she thinks he is – not the Max of her fever dreams, whose fake name she invokes over and over in those videos – but a much less alpha male, who will look very different in plain daylight. Saggier, older, but also jaded, shifty-eyed, calculating: you can see that in his face, on the videos. She and Phil will be stuck with each other whether they like it or not. Charmaine will have to live with his dirty socks, his hairs in the sink; she’ll have to listen to him snoring, she’ll have to make small talk with him at breakfast; all of which will put a damper on the bodice-ripper she’s been acting out.

How long will it take the two of them to get bored, then fed up with each other? How long before Phil resorts to domestic violence, just for something to do? Not long, Stan hopes. He wouldn’t mind knowing that Phil is smacking Charmaine around, and not just as a garnish to sex, the way he does onscreen, but for real: somebody needs to.

But Phil better not push it too far, or Charmaine may stick a grapefruit knife into his jugular, since behind that blond fluff-head act of hers there’s something skewed. A chip missing, a loose connection. He hadn’t recognized it when they’d been living together – he’d underestimated her shadow side, which was mistake number one, because everyone has a shadow side, even fluffpots like her.

There’s another thought, not so pleasant: when Phil and Charmaine take up domestic life in this house, what will become of him, Stan? He can’t stay in the house with them, that’s clear. Will Jocelyn spirit him away to a secret love-nest and chain him to her bedpost? Or will she tire of treating him like an indentured studmuffin, of hotwiring his mind and watching him jerk around like a galvanized frog, and let him re-enter Positron for a much-needed rest?

Though maybe she’ll alter the schedule even further: maybe she’ll just keep Stan here with her, playing her warped game of house, and let the other two cool their jets inside the slammer. Switchover day will roll around and Charmaine and Phil will be all set to put on their civvies and beeline it to their seedy rendezvous, but then some gink in a uniform will tell them there’s been a delay, and they won’t be coming out of Positron right now. Which will mean three months straight for Charmaine. She must be going nuts.

Phil will already have guessed that Jocelyn has found him out, yet again; he’ll wonder whether she’s finally given up on him. He’ll be in an advanced state of anxiety if he has any sense at all. He must know his wife is a vengeful harpy, deep inside her business-suit-neutral cool and her long-suffering pose of tolerance.

But Charmaine will be confused. She’ll run through her gamut of girly manipulations with the Positron management: dimpled blond astonishment, lip-quivering, outrage, tearful pleading – but none of it will do her any good. Then maybe she’ll have a real meltdown. She’ll lose it, she’ll wail, she’ll crumple to the floor. The officials won’t put up with that: they’ll haul her upright, hose her down. Stan would like to see that; it would be some satisfaction for the contempt with which she’s been treating him. Maybe Jocelyn will let him watch on the spy-cam video hookup.

Not likely. His access to spy-cam material is limited to Charmaine and Phil writhing around on the floor. Jocelyn really gets a jolt out of those. Her demand that he duplicate the action is pathetic: she must know he can’t feel any real passion. At those moments he’d drink paint thinner or stuff a chili pepper up his nose – anything to dull his brain during these mutually humiliating scenes. But he needs to convince himself that he’s next door to an automation, he needs to keep the action going. His life may depend on it.

Last night Jocelyn tried something new. She has all the access codes to everything, as far as he can tell, so she opened Charmaine’s pink locker and rummaged around in Charmaine’s stuff and found a nightgown she could fit into. It had daisies on it, and little bows – very far from Jocelyn’s functional style, which was maybe the point.

Jocelyn is in the habit of sleeping in the spare room, where she also keeps her “work,” whatever it is; but last night, after lighting a scented candle, she’d put on that nightgown and tiptoed into his room. “Surprise,” she’d whispered. Her mouth was dark with lipstick, and as she pressed it down on his he’d recognized the scent of the lipstick kiss on that note he’d found. I’m starved for you! I need you so much. XXOO and you know what more – Jasmine. Like a moron, he’d fallen for this sultry Jasmine, with her mouth the colour of grapejuice. What a mirage! Then, what a disappointment.

And now Jocelyn wanted to be who? Dragged out of sleep, he was disoriented; for a moment he didn’t know where he was, or who was pressing herself against him. “Just imagine I’m Jasmine,” she murmured. “Just let yourself go.” But how could he, with the texture of Charmaine’s familiar cotton nightgown under his fingers? The daisies. The bows. It was such a disconnect.

How much longer can he go on starring in this bedroom farce without losing it completely and doing something violent? He can keep himself steady when he’s working at the scooter depot: solving mechanical problems levels him out. But as the workday nears its end he feels the dread building. Then he has to get onto his scooter and motor back to the house. His goal is to dump a few beers into himself, then pretend to concentrate on yard work before Jocelyn turns up.

It’s risky to combine beer fog with power tools, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Unless he numbs himself, he might find himself doing something stupid.

But Jocelyn is high up on the power ladder; she must have every one of her snatch hairs monitored, with a SWAT team ready to spring into lethal action at any threat. Stan would surely trigger an some alarm while making even the most innocuous move against her, such as roping her up and stowing her in Charmaine’s pink locker – no, not the pink one, he doesn’t know the code; in his own red locker – while he makes his getaway. But getaway to where? There’s no route out of Consilience, not for those who’ve made the dick-brained mistake of signing themselves in. Signing themselves over. do time now, buy time for our future.

You got suckered, says Conor’s voice inside his head.

Here comes Jocelyn in her darkened, softly purring spook vehicle. She must have a driver, because she always exits from the back seat. They’re said to be working on a bunch of new robotic tech stuff at Positron that’s going to help this place pay its way, so maybe it’s a bot driving the car.

He has a wild impulse to sprint over with the hedge trimmer, turn it on, threaten to shred both Jocelyn and her robot driver unless they take him to the main Consilience gateway, right now. What if she calls his bluff and refuses? Will he go for it, and be left with a dead car full of electronics and mangled body parts?

But if it works, he’ll make her drive him right through the gateway, into the crumbling, semi-deserted wasteland outside the walls. He’ll jump out of the car, make a break for it. He won’t have much of a life out there, picking through garbage dumps and fighting off scavengers, but at least he’d be in charge of himself again. He’ll find Conor, or Conor will find him. If anyone knows how to play the angles out there, it will be Con. He’ll have to eat his pride, though. Do some backtracking. I was wrong, I should have listened to you, and fucking etcetera.

Though maybe better not to try the hedge-trimmer move on Jocelyn. She can probably activate the alarm system by flexing her toes. Not to mention her fast moves: those Surveillance types must take martial arts training. Learn to crush windpipes with their thumbs.

Now she’s getting out of the car, feet first. Shoes, ankles, grey nylon. Any guy seeing those legs would have to be turned on. Wouldn’t they?

Hang on to that thought, Stan, he tells himself. It’s not all downside.

VI | VALENTINE’S DAY Limbo

It’s the tenth day of February, and Stan is still in limbo. Charmaine didn’t reappear on the switchover day, as he’d been both hoping and fearing she would. Hoping, because – he has to admit – he misses her and wants to see her, especially if she replaces Jocelyn. Fearing, because would he lose his temper? Tell her he’s seen the videos of her with Max, confront her with all the lies she told him, belt her one, the way Con might? Would she be defiant, would she laugh at him? Or would she cry and say what a mistake she’s made and how sorry she is, and how much she loves him? And if she does say that, how will he know she means it?

He himself would be on shaky ground. What if Jocelyn takes her side, what if she shares what she knows about Stan’s pursuit of the fake Jasmine and adds in a few details about what she and Stan have been doing on the blue sofa? And elsewhere. Many elsewheres. The inside of his head turns to a snarl of string every time he tries to picture his reunion with Charmaine.