The Heart Goes Last - Страница 42

“Timing,” says Budge. “But it makes her an ideal operative, because she can never be distracted by a man.”

“Who can she be distracted by?” Stan asks.

Budge stops in front of a door, knocks on it, opens it with his card. “After you,” he says.

Sacrifice

The funeral chapel is one size fits all. No crosses or whatnot, but there’s a giant pair of praying hands and a picture of a sunrise. The colour scheme is powder blue and white, like the Wedgewood-style teacups Grandma Win used to have. There are huge banks of white flowers: they’ve really gone all out.

The chapel is filled to overflowing. The women from the bakery where Charmaine works when she’s not in prison are here, and so are the knitting groups – her original group and that other group she hardly knows at all. They must have let these women out of Positron on passes for the funeral. Quite a few are wearing black hats – berets, pancake shapes, modified cloches – so she’s made the right choice hatwise.

There are a number of Stan’s fellow workers from the scooter shop. They nod at her deferentially because she’s the widow, but there’s an extra layer of deference as well. It must be the presence of Ed, who has tucked her arm within his and who is leading her up the aisle carefully, respectfully. He places her in the front pew, then sits down beside her, his thigh not touching hers, thank goodness, but still too close.

Aurora is on the other side of her, and on the other side of Ed is Jocelyn from Surveillance, wearing a pillbox hat. She looks a bit like Jackie Kennedy.

And on the other side of Jocelyn is Max. She can feel a thin filament of superheated air stretching between them, like the inside of an old light bulb: incandescent. He feels it too. He must feel it.

Ignore this, she tells herself. It’s an illusion. You’re in mourning.

The chapel has fold-down pews in case any dead person has a kneeling family. Charmaine wasn’t brought up as a kneeler, but she’d like to be able to kneel right now – put her hands on the back of the pew in front, then place her forehead on those hands as if in despair. That way she could just zone out, which would help her get through this bogus funeral. Or she could spend the time thinking about what in heck she’s going to do if Ed makes a move on her, such as putting his hand on her thigh. But she can’t do any kneeling, because she’s in the front row. She has to sit up straight and act noble. She squares her shoulders.

Now they’re playing organ music, some kind of hymn. If they play “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” like in some of the Consilience TV funerals, she doesn’t know if she can stand it. She is walking alone, she always will be. Here comes a tear.

Toughen up. Just pretend you’re at the hairdresser’s, says the little voice.

The coffin is closed, due to the hideous burns that Stan is supposed to have suffered as he threw himself upon the defective main switch, then frizzled as the current shot through him. That’s what it said on the TV news, but really the coffin is closed because Stan isn’t in it. She wonders what they’ve done with him and what they’ve put into the coffin instead. Most likely some old cabbages or bags of lawn clippings: something of the right weight and sogginess. But why have anything in there at all? No one’s going to look inside.

What if she called their bluff? Said, I want to see my darling Stan one more time. Made a scene, threw herself on the coffin, demanded they wrench off the lid. Then, when they refuse, she could turn to the congregation and tell them what’s really going on: Innocent people are being killed! Like Sandi! Like Stan! And there must be dozens of others … But they’d surround her in a minute and haul her away to calm her down, because after all she’s out of her mind with grief. Then she’d be erased, just like Stan. Oh, Stan …

Dang it, more tears. Aurora squeezes her hand to show support. Ed is going pat pat, and in one more minute he’s going to snake his arm around her. There’s black on her white hanky: the mascara. “I’m all right,” she manages to gasp in a half-whisper.

Now there’s a soloist, a woman from Charmaine’s knitting group, the second one. She’s got that solemn soprano expression on her face, she’s inflating her lungs and sticking out her black frilly boobs and opening her mouth, and this will be awful, because Charmaine recognizes the organ-music tune: “Cry Me a River.” The woman’s way off key. Charmaine covers her face with her gloved hands, because she might laugh. No hysteria, she tells herself firmly.

The soprano’s done, thank heavens. After the rustling and coughs die down, one of Stan’s scooter co-workers delivers a message from what he calls Stan’s Team. Bowed head, foot shuffling. Great guy, Stan; stepped up to the mark, proud of him, made the sacrifice for all of us, miss him. Charmaine feels sorry for the speaker, because he’s been deceived. Like everyone else.

Then Ed unglues himself from her arm, straightens his tie, and walks to the podium. He clears his throat and out pours his TV voice, warm and reassuring, strong and believable. It comes to her as bursts of sound, like a scratched cd. Brought together malfunction regrettable solemn deplorable admirable brave enduring heroic forever. Then, Join loss spouse help hope community.

If she didn’t know the truth, Charmaine would be convinced. More than convinced, won over. Get through it, you windbag, she thinks at Ed.

Now six of Stan’s Team are moving forward. Now they’re rolling the coffin down the aisle. Now the music starts up: “Side By Side.”

I can’t take this, thinks Charmaine. That should have been us, me and Stan, travelling along as we used to, through all kinds of weather, even inside that smelly old car, just as long as we’re together. Here come the tears again.

“Stand up,” Aurora is telling her. “You need to follow the coffin.”

“I can’t, I can’t see,” Charmaine gasps.

“I’ll help you. Up you come! People will want to pay their respects at the reception.”

Reception. Egg salad sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Asparagus pinwheels. Lemon squares. “To me? Respects?” Charmaine stifles a sob. That’s all she needs, a hysterical outburst. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t eat anything!” Why does death make people so hungry?

“Take a deep breath,” says Aurora. “That’s better. You’ll shake their hands and smile, it’s all they expect. Then I’ll drive with you back to the house, and we can discuss your grief therapy. Consilience always provides that.”

“I don’t need any grief therapy!” Charmaine almost screams.

“Oh, you do,” says Aurora with her sham compassion. “Oh, I think you really do.”

We’ll see about that, Charmaine thinks. She starts to pace down the aisle, Aurora’s steadying hand on her elbow. Ed has materialized again and flanks her on the other side, his arm stuck onto her back like a squid.

Perfect

Budge eases the door open, stands aside to let Stan go first. The room they enter is the closest thing to a genuine old-fashioned room that Stan has seen in some time. The Dimple Robotics golf course had a bar like that. There’s wood panelling, there are floor-length curtains, there are oriental carpets. There’s a fire burning in the fireplace, or a quasi-fire: gas, maybe. There’s a leather-look sofa in front of it.

Sitting on the sofa with her long legs stretched out is one of the most gorgeous women Stan has ever seen. Lustrous dark hair, shoulder-length; perfect tits, the tops of them just barely displayed. She’s wearing a simple black sheath, a single strand of pearls. What a classy piece of ass, thinks Stan.

She smiles at him, the neutral smile she might give a puppy, or an elderly aunt. There’s no charge coming from her, no chemistry.

“Stan, I’d like you to meet Veronica,” says Budge. “Veronica, this is Stan.”

“Veronica,” says Stan. Is this the same Veronica? That hooker from PixelDust who Charmaine used to tell him wasn’t really her friend? If so, she’s had quite a makeover. She’d been pretty before, but now she’s drop-dead stunning. “Do I know you?” he asks, then feels dumb because every man she meets must ask her that.

“Possibly,” says Veronica, “but the past no longer applies.” She extends a hand. Manicured nails, burgundy. Expensive watch, Rolex. Cool palm. She gives him an LED smile: light, but no heat. “I understand I’m taking you to the other side.”

Stan shakes the hand. Take me fucking anywhere, he thinks. This is what he once thought Jasmine would look like, though Jasmine had only ever been a fantasy. He needs to watch it here, not let himself be hauled around by the gonads. Listen up, he tells his dick silently. Keep it zipped.

“Sit down, have a drink,” says Veronica.

“Do you live here?” says Stan.

“Live?” says Veronica. She arches a perfect eyebrow.

“This is the honeymoon suite,” says Budge. “Or one of them. Where the customized individuals first meet their … their …”

“Their owners,” says Veronica with a precious-metal laugh. “It’s supposed to be lust at first sight on behalf of the, of the people like me, but they missed the target in my case. The man walked in to collect on his investment and there was nothing.”

“Nothing?” says Stan. Why isn’t she angry? But Budge said they weren’t, or not so you’d notice. They don’t seem to miss what they’ve lost.