The Heart Goes Last (30 page)

“There’s an update,” says Jocelyn.

“Coffee?” says Aurora.

“Thanks,” says Jocelyn. She inspects Charmaine. “What’s happened? You look like shit, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“It’s the grief,” Aurora says, and she and Charmaine both giggle.

Jocelyn takes this in. “Okay, good story. Stick to it if he asks,” she says. “I can see the two of you got into the liquor cabinet. I’ll get rid of the evidence for you, empties are my thing. Now listen up.”

They sit at the kitchen table. Charmaine tries a sip of coffee. She’s not ready to tackle the egg yet.

“Here’s his plan. Charmaine, he’ll tell you he’s taking a business trip to Las Vegas. He’ll ask you to book some tickets for you as well. He’ll say he requires your services onsite.”

“What kind of services?” Charmaine asks nervously. “Is he going to trap me in a hotel room, and then …”

“Nothing so simple,” says Jocelyn. “As you know, he’s through with sexbots, for his personal use. He’s moving to the next frontier.”

“This is what I was telling you,” says Aurora. “Last night.”

Charmaine’s recollections of last night are a little fuzzy. No, they are very fuzzy. What was it she and Aurora were drinking? Maybe there was some sort of drug in it. There was something about Aurora’s face coming off, but that can’t be right. “Frontier?” she says. All she can think of is Western movies.

Jocelyn brings out her PosiPad, turns it on, calls up a video. “Sorry for the quality,” she says, “but you can hear quite well.” There’s a pixilated Ed standing in front of a large boardroom touchscreen that says Possibilibots in writing that scrawls across the space, explodes into fireworks, then begins again. He’s addressing a small gathering of men in suits, visible only as the backs of heads.

“I have it on good authority,” he’s saying in his most persuasive manner, “that the interface experience, even with our most advanced models, is and can only ever be an unconvincing substitute for the real thing. A resort for the desperate, perhaps” – here there’s some laughter from the backs of the heads – “but surely we can do better than that!”

Murmuring; the haircuts nod.

Ed continues: “The human body is complex, my friends – more complex than we can hope to duplicate with what is, and can only be, a mechanical contrivance. And it is driven by the human brain, which is the most sophisticated, the most intricate construct in the known universe. We’ve been killing ourselves trying to approximate that combo! But maybe we got hold of the wrong end of the stick!”

“How do you mean?” asks one of the heads.

“What I mean is, why build a self-standing device when a self-standing device already exists? Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just make those wheels
roll where we want them to?
In a way that is beneficial to all. The greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number – that’s what Possibilibots stands for, am I right?”

“Cut to the chase,” says one of the haircuts. “You’re not on TV, we don’t need the sermon.”

“What’s wrong with our current position? I thought we were raking it in,” says another.

“We are, we are,” says Ed. “But we can rake it in even more. Okay, short form: why not take an existing body and brain, and, by a painless intervention, cause that entity – that person – not to put too fine a point on it, that hot babe who won’t come across for you – cause her to home in on you and you alone, as if she thinks you’re the sexiest hunk she’s ever seen?”

“Is this some kind of a perfume?” says another voice. “With the pheromones, like with moths? I tried that, it’s crap. I attracted a raccoon.”

“No shit! A real raccoon? Or just a dame with …”

“If it’s a new oxytocin –Viagara pill – they don’t last. The next morning she’ll go back to thinking you’re a douche.”

“What happened with the raccoon? That would be something new!” Laughter.

“No, no,” says Ed. “Let’s settle down. It’s not a pill, and believe it or not, it isn’t science fiction. The technique they’re refining at our Las Vegas clinic is based on the work that’s been done on the erasure of painful memories, in vets, child-abuse survivors, and so forth. They discovered that not only can they pinpoint various fears and painful associations in the brain and then excise them, but they can also wipe out your previous love object and imprint you with a different one.”

The camera moves to a very pretty woman in a hospital bed. She’s asleep. Then her eyes open, move sideways. “Oh,” she says, smiling with joy. “You’re here! At last! I love you!”

“Wow, that simple,” says a haircut. “She’s not acting?”

“No, says Ed. “This is one that didn’t work out; we tried it onsite here, but it was too soon, the technique hadn’t been perfected. Our Vegas team is up to speed on it now! But it illustrates the principle.” Segue left: The woman is pressing her lips to a blue teddy bear in a passionate kiss.

“That’s Veronica!” Charmaine almost shrieks. “Oh my god! She’s fallen in love with knitwear!”

“Wait,” says Jocelyn. “There’s more.”

“I don’t know what saboteur gave her that bear,” Ed says. “Trouble is, this thing works on anything with two eyes. The guy who ordered the hit … ordered the job … ordered the operation was very annoyed when he turned up, but he was too late. She’d already imprinted. Timing is everything.”

“This is dynamite,” says one of the heads. “You could have a harem, you could have …”

“So you designate the target …”

“You requisition it …”

“Into the van, then the plane,” says Ed, “off to the Vegas clinic, a quick needle, and then – a whole new life!”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

Jocelyn turns off the PosiPad. “That’s it, in a nutshell,” she says.

“You mean, they’re snatching them?” says Charmaine. “Out of their own lives? The women?”

“That’s a blunt way of putting it,” says Jocelyn. “But not just women, it’s a unisex thing. Yes, that would be the idea. But the subject doesn’t mind, because their previous love attachments have been nullified.”

“So that’s why Ed wants her to go on the business trip to Vegas?” says Aurora.

“He hasn’t told me in so many words,” says Jocelyn, “but it’s a fair guess.”

“You mean, he wants to fix it so I don’t love Stan any more,” Charmaine says. She hears her own voice: it’s so sad. If that happened, Stan would become a stranger to her. Their whole past, their wedding, living in their car, everything they went through together … maybe she’d remember it, but it wouldn’t mean anything. It would be like listening to someone else, someone she doesn’t even know, someone boring.

“Yes. You wouldn’t love Stan any more. You’d love Ed instead,” says Jocelyn. “You’d dote on him.”

This is like one of those love potions in the old fairy-tale books at Grandma Win’s, thinks Charmaine. The kind where you get imprisoned by a toad prince. In those stories you always got the true love back at the end, as long as you had a magic silver dress or something; but in real life – in this real life, the one Ed’s planning for her – she’ll be under some awful toad prince spell forever. “That’s horrible!” Charmaine says. “I’ll kill myself first!”

“Maybe,” says Jocelyn, “but you won’t kill yourself after. You’ll come to when the operation’s over, and there will be Ed, holding your hand and gazing into your eyes, and you’ll take one look at him and throw your arms around him and say you’ll love him forever. Then you’ll beg him to make whatever sexual use of you he wants. And you’ll mean that, every single word. You’ll never get enough of him. That’s how this thing is supposed to work.”

“Oh god,” says Charmaine. “But you can’t let that happen to me! No matter what I’ve … you can’t let it happen to
Stan
!”

“You still care about Stan?” Jocelyn says with interest. “After everything?”

Charmaine has a flash of Stan, how sweet he was, much of the time; how innocent he looked when he was sleeping, like a boy; how crushed he would be if she turned her back on him as if he’d never existed, and took the arm of Ed, and walked away. He would never, ever get over it.

She can’t help it: she begins to cry. Great big tears are rolling out of her eyes, she’s gasping for breath. Jocelyn brings her a tissue but doesn’t go so far as to pat her shoulder. “At least he wants
you,
” she says. “Not just your organs.

“It’s okay,” Jocelyn says. “Calm down. Ed has specified that I’m going with you. I’m your security, I’m your bodyguard, I’m supposed to keep you safe.” She pauses, to let this sink in. “So I’ve got your back.”

The show Lucindas’s got tickets for is the Green Man Group. They’re a spinoff of the Blue Man Group, who’ve been going in Vegas for decades. Stan saw a spoof version of them on YouTube when he was still working at Dimple. There was also the Red Man Group and the Orange Man Group and the Pink Man Group, each with a different gimmick. With the Green Man Group, says the program, it’s an eco theme.

Sure enough, when the spots and floods go on, there’s some fake vegetation with some fake birds in it, and when the first set of Green Men come bouncing out they’re not only bald and painted a shiny green but also wearing foliage. Apart from the leaves, it’s the same kind of tightly directed comedy, tech, and music show that Stan can remember watching online, or parts of it: tricks with balloons that turn into flowers, munching up kale and spitting green goop out of their mouths, juggling onions, and a lot of drumming, plus a guy with a gong who’s used as punctuation. No words – none of the Men ever say anything, the pretense is that they’re mute. Once in a while, there’s a bit of message – birdsongs, a sunrise on the big onstage screens, a flight of helium balloons with baby trees attached to them – but then the drums kick in again.

All of sudden there’s a tulip number, done to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” At first this makes Stan sit up straight: the password from his time at Possibilibots, it can’t be a fucking coincidence! But as the number unfolds he thinks, Hold on, Stan. Yes, it can be a coincidence, a lot of things are, and considering the barefaced idiocy of what the Green Men are doing up there on the stage, it has to be. If it were a signal, what the fuck would they be expecting him to do in response? Run around screaming? Yell,
Take my belt buckle. Here’s the flashdrive
? So, coincidence, for sure.

He leans back in the seat, watches the number. There are tulip-themed pyrotechnics, tulip manipulations, tulip transformations: tulips that catch fire, tulips that explode, tulips that grow out of a Green Man’s ears. Stan has to admit it’s expertly performed, and also funny. It’s relaxing to see other guys making fools of themselves. But if they’re doing it on purpose, maybe it doesn’t count.

Next up, a gong item. The one playing the gong is a clown of sorts. He gets a lot of laughs. But is there only one gong guy? The Green Men are like the Elvises: they’re in identical disguises and hard to tell apart. Stan tries to follow the changes, but it’s like watching a card sharp: the trick is done, you know it’s a trick, but you can’t catch them doing it.

The second-last number is an audience participation segment. Three innocents are hauled up on stage, dressed in waterproof outfits, asked to eat peculiar substances, and bombarded with green goo. Then there’s a grand finale, with more drums, gongs, and things that light up. Then there’s the curtain calls. The bald green guys are sweating.

“So, Rental Elvis, what’s your verdict?” says Lucinda as the lights go up.

“Good timing,” says Stan.

“That’s it? Good timing?” says Lucinda. “Men devote their lives to developing those skills and that’s all you can say? I bet you’re a wow in bed.”

Fuck you, thinks Stan. But I’d rather not. “Ma’am,” he says, ushering her down the aisle with a swirl of his blue cape. “After you.” Her orange horns are on crooked; they give her a rakish air, like a demon on holiday.

Lucinda says she’s headed for the ladies’, and after that she expects Stan to take her to one of the bars in this joint and share a White Russian or two with him, and tell her his life story. The night is young, so after they do that, they can do something else. She fully intends to get her money’s worth, she tells him, with a grin, but also in the stern, slightly accusing voice of a high school teacher.

One thing at a time, he thinks. He shepherds her to the Ladies’. As he’s waiting for her outside, scanning the thinning crowd for anyone thuggish who looks too interested in him, one of the Marilyns sidles up beside him. “Stan,” she whispers. “It’s me. Veronica.”

“What took you so fucking long?” he growls. “There’s Positron some guys in sunglasses asking about me at the place where I’m living. You need to move me! Where’s Budge? Where’s Conor? Am I a small potato? If this crap I’m carrying is so shit-hot, why isn’t anyone coming to collect it?”

“Keep your voice down,” she says. “NAB is always crawling with eavesdroppers. Those broadcasters like to steal scoops and rat on each other to anyone shoe listening. That could be bad for you.”

“I thought Jocelyn wanted to get the news out!” says Stan,

“It’s the timing,” says Veronica. “She needs to hold back until the exact right moment. Come with me, hurry. We’re going backstage.”

“What about my date?” Stan says. Lucinda will raise hell if he vanishes; she’s the hell-raising type.

“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got another Elvis, he’ll take your place, she won’t be able to tell you apart.”

Stan doubts that – Lucinda’s not stupid – but he follows Veronica down a side aisle and through the Exit door at the front row of the theatre. There’s a corridor, a corner, some stairs. Then the stage door. He knocks on it. It’s opened by a bald guy painted green, in a dark green suit and an earpiece. “That way,” he says. They’ve thought of everything: themed bouncers.

Veronica hurries along a narrow corridor, Stan following. She’s got the Marilyn rear action down cold: do they give classes in it? Sprain your ankle, then stuff your feet into the high heels? Veronica, he thinks mournfully. You are so fucking wasted on that bear.

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.

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.”

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.”