The Heart Goes Last

by Margaret Atwood

  Has she been a fool? No question, yes. Has it been worth it? No. Maybe. Yes.

  Or yes, right now.

  V | AMBUSH

  TOWN MEETING

  On the evening before the December 1 switchover day there's another Town Meeting. Not that anyone actually meets up: they watch on closed-circuit TV, whether they're inside Positron Prison or out of it. The Town Meeting is to let everyone know how well the Consilience/Positron experiment is doing. Their collective Healthy Interaction scores, their Food Production goals, their Dwelling Maintenance rates: things like that. Pep talks, Zing ratings, helpful feedback. Admonishments kept to a minimum, a few new rules added in at the end.

  These Town Meetings emphasize the positives. Incidents of violence are way down, they're told today - a graph pops onto the screen - and egg production is up. A new process will soon be introduced at Poultry: headless chickens nourished through tubes, which has been shown to decrease anxiety and increase meat growth efficiencies; in addition to which it eliminates cruelty to animals, which is the sort of multiple win that Positron has come to stand for! Shout-out to the Brussels Sprouts team, which has exceeded its quotas two months in a row! Let's raise the bar on rabbit production in the second half of November, there are some great new rabbit recipes coming soon. More attention to the sorting for the Waste Recycling program, please; it won't work unless we all pull together. And so on and so on.

  Headless chickens, no fucking way I'd eat that, thinks Stan. He's downed three beers before the meeting started: the Consilience brewery is up and running, and the beer is better than nothing, though he can imagine what Conor would say about it. You're joking. It's not beer, it's horse piss. What's it made out of, anyway?

  Yeah, what, he thinks, taking another swig. He lets his attention drift; Charmaine, sitting beside him on the sofa, chirps up with "Oh, the eggs are doing well! That must be you, hon!" He talks to her, off and on, about his work in the chicken facility, but she hasn't been similarly forthcoming about her own work, which has made him curious about it. What exactly is it that she does, over at Medications Administration? It's more than just giving out pills, but when he asks questions, her face goes blank and she shuts the conversation down. Or she says everything is just fine, as if he might think it isn't.

  There's something else about Charmaine that's been bothering him. During their town times, he's tracked the scooter off and on, just to make sure his two-phone system is working. Everything was as expected: Charmaine spent her time bustling here and there, to the bakery, to the shops, back to the house. But then, on the switchover days he's monitored, she's been making detours. Why would she have gone to the seedier part of town, where the unreclaimed houses are located? What was she doing? Checking out future real estate? That must be why she spent so much time inside the houses: she must've been measuring the rooms. Is she in nesting mode? Is she going to start pushing for them to get another transfer, move into a bigger house? Is she planning a baby? That's most likely her game plan, though she hasn't brought up the subject lately. He isn't sure how he feels about that: a baby might interfere with his Jasmine plans, not that these are crystal clear. He hasn't imagined much beyond that first sulphurous encounter.

  He now knows where Jasmine goes during her time as a Consilience citizen: she gets on the very same pink-and-purple scooter and heads to the gym. She must work out a lot. How lithe and toned and strong her body must be.

  That alarms him: she might put up a struggle when he surges out of the swimming pool like a powerful giant squid and wraps her in his wet, naked arms. But she won't struggle for long.

  He's taken to going to the gym himself, checking around. Not that Jasmine would be there, she'd be inside Positron. But the weight machines, the treadmills: her alluring bum must have reposed on one of the former, her agile feet must have walked upon one of the latter. Though he knows it's impossible, he half expects to find signs of her: a dropped handkerchief, a glass slipper, some fuchsia bikini briefs. Magical signs of her presence.

  Sometimes when he's loitering he feels watched; perhaps by the shadowy face at the window one floor up, overlooking the gym's swimming pool. That's where the upper-management supervisors are said to get their exercise, so naturally they'd have a Surveillance person somewhere around. That thought makes him nervous: he doesn't want to be singled out, he doesn't want to be of special interest. Except to Jasmine.

  --

  The Town Meeting today skips the preliminary shots of happy workers and pie charts and focuses right in on Ed, who's in full pep-talk mode. How well they are all doing with their Project tasks - beyond Ed's highest expectations! They must be so proud of their efforts and achievements, history is being made, they are a model for future towns just like theirs; indeed, there are now nine other towns that are being reconstructed according to the Consilience/Positron model. If all goes well, soon that model will be deployed wherever the need is great - wherever the economy has flagged and left hard-working people stranded!

  Better still, thanks to this model and its reordering of civic life, and the construction dollars that have been generated and the waste that's been saved, the economy in those areas is pulling out of the slump. So many new initiatives! So much problem-solving! People can think so creatively when given the chance!

  Hold on, thinks Stan. What's underneath all the horn-tooting? Some folks must be making a shitload of cash out of this thing. But who, but where? Since not that much of it is trickling down inside the Consilience wall. Everyone's got a place to live, true, but no one's richer than anyone else.

  So are they all being lied to, played for suckers? Duped into doing the work while others roll around in the cash? Conor always said Stan was too trusting, that he could never sniff out a bent motive, that given the choice he'd pay top dollar for a baggie full of baking soda and stuff it up his nose. Fuck, said Conor, he'd probably even get high on it.

  So how much of a dickwit have I been? Stan wonders. What exactly did I sign away? And is there really no way out except in a box, as Conor warned? That can't be true: those at the top must be able to come and go at will. But apart from Ed, he doesn't know who those top people are.

  He really wants another beer. But he'll wait until this show is over, because what if the TV can see him?

  Stan, Stan, he tells himself. Cool the paranoia. Why would they be interested in watching you watch them?

  Now Ed has put on a fatherly frown. "Some of you," he says, "and you know who you are - some of you have been dabbling in digital experimentation. You all know the rules: phones are to be used for personal intercommunication with your friends and loved ones, but no more. We take boundaries very seriously here at Positron! You may believe you're engaging in private entertainment, and that your attempt to invade the private space of others is harmless. And so far no harm has been done. But our systems are very sensitive; they pick up even the faintest of unauthorized signals. Disconnect now - again, you know who you are - and we will take no action."

  The Consilience theme song comes on - it's the barn-raising music from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - and the slogan zooms up: CONS + RESILIENCE = CONSILIENCE. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE.

  Stan feels a chill. Sober up, he tells himself. That message from Ed seemed aimed at several people, so they might not be on to him personally. Still, he'll take that phone out of the scooter immediately. Never mind, he's got Jasmine in his crosshairs. On switchover days, it's first stop the house, next stop the gym.

  AMBUSH

  It won't be the gym, he decides: that would be too public. Instead it will be right here, at the house. On switchover day Charmaine will leave on her scooter and possibly inspect more real estate, after which she'll park the scooter at Positron Prison, after which Jasmine will get onto it and drive it here. Meanwhile, he himself will stash his pile of clean, folded clothes in the green locker, key himself out of the house, and then, instead of heading right to the prison, he'll wait in the garage. When Jasmine turns up he'll watch
her go into the house. Then he'll follow, and the inevitable red-hot encounter will take place. They might not even make it upstairs, so overpowering will be their lust. The living room sofa; no, even that's too formal. The carpet. Not the kitchen floor, though: that would be hard on the knees.

  They won't be interrupted by Max, because how can he get here without the scooter he shares with Stan - the red-and-green one? Which is supposed to be arriving at Positron about now, but which is still in the garage. He takes satisfaction in the thought of Max cooling his heels and checking his watch while his wayward, insatiable Jasmine is winding her arms and legs around Stan.

  Now he's in the garage. It's warm for December 1, but he's shivering a bit: it must be the tension. The hedge trimmer is hanging on the wall, newly cleaned, battery charged, ready for action, not that scum-bucket Max will appreciate the care Stan has taken. The hedge trimmer would make a good weapon, supposing Max makes it to the house by some other means and there's a confrontation. The thing has a hair-trigger start button; once at full throttle, with its sharp saw whizzing around, it could take off a guy's head. Self-defence would be his plea.

  If that doesn't happen and instead he gets involved in some heavy tangling with Jasmine, he'll be late for checkin. That's frowned on, but he'll have to risk it because he can't go on the way he's been going. It's eating him up. It's killing him.

  There's a crack in the front door of the garage. Stan is peering through it, waiting for Jasmine to drive up on her pink scooter, so he doesn't hear the side door opening.

  "It's Stan, isn't it?" says a voice. He jerks upright, whirls around. His first instinct is to go for the hedge trimmer. But it's a woman.

  "Who the fuck are you?" he says. She's on the short side, with straight black hair down to her shoulders. Dark eyebrows. A heavy mouth, no lipstick. Black jeans and T-shirt. She looks like a dyke martial arts expert.

  There's something familiar. Has he seen her at the gym? No, not there. It was the workshop, when they'd just signed on. She was with that dork of an Ed.

  "I live here," she says. She smiles. Her teeth are square: piano-key teeth.

  "Jasmine?" he asks uncertainly. It can't be. This isn't what Jasmine looks like.

  "There is no Jasmine," she says. Now he's confused. If there is no Jasmine, how does she know there's supposed to be one?

  "Where's your scooter?" he says. "How did you get here?"

  "I drove," she says. "In the car. I'm parked next door. By the way, I'm Jocelyn." She holds out her hand, but Stan doesn't take it. Shit, he thinks. She's in Surveillance, which is the only way she could have a car. He feels cold.

  "Now maybe you'd better tell me why you hid that phone in my scooter," she says, withdrawing her hand. "Or the scooter you thought was mine. I've been following it around, your clever tracker. It shows up well on our monitoring equipment."

  Somehow they're in the kitchen - his kitchen, her kitchen, their kitchen. He's sitting down. Everything here is familiar to him - there's the coffee machine, there are the folded tea towels Charmaine set out before she left - but it all seems foreign to him.

  "Want a beer?" she says. A sound comes out of his mouth. She pours the beer and one for herself, then sits down opposite him, leans forward, and describes to him in way too much detail the movements of Charmaine on switchover days. In and out of the vacant houses, for months now, in conjunction with Jocelyn's husband, Max. Conjunction is the word she uses. Among other, shorter words.

  Though Max isn't her husband's real name. His name is Phil, and she's had this kind of problem with him before. She always knows about it, and he knows she knows but is pretending not to know. He knows about the cameras hidden in the vacant houses, he knows she has access to the footage. That's part of the attraction for him: the certainty that he's performing for her. He'll stray off-track - it's an addiction like gambling, it's an illness, doesn't Stan agree, you have to feel sorry - and she'll let him run with it for a while. It's an outlet for him: in a gated city with one-way gates, outlets are limited for a man like him. He's tried to get help with this sex addiction of his, he's tried counselling, he's tried aversion therapy, but so far nothing has worked. It doesn't help that he's so good-looking. Women with overactive romantic imaginations more or less throw themselves at him. There's no shortage.

  When she thinks whatever he's mixed himself up with has gone far enough, she confronts him. That shuts it down: he cuts it off with the woman in question, no loose ends. Then, after an interval of promising to go straight, he'll start on another one. It's been humiliating for her personally, even though he assures her that he's loyal to her in his heart, it's just that he can't control his impulses.

  "But there's never been a wild card before," she says. "Not one of our own Alternates. Mine and Phil's."

  Stan's so fucking addled he can't think straight. Charmaine! Right under his nose, the slutty cheat - withholding sex from him, or doling it out in chilly slices between clean sheets. It must've been her who wrote that note, sealed it with a fuchsia kiss. How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being? And with some dipshit named Phil, married to a lady wrestler! On the other hand, how dare anyone else tag his wife as a mere outlet? "Wild card," he says weakly. "You mean Charmaine."

  "No. I mean you," she says. She looks at him from under her eyebrows. "You're the wild card." She smiles at him: not a demure smile. Despite her lack of makeup, her mouth looks dark and liquid, like oil.

  "I need to be getting along," he says. "I need to check in before curfew, over at Positron. I need -"

  "That's all taken care of," she says. "I control the identity codes. I've rearranged the data so Phil's going there in your place."

  "What?" says Stan. "But what about my job? It takes training, he can't just -"

  "Oh, he'll be fine," says Jocelyn. "He's not good with his hands, not like you, but he's all right with digital. He'll take care of your chickens for you, both ends. He won't let anyone interfere with them."

  Fuck, thinks Stan. Both ends. She knows about that thing with the chickens. How long has she been keeping an eye on him?

  "Meanwhile," she says. She puts her head on one side as if considering. "Meanwhile, you'll be here, with me. You can tell me all about your interest in Jasmine. If you want to, we can listen in on Max and Jasmine, during their little vacant-house rendezvous. I've got the recordings, the surveillance videos. The sound quality's excellent, you'd be surprised. It's quite exciting. We can have a twosome of our own, on the sofa. I think it's time I got a turn at playing Phil's game, don't you?"

  "But that's..." He wants to say, "That's fucking warped," but he stops himself. This woman is upper-level management, she's in Surveillance: she could make his life truly disagreeable. "That's unfair," he says. His voice is going all wussy.

  She smiles again with her slippery-looking mouth. She has biceps, and shoulders, and her thighs are alarming; not to mention the fact that she's a sick voyeur. What has he done to himself, to his life? Why has he done it? Where is bland, perky Charmaine? It's her he wants, not this sinister and most likely hairy-legged ball crusher.

  Surreptitiously he checks out the exits: back door, door to the front hall, door to the cellar stairs. What if he were to shove this woman into his green basement locker, then make a run for it? But run to where? He's blocked his own exits. "Seriously. This won't work, it's not...I'm not...I need to go," he says. He can't bring himself to say please.

  "Don't be worried," she says. "You won't be missed. You'll get an extra month here at the house. Then, next month, when Charmaine comes out of Positron, you can go in."

  "No," he says. "I don't want..."

  She sighs. "Think of it as an intervention to avoid possible violence. You'll have to admit you feel like strangling her, anyone would. You'll thank me later. Unless, that is, you want me to turn in a report on the rules you've broken. Want another beer?"

  "Yeah," he manages to say. He's falling deeper and deeper into the hole he dug f
or himself. "Make it two." He's trapped. "What else do I have to do?" To avoid the consequences, is what he means, but he doesn't have to explain that. She's fully aware that she's twisting his arm.

  She takes her time answering, drinks, licks her lips. "We'll find out, won't we?" she says. "We have lots of time. I'm sure you're very talented. By the way, I switched the lockers. Yours is the red one now."

  CHAT ROOM

  On the January 1 switchover day, Charmaine is told by one of the behind-the-counter clerks to stay behind at the prison, because Human Resources needs to talk to her. She has a sinking feeling right away. Do they know about Max? If so, she's in trouble, because how many times were they told it was absolutely not allowed to fraternize with the Alternates who shared your house? You weren't even supposed to know what they looked like. Which was one of the things that made seeing Max so thrilling for her. So forbidden, so over the line.

  Seeing Max. What an old-fashioned way of putting it! But then she's an old-fashioned girl - that's what Stan thinks. Though her times with Max haven't involved much actual seeing. They've been close-ups, in half-light. An ear, a hand, a thigh.

  Oh please, let them not know, she prays silently, crossing her fingers. They never spelled out what would happen if you disobeyed, though Max had reassured her. He'd said it was nothing much: they just gave you a little slap on the hand and maybe changed your Alternate. Anyway she and Max were being so careful, and none of those houses had spyware in it; he should know, it was his job to know all about those houses. But what if Max was wrong? Worse: What if Max was lying?

  She takes a breath and smiles, showing her small, candid teeth. "What's the problem?" she asks the clerk, her voice higher and more girly than normal. Is it something about her job as Chief Medications Administrator? If so, she'll learn how to improve, because she always wants to do the very best possible and be all that she can be.

  She hopes that's the issue. Maybe they've noted that she ignores the surgical-mask protocol, maybe they've decided she's being too nice to the subjects during the Special Procedures. The head strokings, the forehead kisses, those marks of kindliness and personal attention just before she slides in the hypodermic needle: they aren't forbidden, but they aren't mandated. They're flourishes, grace notes - little touches she's added because it makes the whole thing a more quality experience, not only for the subject of the Procedure but for herself as well. She does feel strongly that you should keep the human touch: she's always been prepared to say as much in front of a tribunal if it came to that. Though she's hoped it wouldn't. But maybe now is the time it will.