But now nothing is simple. Now she’s a widow. Now she’s a spy.
She’s finding this date with Ed a little difficult. More than a little: she doesn’t know how to play this, because it’s unclear what he wants, or not what: when. Why can’t he just blurt it out?
“Are you feeling all right?” Ed says with concern, and she says, “I’ll be fine, it’s just …” Then she excuses herself and goes to the ladies’ room. Grief must be expected to overcome her from time to time, which it does, truly, only just not right now. But the ladies’ is a reliable place, a place a girl can retreat to at moments like this. The dinner hasn’t even started, and already she needs a time-out.
It’s soothing in here; luxurious, like a spa. The countertops are marble, the sinks are long and made of stainless steel, with a line of tiny faucets endlessly shooting thin streams of silvery water. The towels aren’t paper, they’re soft white cotton pile, and happily there’s no air dryer that blows your skin into flesh ripples up as far as your wrists; she hates those, they make you realize that your skin could be peeled off like an orange rind. When there are no towels, she’d rather take her chance with the microbes and wipe her hands on her skirt.
There’s lotion that claims to be made from real almonds: Charmaine rubs it on her inner arms, breathes it in. If only she could just stay in here, for ever and ever. A woman place. Sort of like a nunnery. No, a girl place, pristine, like the white cotton nighties she had at Grandma Win’s, when she could be clean, and not hurt and afraid. A place where she feels safe.
The toilets play a tune when you wave your hand in front of the toilet paper dispenser. The tune is the theme song of Together; it’s from some old song about not having a barrel of money and wearing white-trash clothes, and having to travel along, side by side all of which was more or less the way it had been when she and Stan were living in their car; but in the song, none of that matters because the two of them are together, singing a song. A song about being together, for the restaurant called Together.
It’s lying, that song. Not having any money does matter, and having to wear those worn-out clothes. It’s because all those things matter that they signed into the Project.
She checks herself in the mirror, refreshes her lips. Why is it she’s finding Ed so hard to be with? It’s because he’s like that weirdo psycho nerd who admired her so much in high school, what was his name …
Get real, Charmaine, her reflection says to her. He didn’t just admire you. He had a nauseating sexual crush on you, he used to slip anonymous notes into your locker, to which he seemed to have the combination even though you changed the lock twice. Those notes – typed, but not emailed, not texted, he was smarter than that – those notes listed your body parts and which ones he most wanted to slide his hands over or into. Then came the day of the damp tissue left inside her jacket pocket, reeking of jerkoff; that was truly icky. Why had he thought she’d find it in any way attractive?
Though perhaps the goal was not to attract her. Perhaps the goal was to repel her, then overwhelm her despite her aversion. The wet dream of a boy who hoped he was a lion king but who was really just a slimy loser.
She returns to the dining room. Ed stands up, holds her chair for her. The avocado with shrimp appetizer is in place, and a bottle of white wine in a silver bucket. He raises his glass of white wine and says, “To a brighter future,” which really means “To us,” and what can she do but raise her glass in return? She does it modestly, though. Tremulously. Then she sighs. She doesn’t have to fake the sighing.
“I know you must find it hard to believe in a brighter future, so soon after … ,” he says.
“Oh yes,” she says. “It is hard. It’s so hard. I miss Stan so much!” Which is true, but at the same time she’s pondering the word
Say it, say it
That’s over, Charmaine, she tells herself. That’s gone.
“He died a hero,” Ed says piously. “As we all know.”
Charmaine looks down at her half-eaten avocado. “Yes,” she says. “It’s such a comfort.”
“Though in fairness,” he says, “I have to tell you that there are some doubts.”
“Oh,” she says. “Really? What kind of doubts?” A wave of cold sweeps up from her stomach. She flutters her eyelashes. Is she blushing?
“Nothing you need to be troubled with right now,” he says. “An irresponsible rumour. That Stan didn’t die in that fire but in a different way. People will make up some very malicious things! Anyway, accidents do happen and data gets mixed up. But I can take care of that rumour for you. Nip it in the bud.”
You jerk, she thinks. You’re bribing me! You know I killed Stan, you know I have to pretend he died saving chickens, and now you’re twisting my arm. But guess what, I know something you don’t know. Stan isn’t dead, and pretty soon I’ll be together with him again.
Unless Jocelyn is lying.
“You still working on that?” says the server, a brownish young man in a white dinner jacket. At Together they want everything to look like a movie, an old movie. But no one in an old movie would ever have said,
The server whisks the plate away. Ed leans forward. Charmaine leans back but not too far back. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn the black V-neck. It wouldn’t have been her choice, but Jocelyn had selected it for her. That, and the push-up bra underneath. “You have to suggest that he might be able to look all the way down,” she’d said. “But don’t let him actually do it. Remember, you’re in mourning. Vulnerable, but inaccessible. That’s your game.”
Working in secret with Jocelyn like this – it was like being on TV. She’d made her face up carefully, with a little extra powder for the pallour.
“I respect your sentiments,” says Ed. “But you’re young, you have a whole life ahead of you. You should live it to the fullest.” Here comes his hand, planing slowly across the white tablecloth like a manta ray in one of those deep-sea documentaries. It’s descending onto her own hand, which she shouldn’t have left so carelessly lying around on the table.
“It doesn’t feel like I could do that,” says Charmaine. “As if I could live it to the fullest. It feels like my life is over.” It would be shockingly rude to remove her hand. It would be like a slap. His hand covers hers: it’s damp. Pat, pat, pat, squeeze. Then, thankfully, withdrawal.
“We’ve got to get the roses back in your cheeks,” says Ed. Now he’s being fatherly. “That’s why I ordered steak. Bump up your iron.”
And here’s the steak in front of her, seared and brown, branded with a crisscross of black, running with hot blood. On the side, three mini-broccolis and two new potatoes. It smells delicious. She’s ravenous, but it would be folly to show it. Tiny, ladylike bites, if any. Maybe she should let him cut it up for her. “Oh, it’s so much,” she breathes. “I couldn’t possibly …”
“You need to make an effort,” says Ed. Will he go so far as to pop a morsel into her mouth? Will he say, “Open up?” To head him off, Charmaine nibbles a sprig of broccoli.
“You’ve been so kind,” she says. “So supportive.” Ed smiles, his lips now glossy with fat.
“I’d like to help you,” he says. “You shouldn’t go back to your old work in the hospital, it would be too much of a strain. Too many memories. I believe I have a job you might like. Nothing too demanding. You can ease yourself into it.”
“Oh,” says Charmaine. She must not sound eager. “What sort of job?”
“Working with me,” says Ed. “As my personal assistant. That way, I can keep an eye on you. Make sure you’re not overstrained.”
You don’t fool me, thinks Charmaine. “Oh, well, I’m not sure … That sounds …” she says as if wavering.
“No need to discuss it now,” he says. “We have lots of time to do that later. Now eat up, like a good girl.”
That’s the role he’s chosen for her: good girl. She feels a sudden wave of longing for Max. Bad girl was what she was for him. Bad, and deserving of punishment. She leans forward to cut up a potato, and Ed leans forward too. She knows exactly what the view is from his vantage point: she’s rehearsed the angles in the mirror. A curve of breast, with an edging of black lace.
Is he sweating? Yes, make that a definite. Is that his knee, giving her own knee the gentlest of nudges under the table? Yes, it is: she knows a knee under the table when she feels one. She moves her own knee away.
“There,” she says. “I’m eating. I’m being good.” She looks at him over the rim of her wineglass: her blue-eyed look, her child’s look. Then she takes a sip of wine, pursing her lips into a pout. Maybe she’ll leave a lipstick kiss on the glass for him, as if by accident. A pale kiss, a shadow of a kiss, like a whisper. Nothing too blatant.
Shipped
Stan wakes and sleeps, wakes and sleeps, wakes. He’s taken one of the pills Veronica gave him, which conked him out though not for long enough, and now he’s hyper-alert. He doesn’t want to take any more pills, because what if the plane lands soon? He can’t be asleep for that: he may need to spring into full-throttle action, though he’s got no image of what kind of action. Saving the world in a blue cape and an Elvis ducktail doesn’t convince him, even as a fantasy. But it would have an element of surprise if the enemy thinks he’s a robot.
What enemy? Back at Positron the enemy is Ed – control-freak body-parts salesman, potential baby-blood vampire –, but who will the enemy be once he gets to Las Vegas? In the pitch-blackness a parade of potential enemies marches across his eyeballs. Corrupters of Charmaine, kidnappers of Veronica, platoons of slavering men much more lecherous than he is, with scaly skins and clawlike fingernails and slitty-pupilled lizard eyes. In addition to which they have superhuman strength and can walk up the sides of skyscrapers as if they were human silverfish.
There goes one of them now, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, Charmaine under one arm, Veronica under the other. But it’s Stan to the rescue. Luckily his blue Elvis cape and his silver belt buckle have magic powers. “Drop those women or I’ll sing ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ It won’t be pretty.” The monster shudders and clutches a hand to either pointed ear; while he’s distracted, Stan presses his silver buckle and a lethal ray shoots out of it. The monster screams and disintegrates. Both scantily clad beauties tumble, their diaphanous garments fluttering. Stan vaults forward, flies through the air, and catches the wilted lovelies in his outstretched arms. They’re too heavy, he’s losing altitude, they’re about crash! Which wilted lovely should he save? And which will therefore go splat? He can’t save both of them. Considering that Veronica will never hump anyone but a stuffed animal, maybe he should stick with Charmaine.
So much for that daydream, which lands him right back in the breakfast nook with him and Charmaine fighting over which one of them has cheated the most, and then whether Charmaine really wanted to kill Stan, and then tears. “How could you believe that about me! Don’t we love each other?” Yes or no? Maybe isn’t allowed. No matter how he plays it, he’ll come out an asshole. Or else a wimp. Are those his only choices?
He eats the energy bar, which tastes like coconut-flavoured sawdust. It’s freezing cold in here. How long is this fucking flight going to go on? Why doesn’t he have a light-up watch? It’s totally dark, not to mention noisy. He knows – he knows with the rational part of his mind – that he’s inside a satin-lined shipping crate, which in turn is strapped into place, along with four other Elvises, inside an aluminum Unit Load Device, which in turn is in the cargo hold of a transcontinental plane; but with the other part of his mind – by far the larger part at the moment – he thinks he’s been buried alive.
Like a fool, he’s drunk both of the bottles of water packed for him by Veronica, and now, of course, of course! he needs a piss. Veronica’s instructions were that he was to pee into the empty hot-water bottle, but where the fuck is it? He gropes around, locates it snarled up in his cape, unscrews the top. Why didn’t they give him a flashlight? Because he might forget to turn it off, and then the light beams coming through the air holes would give him away, and they’d unsnap his cover, guns at the ready.
Calm down, Stan, he orders himself. Next contest challenge: unzipping Elvis’s fly. He fumbles around. The zipper sticks. Of course! Of course! “Fuck, shit,” he says out loud.
“Stan, is that you?” comes the whisper in his ear. Veronica, over their Virtual Private Network; her voice, even her whispering voice, sends a jolt of sexual electricity through his spine. “Keep your voice down, there may be monitor bugs in the cargo hold. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he whispers back. He’s not about to tell her he couldn’t get his dick out of his white flares, result being he’s just wet himself.
“Why are you awake? Are you worrying?”
“Not really, but …”
“It’s all arranged. They won’t ask you anything. Just follow the plan.”
What fucking plan? Stan wants to ask but doesn’t. “Okay, cool,” he says.
“Did you take a pill?”
“Yeah, I did, earlier. But I don’t want to take another, I need to stay alert.”
“It’s okay, take one if you want to. Take two, it’ll be fine. Are your hands cold? Remember you’ve got those Little Hotties. You just tear the package open and give it a shake, and it heats up.”
“Thanks,” he whispers. Even now, with things really not going so good, really going quite terrible in here, since he’s squelching around on warm, damp, aromatic satin that will soon be cold, damp, smelly satin, he can’t help picturing Veronica as she lies inside the ULD beside his. Sculpted perfection, so smooth, so curved, so inviting. Little Hottie. How he’d like to tear her package open – well, tear her dress open, at any rate – and give her a shake, and feel her heat up.
Stan, Stan, he tells himself. This is a mission you’re on. Can you stop thinking like a pre-human sex-crazed baboon for maybe just one minute? It’s his hormones, it must be his hormones. Is he responsible for his hormones?
“How much longer?” he whispers.
“Oh, maybe an hour. Go back to sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispers back. He drifts into a semi-doze, but then, right in his ear, he hears her whispering voice again.
“Oh, honey. Oh, yes. You’re so soft!”
For one instant, he thinks she’s talking to him. No such luck: she’s making out with the blue knitted bear. She must have forgotten to turn off the mic at her end, or else she’s torturing him for some obscure reason. Because it is torture! Is it worse to listen in, or not to listen? Wait, wait, he wants to shout. I can do that better!
“Yes, yes … oh, harder …”
This is obscene! In desperation he swallows three of the handy pills and plummets into oblivion.
Fetish
The morning after Charmaine’s dinner with Ed, Jocelyn arrives at the house in her sleek black car. No chauffeur this time, no Max/Phil: she must have driven herself. Aurora’s with her.
Charmaine watches the two of them out the front window as they come up the walk, each in a tidy businesslike suit. She’s at a disadvantage: in her housecoat, no makeup, her hair every which-way. She feels like she has a hangover, even though she drank almost nothing: it’s the toxic effect of Ed.
Jocelyn does Charmaine the courtesy of ringing the doorbell even though she has a key, and Charmaine says, “Come in” even though they’ll come in anyway.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Aurora says, using her most efficient voice.
“Thanks, you know where everything is,” says Charmaine. This is supposed to be a rebuke to Aurora for the way she’s snooped all over Charmaine’s life, but either Aurora doesn’t pick up on that or she pays no attention. Jocelyn follows Charmaine into the living room.
“Well?” she says. “Get the hook in? Not that he wasn’t up to the gills already.”
Charmaine describes her evening, including the food, and everything Ed said, and everything she said in return. She includes the job offer, but Jocelyn already knew about that, because Ed asked her advice about it. She’s more interested in the body language. Did Ed take her arm as they left the restaurant? Yes, he did. Did he put his arm around her waist, at any time? No, he did not. Did he try to kiss her goodnight?
“There was a moment,” says Charmaine. “He kind of loomed forward in that way they have. But I stepped back and said thank you for the lovely evening and for being so understanding, and then I slipped inside the door.”
“Excellent,” says Jocelyn. “ ‘Understanding,’ good choice. Right up there with ‘I think of you as a friend.’ You need to keep him at arm’s length without actually pushing him away. Think you can do that?”