Today’s address is in a housing development left over from some decade in the mid-twentieth century: one of the many relics from the town’s past. As they’ve all been informed in the backgrounders, the town that’s now become Consilience was founded in the late nineteenth century by a group of Quakers. Brotherly love was what they’d wanted; the town’s name was Harmony, its crest was a beehive, meaning cooperative labour. The first industry was a beet-sugar mill; next came a furniture factory, then a corset company. Then there was an automobile plant – one of those pre-Ford cars – then a camera film corporation, and finally, a state correctional institution.
After the Second World War, the key industries faded until nothing was left of Harmony but a gutted downtown, several crumbling public buildings with white columns, and a lot of repossessed houses not even the banks could sell. And, of course, the correctional institution, which was where the inhabitants had worked, when they’d worked at all.
But now, thinks Charmaine, it’s all different. Such an improvement! Already the gym has been renovated, for instance. And a whole bunch of houses are being upgraded – a fresh batch of applicants will arrive any month now to fill them. Or maybe to fill the houses that aren’t so upgraded, such as the one she and Stan had lived in at first. There had been plumbing problems; more like plumbing
Once Grandma Win had died, Charmaine had to make her own way; it had been thin ice with the cracks showing and disaster always waiting just beneath her, but the trick was to keep gliding. She loved Stan because she liked solid ground under her feet, non-reflective surfaces, movies with neat endings. Closure, they called it. She’d opted for Chief Medications Administrator at Positron Prison when it was offered to her because it involved shelves and inventories, and everything in its place.
Or that’s all she thought it would be; but there are depths, as it turns out. There are other duties not mentioned to her at first, there’s a certain amount of untidiness, there’s navigation to be done. She’s getting proficient at it. And it turns out she’s not as dedicated to tidiness as she used to think.
It was sloppy to have left that note under the refrigerator. And that lipstick kiss was so tawdry. She keeps the lipstick in her locker; she’s only ever used it on that one note. Stan would never put up with her wearing a garish hue like that – Purple Passion is its name, such bad taste.
Which is why she bought it: that’s how she thinks of her feelings toward Max. Purple. Passionate. Garish. And, yes, bad taste. To a man like that, for whom you have feelings like that, you can say all sorts of things,
And that’s what she was doing – making up the bed, humming to herself – when Max walked into the room. He startled her. Cornered her: there was only the one door. A thinnish man, wiry. Not unusually tall. A lot of black hair. Handsome too. A man who’d have choices.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Sorry. I’m early. I live here.” He took a step forward.
“So do I,” Charmaine said. They looked at each other.
“Pink locker?” Another step.
“Yes. You’re the red one.” Backing away. “I’m almost finished here, and then you can …”
“No hurry,” he said. He took another step. “What do you keep inside that pink locker of yours? I’ve often wondered.”
Had he made a joke? Charmaine wasn’t so good at telling when people were making jokes. “Maybe you’d like some coffee,” she said. “In the kitchen. I cleaned the machine, but I can always … It’s not very nice coffee, though.” Charmaine, you’re babbling, she told herself.
“I’m good,” he said. “I’d rather stay here and watch you. I like the way you always make up the bed before you leave. And put out the fresh towels. Like a hotel.”
“It’s okay, I kind of like doing it, I think it looks …” Now she was backed up against the night table. I need to get out of this room, she told herself. Maybe she could glide around him. She moved to the side and forward. “I’m sorry, I have to leave now,” she said in what she hoped was a neutral tone. But he put his hand on her shoulder. He stepped forward again.
“I like your apron,” he said. “Or whatever it is. Does it tie at the back?” The next minute – how did it happen? – her pinafore apron was on the floor, her hair had come loose – had he done that? – and they were kissing, and his hands were under her freshly ironed shirt. “We’ve got a couple of hours,” he said, breaking away. “But we can’t stay here. My wife … Look, I know this place …” He scribbled an address. “Go there now.”
“I’ll just tuck in the sheet,” she said. “It would look wrong otherwise.” He smiled at that. She did tuck in the sheet, though not as tightly as usual, because her hands were shaking. Then she did what he said.
That was their first vacant house. It was dim, there were dead flies, the lights didn’t work, nor the water; the walls had been cracked and stained, but none of it mattered that first time, because she wasn’t noticing those kinds of details. He’d left first, by the side door. Then, after she’d counted to five hundred as he’d suggested, she’d walked out the front door, trying to look hurried and official, and scootered straight to Positron Prison, where she’d checked in, handed over her civvies, taken the mandatory shower, and put on the clean orange prison-issue suit that was waiting for her. After dinner in the women’s hall with the others – it was roast pork with Brussels sprouts – she’d joined her knitting circle as usual, and chatted about this and that, also as usual. But she was sleepwalking.
She ought to have been appalled by herself, by what she’d done. Instead she was amazed, and also jubilant. Had it really happened? Would it happen again? How could she contact him, or even believe in his existence? She couldn’t. It was like standing on a cliff edge. It made her dizzy.
At ten o’clock she went into her double cell, where the woman she shared with was already asleep, and there was the reassuring clang of the door and click of the lock. It felt safe to be caged in, now that she knew she had this other person inside her who was capable of escapades and contortions she’d never known about before. It wasn’t Stan’s fault, it was the fault of chemistry. People said
She slept that night as if drunk. The next day she went about her hospital duties as briskly as usual, hiding behind the grillwork of her smile. Ever since then she’s been waiting: inside Positron while Max inspects vacant dwellings in Consilience; then in the house with Stan, working at her bakery job during the days; she does the pies and the cinnamon buns. Then there’s an hour or two of being Jasmine, with Max, on switchover days, while he’s going into Positron Prison and she’s coming back to civilian life, or vice versa. A vacant house. The anxiety. The haste. The rampage.
Then more waiting. It’s like being stretched so thin you feel you’ll break the very next minute; but she hasn’t broken yet. Though maybe leaving the note was breakage of a sort. Or the beginning of it. She should have had better control.
Stan must have read the note. It has to have been like that. He must have read it and then tucked it back under the fridge, because Max described where he’d found it, and it was a lot farther over to the right than where she’d stashed it. Ever since then, Stan has been so preoccupied he might as well be deaf and blind. When he makes love – that’s how Charmaine thinks of it, as distinct from whatever it is that happens with Max – when Stan makes love, it isn’t to her. Or not his usual idea of her. He’s almost angry.
“Let go,” Stan said to her once. “Just fucking let go!”
“What did you mean, ‘Let go?’ ” she asked him afterwards in her puzzled, clueless voice, the voice that had once been her only voice. “Let go of what? What are you talking about?” He said, “Never mind” and “Sorry” and seemed ashamed of himself. She did nothing to discourage that. She wants him to feel ashamed of himself, because such feelings of his are a part of her disguise.
He called her Jasmine once, by mistake. What if she’d answered? It would have been a giveaway. But she caught herself and pretended she hadn’t heard. Maybe Stan has fallen in love with her note, with its ill-advised fuchsia kiss. Is that funny, or is it dangerous?
What if Stan finds out? About her, about Max. What would he do? He has a temper; it was worse when they were in the car, but even since coming here he’s thrown some glassware, he’s sworn at things when they don’t work the way he wants: the hedge pruner, the lawn trimmer. He wouldn’t enjoy the discovery that there is no Jasmine really, except inside Charmaine. She would lose him then. He wouldn’t be able to stand it.
She needs to break it off with Max. She needs to keep them both safe – Stan as well as Max – and herself too. Just not yet. Surely she can permit herself a few more hours, a few more moments, of whatever it is. Not happiness; it isn’t that.
It would have been better if Max’s wife, Jocelyn, had found that note. What would she have thought? Nothing too unsafe. She wouldn’t have known who “Max” was because he never uses that name with his wife, according to him, and he doesn’t have sex with her much, or nothing like the sex he has with Charmaine, so there’s no need to be jealous. It’s two different worlds, and Max and Jasmine are in one of them, and the wife is in the other.
For Jocelyn, “Max” and “Jasmine” would just be the Alternates, living in the house whenever she and her husband were in Positron. She would have thought that “Max” and “Jasmine” were Stan and Charmaine, if she paid any attention at all. What else could she possibly have thought?
So, whew! Charmaine tells herself. Looks like you got away with it, so far.
Whew? Like a vintage funny-paper guy? Baby, you’re so fucking retro, you’re cool! Now I’m gonna make you say something better with your slutty purple mouth. Ask me for it. Bend over.
Oh anything.
IV
“Have a good month outside?” asks the barber, whose name is Clint. Clint has a big T on his front because he’s playing the part of a Trusty. He’s not one of the original criminals, the ones who were still in here when the Project began: you’d never let a dangerous offender anywhere near those scissors and razors. Outside, when he’s a civilian, Clint does tree pruning. Before he signed onto the Project he was an actuary, but he’d lost that job when his company moved west.
It’s a familiar story, though nobody talks much about what they were before: backward glances are not encouraged. Stan himself doesn’t dwell on his
Dimple Robotics interlude, back when he’d thought the future was like a sidewalk and all you had to do was make it from one block to the next; nor does he dwell on what came after, when he had no job. He hates to think of himself the way he was then: grimy, morose, with the air being sucked out of his chest by the sense of futility that was everywhere like a fog. It’s good to have goals again, among them the discovering and seduction of Jasmine. He can almost feel her in his fingertips – the yielding, the rubberiness, the humid jungle heat.
Steady, he tells himself as he swings himself into the chair. Hands out of the pockets. Don’t give yourself a hernia.
Clint must have learned the barbering here: they’d all had to apprentice, in order to gain or hone a practical skill of use inside Positron.
“Yeah, good month, can’t complain,” says Stan. “You?”
“Terrific,” says Clint. “Did a little work on my house. Went to the committee, got permission, painted the kitchen. Primrose yellow, gave the place a lift. Northern exposure. Wife was pleased.”
“What’s she do, inside?” Stan asks.
“Works in the hospital. Surgeon,” says Clint. “Heart, mostly. Yours?”
“Hospital too, Chief Medical Administrator,” says Stan. He feels a twinge of pride in Charmaine: despite her pink locker, she’s no airhead. It’s a serious position, it comes with power. You need to be dependable, you need to be upbeat, she’s told him. Also stable, discreet, and not given to dark thoughts.
“Must be a tough job sometimes,” says Clint. “Dealing with sick people.”
“Was at first,” says Stan. “Got to her a bit. But she’s more used to it
now.” She’s never told him much about her work, but then, he’s never told her much about his.
“You’d need a cool head,” says Clint. “Not sentimental.”
This calls for no more than a yup. Clint decides on a tactful, snippety-snipping silence, which is fine with Stan. He needs to concentrate on Jasmine, Jasmine of the fuchsia kiss. She won’t let him alone.
He closes his eyes, sees himself as one of those dorky video-game hero princes of his childhood, slashing his questing way through swamps full of tentacled man-eating plants, annihilating giant leeches, hacking through the poison brambles to the iron castle where Jasmine lies asleep, guarded by a dragon, the dragon of Max, and shortly to be awakened by a kiss, the kiss of Stan. Trouble is she’s already awake, she’s super awake, having sex with the dragon. Him and his big scaly tail.
Bad reverie. He opens his eyes.
Who is Max? He could be someone Stan sees often without knowing it. He could be a guy who’s left his scooter with Stan for repair while he spent his month in the slammer, he could be playing a guard right now, locking Stan in at night and saying,
“There you go,” says Clint. He holds up a mirror so Stan can see the back of his own head. There’s a bristly roll of fat taking shape at the nape of his neck, but only if he leans his head back. When he finds Jasmine he must remember to keep his head upright. Or forward a little. She might put her hand there, a hand with long, strong fingers tipped with nails the colour of arterial blood. At the mere thought, he feels himself flushing. Clint is whisking off the prickly hairs.