"If there aren't any complaints, then why?" Charmaine says to Aurora, trying not to let her desperation show. "I'm needed in Medications, it's a special technique, I have the experience, I've never had a single -"
"Well, as I'm sure you'll agree is necessary," Aurora cuts in, "considering the uncertainty as to your identity, your codes and cards have been deactivated. For the moment you're in limbo, you might say. The database crosschecking is very thorough, as it has to be, since I can share with you that we've had a few impostors in here. Journalists." She frowns as well as she is able to with her stretched face. "And other troublemakers. Trying to unearth - trying to invent bad stories about our wonderful model community."
"Oh, that's terrible!" says Charmaine breathily. "The way they make things up..." She wonders what the bad stories were, decides against asking.
"Yes, well," says Aurora. "We all have to be very careful about what we say, because you never know, do you? If the person is real or not."
"Oh, I never thought of that," says Charmaine truthfully.
Aurora's face relaxes a millimetre. "You'll get new cards and codes if" - she catches herself - "when you're re-verified. Until then, it's a trust issue."
"Trust issue!" says Charmaine indignantly. "There has never been any..."
"This isn't about you personally," says Aurora. "It's your data. I'm sure you yourself are completely trustworthy in every way. More than loyal." Is that a little smirk? Hard to tell on such a wrenched-back face. Charmaine finds herself blushing: loyal. Has Max leaked something, have they been seen? At least she's been loyal to her job.
"Now," says Aurora, switching to efficiency mode, "I'm placing you temporarily in Laundry. Towel-Folding - there's a shortage in that department. I've done towel-folding myself, it's very soothing. Sometimes it's wise to take a break from too much stress and responsibility, and the after-work pursuits we may" - she hesitates, searching for the word - "the pursuits we may pursue, to deal with that stress. Towel-folding gives time for reflection. Think of it as professional development time. Like a vacation."
Darn it to heck, thinks Charmaine. Towel-Folding. Her status in Positron has just taken a pratfall over a cliff.
Charmaine changes out of the street clothes she put on hours ago. (Oh shoot, look at that bra, she thinks: bright pink staining under the arms from the sweater, she'll never get it out.) There was something else. Aurora can't smile like a normal person, but it wasn't just the weird smile, it was the tone. Overly mollifying. How you'd talk to a child about to have a painful vaccination or a cow on the way to the abattoir. They had special ramps for those cows, to lull them into walking placidly to their doom.
--
In the evening, after four hours of towel-folding and the communal dinner - shepherd's pie, spinach salad, raspberry mousse - Charmaine joins the knitting circle in the main room of the women's wing. It's not her usual knitting circle, not the group that knows her: those women left today and were replaced by their Alternates. Not only are these women strangers to Charmaine, they view her as a stranger too. They're making it clear they don't know why she's been stuck in among them: they're polite to her, but only just. Her attempts to make small talk have been cold-shouldered; it's almost as if these women have been told some disreputable story about her.
The group is supposed to be knitting blue bears for preschoolers - some for the Positron and Consilience playgroups, the rest for export, to craft shops in faraway, more prosperous cities, maybe even in other countries, because Positron has to earn its keep. But Charmaine can't concentrate on her teddy bear. She's jittery, she's getting more anxious by the minute. It's the digital mix-up: how could it happen? The system is supposed to be bug-proof. There are IT personnel working on it right now, Aurora has told her, but meanwhile Charmaine should join some yoga groups in the gym, and stick with the daily routine, and it's too bad but numbers are numbers, and her numbers aren't showing her as being who she says she is. Aurora is sure it will work out soon.
But Charmaine doesn't believe this runaround for one instant. Someone must have it in for her. But who? A best friend or lover of one of her Special Procedure subjects? How would they even know, how would they have access? That information is supposed to be totally classified! They've found out about her and Max. It must be that. They're deciding what should be done with her. Done to her.
If only she could talk to Stan. Not Max: at the first hint of danger Max would vamoose. He's a travelling salesman at heart. I will always treasure our moments together and keep you safe in my heart, then out the bathroom window and over the back fence, leaving her to deal with the smoking gun and the body on the floor, which might prove to be hers.
Max is like quicksand. Quicksilver. Quick. She's always known that about him. Stan, though - Stan is solid. If he were here, he'd roll up his sleeves and tackle reality. He'd tell her what to do.
Heck. Now she's made a boo-boo with the neck of the blue teddy bear, she's knitted where she should have purled. Should she unravel the row, knit it over? No. The bear will just have to wear a little ridge around its neck. She might even tie a ribbon around it, with a bow. Cover up the flaw by adding an individual touch. If all you've got is lemons, she tells herself, make pink lemonade.
--
When she returns to her cell that night, she finds it empty. Her cellmate is gone; it's her month back in Consilience. But the other bed isn't made up, it's stripped bare. It's as if someone has died.
They aren't giving her a new cellmate, then. They're isolating her. Is this the beginning of her punishment? Why did she ever let herself get mixed up with Max? She should have run out of the room the first minute she laid eyes on him. She's been such a pushover. And now she's all alone.
For the first time that day, she cries.
HOUSEBOY
"Honey, cheer up, surely life's not so bad," Charmaine was in the habit of saying when they were living in their car, which used to grate on him: how could she be so fucking perky, with the shit that was bombarding them from all sides? But now he tries to recall her light tone, her consolations, her reassuring quotes from her dead Grandma Win. It's darkest before the dawn. He should man up, because she's right: surely his life's not so bad. A lot of men would be happy to trade.
Every weekday he goes to his so-called work at the Consilience electric-scooter repair depot, where he's had to fend off questions from the other guys - "What're you doing back here? Thought it was your month to be in Positron." To which he replies, "Administration morons screwed up, they got my info mixed up with some other guy's. Case of mistaken identity, but hey, I'm not complaining."
No need to add that the other guy is the douche who's been jumping his chirpy, treacherous wife, and that the Administration moron was a highly placed Surveillance spook who's recorded her husband's encounters with Charmaine in grainy but surprisingly erotic videos. Stan knows they're surprisingly erotic because he's watched them with Jocelyn, sitting on the exact same sofa where he used to sit with Charmaine to watch TV.
That sofa, with its royal blue ground and overall design of off-white lilies, had meant tedium and a comforting routine; the most he'd ever done on it with Charmaine had been hand-holding or an arm around the shoulders, because Charmaine claimed she didn't want to do bed things except where they belonged, in a bed. A wildly false claim, judging from those videos, in which Charmaine required nothing more than a closed door and a bare floor to release her inner sidewalk whore and urge Phil to do things she'd never allowed Stan to do and say things she'd never once said to Stan.
Jocelyn, smiling a tight but lip-licking smile, likes to watch Stan watching. Then she wants him to re-create these videos, playing Phil, with her in the role of Charmaine. The horrible thing is that sometimes he can; though it's equally horrible when he can't. If he roughs her up and fucks her, it's because she told him to; if he isn't up to it, he's a failure; so whichever it is, he loses. Jocelyn has transformed the neutral sofa with its bland lilies into a nest of torturous and humil
iating vice. He can barely sit down on it any more: who knew that a harmless consumer good made of fabric and stuffing could become such a crippling head-games weapon?
He hopes Jocelyn has been recording these scenes, and will make Phil watch them in his turn. She's mean enough for it. No doubt Phil's wondering why he's still in prison, and is trying bluster - There's been a mistake, I'm supposed to be leaving now, just let me contact my wife, she's in Surveillance, we'll get this straightened out. Stan takes an acidic pleasure in imagining this scenario, as well as the stonewalling stares and hidden snickering among the guards, because haven't they got their orders, which come from higher up? Just cool it, buddy, look at the printout, Positron identity numbers don't lie, the system's hackproof. That twisted fuckwit Phil had it coming.
Holding this thought keeps Stan going during his sexual command performances with Jocelyn, which are a good deal more like tenderizing a steak than anything he finds purely pleasurable.
Oh, Stan! comes the pert, giggly pseudovoice of Charmaine. You get a kick out of it, you must! You know you do, well, most of the time anyway, and every man has those letdown moments, but the rest of the time don't think I can't hear those groans, which have to be enjoyable for you, don't deny it!
Ram it, he tells her. But Charmaine, with her angel face and devious heart - the real Charmaine - can't hear him. She can't know that Jocelyn's been messing with their lives, paying her back for stealing Phil; but on the first of the month she'll find out. When she walks into this house, expecting to find Stan, it will be Phil who'll be waiting for her. He won't exactly be pleased about it either, would be Stan's guess, because a quick hit of supercharged nooky snatched on the run is not at all the same as all day every day.
That's when Charmaine will discover that the fire of her loins is not who she thinks he is - not the Max of her fever dreams, whose fake name she invokes over and over in those videos - but a much less alpha male, who will look very different in plain daylight. Saggier, older, but also jaded, shifty-eyed, calculating: you can see that in his face, on the videos. She and Phil will be stuck with each other whether they like it or not. Charmaine will have to live with his dirty socks, his hairs in the sink; she'll have to listen to him snoring, she'll have to make small talk with him at breakfast; all of which will put a damper on the bodice-ripper she's been acting out.
How long will it take for the two of them to get bored, then fed up with each other? How long before Phil resorts to domestic violence, just for something to do? Not long, Stan hopes. He wouldn't mind knowing that Phil is smacking Charmaine around, and not just as a garnish to sex, the way he does onscreen, but for real: somebody needs to.
But Phil better not push it too far, or Charmaine may stick a grapefruit knife into his jugular, since behind that blond puffball act of hers there's something skewed. A chip missing, a loose connection. He hadn't recognized it when they'd been living together - he'd underestimated her shadow side, which was mistake number one, because everyone has a shadow side, even fluffpots like her.
There's another thought, not so pleasant: when Phil and Charmaine take up domestic life in this house, what will become of him, Stan? He can't stay in the house with them, that's clear. Will Jocelyn spirit him away to a secret love-nest and chain him to her bedpost? Or will she tire of treating him like an indentured studmuffin, of hotwiring his mind and watching him jerk around like a galvanized frog, and let him re-enter Positron for a much-needed rest?
Though maybe she'll alter the schedule even further: maybe she'll just keep Stan here with her, playing her warped game of house, and let the other two cool their jets inside the slammer. Switchover day will roll around and Charmaine and Phil will be all set to put on their civvies and beeline it to their seedy rendezvous, but then some gink in a uniform will tell them there's been a delay, and they won't be coming out of Positron right now. Which will mean three months straight for Charmaine. She must be going nuts.
Phil will already have guessed that Jocelyn has found him out, yet again; he'll wonder whether she's finally given up on him. He'll be in an advanced state of anxiety if he has any sense at all. He must know his wife is a vengeful harpy, deep inside her business-suit-neutral cool and her long-suffering pose of tolerance.
But Charmaine will be confused. She'll run through her gamut of girly manipulations with the Positron management: dimpled blond astonishment, lip-quivering, outrage, tearful pleading - but none of it will do her any good. Then maybe she'll have a real meltdown. She'll lose it, she'll wail, she'll crumple to the floor. The officials won't put up with that: they'll haul her upright, hose her down. Stan would like to see that; it would be some satisfaction for the contempt with which she's been treating him. Maybe Jocelyn will let him watch on the spy-cam.
Not likely. His access to spy-cam material is limited to Charmaine and Phil writhing around on the floor. Jocelyn really gets a jolt out of those. Her demand that he duplicate the action is pathetic: she must know he can't feel any real passion. At those moments he'd drink paint thinner or stuff a chili pepper up his nose - anything to dull his brain during these mutually humiliating scenes. But he needs to convince himself that he's next door to an automaton, he needs to keep the action going. His life may depend on it.
--
Last night Jocelyn tried something new. She has all the access codes to everything, as far as he can tell, so she opened Charmaine's pink locker and rummaged around in Charmaine's stuff and found a nightgown she could fit into. It had daisies on it, and little bows - very far from Jocelyn's functional style, which was maybe the point.
Jocelyn is in the habit of sleeping in the spare room, where she also keeps her "work," whatever it is; but last night, after lighting a scented candle, she'd put on that nightgown and tiptoed into his room. "Surprise," she'd whispered. Her mouth was dark with lipstick, and as she pressed it down on his he'd recognized the aroma of the lipstick kiss on that note he'd found. I'm starved for you! I need you so much. XXOO and you know what more - Jasmine. Like a moron, he'd fallen for this sultry Jasmine, with her mouth the colour of grape juice. What a mirage! Then, what a disappointment.
And now Jocelyn wanted to be who? Dragged out of sleep, he was disoriented; for a moment he didn't know where he was, or who was pressing herself against him. "Just imagine I'm Jasmine," she murmured. "Just let yourself go." But how could he, with the texture of Charmaine's familiar cotton nightgown under his fingers? The daisies. The bows. It was such a disconnect.
How much longer can he go on starring in this bedroom farce without losing it completely and doing something violent? He can keep himself steady when he's working at the scooter depot: solving mechanical problems levels him out. But as the workday nears its end he feels the dread building. Then he has to get onto his scooter and motor back to the house. His goal is to dump a few beers into himself, then pretend to concentrate on yard work before Jocelyn turns up.
It's risky to combine beer fog with power tools, but it's a risk he's willing to take. Unless he numbs himself, he might find himself doing something stupid.
But Jocelyn is high up on the status ladder; she must have every one of her snatch hairs monitored, with a SWAT team ready to spring into lethal action at any threat. Stan would surely trigger some alarm while making even the most innocuous move against her, such as roping her up and stowing her in Charmaine's pink locker - no, not the pink one, he doesn't know the code; in his own red locker - while he makes his getaway. But getaway to where? There's no route out of Consilience, not for those who've made the dick-brained mistake of signing themselves in. Signing themselves over. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE.
You got suckered, says Conor's voice inside his head.
--
Here comes Jocelyn in her darkened, softly purring spook vehicle. She must have a driver, because she always exits from the back seat. They're said to be working on a bunch of new robotic tech stuff at Positron that's going to help this place pay its way, so maybe it's a bot driving the car.
He has a wild impulse to sprint over with the hedge trimmer, turn it on, threaten to shred both Jocelyn and her robot driver unless they take him to the main Consilience gateway, right now. What if she calls his bluff and refuses? Will he go for it, and be left with a dead car full of electronics and mangled body parts?
But if it works, he'll make her drive him right through the gateway, into the crumbling, semi-deserted wasteland outside the wall. He'll jump out of the car, make a break for it. He wouldn't have much of a life out there, picking through garbage dumps and fighting off scavengers, but at least he'd be in charge of himself again. He'll find Conor, or Conor will find him. If anyone knows how to play the angles out there, it will be Con. He'll have to eat his pride, though. Do some backtracking. I was wrong, I should have listened to you, and fucking etcetera.
Though maybe better not to try the hedge-trimmer move on Jocelyn. She can probably activate the alarm system by flexing her toes. Not to mention her fast moves: those Surveillance types must take martial arts training. Learn to crush windpipes with their thumbs.
Now she's getting out of the car, feet first. Shoes, ankles, grey nylon. Any guy seeing those legs would have to be turned on. Wouldn't they?
Hang on to that thought, Stan, he tells himself. It's not all downside.
VI | VALENTINE'S DAY
LIMBO
It's the tenth day of February, and Stan is still in limbo. Charmaine didn't reappear on the switchover day, as he'd been both hoping and fearing she would. Hoping, because - he has to admit - he misses her and wants to see her, especially if she replaces Jocelyn. Fearing, because would he lose his temper? Tell her he's seen the videos of her with Max, confront her with all the lies she told him, belt her one, the way Con might? Would she be defiant, would she laugh at him? Or would she cry and say what a mistake she's made and how sorry she is, and how much she loves him? And if she does say that, how will he know she means it?