"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 wig 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 scrolls 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, he's about to 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. Get me out! Get me out! he screams silently. As if in answer, there's the muffled barking of a dog. Some gloomy pet, the slave and toy of a bejewelled concubine, herself no doubt the gloomy pet of a suavely sadistic plutocrat. He sympathizes.
Like a fool, he's drunk two 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. Yo! Bro! This Elvis is not a robot, this Elvis is alive! Undead Elvis! Get the garlic and the spike!
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 and give her a shake, 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, baby. Oh, yes. You're so soft! You're so strong!"
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 from 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 d
oorbell 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. Can you do that?"
"I'll try," says Charmaine. Then she just has to ask, because why else is she doing all this: "Where's Stan? When can I see him?"
"Not yet," says Jocelyn. "You've got a few cards to play for us first. But he's safe enough, don't worry."
Aurora comes in with the tray and three mugs of coffee. "Now, about your new job," she says. "Here's what we want you to wear." They've been through her clothes again, they've added a couple more outfits; they've got it all planned out.
Aurora makes her nervous. Why is she in cahoots with Jocelyn? Why would she risk her job? Has she done some criminal thing Jocelyn knows about? Charmaine can't imagine what.
--
For her first day as Ed's personal assistant, Charmaine has on a black suit with white trim and a high collar. There's a white blouse underneath; it has a frilly white bow at the neck, a cross between angel feathers and underpants. She sits at a desk outside Ed's office and does nothing much. She has a computer on which she's supposed to keep track of Ed's appointments, but his onscreen calendar seems to run itself and he posts dates on it without consulting her. Still, she has a good idea of his whereabouts most of the time, for whatever that's worth. He asks her to email a few people and tell them he can't see them because he has prior commitments; he asks her to look in his address files for some contact numbers in Las Vegas. One of them is at a casino, one seems to be a doctor's office, but one is at the new Ruby Slippers headquarters they've opened after taking over the chain, which makes her go all nostalgic. If only she still had her old job, in the Ruby Slippers local branch where she'd once been so content.
Or she'd been content enough. Being nice to the residents and planning special entertainment events for them wasn't what most people would call stimulating, but it was rewarding to be able to shine a ray of happiness into people's lives, and she was good at that, and she'd felt appreciated.
Ed walks past her desk, says, "How's it going," goes into his office, shuts the door. A trained dog could do this job, she thinks. It isn't really a job, it's an excuse. He wants me where he can get his hands on me.
But he doesn't get his hands on her. He doesn't take her to lunch, or make any moves on her at all, apart from some benign smiling and an assurance that she'll soon get used to things. He doesn't even ask her to go into his office except to bring him coffee. She's had a little daydream - a little nightmare - of Ed cornering her in there, and then locking the door and advancing on her with a leer. But that doesn't happen.
What's in the drawers of her own desk? Only some pens and paper clips, that kind of thing. Nothing to report there.
There's one other thing, she tells Jocelyn, who's come over in the evening to debrief her. There's a map on the wall behind Ed's desk, with pins in it. Orange pins are the Positron Prisons that are going up. Ed has told her it's now a franchise: there's a basic plan, there are instructions; it's like hamburger chains, only with prisons. Red pins are for the Ruby Slippers branches. There are more of those, but that company has been going longer.
Ed seems very proud of the map. He made sure she was watching him the day he stuck a new pin into it, near Orlando.
--
On the fifth day of her job, three state governors called and Ed got quite excited. "They want one in their state," Charmaine heard him saying on his phone. "The model's proving itself! We're cooking with gas!"
At the end of the week he went to Washington for a meeting with some senators - Charmaine arranged the tickets and booked the hotel - but although he seemed pleased when he came back, he didn't tell her what happened.
"Did you go into his office while he was away?" asks Aurora.
"It's bugged," says Charmaine. "He told me that."
"I'm in charge of the bugging, remember?" says Jocelyn. "That's how I know your house is clean. Next time go in. Have a look around. Not on his computer, though. He'd know about that."
--
In the middle of the second week, Charmaine says, "I don't get it. According to both of you, he's mad for me..."
"Oh, he is," says Aurora. "He's at the moping stage."
"But he hardly looks at me, and he hasn't asked me out again. And the job's a nothing. Why does he want me there?"
"So nobody else can get you," says Jocelyn. "He's asked me to shadow you to and from work, and to report anyone - any man - who visits you at home. Needless to say I don't report myself. Aurora, yes, I report her. She's supposed to be doing grief therapy with you."
"But what...I don't see where this is going," says Charmaine.
"I don't exactly myself," says Jocelyn. "But he's got his double of you almost finished. Have a look."
She brings up a window on her PosiPad: grainy footage of a corridor, Ed walking along it. He goes in through a door. "Surveillance footage," she says. "Sorry about the quality. This is over at Possibilibots, where they're making the sex robots." Charmaine remembers Stan saying something about that, but she hadn't paid much attention, she'd been too preoccupied with Max. Real sex with him was so, was so...Divine isn't the word. But if you could have that, why bother with a robot?
Inside the room, bright light. A couple of men are there, one with glasses, one without. They have green smocks on. There are a lot of wires and gizmos.
"How's she coming?" Ed asks the two men.
"Almost ready for a trial run," the glasses one says. "Just the standard prostibody for now, with the regular action. We can't make the custom body without the measurements, and some photos for detail."
"That'll come later," says Ed. "Let's have a look."
Segue across to a table, or is it a bed? A flower-patterned sheet over a body shape. Daisies and carnations. Ed turns down the corner of the sheet.
There's Charmaine's head, her very own head, with her very own hair on it, slightly dishevelled. She's sleeping. She looks so lifelike, so alive: Charmaine would swear she can see the rise and fall of the upper torso.
"Oh my gosh!" she says. "It's me! That is so..." She feels a chill of terror. On the other hand, it's thrilling in a strange way. Another one of her! What will happen to her?
Ed leans over, strokes the cheek gently. The eyes open, widen in alarm.
"Perfect," says Ed. "Did you program the voice yet?"
"Just put your hands around her neck," says one of the men, the one with the glasses. "Give a tender squeeze."
Ed does so. "No! Don't touch me!" says Charmaine's head. The eyes close, the head is thrown back in an attitude of surrender.
"Now kiss her neck," says the man without glasses. "A small bite is okay, but don't bite too hard."
"You wouldn't want to break the skin," says the other. "You could get a short."
"Those can b
e ugly," says the one without glasses.
"Okay, here goes," says Ed as if he's about to jump into a swimming pool. His head goes down. The camera sees two white arms come up, encircle him. There's a moan from underneath Ed.
"You hit it out of the park," says the one with glasses.
"The moan means you're on target," says the other. "Wait till you try the main action."
"Genius," says Ed. "Exactly to spec. You guys deserve a medal. When can I take delivery?"
"Tomorrow," says the one with glasses. "If you're willing to go with this iteration. There's only a couple more adjustments."
"You don't want to wait for the custom body?" says the other.
"This one will do for now," says Ed. "When I've got the stats and the pics I'll send it back to you for the replacement." He bends over the head, which is sleeping again. "Goodnight, sweetheart," he murmurs. "I'll see you very soon."
The film ends. Charmaine feels dizzy. "He's going to have sex with her?" She feels strangely protective of her fabricated self.
"That's the idea," says Jocelyn.
"Why doesn't he just...I mean, he could ask me instead. He could practically force me to do it."
"He's afraid of rejection," says Aurora. "A lot of people are. This way, he'll never be rejected by you."
"By the way, heads-up," says Jocelyn. "He's asked me to plant some cameras in your bathroom, to take the pictures for the custom body."
"But you won't do it," says Charmaine. "Will you?" Displaying herself for an unseen camera, pretending she doesn't know it's there...that's the kind of thing Max might have asked her to do. Did ask. Turn this way. Raise your arms. Bend over. The joke was that there really were cameras.
"It's my job," says Jocelyn. "If I don't do it he'll know something's wrong."
"Fine. I just won't have any baths," says Charmaine. "Or showers," she adds.
"I wouldn't take that attitude if I were you," says Aurora. "It's not helpful. Think of it like acting. We want him to go through with his plan."
"It's partly business," says Jocelyn. "You're like a demonstration model. Can you imagine what a market demand there would be for customized robots like this, once they've got all the kinks worked out of the process?"