The Heart Goes Last

XII | ESCORT Elvisorium

Stan’s at the Elvisorium, drinking beer and playing Texas hold’em with three of the other Elvises. They don’t play for money, they know better than that; they’ve seen too many despairing punters lose their last dollar at the tables. They play for pancakes – the Baby Stacks Cafe ones, though you can trade your chits for bacon or peanut butter sandwiches – and there isn’t any rule that you have to eat the stuff: too many pancakes and those belts with the silver buckles will fail to make it around the ballooning waists. The core concept is Elvis in his slim-hipped glory days, not Elvis in his blimpy decrepitude. No one wants to remember the tragic decline.

By now Stan knows the civvie names of UR-ELF Elvis team members. Rob, the tallest, is the founder and CEO; he handles the bookings and the PR, including the website, and keeps an eye on overall performance. Pete, the second-in-command, does the financials. Ted – a little on the plump side for an Elvis – is in charge of running the Elvisorium on a daily basis: the dry-cleaning of the Elvis outfits, the sheets and towels, the basic groceries. UR-ELF is making a profit, says Pete, but only because they keep the overheads low. It’s a close-to-the-bone operation: the champagne does not flow, the caviar is not spread. They’re always looking at schemes for making a little extra, though not all of these work out. Juggling Elvis was tried but wasn’t a success. The same went for Tightrope-Walking Elvis: the fans don’t want the Elvises to do things that the historical Elvis would never have done: it would be too much like making fun of the King, and they don’t appreciate that.

It’s a slow day, so the poker players aren’t “in character,” as Rob calls dressing up. They’re wearing shorts, Ts, and flipflops: the A/C isn’t working well, and outside the door it’s 104°F. Luckily Vegas is in a desert, so at least it’s not humid.

Stan now knows that not all the Elvises aren’t gay. Some are, and there are a couple of bis and one asexual, though who can tell any more where to draw the line?

“Let’s say it’s a continuum,” said Rob while explaining this to Stan the first day. “Nobody’s either/or, when it comes right down to it. Me, I’m between wives. Boring old vanilla.”

Stan doesn’t buy the continuum thing himself. But why should he worry about what other guys do in their spare time? “The way you were all talking when I got here, you could’ve fooled me,” he said.

“And we did,” said Pete. “But it’s acting. UR-ELF was founded by actors for when we aren’t working.

“Most of us are just here looking for a part in one of the shows,” said Rob.

“By the way, we give coaching in how to act gay,” said Ted. “For our new Elvises. Ten tips, that sort of thing. Stan, we might have to give you some help.”

“A straight guy playing a gay guy playing a straight guy, but in a way so that everyone assumes he’s gay – that takes skill. Think about the complexity. Though some of the guys overact. It’s a fine line,” said Rob.

Stan flashed back to his days with Jocelyn, when he was expected to play out whatever fantasy she’d ordered up that night. “Okay,” he said. “I get that about the acting, but why the gay thing? I may be dumb, but Elvis was definitely not gay, so …”

“It’s the clients,” said Rob. “And the relatives, the ones who book us for a treat. They prefer the Elvises to be gay.”

“I don’t get it.”

“They don’t want any uninvited hanky-panky,” said Rob. “Especially not at the hospitals. With the female patients, the ones in the private rooms. Historically, there have been incidents.”

Stan laughed. “Not really! Crap! Who’d want to …” Who’d want to fuck a hundred-year-old woman with tubes all over her and her insides leaking out? is what he’s thinking.

“This is Vegas,” said Rob. “You’d be surprised.”

“Beer?” says Pete, folding his hand and getting up.

Stan nods, broods over his cards. He’s within view of another stack of pancakes. He’s on a winning streak.

“I hear there’s a couple new productions scheduled,” says Ted. “It’s booming in showtime here, so much better than Broadway.”

“Dan just hit it out of the park,” says Rob. “They’re casting for an all-guy Midsummer Night’s Scream, and he got Tits Tania. That’s why he hasn’t been around.”

“Let’s hope his voice holds up. It’s not what you’d call singing,” says Pete with a touch of rancour. “I wouldn’t want to be in that pile of crap myself.”

Stan is way out of his depth – what is Tits Tania? – but once they get into the actor talk, better not to ask.

“At least it wasn’t fucking Cobweb,” says Ted. “With the fairy wings.”

“Or fucking Puck. You can imagine the puns. I hear they’re doing an all-guy Annie next year,” says Pete. “Only I’m going for what’s her name, the bitch who runs the evil orphanage. I did it once, in Philly. I could ace it.”

“Five pancakes,” says Rob, laying down his cards. “You can pay up on Sunday.”

“Go again?” says Ted. “Win ‘em back off you. I’m owed six anyway, from last time.”

“Someone else be dealer,” says Rob.

“Flip for it.”

“With Dan out, we’re short an Escort,” says Rob. “There’s a big convention coming up, it’s NAB. We’re going to have demand.”

“NAB?” says Stan. They’re always throwing around these short forms, stuff he’s never heard of.

“National Association of Broadcasters. TV, radio, all that. The see exhibits and listen to talks in the day, drink horrible coffee, the usual; then they hit the shows at night. Lot of single women, not always young. Stan, up for that?”

“Up for what?” says Stan cautiously.

“Escort Elvis. You’ve been doing great at the hospitals, nothing but stars and thumbs-up on the website Comments, so you should be fine. See a show, eat some food, drink some booze. They might hit on you, offer you extra to go up to their rooms. That’s where being gay can come in handy.”

“I can see that,” says Stan. “Maybe I need some of those gayness lessons.”

“But we need the client to have an overall positive experience. We’re all for gender equality. If the ladies want sex-for-cash, we provide it.”

“Wait a minute,” says Stan.

“Not you,” says Rob. “You’ll just give us a call on the cell, over at the UR-ELF Nightline, and we send one of the Elvis bots. Big markup on those! Like a super-dildo, only with a body attached. Vibrator built in, optional.”

“Wish I felt like that,” says Pete.

“Then you chat with them, pour them a drink, tell them you wish you were straight. When the Elvis arrives, you switch him on and he hums a little tune while you run over the instructions with the client: he responds to simple voice commands like love me tonight and all shook up. Then you wait in the lobby. You’ll have an earpiece, so you can hear it’s unfolding as per plan.”

Oh great, thinks Stan. Parked in a hotel lobby and eavesdropping while some mildewed hen has an orgasm. He’s had enough of insatiable women. He remembers Charmaine, the way she was when they were first married: her quasi-virginal restraint. He didn’t appreciate it enough. “Why wait in the lobby?” he says.

“So you can supervise the re-delivery. Plus, in case there’s a malfunction,” says Rob.

“Right,” says Stan. “How will I know?”

“If you hear too much screaming, time to act. Get up there fast and flip the Off switch.”

“It’ll sound different,” says Rob. “The screaming. More terrified.”

“No one wants to be fucked to death,” says Pete.

Why Suffer?

Ed has still not returned to the office. All that’s happened is that three men with Positron logos on their jacket pockets arrive with a large crate. It’s a stand-up desk, they say, and they have orders to install it in the office of the big boss. Once the desk is in they go away, and Charmaine is left to her own devices, which consist of slipping off her shoes and stockings and painting her toenails, behind the desk in case anyone comes in.

Blush Pink is the colour she’s allowed. Nothing flaming, nothing flagrant, nothing fuchsia. Aurora bought the Blush Pink for her and presented it in that smug way she has. “Here you are, this shade is very popular among the twelve-year-olds, I’m told, so I’m sure it will convey the right message.” Aurora gives a lot of thought to those details, which is helpful, but she can feel herself reaching the moment when she’s going to yell. Darn it, leave me alone! Stop bugging me! Something like that.

Painting her toenails gives her a lift. That’s what most men never understand, how it’s a real pick-me-up to be able to change the colour of your toes. Stan got mad at her once when they were living in the car, because she spent some of her PixelDust tip money – he didn’t say spend, he said fucking blew – on a little bottle of polish in a lovely silvery coral shade. They had a tiff about that, because she said it was her money, she’d earned it herself, and it wasn’t as if the polish cost a lot, and then he accused her of throwing it up to him that he didn’t have a job, and then she said she was not throwing it up, she only wanted her toes to look nice for him, and he said he didn’t give a fucking fuck about her fucking toe colour, and then she cried.

She has a little cry now, remembering it. How bad are things when you can get nostalgic about living in your car? But it isn’t the car that makes her sad, it’s the absence of Stan. And not knowing if he’s mad at her. Really mad, not just fucking fuck toe colour mad. They’re not the same thing at all.

She tries not to think about Stan not being here any more, because what is is, as Grandma Win used to say, and what can’t be cured must be endured, and laugh and the world laughs with you but cry and you cry alone. Maybe it served her right for talking back to Stan, that time in the car.

(I’ll teach you to talk back! Now who said that? And how had she talked back? Did crying count as talking back? Yes, it did, because after that something bad happened. Let that be a lesson to you. But what was the lesson?)

She lets her mind go blank. Then, after a while of staring at the map with red and orange pins all over it like measles, she thinks, Ed will need a lamp for that stand-up desk, which gives her the excuse to go to the Consilience digital catalogue. She browses here and there to find the right section, pausing maybe too long at Ladies’ Fashions and Cosmetic Magic, and orders the appropriate lighting device.

Then it’s time to go home. So she does go home. Not that it’s really a home. More of a mere house, because as Grandma Win said, it’s love that makes a house a home.

Sometimes she wishes Grandma Win would bug off out of her head.

Aurora is ensconced on the living room sofa. She’s having a cup of tea and a date square. Would Charmaine care to join her she asks with her wide, tight smile? As if she’s the darned hostess, thinks Charmaine, and I’m simply a visitor. But she passes over this, because what the hey, she has to get along with this woman, so she’ll suck it up.

“No tea, thank you,” she says. “But I could really use a drink. I bet there’s some olives or something in the fridge too.” There were olives last time she looked, but food has been appearing and disappearing out of that fridge like it has a bad case of gnomes.

“Certainly,” says Aurora as Charmaine sinks into the easy chair, kicking off her shoes. There’s a pause while each of them waits to see if the other one’s going to get the drink. Darn it, thinks Charmaine, why should I be her maid? If she wants to be the hostess here, let her darn well do it.

After a moment Aurora sets down her cup, pushes up from the sofa, takes the olives out of the fridge and puts them in an olive dish, then rummages among the liquor bottles, because there aren’t very many of them. Though more than there used to be: Jocelyn has a special allowance, she’s not limited the way the rest of them are, so it’s her that’s bringing in the booze. Consilience takes a dim view of drunks because they aren’t productive and they develop medical problems, and why should everyone pay because one individual has no self-control? That’s been on the TV quite a lot recently. Charmaine wonders if there’s bootlegging going on, or maybe people making moonshine out of potato peelings or something. Or more drinking because they’re getting bored.

“Campari and soda?” says Aurora.

What’s that, thinks Charmaine, some snobby drink unknown to us hicks? “Whatever,” she says, “as long as it’s got a kick to it.”

The drink is reddish and a little bitter, but now she feels better.

Aurora waits until Charmaine’s drunk half. Then she announces, “I’m staying here this weekend. Jocelyn thought it would be best. I can keep an eye on you, just in case anything unexpected happens.”

Oh heck, Charmaine thinks. She’s been looking forward to having some Me Time. She’d enjoy a long soak in the tub, in behind the shower curtain where the camera can’t see her, and without having to worry about another person who might want to get in there to floss their teeth. “Oh, I don’t want to put you out,” she says. “I don’t think anything unexpected … I’m fine, really. I don’t need –”

“I’m sure that’s true,” says Aurora in her tone that means the opposite. “But think of it this way. What if he decides to pay you a visit?”

A big What If, thinks Charmaine. She doesn’t need to ask who he is, but she doubts very much that he’ll be visiting, since from what Jocelyn says his dick is in a cast. “I don’t think he will,” she says. “Not this weekend.”

“You never know,” says Aurora. “I understand he can be impetuous. Anyway, he’ll be happy to hear you’ve had a chaperone. I also understand he can be quite jealous. And we wouldn’t want any undue suspicions to arise, would we?”

It’s better than she thought it would be, the weekend with Aurora. You should never pass up the chance to learn something new, and Charmaine learns several things. First of all, she learns that Aurora can make good scrambled eggs. Second, she learns that Ed is planning some sort of a trip, and that Charmaine will be invited on it, but Aurora doesn’t know where or when, so right now it’s only a heads-up.

And third, she learns that Aurora’s face is not her original face. It’s always been obvious that she’s had work done, Charmaine has known that from the get-go, but what Aurora tells her goes way beyond mere work.

“You may have wondered about my face” is how Aurora opens the face round. This is on the Sunday, after they’ve watched Some Like It Hot while eating popcorn and drinking beer, not that Charmaine likes beer that much but it seemed like the right thing to do. Then they got into the mixed drinks, which by this time are unusual, since the ingredient options are running out.

Now they’re feeling like old best girfriends from school, or at least Charmaine is feeling like that. Not that she had any best girlfriends from school, not really close ones. When she was little she wasn’t allowed to have them, and then later she didn’t want to have them, because they would ask too much about her life. So maybe she’s having a best girlfriend now. Though it might just be the effect of her fourth Campari and soda, or is it a gin and tonic, or maybe something with vodka.

“Your face? What do you mean?” says Charmaine, trying to be kind and helpful while at the same time paying attention.

“You don’t have to pretend,” says Aurora. “I know what I look like. I know it’s too … tight. But I used to look very different. And then, for a while, I looked … I didn’t have any face at all.”

“No face?” says Charmaine. “Everyone has a face!”

“Mine got scraped off,” says Aurora.

“You’re kidding!” says Charmaine, and then she can’t help laughing because it’s too ridiculous, a scraped-off face, like scraping icing off a cake, and then Aurora laughs too, as much as she can, considering.

“I was in a roller-derby accident,” she says when they’re finished laughing. “It was a charity thing, for the image consultant agency I was working for then. We were raising money for lung cancer. I guess I shouldn’t have volunteered, but I really wanted to help out. You know.”

“Oh, yes. I know. But roller skates, that’s dangerous,” says Charmaine. She wouldn’t have spotted Aurora as being that athletic. Face scraped off! It hurts her to think about it. Aurora is looking blurry, and Charmaine can almost see underneath her skin. Hurt is what’s under there. So much hurt.

“Yes. I was young then, I thought I was tough. I shouldn’t even say accident, it was a deliberate trip for Maris in Accounts. She had it in for me because of this man called Chet, not that there was anything. And I landed right on my face, at top speed. I came out looking like hamburger.”

“Oh,” says Charmaine, sobering up a little. “Oh, terrible.”

“I couldn’t even sue,” says Aurora. “There wasn’t even a category.”

“Of course not,” says Charmaine sympathetically. “Darned insurance companies.”

“So they offered me a full-face transplant,” says Aurora. “For signing up at Positron.”

“They did?” says Charmaine. “You can do that with faces?” Pop your face off and pop another one on – you could be a whole different person, on the outside, not just on the inside.

“Yes. They were at the experimental stage and there I was. I was custom-made for them. They wanted to see if they could transplant a whole face. Why suffer is how they put it.”

“Whose face did you get?” Charmaine asks. It’s a stupid question, she shouldn’t have asked it. The face of a Procedure is the answer: the face of someone who didn’t need their face any more. But they’d have been blissed out while it was peeled off them, they wouldn’t have known. And it was all for the best. The better. The good. She upends her drink.

“Those were early days,” Aurora says. “They’re doing things differently now.”

“Differently,” says Charmaine. “Things. You mean they’re killing them differently? Those prisoners? They’re not doing the Procedure?” She shouldn’t have blurted that out, she knows never to use the k-word. She’s had too much to drink. At least she didn’t say murdering.

“Killing is harsh,” says Aurora. “It was positioned as the alleviation of excessive pain. And happily there are now more ways than one of doing that! Alleviating the excessive pain. Ways that are less harsh.”

“You mean, they don’t kill them?” Even to herself, Charmaine sounds like a five-year-old. She’s overdoing it on the dumb.

“Hardly at all any more,” says Aurora. “The thing is, people get lonely; they want someone to love them. That can be arranged for anyone now, even if you look like something the cat coughed up. Why should anyone have to endure that kind of emotional damage? Lord knows I can identify with the whole solution! Considering the way my face … this face is, you can imagine I haven’t had much of a love life.”

“Poor you,” says Charmaine. “Of course, there can be a downside.”

“A downside to what?” says Aurora a little coldly.

“Well, you know. To a sex life. All of that,” says Charmaine. She could tell Aurora about a few of her own downsides, but why dwell on the negative?

“Not if the person is devoted,” says Aurora. “Not if they’re fixated on you. Only you. It can be done, they do it by changing the brain, it’s like a magic love potion.”

“Oh,” says Charmaine. “That would be …” What’s the word? Amazing? Impossible? She’s never felt she had a lot of choice with the love, especially with the hopeless kind. The kind that was mostly sex. You loved someone in that way, and wham! You couldn’t help yourself. It was like going down a water slide: you couldn’t stop. Or that’s how it was with Max. Maybe she’ll never be able to feel anything like that again.

“Jocelyn’s promised me,” says Aurora. “If I helped her. She says I can have that done, very soon now. I’ve been waiting so long! But now I can have a whole new life.” Her eyes tear up.

Charmaine is almost envious. A whole new life. How can she herself get one of those?

Escort

“You’ve snagged your first Elvis Escort gig,” Rob tells Stan at breakfast. Or at Stan’s breakfast. It’s more like lunch for Rob, but Stan slept in. They’re both eating much the same thing, however: undifferentiated foodstuffs. Things that come already sliced, things in foil packages, things in jars. The Elvisorium is not a gourmet establishment.

Stan pauses in mid-crackle. He has to stop gobbling Pringles, they’ll make him fat. “Where?” he says.

“Woman here for that broadcaster convention,” says Rob. “Television, or ex-television from the sound of it. Thought I ought to know who she was. She wants someone to take her to a show. Sounds harmless.”

It’s stupid, but Stan actually feels nervous. Performance anxiety, he tells himself. What’s there to worry about? This isn’t his real job, or the rest of his fucking life. “So, what exactly do I do?” he says.

“What she’s ordered up,” says Rob. “You don’t even have to do the dinner, it’s just the show. You won’t know about the sex till later in the evening; that can be an impulse buy. But remember to compliment them on their dress. Gaze into their eyes, all of that. At UR-ELF we’re noted for our discreet attention to every detail.”

“Okay, got it,” says Stan.

He goes for his usual stroll along the strip to quiet his nerves, poses for a few photos, collects a few dollars, and one fiver from a big spender from Illinois. When he gets back to the Elvisorium, Rob’s still in the kitchen. “Some guys were here looking for you,” he says. “They had your picture.”

“What kind of guys?” says Stan.

“Four guys. They were bald. They had sunglasses.”

“What’d you tell them?” says Stan. Four bald guys with sunglasses – that sounds ominous. Jocelyn never mentioned anything like that, and neither did Budge or Veronica. His contact is supposed to be just one person. Has Ed traced the data leak to its source, has he pulled off Jocelyn’s fingernails to extract Stan’s whereabouts from her? Are these guys Ed’s heavies? He sees himself being yanked into a car, then tied to a chair in a vacant garage and having the crap smashed out of him until he cries, “It’s in the belt buckle!” Already he’s sweating inside his Elvis carapace. Or sweating more than he was.

“I said they had the wrong address,” said Rob. “I didn’t like the feel of them.”

“What kind of picture?” Stan asks. He gets himself a beer, gulps down half of it in one swig. “Of me. You think it was taken here?” If so, he’s really in trouble.

“Nah, it was old,” says Rob. “You were standing on a beach with a hot blonde, with penguins on your shirt.”

Stan feels his stomach clench. It’s his honeymoon pic, it has to be. The last time he saw a copy of that was at Possibilibots; it was beside Charmaine’s head, and he himself had been deleted. The project is calling the shots on this, for sure. They’ve tracked him down.

Fuck it, he thinks. I’m fucked.

He figures it’s better to stay in crowds – the bald thugs won’t want to call attention to themselves while abducting him – so it’s good he has a client for the evening. Her name is Lucinda Quant, which rings a distant bell. Didn’t Charmaine used to watch a show this Lucinda did, back when they were living in their car? The first time he heard that name he could imagine the locker-room jokes it must have generated in her teenaged years.

He meets her at her hotel, as arranged; it’s the Venetian one. The lobby is crammed with NAB convention-goers, still with their badges on. Some of them look as if they ought to be famous, or have been, once; the others, the scruffier-looking ones, are probably from radio.

Lucinda Quant spots him before he spots her. “Are you my rent-boy Elvis?” she says. He peers down at her tag and growls, “Why yes, little lady.”

“Not bad,” says Lucinda Quant. She’s about fifty, or maybe sixty; Stan can’t tell because she’s so tanned and wrinkly. She grabs Stan’s arm, waves goodbye to a chattering group of her fellow broadcast journalists, and says, “Let’s get out of this freak show.”

Stan hands her into a taxi, goes around to the other side, and slides in beside her. He gives her his best rubbery-lipped smile, which she doesn’t return. She’s skinny in the arms, teeth-whitened, and covered with silver and turquoise ornaments. Her hair’s dyed black, her eyebrows are drawn on with a pencil, and on her head she’s wearing two little horns, like baby goat horns, orange in colour.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he says in his Elvis register. “I sure do admire those horns you got.” It’s as good a way as any of starting social chat.

She laughs the hoarse laugh of a long-time smoker. “Got them here, from a street vendor,” she says. “Supposed to be the horns of Nymp.”

“Nymp?” says Stan.

“It’s a nymphomaniac imp,” says Lucinda Quant. “Some comic book manga thing. My grandkids know about it, they say it’s all the rage.”

“How old are they?” Stan asks politely.

“Eight and ten,” says Lucinda. “They even know what ‘nymphomaniac’ means. When I was their age I didn’t know which end of the lollipop to put in my mouth.”

Is that an innuendo? Stan hopes not. Suck it up, Stan, he tells himself. Be a man. Better still, be some other man. Lucinda reeks of Blue Suede, an Elvis tribute scent Stan has inhaled a ton of lately. A lot of the old babes wear it; it’s must be sort of like cats rolling around on their dead owner’s sweatshirts. It’s weird to wear a perfume named after shoes, but what does he know? The aroma – a little like cinnamon, but with an undertone of leather preservative – wafts up from between Lucinda’s breasts, the tops of which are on display in the plunge neckline of her scarlet hibiscus-flowered dress.

“So first I thought, those horns are for kids,” says Lucinda, “but then I thought, why not? Go for it, gal! Live while you can, is what I say. I’m going to tell you right now this isn’t my real hair. It’s a wig. I’m a cancer survivor, or I am so far, touch wood, and right now I just want to enjoy the hell out of life.”

“That’s okay, these aren’t my real lips,” says Stan, and Lucinda laughs again. “You’re fabulous,” she says. She slides over and positions one of her bony little butt cheeks up against his thigh. Should he say, in his deep Elvis voice, “Whoa, darlin’, we’ve got all night”? No; that would hint, unfairly, of delights to come. Instead he says, “So, since you’ve shared with me, I feel I should tell you that I’m gay.”

She laughs her smoky laugh. “No, you’re not,” she says. She pats his white-clad knee. “But good try. We can discuss that later.”

Here they are at the venue, in the nick of time. The casino is a new one, with a Russian Empire theme; it’s called The Kremlin. Gold onion domes on the outside, servitors in red boots, a line of fire-eaters dressed as Cossacks waiting to welcome them. One of these helps Lucinda out of the car while raising his flaming torch high in the other hand.

White Russians featured at the bars, and dancers in faux-fur pasties bumping to Slavic rock on several of the gambling tables. Four theatres inside: the shows now make more than the gambling, according to Rob, though they make you walk through the gambling on the off chance you’ll be seized by the devil of risk.

“This way,” says Lucinda, “I’ve been here before.” She steers him toward the theatre where their show will shortly begin.

Stan keeps an eye out for any bald guys with sunglasses, but so far, so good. They make it past the slots and the blackjack and the table dancers without mishap, then into the auditorium. He settles Lucinda into her seat; she puts on her rhinestone-studded reading glasses and peers at the souvenir program.

Stan glances around, locates the exits in case he has to run. There are at least a dozen other Elvises present in the auditorium, each with a crone under his wing. There’s also a scattering of Marilyns, in red dresses and silver-blond wigs, paired with elderly dudes. Some of them have their arms around the shoulders of their Marilyns; the Marilyns are throwing back their heads, doing the iconic open-mouthed laugh, flashing their Marilyn teeth. He has to admit it’s sexy, that laugh, even though he knows how fake it is.

“Now we’ll make some conversation,” says Lucinda Quant. “How did you get into this business?” Her voice has the neutrality and edge of a professional interviewer, which is what she claims to be.

Watch it, Stan, he tells himself. Remember those four bald guys. Too many questions means danger. “It’s a long story,” he says. “I just do this when I’m between engagements. I’m an actor, really. In musical comedy.” That’s a sure-fire yawner: everyone here is.

Luckily for him, the show begins.

Requisition

Early on the Monday morning, Jocelyn comes over to the house. Charmaine’s had a shower and is dressed for work, with a white frilly blouse and all, but she isn’t feeling up to scratch – it must be a hangover, though she’s had so few of those in her life she isn’t sure. Aurora is making scrambled eggs and coffee, even though Charmaine has said she doesn’t think she could look an egg in the face. She has a dim memory of what they discussed the night before. She wishes she could recall more of it.

“There’s an update,” says Jocelyn.

“Coffee?” says Aurora.

“Thanks,” says Jocelyn. She inspects Charmaine. “What’s happened? You look like shit, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“It’s the grief,” Aurora says, and she and Charmaine both giggle.

Jocelyn takes this in. “Okay, good story. Stick to it if he asks,” she says. “I can see the two of you got into the liquor cabinet. I’ll get rid of the evidence for you, empties are my thing. Now listen up.”

They sit at the kitchen table. Charmaine tries a sip of coffee. She’s not ready to tackle the egg yet.

“Here’s his plan. Charmaine, he’ll tell you he’s taking a business trip to Las Vegas. He’ll ask you to book some tickets for you as well. He’ll say he requires your services onsite.”

“What kind of services?” Charmaine asks nervously. “Is he going to trap me in a hotel room, and then …”

“Nothing so simple,” says Jocelyn. “As you know, he’s through with sexbots, for his personal use. He’s moving to the next frontier.”

“This is what I was telling you,” says Aurora. “Last night.”

Charmaine’s recollections of last night are a little fuzzy. No, they are very fuzzy. What was it she and Aurora were drinking? Maybe there was some sort of drug in it. There was something about Aurora’s face coming off, but that can’t be right. “Frontier?” she says. All she can think of is Western movies.

Jocelyn brings out her PosiPad, turns it on, calls up a video. “Sorry for the quality,” she says, “but you can hear quite well.” There’s a pixilated Ed standing in front of a large boardroom touchscreen that says Possibilibots in writing that scrawls across the space, explodes into fireworks, then begins again. He’s addressing a small gathering of men in suits, visible only as the backs of heads.

“I have it on good authority,” he’s saying in his most persuasive manner, “that the interface experience, even with our most advanced models, is and can only ever be an unconvincing substitute for the real thing. A resort for the desperate, perhaps” – here there’s some laughter from the backs of the heads – “but surely we can do better than that!”

Murmuring; the haircuts nod.

Ed continues: “The human body is complex, my friends – more complex than we can hope to duplicate with what is, and can only be, a mechanical contrivance. And it is driven by the human brain, which is the most sophisticated, the most intricate construct in the known universe. We’ve been killing ourselves trying to approximate that combo! But maybe we got hold of the wrong end of the stick!”

“How do you mean?” asks one of the heads.

“What I mean is, why build a self-standing device when a self-standing device already exists? Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just make those wheels roll where we want them to? In a way that is beneficial to all. The greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number – that’s what Possibilibots stands for, am I right?”

“Cut to the chase,” says one of the haircuts. “You’re not on TV, we don’t need the sermon.”

“What’s wrong with our current position? I thought we were raking it in,” says another.

“We are, we are,” says Ed. “But we can rake it in even more. Okay, short form: why not take an existing body and brain, and, by a painless intervention, cause that entity – that person – not to put too fine a point on it, that hot babe who won’t come across for you – cause her to home in on you and you alone, as if she thinks you’re the sexiest hunk she’s ever seen?”

“Is this some kind of a perfume?” says another voice. “With the pheromones, like with moths? I tried that, it’s crap. I attracted a raccoon.”

“No shit! A real raccoon? Or just a dame with …”

“If it’s a new oxytocin –Viagara pill – they don’t last. The next morning she’ll go back to thinking you’re a douche.”

“What happened with the raccoon? That would be something new!” Laughter.

“No, no,” says Ed. “Let’s settle down. It’s not a pill, and believe it or not, it isn’t science fiction. The technique they’re refining at our Las Vegas clinic is based on the work that’s been done on the erasure of painful memories, in vets, child-abuse survivors, and so forth. They discovered that not only can they pinpoint various fears and painful associations in the brain and then excise them, but they can also wipe out your previous love object and imprint you with a different one.”

The camera moves to a very pretty woman in a hospital bed. She’s asleep. Then her eyes open, move sideways. “Oh,” she says, smiling with joy. “You’re here! At last! I love you!”

“Wow, that simple,” says a haircut. “She’s not acting?”

“No, says Ed. “This is one that didn’t work out; we tried it onsite here, but it was too soon, the technique hadn’t been perfected. Our Vegas team is up to speed on it now! But it illustrates the principle.” Segue left: The woman is pressing her lips to a blue teddy bear in a passionate kiss.

“That’s Veronica!” Charmaine almost shrieks. “Oh my god! She’s fallen in love with knitwear!”

“Wait,” says Jocelyn. “There’s more.”

“I don’t know what saboteur gave her that bear,” Ed says. “Trouble is, this thing works on anything with two eyes. The guy who ordered the hit … ordered the job … ordered the operation was very annoyed when he turned up, but he was too late. She’d already imprinted. Timing is everything.”

“This is dynamite,” says one of the heads. “You could have a harem, you could have …”

“So you designate the target …”

“You requisition it …”

“Into the van, then the plane,” says Ed, “off to the Vegas clinic, a quick needle, and then – a whole new life!”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

Jocelyn turns off the PosiPad. “That’s it, in a nutshell,” she says.

“You mean, they’re snatching them?” says Charmaine. “Out of their own lives? The women?”

“That’s a blunt way of putting it,” says Jocelyn. “But not just women, it’s a unisex thing. Yes, that would be the idea. But the subject doesn’t mind, because their previous love attachments have been nullified.”

“So that’s why Ed wants her to go on the business trip to Vegas?” says Aurora.

“He hasn’t told me in so many words,” says Jocelyn, “but it’s a fair guess.”

“You mean, he wants to fix it so I don’t love Stan any more,” Charmaine says. She hears her own voice: it’s so sad. If that happened, Stan would become a stranger to her. Their whole past, their wedding, living in their car, everything they went through together … maybe she’d remember it, but it wouldn’t mean anything. It would be like listening to someone else, someone she doesn’t even know, someone boring.

“Yes. You wouldn’t love Stan any more. You’d love Ed instead,” says Jocelyn. “You’d dote on him.”

This is like one of those love potions in the old fairy-tale books at Grandma Win’s, thinks Charmaine. The kind where you get imprisoned by a toad prince. In those stories you always got the true love back at the end, as long as you had a magic silver dress or something; but in real life – in this real life, the one Ed’s planning for her – she’ll be under some awful toad prince spell forever. “That’s horrible!” Charmaine says. “I’ll kill myself first!”

“Maybe,” says Jocelyn, “but you won’t kill yourself after. You’ll come to when the operation’s over, and there will be Ed, holding your hand and gazing into your eyes, and you’ll take one look at him and throw your arms around him and say you’ll love him forever. Then you’ll beg him to make whatever sexual use of you he wants. And you’ll mean that, every single word. You’ll never get enough of him. That’s how this thing is supposed to work.”

“Oh god,” says Charmaine. “But you can’t let that happen to me! No matter what I’ve … you can’t let it happen to Stan!”

“You still care about Stan?” Jocelyn says with interest. “After everything?”

Charmaine has a flash of Stan, how sweet he was, much of the time; how innocent he looked when he was sleeping, like a boy; how crushed he would be if she turned her back on him as if he’d never existed, and took the arm of Ed, and walked away. He would never, ever get over it.

She can’t help it: she begins to cry. Great big tears are rolling out of her eyes, she’s gasping for breath. Jocelyn brings her a tissue but doesn’t go so far as to pat her shoulder. “At least he wants you,” she says. “Not just your organs.

“It’s okay,” Jocelyn says. “Calm down. Ed has specified that I’m going with you. I’m your security, I’m your bodyguard, I’m supposed to keep you safe.” She pauses, to let this sink in. “So I’ve got your back.”