The Heart Goes Last

III | SWITCH Gateway

Getting into the Positron Project won’t be a slam dunk. They aren’t interested in just anyone, as Charmaine whispers to Stan on the bus that’s picked them up from the parking-lot collection point. Some of the people on the bus can’t possibly make it into the Project, they’re too worn-down and leathery, with blackened or missing teeth. Stan wonders if there’s a dental plan in there. So far there’s nothing wrong with his own teeth; lucky, considering all the cheap sugary crap they’ve been eating.

Sandi and Veronica are on the bus too, sitting at the back and nibbling on the sackful of cold chicken wings they’ve brought with them. Every once in a while they laugh, a little too loudly. Everyone on this bus is nervous, Charmaine especially. “What if we get rejected?” she asks Stan. “What if we get accepted?” She says it’s like being picked for sports teams when she was at school: you’re nervous either way.

The bus trip goes on for hours, in a steady drizzle; through open countryside, past strip malls with plywood over most of the windows, derelict burger joints. Only the gas stations appear functional. After a while Charmaine falls asleep with her head on Stan’s shoulder. His arm is around her; he draws her closer. He too dozes off.

Then the bus stops at a gateway in a high black-glass wall. Solar generation, thinks Stan. Smart, building it in like that. The group on the bus wakes, stretches, descends. It’s late afternoon; as if on cue, mellow sunlight breaks through the clouds, lighting them in a golden glow. Many are smiling. They file in past the seeing-eye boundary, then through the entrance cubicle, where their eyes are scanned and their fingerprints taken and a plastic passcard with a number on it and a barcode is issued to each of them.

Back on the bus, they’re driven through the town of Consilience, where the Project is located. Charmaine says she can hardly believe her eyes: everything is so spruced up, it’s like a picture. Like a town in a movie, a movie of years ago. Like the olden days, before anyone was born. She squeezes Stan’s hand in anticipation, and he squeezes back. “This is the right thing to do,” she says.

They get off the bus in front of the Harmony Hotel, which is not only the top hotel in town, says the neatly dressed young man who’s now in charge of them – it’s the only hotel, because Consilience isn’t exactly a tourist destination. He herds them into a preliminary drinks and snacks party in the ballroom. “You’re free to leave at any time,” he tells them, “if you don’t like the ambience.” He grins, to show this is a joke.

Because what’s not to like about the ambience? Stan rolls an olive around in his mouth before chewing: it’s a long time since he’s had an olive. The taste is distracting. He should be more alert, because naturally they’re being scrutinized, though it’s hard to figure out who’s doing it. Everyone is so fucking nice! The niceness is like the olive: it’s a long time since Stan has encountered that muffling layer of smiling and nodding. Who knew he’s such a fascinating dude? Not him, but there are three women, obvious hostesses, they even have name badges, deployed to convince him of his own magnetism. He scans the room: there’s Charmaine, getting a similar treatment from two dudes and a girl. Her slutty hooker friends from PixelDust are in that group too. They’ve fixed themselves up, they even have dresses on. You wouldn’t really spot them as pros.

Throughout the evening, the crowd gets thinner – a discreet weeding, Stan guesses. All those with bad attitudes, out the Discard door. But Stan and Charmaine must have passed scrutiny, because here they still are, at the end of the party. Everyone remaining is given a room reservation, for later. They also get a meal voucher, with a carafe of wine included, and another young man steers them toward a restaurant called Together, just down the street.

There’s an old-fashioned tune playing in the background, white tablecloths, a plush carpet.

“Oh Stan,” Charmaine breathes at him over the electric candles on their table for two. “It’s like a dream come true!” She picks up the rose from their bud vase, sniffs it.

It’s not real, Stan wants to tell her. But why spoil it for her? She’s so happy.

That night they stay at the Harmony Hotel. Charmaine has two baths, she gets so turned on by the towels. Less so by him, Stan guesses; but still, she comes across for him, so why complain? “There,” she says afterwards. “Isn’t this better than the back seat of the car?” If they commit to the Positron Project, she says, they can kiss that horrible car goodbye and good riddance, and the vandals and thieves can tear it apart, because they themselves won’t need it any more.

Night Out

The next day, the workshops begin. After the first one, they’ll still be free to leave, they are told. In fact, they’ll have to leave: Positron wants you to take a good look at the alternatives before deciding. As they themselves know, it’s a festering rust bucket, out beyond the Consilience gates. People are starving. Scavenging, pilfering, dumpster-diving. Is that any way for a human being to live? So each one of them will spend what the Positron Project hopes – what it sincerely hopes! – will be their last night on the outside. To give them time to think it over, seriously. The Project wasn’t interested in freeloaders, tourists just trying it out. The Project wanted serious commitment.

Because after that you were either out or you were in. In was permanent. But no one would force you. If you signed up, it would be of your own free will.

The first day’s workshop is mostly PowerPoints. It begins with videos of the town of Consilience, with happy people at work in it, doing ordinary jobs: butcher, baker, plumber, scooter repair, and so on. Then there are videos of the Positron Prison inside Consilience, with happy people at work in it as well, each one of them wearing an orange boiler suit. Stan only half watches: he already knows they’re going to sign the commitment papers tomorrow, because Charmaine has her heart set on it. Despite the slightly uneasy feeling he’s had – they’ve both had, because Charmaine said at breakfast, with lattes and real grapefruit, “Honey, are you sure?” – the bath towels clinched the deal.

Their night outside the wall is spent in a nasty motel that Stan wagers has been tailored for the purpose, with the furniture trashed to order, stale cigarette smell sprayed one, cockroaches imported, and sounds of violent revelry in the room next door, most likely a recording. But it’s enough like the real thing to make the world inside the Consilience walls seem more desirable than ever. Most likely it is the real thing, because why fake it when there’s so much actual wreckage available?

In view of the racket and the lumpy mattress they have trouble getting to sleep, so Stan hears the tapping at the window immediately. “Yo! Stan!”

Fuck, now what? He draws back the ragged curtain, peers cautiously out. It’s Conor, with his two looming sidekicks watching his back.

“Conor!” he says. “What the fuck?” At least it’s Con and not some lunatic with a crowbar.

“Hi, bro,” says Con. “Come out. I need to talk to you.”

“Fuck, now?” Stan says.

“Would I say need if I didn’t need?”

“Honey, what is it?” says Charmaine, holding the sheet up to her chin.

“It’s only my brother,” says Stan. He’s pulling on his clothes.

“Conor? Why is he here?” She doesn’t like Con, she never has; she thinks he’s a bad influence who will lead Stan astray, as if he’s that easy to lead. Con might get him into behaviour she doesn’t approve of, like too much drinking, and darker stuff she’ll never elaborate on, but she most likely means whores. “Don’t go out there, Stan, he might …”

“I can handle it,” says Stan. “He’s my brother, for fuck’s sake!”

“Don’t leave me alone in here!” she says fearfully. “It’s too scary! Wait, I’ll come with you!” Is this an act, to keep him tethered so Con can’t spirit him away to a den of vice?

“You stay in bed, honey. I’ll be right out outside,” he says with what he hopes is gentle reassurance. Muffled sniffling from the bed. Trust Con to turn up and mess with everyone’s head.

Stan slides himself out the door. “What?” he says as irritably as he can manage.

“Don’t sign into that thing,” says Conor. He’s close to whispering. “Trust me on it. You don’t want to.”

“How’d you know where to find me?” says Stan.

“What’s a phone for? I gave it to you! So I traced it, dum-dum. I tracked you on that bus, all the way here. Lesson one, don’t take phones from strangers,” says Conor, grinning.

“You’re not a fucking stranger,” says Stan.

“Right. So, I’m telling you straight up. Don’t trust that package, no matter what they tell you.”

“Why not?” says Stan. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it is, unless you’re top management, you can’t get out. Except in a box, feet first,” says Conor. “I’m just looking out for you, is all.”

“What’re you trying to tell me?”

“You don’t know what goes on in there,” says Con.

“Meaning what? Meaning you do?”

“I’ve heard stuff,” says Conor. “It’s not for you. Nice guys finish last. Or else they get finished. You’re too soft.”

Stan juts out his chin. That would have been the signal for a scuffle, once upon a time. “You’re fucking paranoid,” he says.

“Yeah, right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” says Con. “Do yourself a favour, stay outside. Listen, you’re family. I’ll help you out, the same as you helped me. You need a job, some cash, a favour, you know where I am. You’re always welcome. And the little lady, bring her along too,” Con grins. “There’s a place for her, any time.”

So that’s it. Con has his poacher’s eye on Charmaine. No fucking way in hell is Stan falling for that one. “Thanks, buddy,” he says. “I appreciate it. I’ll think about it.”

“Like shit,” says Conor, but he smiles cheerfully, and the two of them do the back pat.

“Stan?” comes the anxious voice of Charmaine from inside their room.

“Go comfort the little wifey,” says Conor, and Stan knows what he’s thinking: pussy-whipped.

He watches Con walking away, with his two bodyguards; they get into a long black car, which slides off into the night, silent as a submarine. Most likely the same car he saw at the trailer park. Guys like Con who score some money always want cars like that.

Not that Stan would mind having such a car himself.

Twin City

The next morning they take the final step. Stan barely even read the terms and conditions, because Charmaine is so eager to get in. After all, they’ve been chosen, she says, and so many have been rejected. She smiles mistily at Stan as he signs his name on the form. “Oh, thank you,” she says. “I feel so safe.”

Then the workshops begin in earnest; or, as one of the leaders quips, they’ve had the shop, now they’re getting the work. They are about to learn so many astounding new things, and it will require their full concentration. Men’s workshops over here, ladies over there, because there will be different challenges and duties and expectations for each, and besides, they’ll be separated for a month at a time when they’re in the prison part of this project – a feature that will be explained more fully to them shortly – so they might as well start getting used to it, their first workshop leader says with a chuckle. Anyway, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, as he is sure they know from experience. Another chuckle.

Be a loner, get a boner, thinks Stan. A rhyme of teenaged Conor, who’d had a collection of rhymes like that. He watches as Charmaine and all of the other women in the group leave the room. Sandi and Veronica don’t look back, but Charmaine does. She smiles brightly at Stan to show him she’s confident about their decision, though she looks a little anxious. But then, he’s a little anxious himself. What are these astounding new things they’re about to learn?

The men’s workshop leaders are half a dozen young, earnest, dark-suited, zit-picking graduates of some globally funded think tank’s motivational-speaking program. In his past life, the part of it he’d spent at Dimple Robotics, Stan encountered the type. He disliked them before; but, as before, they can’t be avoided, since the workshop classes are mandatory.

In a jam-packed day of back-to-back sessions, they’re given the full song and dance. The rationale for Consilience, its history, the potential obstacles to it, the odds ranged against it, and why it is so imperative that those odds be overcome.

The Consilience/Positron twin city is an experiment. An ultra, ultra important experiment; the think-tankers use the word ultra at least ten times. If it succeeds – and it has to succeed, and it can succeed if they all work together – it could be the salvation, not only of the many regions that have been so hard-hit in recent times, but eventually, if this model comes to be adopted at the highest levels, of the nation as a whole. Unemployment and crime solved in one fell swoop, with a new life for all those concerned – think about that!

They themselves, the incoming Positron Planners – they’re heroic! They’ve chosen to risk themselves, to take a gamble on the brighter side of human nature, to chart unknown territories within the psyche. They’re like the early pioneers, blazing a trail, clearing a way to the future: a future that will be more secure, more prosperous, and just all-round better because of them! Posterity will revere them. That’s the spiel. Stan has never heard so much bullshit in his life. On the other hand, he sort of wants to believe it.

The final speaker is older than the zitty youths, though not that much older. His suit is of the same darkness, but it looks lusher. He’s narrow-shouldered, long torso, short legs; short hair too, clippered around the neck, combed back. The look says: I am buttoned-down.

There’s a woman with him, also in a dark suit, with straight black hair and bangs and a squarish jaw; no makeup, but she does have earrings. Her legs are good though muscular. She sits to the side, fooling with her cellphone. Is she an assistant? It isn’t clear. Stan pegs her as butch. Technically she shouldn’t have been here, in the men’s sessions, and Stan wonders why she is. Still, better to look at her than at the guy.

The guy begins by saying they should call him Ed. Ed hopes they’re now feeling comfortable, because they know – as he does! – that they’ve made the right choice.

Now he would like to give them – share with them – a deeper peek behind the scenes. It was a struggle to get the multiple permissions needed to set up the Positron enterprise. The powers that be did not decide easily; more than one policy guru’s ass was on the line (he smirks a little at his own daring use of the word ass), as witness the howling when the scheme was first announced in the press. The spokesmen, or rather the spokespersons – Ed glances at the woman, who smiles – have braved a lot of indignant screaming from the online radicals and malcontents who claim that Consilience/Positron is an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit. Nobody is more dedicated to individual liberties than Ed is, but as they all know – here Ed gives a conspiratorial smile – you can’t eat your so-called individual liberties, and the human spirit pays no bills, and something needed to be done to relieve the pressure inside the social pressure-cooker. Wouldn’t they agree?

The woman in the suit glances up. What’s she looking at? Her gaze sweeps over them, calm, cool. Then she turns back to her cellphone. Without a phone himself, Stan feels naked: they’d had to turn in their cells at the beginning of the workshop. They’ve been promised new ones, but those will work only inside the wall. Stan wonders when the new ones will be issued.

Ed lowers his voice: serious stuff coming up. Sure enough, on comes a PowerPoint with a slew of graphs. The financial big guns have concealed the true statistics to avoid panic, he says, but a shocking 40 percent of the population in this region is jobless, with 50 percent of those being under twenty-five. That’s a recipe for systems breakdown, right there: for anarchy, for chaos, for the senseless destruction of property, for so-called revolution, which meant looting and gang rule and warlords and mass rape, and the terrorization of the weak and helpless. That is the grim prospect staring everyone in this area right between the eyes. They’ve already noticed the symptoms for themselves, which is – he is sure – why they saw the desirability of signing in.

What can be done? Ed asks, wrinkling his brows. How to keep the lid on? Which it was in the interests of society at large to do, as they would surely agree. At the official leadership level, ideas were running out fast. There is only so much manpower and tax revenue that can be devoted to riot control, to social surveillance, to chasing fast youths down dark alleyways, to fire-hosing and pepper-spraying suspicious-looking gatherings. Too many once-bustling cities are stagnant or derelict, especially in the northeast, but other regions as well where long droughts have taken their toll. Too many of the disenfranchised are living in abandoned cars or subway tunnels or even in culverts. There’s an epidemic of drugging and boozing: suicide-grade alcohol, skin-blistering drugs that kill you in under a year. Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem? It isn’t even a problem, it’s beyond a problem. It’s more like a looming collapse. Is their once-beautiful region doomed to be a wasteland of poverty and wreckage?

At first the solution was to build more prisons and cram more people into them, but that soon became prohibitively expensive. (Here Ed flicked through a few more slides.) Not only that, it resulted in platoons of prison graduates with professional-grade criminal skills they were more than willing to exercise once they were back in the outside world. Even when the prisons were privatized, even when the prisoners were rented out as unpaid labour to international business interests, the cost–benefit charts did not improve, because American slave workers couldn’t outperform the slave workers in other countries. Competitiveness in the slave labour market was linked to the price of food, and Americans – who remain goodhearted despite everything, stray puppy-rescuers every one – here Ed smiles indulgently, contemptuously – weren’t ready to starve their prisoners to death while working them to the bone. No matter how much the prisoners were vilified by the politicians and the press as filthy dregs and toxic scum, still, heaps of stick-legged corpses can’t be hidden from view indefinitely. The odd unexplained death, maybe – there has always been the odd unexplained death, says Ed, shrugging – but not heaps. Some snoop would make a phone video; such things can escape despite the best attempts to keep things under hatches, and who knows what sort of uproar, not to mention uprising, might result?

Stan feels a small prickle at the back of his neck. That’s his brother Ed could talking about! Or maybe not Con specifically; but he’s pretty sure that if Ed got a close-up look at Con, he’d file him under toxic scum. It’s fine for Stan to use names like that, it’s within the family, and it’s not that he approves of whatever it is Con is probably doing, but. Is this the kind of rumour Con’s been hearing? That Positron is hardcore repressive on the subject of sticky fingers? One strike and you’re out?

He’d like to phone Conor, talk to him some more. See what he knows about this place really. But he can’t do that without a phone. Wait and see, he tells himself. Give the place a chance.

Ed opens his arms like a TV preacher: his voice gets louder. Then it occurred to the planners of Positron, he says – and this was brilliant – that if prisons were scaled out and handled rationally, they could be win-win viable economic units. So many jobs could be spawned by them: construction jobs, maintenance jobs, cleaning jobs, guard jobs. Hospital jobs, uniform-sewing jobs, shoemaking jobs, jobs in agriculture, if there was a farm attached: an ever-flowing cornucopia of jobs. Medium-size towns with large penitentiaries could maintain themselves, and the people inside such towns could live in middle-class comfort. And if every citizen were either a guard or a prisoner, the result would be full employment: half would be prisoners, the other half would be engaged in the business of tending the prisoners in some way or other. Or tending those who tended them.

And since it was unrealistic to expect certified criminality from 50 percent of the population, the fair thing would be for everyone to take turns: one month in, one month out. Think of the savings, with every dwelling serving two sets of residents! It was time-share taken to its logical conclusion.

Hence the twin town of Consilience/Positron. Of which they are now all such an important part! Ed smiles, the welcoming, open, inclusive smile of a born salesman. It all makes sense!

Stan wants to ask about the profit margin, and about whether this thing is a private venture. It has to be. Someone’s got the lucrative infrastructure and supply contracts, walls don’t build themselves, and the security systems are top grade, from what he’s been able to observe at the gateway. But he stops himself: this doesn’t feel like the right moment to ask, because now a great big CONSILIENCE has come up on the screen:

CONSILIENCE = CONS + RESILIENCE. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE!

A Meaningful Life

Stan has to admit that the PR team and the branders have done well; Ed obviously thinks so too. Positron Project had changed the name of the pre-existing prison, he tells them, because “The Upstate Correctional Institute” was dingy and boring. They’d came up with “Positron,” which technically means the antimatter counterpart of the electron, but few out there would know that, would they? As a word, it just sounded very, well, positive. And positivity was what was needed to solve our current problems. Even the most cynical – said Ed – even the most jaundiced would have to admit that. Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. And that’s one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box?

When the new name and the new aesthetic were launched, Positron hit a popular nerve. Credible stratagem, said the online news bloggers. At last, a vision! Even the depressives among them said why not try it, since nothing else had worked. People were starved for hope, ready to swallow anything uplifting.

After they’d run the first TV ads, the number of online applications was overwhelming. And no wonder: there were so many advantages. Who wouldn’t rather eat well three times a day, and have a shower with more than a cupful of water, and wear clean clothes and sleep in a comfortable bed devoid of bedbugs? Not to mention the inspiring sense of a shared purpose. Rather than festering in some deserted condo crawling with black mould or crouching in a stench-filled trailer where you’d spend the nights beating off dead-eyed teenagers armed with broken bottles and ready to murder you for a handful of cigarette butts, you’d have gainful employment, three wholesome meals a day, a lawn to tend, a hedge to trim, the assurance that you were contributing to the general good, and a toilet that flushed. In a word, or rather three words: A Meaningful Life.

That was the last slogan on the last slide on the last PowerPoint. Something to take home with them, says Ed. Their new home, right here inside Consilience. And inside Positron, of course. Think of an egg, with a white and a yolk. (An egg came up on screen, a knife cut it in half, lengthwise.) Consilience is the white, Positron is the yolk, and together they make the whole egg. The nest egg, says Ed, smiling. There’s a final picture: a nest, with a golden egg shining within it.

Ed turns off the PowerPoint, puts on his reading glasses, consults a list. Practical matters: their new cellphones will be issued in the main hall. At the same time they’ll receive their housing allocations. The details are explained more fully on the green sheets in their folders, but in brief, everyone in Consilience will live two lives: prisoners one month, guards or town functionaries the next. Everyone has been assigned an Alternate. One detached residential dwelling can therefore serve at least four people: in Month One, the houses will be occupied by the civilians, and then, in Month Two, by the prisoners of Month One, who will take on the civilian roles and move into the houses. And so it will go, month after month, turn and turn about. Think of the savings in the cost of living, Ed says with a smile.

As for purchasing power, always a hot topic: each of them will be given an initial number of Posidollars, which can be exchanged for items they may wish to purchase at the Consilience shops or from the internal-network digital catalogue. The sum will be increased automatically every payday. Objects purchased to individualize the living spaces may either be stored during prison time or shared with Alternates; in case of breakage, the Alternates will of course replace such items, using their own Posidollars. There is a maintenance staff that will take care of such things as plumbing and electrical issues. And leaks, Ed says. The roof kind, not the information kind, he adds with a smile. This is supposed to be a joke, Stan guesses.

He takes a quick look at the green sheet. Single people will live in two-bedroom condos, which they will share with another single person and the two Alternates. Detached houses are reserved for couples and families: good, he and Charmaine will get one of those. Teens have two schools – one inside the prison, one outside it. Young children stay with the mothers in the women’s wing, equipped with supervised play schools, kindergartens, and toddler dance classes. It’s really an ideal situation for young children, and so far the parent satisfaction index is very high.

Each dwelling unit has four lockers, one for each adult. Civilian clothes, which may be selected from the catalogue, are stored in these lockers during the months when their owners are doing a prisoner shift. The orange prisoner garb is kept at the Positron Prison, worn while in prison, and left there for cleaning.

The prison cells themselves have been upgraded, and though care has been taken to maintain the theme, considerable amenities have been added. It’s not as if they’re being asked to live in an old-fashioned sort of prison! The prison food, for instance, is at least three-star quality. He himself enjoys nothing more because it’s amazing what care and a top attitude can add to simple and wholesome ingredients.

Ed consults his notes. Stan shifts from cheek to cheek: how long is this windbag going to go on? He’s got the picture, and so far there’s nothing to freak out about. He could use a coffee. Better, a beer. He wonders what they’ve been telling Charmaine, over in the ladies’ workshops.

Right, another thing, says Ed. From time to time a film crew may arrive to shoot some footage of the ideal life they will all be leading, to be shown outside Consilience as a boost to the helpful work they are doing here. They themselves will be able to view those results too, on the closed-circuit Consilience network. Music and movies are available on the same network, although, to avoid overexcitement, there is no pornography or undue violence, and no rock or hip-hop. However, there is no limitation on string quartets, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, the Mills Brothers, or show tunes from vintage Hollywood musicals.

Fuck, thinks Stan. Granny junk. What about sports, will they be able to watch any games? He wonders if there’s any way of picking up a signal from outside. What’s bad about football? But maybe not try anything like that too soon.

A couple more things, says Ed. There’s a sign-up list for preferred jobs, in prison and in town: they should number their three top choices, with ten being the most preferred. Those who’ve never driven a scooter should sign up on the yellow sheet; the scooter classes will begin on Tuesday. Scooters are colour-matched to lockers, and all individuals must take personal responsibility for their scooter while it is in their care.

He, Ed, is sure they will all make a great success of this revolutionary new venture. Good luck! He gives a wave of the hand, like Santa Claus, then leaves the room. The woman in the dark suit walks behind him. Maybe she’s a bodyguard, Stan thinks. Powerful glutes.

When he gets to the list of jobs, Stan chooses Robotics first. After that, IT; and third, scooter repair. He figures he could do any one of them. Just so long as he doesn’t end up in Kitchen Cleanup, he’ll be fine.

That evening, he and Charmaine do their first shopping with their Posidollars, and share their first meal in their new abode. Charmaine can’t get over it; she’s so happy she’s warbling. She wants to open all the closet doors, turn on all the appliances. She can hardly wait to see what sorts of jobs they’ll be given, and she’s signed herself up for scooter lessons. It will all be so terrific!

“Let’s go to bed,” says Stan. She’s spinning out of control. He feels he needs a butterfly net to catch her, she’s so hyper.

“I’m just too excited!” she says. As if, thinks Stan. He wishes he were the object of that excitement, and not the dishwasher, which she’s now cooing over as if it’s a kitten. He can’t shake the feeling that this place is some sort of pyramid scheme, and that those who fail to understand that will be left empty-handed. But there’s no obvious reason for this feeling of his. Maybe he’s ungrateful by nature.

I’m Starved for You

Stan’s lost count of the exact time they’ve been inside the twin cities. You can get into a drifting mode. Has a year gone by already? More than a year. He’s repaired scooters one month, dealt with egg-counting software the next, then back to the scooters. Nothing he hasn’t been able to handle.

He’s listening to “Paper Doll” on his phone ear buds while rinsing out his coffee cup. Those flirty guys, he hums to himself. At first he hated the music in Consilience, but he’s begun to find it oddly consoling. Doris Day is even kind of a turn-on.

Today is switchover day, when he and Charmaine both go into the prison. How does she pass the time away from him, inside the women’s wing? “We knit a lot,” she’s told him. “In the off-hours. And there are the vegetable gardens, and the cooking – we take turns at those daily things. And the laundry, of course. And then at the hospital, my job as Chief Medications Administrator – it’s a big responsibility! I’m never bored! The days just fly by!”

“Do you miss me?” Stan asked her a week ago. “When you’re in there?”

“Of course I miss you. Don’t be silly,” she said, kissing him on the nose. But a nose kiss wasn’t what he wanted. Do you hunger for me, do you burn for me? That’s what he’d like to ask. But he doesn’t dare ask that, because he’s almost certain she would laugh.

It’s not that they don’t have sex. They certainly have more of it than they had in the car; but it’s sex that Charmaine enacts, like yoga, with careful breath control. What he wants is sex that can’t be helped. He wants helplessness. No no no, yes yes yes. That’s what he wants. He’s come to realize that, in recent months.

Down in the cellar, he opens the large green locker and stows away the clothes he’s been wearing for summer: the shorts, the T-shirts, the jeans. He may not be using these for a while: by the time he gets back here next month, the hot weather may be over and he’ll be into the fleece pullovers, though you never know with September. He won’t have to do so much lawn maintenance then, which is a plus. Though the lawn will be a wreck. Some guys have no feeling for lawns, they take them for granted, they let them mat up and dry out and then the yellow ants get into them and it takes a lot of work to bring them back. If he were here all the time he could keep the lawn in peak condition.

Upstairs, clean towels are deployed in the bathroom, clean sheets are on the bed. Charmaine did that before she set off on her scooter for Positron. In the past couple of months he’s been leaving the house after she does, so he does the final check: no bathtub ring, no orphaned sock, no ends of soap or wispy gatherings of shed hair on the floor. When they return on the first day of every second month, Stan and Charmaine are supposed to find the house pristine, spotless, hinting of lemon-scented cleaning products, and Charmaine likes to leave it that way. She says they should lead by example.

It certainly hasn’t been spotless every time they’ve returned. As Charmaine has pointed out, there have been hairs, there have been toast crumbs, there have been smudges. More than that: three months ago Stan found a folded note: the corner was sticking out from under the refrigerator. It must originally have been attached with the silver fridge magnet in the shape of a duck, the same one Charmaine uses to post shopping reminders.

Despite the strict Consilience taboo against contact with Alternates, he read the note immediately. Though it was done on a printer, it was shockingly intimate:

Darling Max, I can hardly wait till next time. I’m starved for you! I need you so much. XXOO and you know what more – Jasmine.

There was a lipstick kiss: hot pink. No, darker: some kind of purple. Not violet, not mauve, not maroon. He riffled through his head, trying to recall the names of the colours on the paint chips and fabric swatches Charmaine spends so much time brooding over. He’d lifted the paper to his nose, breathed in: still a faint scent, like cherry bubble gum.

Charmaine has never worn a lipstick that colour. And she’s never written him a note like that. He dropped it into the trash as if it was burning, but then fished it out and slid it back under the refrigerator: Jasmine shouldn’t know that her note to Max had been intercepted. Also, it’s possible Max looks under the fridge for such notes – it might be a kinky little game they play – and Max would be upset not to find it. “Did you get my note?” Jasmine would say to him as they lay stuck together. “What note?” Max would answer. “Omigod, one of them found it!” Jasmine would exclaim. Then she would laugh. It might even turn her on, the consciousness of a third pair of eyes having seen the imprint of her avid mouth.

Not that she needs turning on. Stan can’t stop thinking about that: about Jasmine, about her mouth. It’s bad enough here at the house, even with Charmaine breathing beside him, lightly or heavily depending on what they’re doing, or rather on what he’s doing – Charmaine has never been much of a joiner, more of a sidelines woman, cheering him on from a distance. But at Positron, in his narrow bed in the men’s wing, that kiss floats in the darkness before his open eyes like four plush pillows, parted invitingly as if about to sigh or speak. He knows the colour of that mouth by now, he’s tracked it down.

Fuchsia. It has a moist, luscious feel to it. Oh hurry, that mouth says. I need you, I need you now! I’m starved for you! But it’s speaking to Stan, not to the guy whose clothes repose in the locker beside his own. Not to Max.

Max and Jasmine, those are their names – the names of the Alternates, the two others who occupy the house, walk through its routines, cater to its demands, act out its fantasies of normal life when he and Charmaine aren’t there. He isn’t supposed to know those names, or anything at all about their owners: that’s Consilience protocol. But because of the note, he does know the names. And by now he knows – or deduces, or, more accurately, imagines – a lot of other things as well.

Max’s locker is the red one. Charmaine’s locker is pink, Jasmine’s is purple. In an hour or so – once Stan has left the house, once he’s logged out – Max will walk in through the front door, open the red locker, take out his stored clothes, carry them upstairs, arrange them in the bedroom, on the shelves, in the closet: enough for a month’s stay.

Then Jasmine will arrive. She won’t bother with her locker, not at first. They’ll throw themselves into each other’s arms. No: Jasmine will throw herself into Max’s arms, press herself against him, open her fuchsia mouth, tear off Max’s clothes and her own, pull him down onto – what? The living room carpet? Or will they stumble upstairs, reeling with lust, and fall entwined onto the bed, so thoughtfully and neatly made up with newly ironed sheets by Charmaine before she left? Sheets with a border of birthday-party bluebirds tying pink ribbon bows. Nursery sheets, kiddie sheets: Charmaine’s idea of cuteness. Those sheets don’t seem right for Max and Jasmine, who would never choose such bland, pastel accessories for themselves. Black satin is more their style. Though, like everything else in the place, the sheets came with the house.

Jasmine isn’t a sheet ironer, nor does she make up the bed for Stan and Charmaine before she leaves: they find the mattress bare, and no towels set out in the bathroom either. But of course Jasmine is lax about such household details, thinks Stan, because all she really cares about is sex.

Stan rearranges Jasmine and Max in his head, this way and that, lace bra ripped asunder, legs in the air, hair wildly tangled, even though he has no idea what either of them looks like. Max’s back is covered with scratch marks like a cat fancier’s leather sofa.

What a slut, that Jasmine. Flaming hot in an instant, like an induction cooker. He can’t stand it.

Maybe she’s ugly. Ugly ugly ugly, he repeats like a charm, trying to exorcise her – her and her maddening bubble-gum lipstick smell and her musky voice, a voice he’s never heard. But it doesn’t work, because she’s not ugly, she’s beautiful. She’s so beautiful she glows in the dark.

No such pranks with Charmaine. No blistering fuchsia kisses, no rolling around on the carpet. A month from now it’ll be “Stanley! Stan! Honey! I’m here!” in a light, clear voice, a voice without undertones: Charmaine, wearing her blue-and-white-striped shirt, so crisp, with its faint underscent of bleach and its overtone of baby-powder-themed fabric softener.

He wouldn’t have her any other way. That’s why he married her: she was an escape from the many-layered, devious, ironic, hot–cold women he’d tangled himself up with until then; women too open to being poached by Conor, and by others as well. Transparency, certainty, fidelity: his various humiliations had taught him to value those. He liked the retro thing about Charmaine, the cookie-ad thing, her prissiness, the way she hardly ever swore. When they’d got married they’d pictured kids, once they could afford them. They still do picture them. Maybe that will happen soon, now that they’re no longer living in their car.

He keys in the code on his locker, waits for it to flash CLOSED, climbs the cellar stairs, leaves the house. Once outside, he taps a second code into the signal pad beside the door, coding himself out.

Over at Positron, Jasmine and Max must already have changed into the civvies they stored there last month. Now they must be checking out of their prison wings and ditching their orange prison uniforms at the main desk. Very soon they’ll hop onto their scooters and make their way to this house. Stan has a voyeur’s urge to hide behind the hedge, that cedar hedge he trimmed last week, tidying up the slapdash job done by Max during his last sojourn. He’ll wait until they’re both inside, then peer through the windows. He’s figured out the sight lines, he’s left the ground-floor blinds up a crack. If they go upstairs, though, he’ll have no option but to set up the extension ladder, and he knows how screechy and metallic that would be.

And what if he falls off? Worse, if Max leans out the window, stark naked, and pushes him off? He doesn’t know anything about Max, except from what’s implied in that note; also, Max had first choice of lockers, and he chose the red one. He must be aggressive. Stan wouldn’t wish to be pushed off an extension ladder by an angry naked man, a naked man to whose rippling epidermis he now adds copious tattoos. Most likely Max also has a shaved head, covered in scars and welts from all the times he’s broken men’s teeth and jaws with the sheer force of his bullet-shaped skull.

Stan’s own skull still has a cushion of sandy hair, but it’s thinning, even though he’s only thirty-two. He’s never used his skull to butt anyone in the mouth, though he’s willing to bet Max has. Most likely Max once worked as a bodyguard for some black-jacketed, gold-chained, coke-pushing, girl-enslaving money lord, in his life before Positron. Someone like Conor, only a larger, tougher, meaner, more powerful Conor. On level ground, Stan might be able to hold his own against such a man, but on that ladder he’d be off balance. And he’d land in the hedge, bashing a jagged hole in it, after all his careful trimming.

That asswipe Max is even worse with the hedge than he is with the lawn. Stan found the hedge trimmer in the garage, its blade gummed up with slaughtered foliage. But there’s no chance Max is able to focus on hedge trimming, since Jasmine leaps on the poor sod every time she sees him in his leather work gloves and starts pawing at his belt buckle.

All things considered, better not to peer in the window.

Switch

It’s a beautiful cloudless day, not too hot for the first of August. Charmaine finds switchover days almost festive: when it’s not raining, the streets are full of people, smiling, greeting one another, some walking, some on their colour-coded scooters, the odd one in a golf cart. Now and then one of the dark Surveillance cars glides through them: there are more of those cars on switchover days.

Everyone seems quite happy: having two lives means there’s always something different to look forward to. It’s like having a vacation every month. But which life is the vacation and which is the work? Charmaine hardly knows.

Making her way to the Consilience town pharmacy on her pink-and-purple electric scooter, she checks her watch: she doesn’t have much time. She needs to key in at Positron by five-thirty at the latest, and it’s already three. She told Stan she had to do some ordering for the prison hospital: that’s why she was in a rush to leave the house. The month before last, her excuse was slipcovers – didn’t he agree about the slipcovers, weren’t they a drab colour, shouldn’t they both go and view the selection and put in a requisition for something more cheerful? Look, she has some fabric swatches! A floral, or maybe an abstract motif?

Anything along those lines and Stan zones out, and she can count on his not having heard a word she’s said. He’d notice her if she were to suddenly disappear, but he doesn’t register her much otherwise. Lately he’s been treating her like white noise, like the rivulet sound on their sleep machine. This would once have hurt her – did hurt her – but now it suits her fine.

She parks the scooter in the lot behind the pharmacy, then walks around to the front. Already her heart is beating faster. She takes a breath, assumes her bustling, efficient pose, consults her little notebook as if there’s something written in it. Then she orders a large box of gauze bandages, putting it on the hospital account. The bandages aren’t needed, but they’re also not remarkable: no one will be keeping track of gauze bandages, especially since keeping track of them happens to be her own job, every other month.

She smiles in her sunniest manner at Bill Nairn, who’s putting in his last hour as pharmacist before shedding his white coat and taking up whatever role he plays inside the Positron Prison walls. Bill smiles back, and they exchange remarks about the lovely weather, then close with goodbyes. She smiles again: she has such guileless teeth: asexual teeth, nothing fanged about them. She used to worry about looking so symmetrical, so blond, but she’s come to think of this as an asset. Her small teeth alarm no one: bland is good camouflage.

She hurries back to the lot, and sure enough there’s a small envelope tucked in under the scooter seat. She palms it, fishtails out of the lot, makes it around the corner to a residential street, parks.

They don’t use their Consilience-issue cellphones to arrange these meetings: it’s too risky, because you never know what the central IT people are tracking. The whole town is under a bell jar: communications can be exchanged inside it, but no words get in or out except through approved gateways. No whines, no complaints, no tattling, no whistle-blowing. The overall message must be tightly controlled: the outside world must be assured that the Consilience/Positron twin city project is working.

And it is working, because look: safe streets, no homelessness, jobs for all!

Though there were some bumps along the way, and those bumps had to be flattened out. But right now Charmaine doesn’t intend to dwell on those discouraging bumps, or on the nature of the flattening.

She unfolds the paper, reads the address. She’ll dispose of the note by burning it, though not out here in the open: a woman on a scooter setting fire to something might attract notice. There aren’t any black cars in view, but it’s rumoured that Surveillance can see around corners.

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 events, since they were bigger than mere problems. There was the time when it rained so hard and the sewage came spouting up through the kitchen sink: that was bigger than just a problem.

Luckily they’d been approved for a transfer; she assumes their Alternates had moved to the new house as well, but maybe not. She hasn’t thought to ask Max about that – whether he and his wife once lived in that earlier house. It isn’t the kind of thing she talks about with Max.

Every month it’s a new address: better that way. Luckily there are a lot of vacant houses, left over from when the industries were failing and the lenders were foreclosing, and from that later time when so many houses were standing empty because no one wanted to buy them. Max is a member of the Consilience Dwellings Reclamation Team when he’s not living in his prison cell at Positron. The Reclamation Team are the ones who inspect the houses, then tag them either for the wrecking ball and levelling for parkland and community gardens, or else for renovation, so he’s in a position to know which ones are suitable.

Max tries to choose the kind of interior decoration Charmaine prefers: she likes pretty wallpaper, with rosebuds or daisies. He does find the ones with wallpaper like that. But in each house they’ve used, the vandals were there, in the times when they roamed from town to town and from house to house, smashing windows and bottles and drinking and drugging and sleeping on the floor and using the bathtubs as outhouses. That was before they started the Positron Project and put up the walls around Consilience.

The gangs and crazies left their marks on the floral wallpaper: scrawled tags and other things. Vicious drawings. Short, hard words, written in spray paint, or markers, or lipstick, and, a couple of times, something brown and crusted that might have been shit.

“Read to me,” Max had whispered into her ear, in the first house, the first time.

“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t want to.”

“Yes, you do,” Max said. “You do want to.” And she must have wanted to, because those words were spilling out of her mouth. He laughed, picked her up, pushed his hands up under her skirt. She never wears jeans to these meetings, and that’s why. The next minute they were down on the bare floorboards.

“Wait!” she said, gasping with pleasure. “Undo the buttons!”

“I can’t wait,” he said, and it was true, he couldn’t wait, and because he couldn’t, and neither could she. It was like the copy on the back of the most lurid novel in the limited-titles library at Positron. Swept away. Drugged with desire. Like a cyclone. Helpless moaning. All of that. She’d never known about such a force, such an energy. She’d thought it was only in books and TV, or else for other people.

She gathered the buttons up afterwards, pocketed them. Only two had come off. She sewed them on again, later, after her stint in Positron, before returning to the house where she lived with Stan.

She did love Stan, but it was different. A different kind of love. Trusting, sedate. It went with pet fish, in fishbowls – not that they had one of those – and with cats, perhaps. And with eggs for breakfast, poached, snuggled inside their individual poachers. And with babies.

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, I’m starved for you being the mildest of them. Words she would never have used, before. Vandal words. Sometimes she can’t believe what comes out of her mouth; not to mention what goes into it. She does whatever Max wants.

His name isn’t Max, of course, any more than Charmaine’s name is Jasmine. They don’t use their Consilience names: they decided on that the first time, without even talking about it. It’s as if they can read each other’s minds.

No, not minds: each other’s mindlessness. When she’s with Max, she throws away her mind.

Tidy

That first time had been an accident. Charmaine had stayed behind at the house after Stan left, finishing the final tidy, as she used to do at first, before Max. “You go on ahead,” she’d tell him to get him out of her hair, which was pulled back into her housekeeping ponytail. She liked her cleanup routine, she liked to put on her pinafore apron and her rubber gloves and tick the items off her mental list without being interrupted. Rugs, tubs, sinks. Towels, toilets, sheets. Anyway, Stan hated the sound of the vacuum. “I’ll just make up the bed,” she’d say. “Off you go, hon. See you in a month. Have a good one.”

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 chemistry when they meant something else, such as personality, but she does mean chemistry. Smells, textures, flavours, secret ingredients. She sees a lot of chemistry in her work, she knows what it can do. Chemistry can be like magic. It can be merciless.

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.

You said what? She hears Max’s voice in her head, the way she often does when

he isn’t there. She invents him, she knows it; she makes up things for him to say. Though it doesn’t feel like making up, it feels as if he’s really talking to her. 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.

Anything, she answers. Anything inside this non-house, inside this nothing space, a space that doesn’t exist, between these two people with no real names. Oh anything. Already she’s abject.

Here it is now, today’s address. Max’s scooter is already parked, discreetly, four derelict doors away. She can barely make her way up the front steps, her legs are so wobbly. If anyone were watching, they’d think she was crippled.