The Heart Goes Last Read Free Page B

Charmaine thinks regretfully.
    Grandma Win refused to go to the hospital, once she got really sick. She said it would cost too much, and it would have. So she died right in the house, with Charmaine taking care of her up to the end. Sell the house, sugar pie, Grandma Win said, when she was still lucid. Go to college, make the most of yourself. You can do it.
    And she had made the most of herself. She’d majored in Gerontology and Play Therapy, because Grandma Win said that way she’d be covered both ends, and she had empathy and a special gift for helping people. She’d got her degree.
    Not that it makes any difference now.
    If anything happens we’re on our own, Stan tells her too frequently. It’s not a comforting thought. No wonder he’s so rapid, those times he does manage to cram himself in on top of her. He needs to be on the alert all the time.
    So instead of touching Stan last night, she whispered, “Sleep tight. Love you.”
    Stan said something. “Love you too,” maybe, though it came out more like a mumble, with a kind of snort in it. Probably the poor man was almost asleep. He does love her, he said he’d love her forever. She was so grateful when she found him, or when he found her. When they found each other. He was so steady and dependable. She would like to be that way too, steady and dependable, although she has doubts that she can ever manage it because she’s so easily startled. But she needs to toughen up. She needs to show some grit. She doesn’t want to be a drag.
    They both wake up early – it’s summer now, the light comes in through the car windows, too bright. Maybe she should fix up some curtains, thinks Charmaine. Then they could get more sleep and not be so crabby.
    They go for day-old doughnuts at the nearest strip mall, double chocolate glazed, and make some instant coffee in the car with their plug-in cup heater, which is a lot cheaper than buying the coffee in the doughnut place.
    “This is like a picnic,” Charmaine says brightly, though it isn’t much like a picnic – eating stale doughnuts inside the car with a light drizzle falling.
    Stan checks the job websites on their pre-paid phone, but that’s depressing for him – he keeps saying, “Nothing, fuck, nothing, fuck, nothing” – so Charmaine says why don’t they go jogging? They used to do that when they had their house: get up early, jog before breakfast, then a shower. It made you feel so full of energy, so clean. But Stan looks at her like she’s out of her mind, and she sees that yes, it would be silly, leaving the car unattended with everything in it such as their clothes, and putting themselves at risk in addition, because who knows what might be hiding in the bushes? Anyway, where would they jog? Along the streets with the boarded-up houses? Parks are too dangerous, they’re full of addicts, everyone knows that.
    “Jogging, fuck,” is all Stan says. He’s bristly and grumpy, and he could use a haircut. Maybe she can smuggle him into the bar where she works, later, with a towel and a razor, and he can give himself a wash and a shave in the men’s room. Not luxury surroundings, but at least water still comes out of the tap. It’s rusty red in colour, but it comes out.
    PixelDust is the bar. It opened in the decade when there was a digital mini-boom here – a bunch of interactive startups and app creators – and was meant to lure in those kinds of geeky kids, with toys and games such as foosball and pool and online car racing. There are big flatscreens where they once ran silent movies as cool wallpaper, though one of them is broken and the rest show ordinary TV shows, a different one on every screen. There are some little nooks and corners meant for brainy conversations – Think Tank, that section was called. The signage is still there, though someone’s crossed out Think and written Fuck, because two of the semi-resident hookers turn tricks in there. After the mini-boom dried up, some smarty-pants