“Oh no, I’m sure it’s nothing,” the clerk says. She adds that it’s just an administrative formality. Someone must have keyed in the wrong piece of code, such things happen and it can take a while to unsnarl them. Even with modern technology there’s always human error, and Charmaine will just have to be patient until they can trace what they can only assume is a bug in the works.
She nods and smiles. But they’re looking at her strangely (now there are two of them, now there are three behind the checkout desk, one of them texting on a cell), and there’s something odd in their voices: they aren’t telling the truth. She doesn’t think she’s imagining that.
“If you’ll wait in the Chat Room,” the one with the cellphone says, indicating a door to the side of the counter. “Away from the checkout process. Thank you. There’s a chair, you can sit down. The Human Resources Officer will be with you shortly.”
Charmaine looks over at the group of departing prisoners. Is that Sandi among them, and Veronica? She’s glimpsed them briefly over the months – they’re in prison when she is – but they aren’t in her knitting group and they don’t work in the hospital, so she’s had no reason to get close. Now, however, she longs for a friendly face. But they don’t see her, they’ve turned away. They’ve shed their orange prison boiler suits and are wearing their street clothing, they must be anticipating the fun times they’re about to have, outside.
As she was, just moments ago. She’s wearing a lacy white bra underneath her new cherry-coloured sweater. She chose these items a month ago to be special for Max today.
“What’s wrong?” one of the other women calls over to her. Someone from her knitting circle. Charmaine must be signalling distress, she must be making a sad face. She forces up the corners of her mouth.
“Nothing, really. Some data entry thing. I’ll be out later today,” she says as gaily as she can. But she doubts it. She can feel the sweat soaking into her sweater, underneath her arms. That bra will have to be washed, pronto. Most likely the cherry colour is leaking into it, and it’s so hard to get dye stains like that out of whites.
She sits on the wooden chair in the Chat Room, trying not to count the minutes, resisting the urge to go back out to the front desk and make a scene, which will definitely not be any use. And even if she does get out later that day, what about Max? Their meet-up, planned a month ago. At this very moment he must be scootering toward this month’s empty house – he told her the address last time and she memorized it, repeating it like a silent prayer as she lay in her narrow bed in her Positron Prison cell, in her poly-cotton standard-issue nightgown.
Max likes her to describe that nightgown. He likes her to tell him what torture it is for her to lie there alone, wearing that scratchy nightgown, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, thinking about him, living every word and touch over and over, tracing with her own hands the pathways across and into her flesh that his hands have taken.
Very exciting possibilities there
.
Knitting. If she has to stay in Positron Prison another whole month she’s going to get really fed up with that knitting. It was fun at first, sort of old-timey and chatty, but now they’ve been given quotas. The supervisors make you feel like a slacker if you don’t knit fast enough.
Choke Collar
It’s late afternoon. The sun is low in the sky, the street is empty. Or it seems empty: no doubt there are eyes embedded everywhere – the lamppost, the fire hydrant. Because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see you.
Stan is trimming the hedge, making an effort to appear not only useful but also cheerful. The hedge doesn’t need trimming – it’s the first of January, it’s winter, despite the lack of snow – but he finds the activity calming for the same reasons nail biting is calming: it’s repetitive, it imitates meaningful activity, and it’s violent. The hedge trimmer emits a menacing whine, like a wasp’s nest. The sound gives him an illusion of power that dulls his sense of panic. Panic of a rat in a cage, with ample food and drink and even sex, though with no way out and the suspicion that it’s part of an experiment that is sure to be painful.