CHRISTINE BECKERT

GRAFT

"I HAVE TO DECIDE BY tomorrow," said Marie abruptly.

"Tomorrow," Why so soon? I thought you had to build up your resistance first or
something."

"It's been a week -- the doctor says it's time. And there's a new registration
in, an almost match, he says."

"Oh, wow, who is it?"

Marie glared at her fried. "They didn't tell me that, obviously. But they showed
me her picture, from the neck down. She's twenty-eight years old, and -- it's
beautiful skin. The doctor said if I don't take it now, somebody else will,
right quick."

"Well, you know my opinion. If it'd been me, I'd have signed that donor request
form the first time they stuck it in front of me."

"Yes," sighed Marie, "I know you would've."

She was lying in an isolation box in the burn ward, floating on a cushion of
warm, moist, medicated air, her body packed in a gel that both sealed her flesh
as her skin used to and helped to ease the trauma caused by a fire that claimed
almost sixty percent of her skin, though by some odd quirk her face had been
spared.

"Sure I would. In the first place, if you use self-grafts, you'll be stuck in
here two or three months, won't you?"

"At least, yes. But that's a lot better than it used to be."

Joan made a rude sound. "Big deal," she said. "You're in trouble now --now's
what counts--and if you take the skin replacement, you'll be out in a week or
two. Seems to me that's not only better in time, but it's got to be better
medically--anything that lets you heal faster has to be better."

"The doctor agrees with you there. How do you know so much about this anyway? "

"Oh, I keep up with news like that. You never know when it'll come in useful."

Marie stared at her friend incredulously. "You've anticipated getting
practically cremated by a truck going the wrong way on the freeway?"

Joan laughed. "Not quite," she said, patting the clear side of Marie's box. "But
I do know I'm going to get old someday, and I want to know all my options before
I need to exercise them."

As she looked at her friend, Marie supposed she should have figured that. Joan
had been using anti-aging and anti-wrinkle drugs for years, most of them still
rare and wildly expensive. She'd also had a tummy tuck or two and some subtle
lifts here and there, and she'd visited several bizarre and very private clinics
that injected her with fetal goat tissue or some such nonsense in hopes of
eternal youth. None of this was covered by national insurance, but "Hey," she
always said, "if you can afford it, why suffer?"

Joan had every right to be pleased with the results, Marie conceded. She was
fifty years old, but looked like a woman in her twenties, thirty max. To be
fair, Joan did take care of herself in other ways; she ate right, and she
religiously followed the regime laid down by her personal trainer at the club.
Marie was no slouch, but she did indulge in a more-than-occasional bacon and egg
breakfast and often found the lure of a book more potent than her appointment at
the club. But until recently she'd never been tempted by drugs or surgery. Fifty
herself, strangers guessed her at forty or forty-five, and she was content with
that. She liked the character of older faces; she liked her own more than
Joan's, which, though pretty, struck Marie as rasher bland. Where was the life
Joan had lived? Not in her face, that's for sure.

But recently Marie had become mildly uneasy about the rest of herself. When she
spread her hand and arched her wrist backward, she could see the tiny puckerings
that meant the elasticity of her skin was slipping, her chest and thighs were
blossoming with tiny crosshatches she couldn't bear to call alligator skin; her
arms and legs were dryer than they used to be--her over-the-counter creams
apparently couldn't keep up.

And maybe it was her imagination, but Carl's eyes seemed to linger more than
they used to on younger women they encountered on the streets, in restaurants,
at the parties of their friends. She'd always been fully confident of Carl's
fidelity, and besides, while he worked at the firm, he'd never had time for a
fling--they'd had fights, in fact, Marie calling him a workaholic, Carl accusing
her of being jealous of his work, work he loved, damn it, he really did. He'd
surprised the hell out of her, then, when he quit two years ago, saying that's
what he wanted all along, early retirement, the security and freedom to travel
and do what he wanted.

To be sure, he still spent hours in his study when they were home, mesmerized by
the array of electronics that kept him connected to big boards and financial
houses all around the world. This was really fun, he claimed, doing just for
their own portfolio what he used to do for others, shuffling money fast enough
to earn another five or ten thou with a few taps on the keys.

"Why do you bother?" she asked, though she knew the answer. "We've got far more
now than we could spend in two lifetimes."

He shrugged. "It's partly a game--I could lose it, too, you know. But I never
will, not for long anyway."

That was not idle boasting, Marie knew. Carl was brilliant at what he did. When
he did lose, he'd back up and look around, then carefully select the maneuvers
that would not only recoup the loss but add to the account. The total was
important to Carl--concrete proof of his own ability--but the game was even more
important.

And he did, as promised, take more time for himself, for them. In just two years
they'd been to Hawaii twice, to Paris and Moscow, to Kenya and New Zealand. But
his eyes, or so it seemed to Marie, were moving around more, too, perhaps
comparing her to the young lovelies that seemed, suddenly, to dominate the
landscape wherever they went.

Which is why she said now to Joan, "I think Carl wants me to go for the skin
replacement."

"Honey, don't take this the wrong way," said Joan, after hesitating a moment,
"but that doesn't surprise me much. You'll look twenty or thirty years younger,
you know, and men are so shallow. To them, it's real important that their women
look good--and that means young."

Marie shot her friend a glance, but Joan, incapable of irony, seemed unaware of
the obvious corollary, that women who acquiesced in this judgment must be
equally shallow.

"How about the girls? What do they think?" Joan was asking now.

"They agree with Carl," said Marie, but she didn't elaborate, and Joan knew
better than to pursue the subject. Denise and Suzanne had flown in right after
the accident, but neither could bear to see their mother floating in that
box--so they claimed--and after hearing that Marie would be fine regardless of
what she decided, they whizzed off again, with promises of their undying support
if Marie needed it. They were both still single, both corporate lawyers, and the
joy of Carl's life. But Marie found, to her abiding dismay, that as the years
passed she had less and less to say to her daughters.

"Everybody thinks I should go ahead with it," she cried now in some despair.
"Everybody but me. I just don't think it's right!"

Joan scrabbled at the plastic, as if reaching for her friend's hand. "Honey,
we've talked about this before, but that was in the abstract. I told you then I
thought you were nuts. But it's not abstract anymore, and now I really think
you're nuts!"

"But, Joan, I'd be getting somebody else's skin, and she'd be getting this!"
Marie couldn't gesture, but it was clear what she meant, the badly burned
remnants of skin that would take months to regenerate enough self-grafts, even
with the labs that speeded up the process by growing cells into patches
off-site, so to speak.

"She volunteered for this, you know; you aren't stealing anything from her.
Quite the contrary--you'll be paying her a small fortune."

"It still doesn't seem right," insisted Marie. "Just because I have money, why
should I be able to buy someone's skin--or eyes or breast or kidney, for that
matter."

"For heaven's sake, Marie, it's perfectly legal. You can sell anything you want
that doesn't disable you and put you on the public dole."

"Legal, shmeagal, that doesn't make it right!"

"Why not? Some people sell their kids, for crissake. That's what those private
adoptions add up to, you know."

"So who says that's right either?"

"Okay, well, how about a poor artist? She might paint a masterpiece, something
she knows is really good, but if she's poor enough she'll sell it for a
pittance, won't she?"

"That's not the same either."

"I don't see why not. A person has something you want, and that person wants
your money--that's what makes the world go 'round, my friend."

Marie felt frustrated--she just couldn't seem to find the words that would
convince Joan there was at least a moral point worth discussing here. For now,
she gave up. "I guess I'll have to think about it."

"You said it yourself, kid--you're out of thinking time. You've got to make up
your mind that this is the right thing for you to do." Joan rose. "Well, I
better get going and let you get some rest." She leaned over and kissed the top
of Marie's box near her face. "But I'll love you either way--you know that,
don't you?"

Sudden tears sprang to Marie's eyes. "I do, Joan, and--thanks." She watched
Joan's retreating back. There were times, she knew, when she judged Joan
harshly, when she wondered why she bothered with someone of so few interests, so
little depth. But it was Joan, wasn't it, who wasn't repelled by Marie's
gel-packed body, who spent hours chatting with her here in the hospital, who
touched her, or what passed for touching sealed away as she was in this box.

Carl didn't do any of that. Later that day, as usual, he spent his second
fifteen-minute visit pacing about nervously, unable to maintain a coherent
conversation, to more than glance at her in the isolation box. "The yen fell
today," he was saying, though fully aware that Marie couldn't care less, "but we
were out of there anyway. The Eurodollar should stay strong for a couple months,
though."

Marie watched him, the light from the setting sun making his skin glow strong
and gold. His skin was one of the things that had drawn her to him, so many
years ago, his naturally golden skin that seemed to promise dreams and soft
riches, like sunshine. He was poor then but he already acted rich, and the
combination of events that made him truly rich seemed to let him grow into his
skin so that it matched his bank account, a literal embodying of golden riches.

Now he hesitated. "Look, Marie," he said finally, not looking at her, "I'm not
trying to put any pressure on you, you've got to make your own decision, but if
you decide on self-grafts, if you're going to be stuck here for a few
months--well, I think I'll go on to Switzerland for a while. There's a
conference I thought I might attend, and maybe I could look for that chalet we
were talking about buying. No, don't say it--" He raised a hand, though Marie
had said nothing-- "I know I shouldn't, but-- darling--you know I can't stand
hospitals. It's stupid and low, I know, but I can't help it."

Marie knew that was true. When Carl's own mother had been dying of cancer in
this same hospital, it was Marie who'd come to sit with the woman, to tell her
all about what Carl was doing. Carl's mother was hurt, Marie could see that, but
she couldn't criticize her golden boy any more than Marie could.

Now he chatted brokenly about other things, and Marie murmured appropriate
responses. Even after he was gone, she saw him, at meetings with bright young
go-getters in silk dresses and suits, sipping toddies in firelit resorts, being
shown through houses by real estate agents in elegant wool skirts slashed to the
hip. She saw the taut, beautiful, youthful skin of the donor.

"Oh, god," groaned Joel. "I love your skin."

They were lying on Annie's bed in her cramped apartment, and Joel was writhing
sensuously, dramatically, along the length of her, his hand flowing across her
like the wave of a gentle surf.

Annie took a deep breath. She'd figured this was the best time to tell him, when
they were both warm and mellow from love, but now she felt too full herself to
risk the moment. But she had to sometime, so--

"I'm going ahead with it, Joel."

His hand froze a millimeter above her belly, a tiny, terrible charge
electrifying the space, reigniting a desire she resisted. "You went back to
Donor Net?" he asked, his voice heavy and dull. She nodded.

Suddenly he was on his knees, one leg on either side of her, looking down at
her. "So what's it to be," he demanded. "One of your beautiful eyes--" and his
thumbs gently closed her eyes and brushed across them. "Or your breasts, are you
giving these to some rich bitch with cancer--" but his hands weren't as harsh as
his words as they gently cupped and fondled her breasts. "Or will it be your
hair, are you giving up your scalp to someone who years for this glory?" He
picked up handfuls of her long, silky black hair and crushed it gently in his
hands and buried his face in it.

Then he dropped his hands, her hair. "Well?"

"My--my skin, Joel. I'm going to sell my skin."

For a moment he stared at her in incomprehension. Then--"Are you out of your
fucking mind?"

At that she rolled angrily off the bed and snatched for her clothes. "There's a
woman--she was burned--she's willing to pay a fortune for my skin."

Joel continued to stare at her. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" he repeated.

"Stop saying that!" Annie screamed. "I know what I'm doing."

"Annie? Annie? Is anything wrong?" came an anxious voice from the next room.

"Oh, shit, now we've woken Mom. It's okay," Annie called. "Joel and I
just--disagree about something."

Joel grabbed at her as she was about to pull on her jeans, pulled her back on
the bed, and stroked her arm. "I just can't believe it," he whispered, stricken.
"I just can't believe you'd even consider selling this."

"Don't be such a child, Joel," she said, pulling away again. "Where else can I
make that kind of money?"

"Beg it, borrow it, steal it--I don't know, anything!"

"If I begged or borrowed--that's even if I could--I'd eventually have to pay it
back, and how would I do that? And, sorry, but I don't know how to steal that
much."

"But, Annie, your skin! What would you get in its place?"

"Some chunks of charred skin." Joel gagged--not an act. Annie felt like gagging
herself, but she reached out to pat Joel's head. "It's not as bad as it sounds,"
she said, wondering who she wee trying to convince. "Just a few months of
waiting for self-grafts and lab grafts and regeneration. I'll be as good as new.
She's older--the burned woman--but the doctor says my younger genes will tighten
it up and mane it young again as it grows in."

"I still don't see why you can't just put your mother in a nursing home, Annie."

"We've been over this before, Joel. She'd die there, I know she would. She's
said so herself a thousand times--she's terrified of the very idea." Annie
thought of the hours and hours of conversation with her mother, as the Lou
Gehrig's disease got progresively worse, as she needed more and more care. No
way could Annie's income from waitreesing stretch to cover a full time nurse
while she was away, not on top of the apartment, clothes for the kids, food, the
phone bill. No way.

The government was no hap. If Mom went to the nursing home, everything would be
paid for--room and board, medical care, everything. But out of the nursing home,
at most she'd qualify for a visiting nurse to stop in once a day, not good
enough very soon when she wouldn't be able to get a drink of water or go to the
bathroom by herself. Something had to happen now.

"Why's she so scared of the nursing home anyway? It's not a snake pit."

"Her mind's still good, Joel, and she sees herself fuming into a vegetable if
she goes. She keeps talking about her own mother. Gram was totally different,
her mind was gone, but that's the image Mom has, this vacant, drooling face
looking up at her from a wheelchair. To this day she feels guilty about putting
Gram in there."

"So why did she?"

"Same reason as me--she couldn't afford to give up work to stay with Gram, but
even with work, she couldn't afford the extra help."

Joel sighed deeply, then fell silent for a while. She could feel him watching as
she slipped on her silk bra and buttoned up her buttery yellow silk blouse. She
loved the feel of silk, like a constant kiss on her skin-- it was her one
extravagance.

"What do the kids think?" Joel asked at last.

"I haven't told them yet."

"Omigod." Silence. Then--"How long you gonna be away?"

"Two or three months. They'll have to go to a foster home."

"They won't like that, especially Sam."

Annie shrugged. Ten-year-old Sam had been a problem recently, but he was smart;
he'd understand. As for seven-year-old Beth, she'd brood and cry and stroke
herself, but she'd survive. Things could be worse--had been far worse before
Annie had kicked their abusive father out of the house three years ago. Sam
still had nightmares about Frank, but she thought Beth had pretty well gotten
beyond it except for her moodiness.

"What about your mom?"

Annie busied herself at the mirror with her hair. "Well, that's the hard part.
She will have to go into a nursing home while I'm away. I've got to convince her
it's the only way, that it's just for a little while."

"Look, babe, much as I love you, I'm not going to volunteer to stay here with
her. I've got my own work to do."

Joel sounded surly, but Annie knew the surliness masked his frustration that he
couldn't make it right for her. In the months she'd known Joel, he'd been
generous to her and the kids and even to Mom--but his treats were small because
he had so little himself, the proceeds from his few sales barely supporting his
drafty studio downtown and supplies of precious paint. "I wouldn't ask you to
stay, Joel. But--"

"Well?"

Annie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then turned to him, appeal naked
in her eyes. "Could you--do you think you could visit her while I'm gone? She's
got to be convinced she's gonna get out."

"Hog, boy," breathed Joel, resistance flickering in his eyes.

Annie stiffened. "I'm not really asking much, you know. I just thought if you
could--"

"Well, wait a minute here. I haven't said no. It's just not something I ever
planned on when I fell for you, you know, that I'd be visiting your mother in a
nursing home. If you're gonna make so much money, why don't you just get nurses
here?"

"They're giving me a third up front, a third after the procedure, and a third
when I'm released. The first third'll just cover the kids and the rent. And if I
borrow against what I'm getting, with the interest, there won't be anything left
when I get out."

"Hog, boy."

Everything in Annie screamed against what she was doing--selling her skin in the
first place, farming out Mom and the kits to make it happen, putting this burden
on Joel, the first good guy she'd met since she'd kicked Frank out. She must be
crazy. But....

"Okay, I'll try. I can't promise it'll be every day or that I can stay the
course--but I'll try. And I won't just run on you. I'll let you know if...things
change."

A rush of pure gratitude and love swept through Annie, and she turned and
gathered Joel in her arms.

"There's a condition," he said slowly.

She looked at him, not tense yet but prepared to stiffen.

"Put 'em off a day or two and come down to the studio and let me paint you
nude."

Annie thought about this. She'd resisted his invitations before, out of a
natural shyness--not directed at Joel but at the strangers who might see her and
leer at her if Joel sold the work.

"Your skin--" he was saying brokenly. "Your beautiful skin. I want it on my
canvas, at least, before it belongs to someone else." He ran his fingers along
her arm, causing the tiny hairs under the silk to electrify her skin.

Annie put her own hands on Joel's still naked flesh, felt him react to her
touch. "Yes," she whispered, "okay, but first I'll give you a private audience
here and here and here."

Joel groaned and reached for the buttons of her just-donned clothes.

HOW WEIRD, thought Marie distantly, to be so pampered here in the Wilcox Wing of
the hospital. She'd lived her whole life in a number of houses within five miles
of here, she'd been in the hospital three times, with appendicitis as a child,
then when the girls had been born, but she'd always before been in the regular
wards. There was no problem with that, she'd had wonderful care, she would never
have questioned it if she'd woken up there after leaving intensive care, but she
had to admit the Wilcox Wing, which tendered an extra bill separate from the
basic care charged to the government, was awfully nice.

The private room had a French door that opened on a balcony where pots of spring
flowers flourished. More flowers crowded the room itself, furnished like an
elegant hotel. Nurses kept watch via an array of equipment from a central
station and looked discreetly in on Marie every so often, withdrawing when she
didn't need anything. When she did, they were prompt at bringing her books,
something to drink, help in moving about.

The gel was gone and so was the isolation box. For a few days the skin had been
puffy with the trauma it had undergone--the two women, unconscious, had lain
side by side on their cushions of air while the surgeons made their tidy cuts
and slipped off the other woman's skin and what skin Marie had left, had
exchanged them like slipping the contents of one envelope into another, had
tidily sewed Marie up and taken her to Wilcox to recover.

And by now she felt amazingly good, with very little pain. The skin was tight
still--the donor had been remarkably close to her in height and weight, but her
body was distributed differently. With each passing day, however, her own body
was generating a few new cells and she was diligent about the exercises they
taught her in therapy. In a month or two, they said, she'd never know the
difference.

She spent hours staring at herself. Everything from the shoulders down was new,
was the skin of a woman she didn't know, would never know. But now it was hers.

She refused to think of the other woman, down there in an isolation box in
intensive care for a couple months to come, waiting for Marie's frayed skin
slowly, slowly to build itself up enough to be grafted elsewhere, for the meager
patches to be sent on from the lab.

No, she wouldn't think of that.

She'd think of the rekindled light in Carl's eyes when he came to visit her
after the surgery, after the initial swelling had diminished, of his almost
prurient interest in the line between her old flesh and her new--not a stark
line but one softened by the surgeon's skill, blending in the slightly different
colors of the two skins--in her breasts, clothed in new flesh, in her new
nipples that had not nursed her daughters though they'd nursed someone's
children, in her lower parts--What...what did they do there, asked Carl, licking
his lips, swaying a little when she told him.

Still, every now and then Marie shivered, uncontrollably, as if something in her
wanted to shake off this skin. When she thought of her mother, for instance--

Mom had had a heart transplant, which failed after six months. But what a
glorious, ghastly six months it'd been, while Mom pondered her joy in her
continued existence compared with her knowledge that her donor was dead, victim
of random violence on the city streets. She felt like a thief in the night, Mom
said, a ghoul feasting on life, and yet when she died, her last words were of
her gratitude to a dead man for the gift of six months.

In her memory, Marie's father had lavished pots of money on a donor registry
lobbying for changes in the law. Those changes came, though ironically, to
Marie's thinking, there was too much squeamishness about the presumed consent
plan, whereby organs from the dying could be used unless the person had
specifically denied permission. Far less threatening, in most people's eyes, was
the capitalist system: One could donate organs, or sell them, but would never be
required to give them up.

At any rate, Marie and her father went on with their lives, closer, perhaps,
than most fathers and daughters. Partly that was because Marie was only fourteen
at the time and couldn't understand why there wasn't another heart for her
mother, and another and another and another if need be. Partly it was because
they liked each other a great deal.

Just about the only disappointment each suffered in the other was Marie's
decision to become a teacher. She was hurt when her father wasn't thrilled,
after all his lectures about the duty to give something back to society, and he
was hurt when she didn't leap to carry on with him at the shoe plant he'd
founded and fostered. Marie's feelings were rather soon soothed, as her father's
interest and pride in her work grew, and her pain was sharp when, after he sold
the plant, the new owner broke it up for its assets and laid off the two hundred
employees who'd worked so loyally for her father.

Marie blamed herself, but her father didn't. By then he could say to her and
mean it, "No, no, my dear. You belong in the classroom. You're a natural
teacher. Every year you're touching a hundred different lives, and that's what
matters, that's what counts."

He didn't take the break-up well himself; every day, it seemed to Marie, he
became grayer and slower and more silent.

It was the closest she came to leaving Carl, whom she'd married by then. Despite
the courtesy and sympathy he gave Marie's father when they were together, when
he was alone with her he admitted his impatience. "It was the right thing to
do," he insisted. "That old plant wasn't anywhere close to efficient. His name
lives on, you know -- the shoes are just made in China, much more efficiently."

"But what about those two hundred workers?" Marie asked bleakly. "Doesn't
`efficiency' mean taking advantage of them, using them and discarding them just
for a paper profit?"

"That's not the right spin," said Carl. "They'll find other work -- or else they
don't deserve to. But capital has to act for itself, for stockholders, or
nothing gets done. Can't you see that?"

Marie couldn't, no.

Soon after that her father came to live with them, a gray man who sat at the
dinner table and watched TV in the evening without saying a whole lot. Carl
would talk enthusiastically about various maneuvers at the brokerage house where
he worked, and Dad listened politely and then asked, "But what do you do, what
do you make that means anything?"

"We do it all," Carl said, but Dad shook his head -- Marie didn't know whether
he was denying Carl or the system or his own life, but he didn't live long
enough for her to find out for sure. He died five years after he sold the
business, but while the doctors ruled it a heart attack, Marie called it
heartbreak.

What he left in his will, combined with their savings, Carl parlayed into a
bigger and bigger fortune, shifting it here and there as the financial boards
moved up and down. Marie paid little attention after the first, when she'd
asked, "Dad would hate this, wouldn't he?" and Carl shrugged. "Yes," he said,
"and that's why his business was worth more dead than alive."

Something was wrong with that logic, Marie knew, but she didn't know what.

She'd taken family leave to care for her dad during his last few months, then,
when they discovered Carl's mother's cancer, he persuaded her not to return to
work. He was honest and humble in his appeal. "You did it for your dad," he
said. "Please -- help me. When I was a kid my grandad was in the hospital with
cirrhosis, and they made me go see him every week. It was horrible, watching his
stomach swell and his face puff out. I just couldn't take it, Marie, when it's
my mom in there."

His mother lived another six years, alternating between complete health and
horrible sickness, between losing her hair and regaining it, between
determination to beat the disease and maudlin, drunken acquiescence in her own
death. In the meantime, though Marie fiercely missed her work and her students
and her colleagues, she gradually built another life for herself, centered on
Carl and the girls, on the country club and the health club, on Carl's mother
and on volunteering at the arts center, on the vagaries of her own existence.
After Mother Lou died, Marie thought she was fully prepared to go back to work,
but school systems were no longer particularly interested in her, preferring
younger teachers swarming fresh from college with the newest theories. Carl
himself urged her not to bother--"I'm making enough for both of us"--and Marie's
biorhythms were by now attuned not to early rising and a bell schedule, but to
tennis tournaments at the club and various theatrical and sports events the
girls insisted she absolutely had to attend.

She and Carl had been young and poor when the girls were born, and she'd taken
minimum leave to have them, hire a sitter, and get back to work. But about the
time when her father came to live with them, Carl began to campaign for private
schools. "With the board your dad's paying us and our income, we can afford it,"
he insisted.

"That's not the point. If people like us don't support the public schools, who
will? The school's great here anyway."

But Marie lost that argument when the girls themselves chimed in in favor of
private school. From the beginning, Carl had fostered in them a sense of their
own worth, an effort Marie mostly applauded, though his purchases of designer
clothes for them when they were still in grade school irritated her no end. And
he had also insisted on enrolling them in skating lessons and piano lessons and
special computer classes when the family was still struggling just to meet the
mortgage.

Since Marie had given in to all of this, she knew she shouldn't have been
shocked when all three of them voted for private school, but she was, she was
profoundly hurt and shocked, feeling the decision a slap to all she'd worked
for. But she was outgunned and knew it, and so she held her tongue.

Since then, she'd done little to merit her daughters' esteem, though Carl had no
complaints that she knew of. It was a funny feeling, now, to accept her
daughters' gushing approval of her new skin, her healing body. She hadn't done
anything to warrant the praise, and yet -- how sweet it was to feel Denise's
kiss, to hold Suzanne in her arms and know they accepted her as one of them.

Marie ran her hands over her skin -- someone's skin -- no, her skin and reveled
in its taut golden health.

SIX WEEKS LATER Annie still lay packed in gel in an isolation box, bored out of
her skull. And in between bouts of boredom came niggling worries about what was
going on outside. She'd waited until the last minute to tell Sam and Beth what
was going to happen, and that was a real mistake. Beth had begun to tremble
violently, but Annie was distracted from comforting her by having to try to talk
rationally to Sam who, white and raging, got all macho and protective and tried
to forbid her to go through with it. And despite her daily phone calls to the
kids assuring them that she was all right, the tears and anger continued in the
foster home, until now the foster mother claimed she was at the end of her rope
and threatened to take the kids to Protective Services. Annie had to plead with
her to try again, to please try to understand their worries and help them get
through this.

The situation at the nursing home wasn't much better. Annie was allowed to call
only at certain times, but every day her mother complained about the food, the
regime, the antiseptic smell masking other, even less desirable odors. Every day
she raged that Annie had tricked her and planned to leave her here forever.
Every day she burst into tears and asked if Annie were coming to get her.

Yet that wasn't the worst of it. The worst, it seemed to Annie, was that every
day her mother's complaints and rages and tears sounded a little paler, a little
more tepid. Annie strained in her isolation box, ignoring the nurse waiting
impatiently to disconnect the speaker phone, willing gumption back into her
mother.

The floor supervisor at the home assured Annie that her mother was fine, but
even so, the combination of boredom and worry was taking its toll on Annie. At
least her healing was going well. The grafts should be completed in a few weeks
and then after another couple weeks she'd be free, but she thought she might
lose her mind in the interim.

Joel's visits were the only bright spots. At first he'd had trouble even coming
in the room, then resisted looking at her in her box, then become fascinated
with the eight of her floating there covered in the yellowish gel. He even
insisted on watching one day as machinery sluiced away the ointment so the
doctors could reach their gloved hands through the self-sealing portals to clip
small pieces of new akin and move them elsewhere, to augment these with patches
grown in the lab.

The grafts had been about two-thirds complete the day Joel watched, and even
with her limited vision down the length of her body, Annie agonized at what he
was seeing: chunks of still raw flesh not yet seeded with new skin; bizarre
islands of mottled, puffy skin in some places, remnants of the burned woman's
skin, expanding outward as it regenerated; palely pink skin where grafts had
been moved and taken hold.

The next day Joel brought his sketch pad and asked if he could bring his oils.
Annie wasn't altogether sure she wanted to be painted even in the box -- she
absolutely refused to let him paint her degelled, as it were -- but she figured
she owed him big time for overcoming his distaste for hospitals to visit both
her and her mom.

He was frowning and moody as he set up his easel, but Annie didn't ask; she
wouldn't go looking for more bad news.

"I sold a painting yesterday," he said abruptly as he began to squirt paint onto
his palette. He didn't look at her.

Annie was confused. "Well, that's great -- isn't it?"

"Sure. It was the one of Diego and the dog, remember?"

Annie did. She'd been with Joel, as a matter of fact, when they came upon the
skinny, homeless boy sitting huddled in front of a jewelry store with one arm
around a bony dog and the other leaning on his knee, holding a cup. Joel
immediately offered the boy a couch in his cramped studio for a couple days if
he'd let Joel paint him, and the boy agreed. Then Joel wanted to get him down to
Protective Services, find a home for him, but Diego slipped away that night and
Joel never saw him again. In the painting Joel had replaced the jewelry store --
too obvious, he said -- with a bare, board fence. Diego and the dog were
recognizably themselves, but their bodies were angled somehow, their joints out
of kilter, clashing with the city towers rising like a fantasy land behind the
fence.

Annie knew the painting was one of the best Joel had ever done, and so did the
gallery owner who occasionally hung one of his works, though she mostly dealt
with already up and coming artists.

So now Annie's voice was soft as she said, "That's wonderful, Joel. That
painting deserves--"

"Julie was embarrassed when she called. The guy offered half what I wanted for
it."

Annie sucked in her breath. "Oh, Joel, half?"

Joel still hadn't looked at her. "I had to take it, Annie. The landlord was
threatening to kick me out of the studio unless I came up with the back rent."

Annie willed away the tears she felt threatening; she couldn't let Joel see
them. "You never know, Joel. Maybe that guy, the buyer, maybe he saw everything
in that picture. Maybe he really couldn't afford more."

"Maybe," said Joel savagely. "Or maybe he's the husband of the woman who bought
your skin." He made a vicious stab at the canvas before him, but then--"Ah, I
can't work today"--slammed the palette into his case and strode over to stare
out the window.

"Come here, Joel. Sit by me for a while," said Annie.

Joel did so, leaning forward so that his arms and head lay draped across Annie's
box. She wanted to leap out and hold him, wrap him in her protective gel so that
both of them would be out of it and safe for a while.

Joel raised his head enough to rest it on his wrists. He looked down at her,
untouchable yet eerily close.

"Your mom thinks I'm part of the conspiracy, you know."

"Wha-a-at?"

"Yeah. She's starting to say you're trying to get rid of her on my account, and
my visits are just a smoke screen."

"But that doesn't make any sense!"

Joel shrugged and sat up wearily.

"Joel, please! Please don't give up! Please -- go and reason with her."

"Sure, Annie, for all the good it'll do."

After Joel left, Annie called the nurse to dial the phone, but, she was told,
her mother was asleep just then. Five minutes later the nurse was back. "Call
for you," she said, and toggled a switch on the speaker near Annie's box.

"Yes, yes?" Annie called out eagerly. "Is that you, Mom?"

"No, Ma'am, this is Officer Rakowski at the Twelfth Precinct. We got a young man
named Sam here who says he's your son."

"Omigod! What's he done? Is he in trouble?"

"Not yet, but he will be soon if he keeps running with the kids we found him
with. Some of them are into deep shit. But today somebody's gotta pick Sam up
and sign for him."

"But, Officer, I'm in the hospital, and the people he's staying with, I don't
think they'll come get him. Please, Officer, could you bring him here, to the
hospital, and I'll see he gets home?"

"Sorry, Ma'am, it's not policy--"

"Please!" Annie was almost weeping.

The man paused. "Well, it's strictly against policy, but I'm on my way out
anyway. All right, what room you in?"

It took only about fifteen minutes, but to Annie the time seemed to expand into
a bubble of eternity, a bubble that broke instantly when Sam burst into the
room, took one horrified look at Annie, and bolted, screaming incoherently.

"Hold it there! Hold it!" said the officer, grabbing him. "Isn't that your
mother?" He looked none too happy himself, his eyes anywhere but on Annie.

"No, she's not!" screamed Sam. "That's not my mother!"

"Sam!" Annie called, scrabbling futilely at the side of the box. "Sam, it's
okay, baby. Come here. Look at me."

Sam resisted a moment longer, but then something in him seemed to collapse. He
turned slowly and shuffled toward the box. He kept his eyes on the floor.

"Look at me, baby," said Annie quietly. "Look at me."

Sam did so.

"I didn't want you to see me like this, honey. But you've got to understand.
It's real hard in here -- but it's even harder being away from you. If I have to
worry about you, it'll be impossible for me, can't you see that? I need your
help, Sam!"

Sam still looked defiant. "You don't need my help. You wouldn't even listen when
I said not to do this, and now look at you -- you're a freak."

"You know why I did it, Sam, why I had to do it. It's the system, Sam, just
buying and selling, that's all."

"Yeah, well, the system sucks. That's what the guys say."

"What guys? The ones--"

"Yeah. The Green Dragons."

"A gang? Oh, Sammy, no--"

"The system sucks," Sam repeated, glaring at Annie and then at the officer, who
was still in the room.

Annie took a deep breath. "You're right, Sam, it does," she said, startling the
boy into looking back at her. "But it works, Sam, can't you see that? I know I
look funny here, but I'm fine, really, and I'll be out of here soon, and we'll
be together again. It works, Sam."

Sam looked doubtful, but Annie rushed on before he could speak.

"And I do need your help, Sam. I need you to be strong and look after Beth.
She's so little she can't understand, but you can, can't you Sam? You can
understand and help me with Beth, can't you?"

Sam wavered for a moment, and then threw himself across the box much like Joel
had done earlier. "Oh, Mom, I just want to go home!"

"Shin, shin, baby, so do I. It won't be long now, shin."

Annie let him lie there for a few minutes before she called to the policeman.
"Officer, the duty nurse has my wallet. Would you ask her to give Sam some cab
money--"

"I'll take him back, Ma'am. Don't you worry. And Sam and me, we'll have a nice
chat on the way."

Relief gleamed in Annie's eyes.

Annie didn't sleep much that night, despite the sedatives wafted in with the
antibiotics and pain killers. The box felt as if it had shrunk. She wanted to
scream and pound its walls, but since that was impossible, she lay there and
thought about death, about how terrible and beautiful death would be.

Marie preened before the mirror, admiring herself in the designer dress Carl had
bought for her homecoming day. The high collar hid the faint line of demarcation
that would be with her the rest of her life, but her bare arms and legs glowed
golden against the silk sheen of the dress.

There were only two small problems. Her own mirror pointed out the first: Her
face with its fine crosshatches and lines that didn't smooth out when she
stopped smiling or frowning, that face no longer matched her body. But, the
doctors assured her, the discrepancy would even out. The body caring for this
new skin was no longer young; it would, in time -- how long depended on her own
genes and overall health -- in time it would look like that of a middle-aged
woman, just like her face.

And that was the second problem.

But here was Carl, proudly holding out his arm for her. In a few weeks, he'd
told her, love in his eyes and voice -- she didn't doubt its veracity -- soon,
when she was well enough to travel, they'd go to Switzerland. She'd love the
house he'd found. It was perfect, near the slopes of a posh resort but private
enough to be a love nest for his baby and him. Marie was surprised at how
something within her, her heart or her stomach, had lurched at his choice of
words.

She recognized the name of the resort; that was where Joan went every few years
for massage and mud baths and injections of mysterious youth serums. Marie would
make an appointment now, for next year, and reserve a place as often as the
experts there recommended, as far into the future as they'd make appointments.

For this first trip, Carl would have to be patient a little longer. She'd
already arranged with Joan's plastic surgeon to take care of her face.

But before she acted on any of these plans, she would have a second honeymoon
with Carl right in their own bedroom. She would take off all her clothes and let
his hands and eyes rove her skin; she'd tangle him in its golden net.

Before she'd checked into the hospital, Annie treated herself to one thing: a
silk outfit of sunshine gold with flowing pants and a loose top that responded
to her slightest movement with liquid grace.

Unfortunately, she had to rely on the mirror to assure her that it was as
beautiful as it had been when she'd bought it. She remembered the soft, sleek
feel of it as it floated or clung to her body--

-- but she couldn't feel it now.

The doctors had warned her that the tiny nerves that cause the skin to feel pain
and delight, that those would be transferred with her skin, where they would
likely dig into the recipient's system and make themselves at home. But that
woman's nerves were gone, on the sixty percent of flesh that fire had claimed.
It was an iffy thing, the doctors said; the severed ends of Annie's own nerves
might regenerate and worm their way into her new skin -- or they might not. Or
they might do so haphazardly, restoring feeling in one breast but not the other,
for example.

So far that had not happened, but be patient, the doctors said; these things
take time.

Be patient, that's what the staff at the nursing home said, too, when Annie went
there directly from the hospital to pick her mother up. She'd continued to
deteriorate physically, they said, but that was only to be expected. But
something seemed to give way in her mind, as well, something not connected to
the disease.

Her mother just stared at Annie when Annie hugged her; she didn't react to
Annie's tears or Annie's pleas.

She was little better in the weeks since they'd all come home. She talked a
little, finally, but mostly in monosyllables. Yes, she'd like to watch TV, she'd
say if asked; no, she didn't want a glass of wine.

Annie was shocked at how small her mother looked, at the eyes that seemed to
avoid focusing on Annie. Her mother acted like one mortally betrayed, and Annie
ranged from rage to guilt but forged her public face into a solid front of good
cheer.

A practical nurse now stayed with Annie's mother while Annie was at work. Her
charge was no trouble, the nurse insisted, asking only to be moved from time to
time, or for a different program on TV.

The children were much better, after a brief period of acting out. Annie wore
slacks and long sleeves despite the summer heat pressing cruelly on the
apartment, so Beth forgot, in time, that her mother had been gone. A few days
after their return, Sam asked to see, and after a moment's hesitation, Annie
pushed up her sleeve and held out an arm for him.

He'd hissed and looked away, then looked back and up at her. Then he nodded and
Annie rolled down her sleeve. She knew better than to hug him then, but later,
when she was tucking him into bed, she did, she hugged him fiercely as he sobbed
on her shoulder.

Neither of them ever referred to her skin again.

Then there was Joel. He had brought Annie home from the hospital in a cab,
treating her reverently, solicitously, as if she were made of spun glass. Then
he stopped in once a day, awkward and uneasy until the day he grabbed Annie's
hands and drew her into her bedroom and took off her clothes with quick, nervous
hands and gazed at the expanses of taut, shiny white skin, at the puckers where
grafted skin met skin unharmed in the fire.

"Will it -- will it even out?" he asked, his eyes on hers.

"No."

He reached out a trembling finger to trace a line across her arm, and then with
a sound she could not translate as a sob or a groan or a growl, he fumbled off
his own clothes and seized her and made love in a way that made Annie cry out
because she knew he was not making love to her but to his idea of himself as
someone to whom such a superficial thing as skin meant nothing.

She cried, too, because while she as a person responded as she always had to
Joel, her skin did not. She felt his roving hands as pressure, but not as hands
of love. She gently held his head as he feathered kisses across her neck and
stomach and hips, but that was her only clue that they were being bestowed. She
welcomed him inside her and felt that, but not the warmth of his tongue on her
breast.

They pushed to come together, as if willing pleasure from a duty.

Since that first time, lovemaking had settled into something resembling their
old habits, though Annie concealed how little her flesh responded to Joel's
touch. But she simultaneously felt feverish and a chill wind -- not arising from
the fan he had set up next to the bed -- when he described to her the triptych
he planned: Annie, headless, before the skin exchange; Annie in the box; Annie
now.

"God, I love your skin," he whispered, running his hand down the length of her
in a sweet, seductive search she could not resist. She closed her eyes to his
touch and her ears to a tiny voice inside her that screamed with loss and rage.