MADELEINE E. ROBINS

ABELARD'S KISS

Beatee's lover was made of lip. She wouldn't say more, just smiled, delicately
tracing the edge of her glass with one finger. Susannah, more than anyone else
there, knew Beatrice's theatricality, her beautifully detailed gestures.
Susannah, more than anyone else there, knew that to give way to her curiosity
was to give way to Beatrice.

Still, "Lip, Beatrie?" she murmured, trying to sound wry and doubtful.

"Uh huh." Beatrice's smile broadened and shone on Susannah; she finished her
wine and turned to get more.

Was she the only one in Renata's living room who had heard Beatrice? Susannah
wondered. Or did the others take the casual statement as an example, either of
Beatrice's extravagance or of her hyperbole? No one but Susannah seemed
particularly interested. And beside the delicious, disturbing image of
Beatrice's lover there was only one though t in Susannah's mind: not to show
Beatrice that she was intrigued. Captivated. Hooked again, like the old days.

"Wanna see something?" Beatrice would whisper. They were sammies then, refugee
kids at a Samaritan school after the Big Everything the disaster of '19 which
had wiped out so much of New York City. "It'll cost you a halfie." And Susannah
had found the half-dollar coin hidden in her pocket and given it to Beatrice,
and had been permitted to view the dead cat or the page tom from an old pom
magazine or, once, the body of a bum who had frozen to death outside the school
the night before.

"Wanna see something?" Beatrice would whisper. And every time, every damned time
she fell for it.

Even now, twenty-five years later. The most Susannah had learned to do was look
indifferent so that the others at the party-- friends of Renata's, who was a
sammie too -- wouldn't notice her fascination.

Later, when the party was breaking up, Beatrice offered Sue a ride back to
Manhattan by way of Tamerlane. "I have to stop home, anyway. Come in, I'll give
you some real coffee."

Susannah opened her mouth to say no, and was unsurprised to hear herself say
Yes. Old habit, old captivations. She followed Beatrice up to the copter on
Renata's roof.

"I've named it Abelard," Beatrice said as she fastened her seatbelt.

"Why not Dante?" Susannah asked, trying to play the game.

"Too obvious." Beatrice smiled, a whiteness glittering in the dusk. She flicked
a row of switches and the copter hummed to life. In the fading daylight and the
green glow of the instrument panel, Beatrice looked unearthly, vivid and
perfect, her long fingers manipulating the toggles and dials expertly.

"Besides," she added once they were up in the air. "Abelard sounds sexier." It
certainly did the way Beatrice said it, a sigh rolled along the tongue.

For ten minutes Susannah fought the temptation to ask, "Where did it come from?"
Finally, unasked, Beatrice said, "I had him made for me. One of the
bioengineering places squeezed my order in between batches of interferon or
something, I understand it isn't hard to do. Just expensive." Beatrice lingered
on the word. "A parent tissue, a little fuddling with DNA, program in some
instincts. . . . " Her voice was an elegant drawl, only her smile in the
near-darkness was lewd. "There's only one in the world, and it's mine."

"Beatie--" Susannah murmured.

"I know you'll keep this a secret, love. It's not breaking the law, but. . .
bending it a little."

Susannah stared into the deepening gloom. Below them scavenger boats fished
scrap metal from the Long Island Sound; to the right in the distance the squat
buildings of the rebuilt South Bronx Hospice glittered silently. After their
hungry, grubby childhood, Susannah had continued on to college, gone to work,
built up a small independence for herself. Grubbed for money, Beatrice said, and
shook her head. Her path had been very different. Beatrice had worked only as
long as it took to find, and marry, Felix Ferrar-Giroux, one of the mysteriously
wealthy men who had emerged after the Everything. He took her home to Tamerlane,
a huge house on the Sound that unfolded like a tesseract, disclosing rooms where
none could logically be, and there Beatrice learned to spend his money. He
encouraged her extravagances as if he were feeding a rare bird. No impulse too
wild, no whim too expensive. Including, it appeared, this new extravagance.

I will keep my mouth shut, Susannah thought grimly. I will look at her new toy
-- despite herself a flush of warmth spread through her at the thought -- and
then I will go home.

At Tamerlane they were met at the door by a superior-looking manservant who took
Susannah's three-year-old cloth coat with as much ceremony as he did Beatrice's
fur. Beatrice led Sue to a small den and poured wine for them both.

"You must relax, Susah! You take everything so seriously. There, drink that. Why
are you so edgy?"

"I'm not edgy, but I have work at home I need to get through tonight."

"Susah, you can't let work rule your life," Beatrice said irritably. "

I don't let it rule my life, Beatrice --"

"What else rules your life, then? You haven't had a love; since whatsisname
walked out --"

"Greg," Susannah whispered.

Beatrice made no sign of hearing. "You won't enjoy yourself, you act like you
haven't earned the fight. That's the difference between us: you think you
haven't earned anything. I know I've earned everything I can lay my hands on. We
survived, Susah. We're alive. We don't owe anyone anything. I don't, anyway."
Beatrice raked her hair back from her broad forehead with one hand and looked up
at the ceiling. "Why do I bother? Come on, love. Let's go meet Abelard."

They went down a string of corridors, stopping just as Susannah began to get
seriously lost. The room Beatrice led Sue into was almost empty, uncarpeted,
dimly lit, painted a shining white. The floor was a parquet pattern, doubtless
of real wood. There was a clean soft smell to the air, like talc or running
water; two lush throw rugs and a futon in the comer, a fern hanging in a ceramic
pot. Nothing stirred.

Beatrice crossed the room. "Shut the door behind you, Susah." Then she went
through a door at the far side of the room. Susannah had a moment to look around
curiously, breathe the sweet air, wait for revelation.

"Come on, precious. Come on, sweetie-pie." Beatrice stood in the doorway a
moment to assure herself of Susannah's attention before she reentered the room.
Something moist and gibbous squirmed uneasily into the room behind her, moving
by throwing its weight forward, falling and rolling over until it "stood" again.
It was ovoid, dull red, strangely plastic, with a faint sheen that gave no
impression of sliminess. Ugh, Susannah thought, but was unable to take her eyes
away as the thing rolled after Beatrice like a puppy after its master,
struggling with that sidling somersault to keep up with Beatrice's elegant long
stride.

"Abelard." Beatrice stopped in the center of the room, one palm extended to
present the thing to Susannah. With the other hand she reached caressingly down
to it and it responded, stretching upward in an effort to reach her circling
finger. At last they touched, and the thing grew round her finger, nursed it.
For the first time in all the years she had known Beatrice, Susannah saw her
entirely captivated, not thin king of the next moment or the next, caught
entirely in the present, all attention focused in that one finger.

The mood was contagious. Susannah's faint revulsion at her first sight of the
thing dissipated. She felt a warmth and sweet laziness born of the fragrant
humidity of the room and the unsettlingly erotic sight of the creature suckling
Beatrice's manicured finger. She sighed quietly in the stillness.

"Do you want to touch him?" Beatrice's voice sounded abnormally loud.

Susannah tried to make her murmured Yes seem casual. She stepped near, reached
out a finger and touched, tentatively, at the side of the lover. "Abelard?" she
murmured. The thing did not move toward her, but it did not move away, either.
Sue pushed her finger a little harder. The surface of the lover was warm, firmer
than she had expected. Like lip. It gave slightly, then closed around her
fingertip and nursed at it, tasted it. Susannah felt a string of electric pulses
ripple up her spine; the flesh surrounding hers was damp and warm an faintly
pulsing.

"I thought you'd like him," Beatrice said smugly. At the sound of her voice
Abelard released its grip on Susannah's finger, dropped away and shrank back,
its rolling weight carrying it toward Beatrice. "Hello, Pet," Beatrice crooned.
"Is devoted to Beatie, isn't its. Is got Beatie under its skin, hasn't it?" She
ran a caressing palm flat along one side of Abelard's top while Susannah,
shivering in the warm air, tried to regain her composure. Then, abruptly,
Beatrice pulled away from the lover and turned to the door. "Come on, Susah."

Susannah followed, trying to ignore the tremor that lingered in her arms and
breasts and knees, making walking a shaky, uncertain chore. From the doorway she
took one backward look and saw Abelard, shrunken and forlorn, abandoned in the
center of the room.

"Potter will move it back to the tank later." Beatrice waved a vague hand in the
direction of the room as they moved up the hall. "Tanks."

"It spends most of its time in a nutrient bath. Or something. I told the people
at Bioform I didn't want to know particulars, they're so unromantic. Potter
takes care of him. It. Now, I promised you real coffee, didn't I?"

Susannah had forgotten about the work she had waiting in Manhattan. She followed
Beatrice mutely back to the sitting room where a lavish meal, with the promised
coffee, had been laid out. Through the meal and the copter ride into the city,
where Beatrice landed on the roof of Susannah's building in violation of any
number of ordinances, through the rest of the evening and the next day, Susannah
was haunted by the memory, the teasing sensation of that warm flesh suckling at
her finger. Which was just what Beatrice wanted, she told herself scornfully. An
audience, someone to want what she has.

Which is just what Susannah wanted.

Sue saw Beatrice irregularly, now and then at Renata's house in Connecticut,
sometimes at a restaurant in the city for lunch. With her usual perversity
Beatrice did not mention Abelard, but sometimes in the midst of talking she
would break off in mid-sentence and smile deliciously into space for a moment,
then start theatrically, "What was I saying?" Sue believed these lapses were
contrived for her benefit, but that didn't diminish their power. She was grimly
certain that Beatrice understood that all too well, and was grimly determined to
show herself unmoved.

Other than lunches with Beatrice, parties or weekends at Renata's, or her
occasional work-related social duties, Susannah didn't seek out contacts,
friends, lovers. Her last man had decamped more than a year before, in a shower
of mutual accusation and disappointment, and Susannah couldn't nerve herself to
try again, even approach trying again. Too messy, certain to fail, just not
worth it, she said to Renata when she asked about Susannah's love life. To
Beatrice she said she was too busy to think about sex, let alone love. She was
not quite busy enough to forget the unsettling image of Beatrice's lover, nor
the ghost sensation of the thing sucking on her own finger, even after months
had gone by.

One day, several months after the visit to Tamerlane, Beatrice called her at
work, arranged to meet for lunch. She bubbled and enthused, every word was an
event, and by the time she put the phone down Susannah knew that Beatrice had
some new extravagance and needed an audience. Needed her. She made arrangements
to take an extra hour for lunch; her superiors looked kindly on her lunches with
Beatrice Ferrar-Giroux.

They met at a small restaurant in the rehabilitated section of the east Fifties.
The place had not yet been discovered by anyone but Beatrice, who would
relentlessly drag it into fashion and then tire of it. Today she was dressed
like a wealthy gypsy, scarves and beads and skirts layered around her so that
she looked half-buried in bright fabric. Her hair was in dark ringlets this
time. She looked beautiful, elegant, radiantly pleased with herself and the
world, and Susannah immediately loathed her own blue suit, which that morning
had seemed fashionable and attractive, and her simply dressed dark hair.

"Susannah!" Beatrice rose and enveloped Susannah in a spicy, overwhelming
embrace full of foreign enthusiasms and endearments. Susannah returned it
carefully, fearful of disturbing Beatrice's artful disarray.

Before the first drink had arrived Beatrice was launched on an epic, a saga of
her life since they had last met. By the time the second drink and the faux
salmon appeared Beatrice had arrived at the crux of her story. A new lover, a
man. He was beautiful, he was bright and shining, incredibly sensual, a gypsy, a
madman. He had been, until Beatrice discovered him, a gardener at Tamerlane.

"Who's doing the garden now?" Sue asked dryly. Beatrice blinked, laughed, and
went on. By the time the consomme arrived Beatrice had descended from flowery
abstracts to coarse particulars. Susannah listened in silence.

It was not until the waiter served the veal and poured more wine that Susannah
could get a word in edgewise. "What's going to happen to Abelard?"

Beatrice looked at her blankly for a moment. Then, "Oh God, that's right. I
hadn't even thought. Well, after all, Susah, it's only a blob, isn't it? I'll
have to tell Potter to take it back to Bioform."

Beatrice was paying for the meal; it was not often that Susannah could afford
real meat, let alone cheese and fruit and wine this good. She ate every bite. It
tasted like dust. Over coffee she asked, "What will Bioform do with him?"

It took Beatrice a moment to understand what Susannah was talking about.

"Put it back in the vat or something, I suppose. Recycle the ingredients.
Something. Really, Susannah," Beatrice drawled. "It was only a toy."

She wasn't expected to care, Susannah knew. She was supposed to change
fascinations as Beatrice did, just one step behind. She shook her head and
changed the subject back to Beatrice's new lover.

When they were putting on their coats, Beatrice regarded Susannah with the old
look: satisfaction wanting to flaunt itself. "Susah, you must come meet him.
When can you come out to Tamerlane?"

She faltered, thinking of the work on her desk, the reports in her briefcase
waiting to be taken home. Then Susannah surprised herself. "Tonight. I can come
tonight, after work." And do what? Fight free of the place with Abelard tucked
under one arm? Ridiculous. Still, "Tonight," she said.

"I won't say good-bye, then," Beatrice said. "I'll pick you up at six!" She
smiled again, suddenly irresistible and childlike. "Ooo, Susah, wait till you
see!" And then was gone.

Flying out to Tamerlane, Susannah let Beatricers chatter wash over her like
warm, scented water. Potter waited at the door to receive their coats and lead
them to a different small den. Susannah wondered briefly if Beatrice had a suite
of mores for each lover she took: row on row of white rooms with the small of
running water and one green vine in a whit e ceramic pot. She settled herself in
a deep soft chair and sipped wine, thinking. A young man, very tall and
muscular, with a face of masculine prettiness and a slow, assured walk, joined
them. Susannah noted that he was as besotted with Beatrice as she was with him.

"Susannah, this is John." Beatrice pulled the young man down to sit beside her
on the sofa; their fingers found occasions to touch, and the air between them
rippled as though superheated. Susannah looked away uncomfortably, embarrassed.
When Potter announced a call for Beatrice the lovers rose together and left the
room. Potter looked at Susannah as if she were part of some vulgar conspiracy,
then he too left. Susannah could hear Beatrice's soft murmuring from the
antechamber, the click of the phoneset replaced in its cradle, but neither
Beatrice nor John returned. She thought she heard more murmurings, the soft
sighing of silk against skin and skin against skin. Her face warmed as she
realized that Beatrice meant her to hear, wanted her to hear. Probably thought
it was a great gift to her poor friend Susah, she thought in disgust.

She rose and left the room. If anyone stopped her, she would say she was looking
for the lavatory. No one stopped her. It took her three tries to find the right
corridor, the right door. When she entered the room she found it empty; the
futon and white rugs had been rolled up and piled on one side, the vine trailed
unwatered from its dusty pot. The air was still and musty. She walked across the
bare floor and opened the door to the inner room carefully, afraid she might
startle the creature.

It was flattened, submerged in a shallow plastic glass tank that brimmed with
viscous pink fluid. It looked like photographs Susannah had seen of human hearts
prepared for transplant; there was something lonely and pathetic about it. Ugh,
she thought. How could anyone -- but Susannah thought she knew how. She stood
very still, just inside the room, listening to her own pulse and breathing
watching the faint pulse of the lover in its tank. She was only aware that
Potter had entered the room behind her when he cleared his throat.

"I was only looking --" she began.

Potter regarded her steadily and said nothing.

"I mean, it's horrible, just putting the poor thing back in some sort of vat, as
if it were clay or something. I mean --" she faltered. "When does he -- it --
go?"

Potter smiled thinly. "When Madame remembers to instruct me."

Susannah nodded, still staring at Abelard in the tank. "I just mean, well, it
was made deliberately. It seems so awful to just destroy it. It must feel
something. . . . "

"You want it," Potter stated baldly.

"It should be saved," Susannah corrected. She kept her gaze fixed on the lover.
"We can't just let Beatrice throw it out. lt's alive. It just seems. . . . " She
faded off. The only sound in the room was a faint hiss and bubble from the tank.

Then, We might arrange something," Potter said. He closed the door behind them,
shutting, them into the humid, medicinal-smelling room with the creature
"Something could be arranged," he repeated. Sussanah looked at him as he told
her what.

They negotiated, As Potter made his offer and Susannah her counter offer, she
thought of the warm sucking at her finger, the firm plastic surface of the
lover. Her breath came faster as she calculated her slender resources, the money
she had saved for years, hoping to buy an apartment larger than her cramped
two-room. She thought of little economies she could make, freelance work,extra
income.

When she left the white suite Susannah and Potter had come to an agreement.

All the way back to Manhattan, tiding with Beatrice in the copter, Susannah was
aware of a new sensation, a smugness Beatrice herself would have recognized. She
had taken something from Beatrice, sad Beatie would never know it. It would be
her own.

Sussanah spent her lunch hour st the bank the next day, transferring money to
the account Potter had named. As she wrote the figures out Susannah had a brassy
taste in her mouth, a moment of cautionary fear: What am I doing? Then sanity
was overwhelmed by the rising image, the image she had lived with for months
now, of the lover at her fingertip, nursing gently. Susannah signed the bank
chit recklessly and went back to work.

Potter was early. When the security guard at her building door called up for
clearance Susannah was still eating dinner. She looked quickly around her
apartment, a painfully neat room on which she had lavished all her energy,
choosing fabrics and art that would create s sense of space and graciousness.
Except for the dark wood folding table on which her dinner sat half-eaten, the
apartment was in order. She went to the door to wait.

"Good evening, Miss." Potter might have been opening the door at Tamerlane for
her, rather than she for him.

"Good evening," Susannah replied seriously.

It took only a few minutes to move the shrouded can across the room, slide the
tank as gently as possible onto the floor, unstack the cans of nutrient fluid
which Potter had brought along. "Part of the accouterments," he told her. Then
he looked around the apartment once, shook his head as if his worst fears had
been confirmed.

"Well, Miss," he said at the door. "I hope it gives you great. . . pleasure."

Susannah blushed. "I'm just trying--" she began. Gave that up. "Good night,
Potter."

"I certainly hope so, Miss."

When he was gone, Susannah turned back to the apartment, seeing the drying track
of fluid dribbled from the tank and the shifting sprawl of Abelard against the
plastiglass walls. The tank and cans of fluid took up a space about a meter
square, displacing an armchair she had stored away in the basement. Her heart
beat so strongly she felt the pulse under her jaw. Susannah walked toward the
tank. The pink fluid on the floor smeared greasily under her foot. But when she
reached out a hand and touched the lover its surface was not greasy, scarcely
even damp. At her touch, Abelard slowly stirred, enveloping her fingertip in
warm, firm flesh, just as she remembered.

Susannah drew away. Some ritual was demanded. The lover sank down into its tank
again while she cleared the dishes and started a bath. She soaked for a long
time in water as hot as it ever got in her building then toweled herself dry.
When she could think of no further reason to delay, she set about her seduction.

First there was the clumsy process of getting Abelard out of the tank. The lover
did not reach for her as it did to Beatrice, nor follow the sound of her
murmurs, her heat and scent. But when touched it did respond, reaching upward to
her. After a moment Susannah figured out how to use its weight to move it,
letting the lover overbalance and roll forward over the beveled top of the tank
wall. Even so, Susannah had to pull with both hands, palms flat against the
malleable flesh, until the creature was wholly out of the tank. Susannah stared
at her palms, which tingled from the contact.

Abelard waited, unmoving. Tentatively Susannah reached out again and touched it,
stroking the warm surface. The flesh of the lover kissed her hand, rising to
follow the line of her arm, nibbling tenderly at the soft skin of the inner
elbow. Susannah sighed, shifted from kneeling to sitting, pushed gently at
Abelard's surface with her free hand until it was enveloped in soft, suckling
tissue. The lover was warm like the touch of breath against her skin. Seen
closely its surface was a dusty rose, lined, porous and unappealing; after a
moment Susannah closed her eyes. Then there was only the touch, the slow sliding
pressure on her arms, a kissing of flesh on flesh.

In the still of the room there was the faint singing of her breath and nothing
else. She floated from touch to touch at the lover's whim; there was nothing to
do but be there, be touched. No responsibility for the lover's pleasure, no
necessity for talk or reassurance. Just her own sensations, intoxicating.
Abelard swarmed over her, nuzzling and kissing, rocking her gently in the first
orgasm, clinging warmly.

Gradually the stroking at her throat, her breasts, her inner thighs and labia
became more insistent, probing. The lover seemed to absorb the energy of her
arousal, feeding on it. Susannah was once distantly aware of how strange it was
to have no one to hold on to, no shoulders or buttocks to knead. When she
stroked the lover its skin kissed back, another sensation, distracting, and
after a moment or two she let her hands fall to her sides.

The lover went on stroking, probing, kissing, shape-changing. Susannah grew
tired, overexcited and raw. Her languor turned into heavy-limbed paralysis: it
was impossible even to shudder away from the ceaseless warm caress that went on
and on. At last, dizzy to fainting, Susannah rolled away from the lover,
shivering in the sudden uncovered cool of the room. She lay for a long time,
boneless, flushed and exhausted against the pillows. When she turned over she
saw Abelard, vaguely forlorn, returned to its squat ovoid Shape. She knew she
should put it back in its tank again -- how long since she had coaxed it out? --
but it was still difficult to move.

Finally she did rise from the floor, pulling on a robe, to attend to the lover,
urging it back toward the tank and, at the last, pushing it over the shallow rim
again into the nutrient bath. At the first touch of her hands the creature began
its slow kissing again. Susannah felt as if every cell in her body was
electrified by sensory memory; after the quick shove it took to up-end Abelard
into the tank, she pulled away, panting again, waiting for the electric charge
to dissipate. Foggy with surfeit she sank back to the floor. After a while she
drifted to sleep where she lay.

At work the next day Susannah was tired and stiff. She found herself drifting
into daydreams, her eyelids suddenly heavy and her mouth pursed in a soft "o" as
if by surprise. Pressing her legs together she could summon up a flush of
physical memory that was momentarily incapacitating. She felt a little drunk;
she smiled often. At the stroke of five she cleared her desk and left.

Somehow she expect ed her apartment to be changed, tinted pink or filled with
musky scent, something exotic. It was the same two small rooms, her careful
decorating scheme knocked awry by the tank in the comer. Susannah allowed
herself a brief glance at the lover, then committed herself to ritual: dinner,
small chores, a bath, all prolonging the expectation. Finally, when she could
not distract herself further, she took Abelard from the tank.

It was as it had been the night before: soft caressing flesh, ripplings of
sensation, her body bathed in warm kisses. Even when the pleasure began to mix
with pain she could not stop, convinced by her body that the final sensation,
the perfect sensation, was only a moment away. When languor gave over to
exhaustion, sensation which broke itself, pleasure which hurt too much to bear,
Susannah rolled away shaking, listening to her heart pound in the silence of the
room.

In the next few days Susannah developed dark patches under her eyes, and a
staccato way of talking. It was impossible for her to be in the apartment and
not eventually succumb to the lover's allure. Beatrice called and Susannah said
guiltily that she had no time for lunch. Renata called and Susannah pleaded a
head cold. At home it piqued her that Abelard still had to be cored to her. She
remembered the way the creature had yearned toward Beatrice's hand, her voice.
What had Beatrice said? That it was programmed to respond to her physical
chemistry. In time, Susannah thought, the lover would learn her chemistry,
respond to her, not Beatrice.

Abelard had been in her apartment for a week when Susannah noticed a callus, a
small rough patch on its surface. When she touched the patch the lover responded
instantly, sucking gently at her finger.

"No, sweetie," she murmured absently. Concerned, she checked the nutrient fluid,
but it was the same dear, uncontaminated pink it was supposed to be. For a
moment Susannah entertained thoughts of sexually transmitted diseases,
explanations to doctors. "This is ridiculous," she chided the creature. "There
is nothing wrong with you." Still, when she took him from the tank that evening
she made sure the leathery patch was turned away from her.

The next night the patch seemed larger.

Beatrice called again, insisting upon lunch. They met, embraced, and Beatrice
was launched into her narrative before they had taken their seats. This time,
though, there was a difference. After a few minutes, Beatrice broke off and
stared curiously at Susannah.

"All right, what is it!" she asked. Susannah trembled. "What is what?"

"Susah, you're off in neverland somewhere, you haven't heard a thing I've said.
It must be something. You've met a man! Tell me."

"I haven't met a man." Susannah was enjoying herself. "All right, a woman, then.
Tell."

"I haven't met anyone, Beatrice. I spend my nights quietly at home." Susannah
smiled seraphically. Beatrice's frown was petulant.

"Well, don't tell me." Her bad humor lasted another few minutes and then was
forgotten as she launched into gossip about her gardener-lover at Tamerlane,
about Felix and their parties. By the end of lunch she had talked herself into
charity with Susannah again: "You must come out to Tamerlane soon. I'll even
find a gardener for you."

Susannah smiled politely. They embraced again and she turned away. Behind her
she felt Beatrice watching curiously, for once in all their lives the puzzled
one.

That night as the lover churned over her body Susannah was suddenly aware of the
complete silence, the lack of another breath contrapuntal to hers, no words, no
noise at all. Later, when she rolled Abelard back into the tank, she found two
new leathery patches, and the first was definitely larger, and cracking faintly.
Before she left for work the next morning Susannah examined the lover. It seemed
shrunken to her, slightly withered. This time she opened two cans of nutrient
and recklessly dumped them into the tank. As her hand grazed the lover it
nestled sluggishly. Poor thing, she thought. Up close in the light of day it was
really kind of awful looking.

She was late at work, haranguing with a customer in Zurich over duty
compensation; when she got home she had only enough energy to wash her face and
fall into bed with a curious sense of relief. She did remember to check Abelard
for further sores then or in the morning. All day she was conscious of an
edginess; that night, for the first time, she did not bother with her rituals
but pulled off her clothes and tumbled the lover out of its tank as soon as she
arrived home. She did not really look at it until later, afterward. The firm,
pliant skin was scaly and withered, as if the creature itself had shrunk inside
its flesh. The first of the calluses was cracked and oozing faintly. Susannah
hurriedly pushed the lover into the tank and went to shower the touch of it from
her. She did feel some brief compunction, and dropped more fluid into the
already brimming tank before she went to sleep.

The lover was dull brown by morning and the fluid in the tank was contaminated
with small particles. Susannah was horrified, thinking of the touch of that
thing on her body only hours before. When she got home the lover was dead.

Susannah knew it the moment she opened the door; there was no smell, but a sense
of presence in the apartment was abruptly not there. Abelard floated in the
tank, shriveled and dark, strands of peeling skin suspended in the murky fluid
that surrounded it. Susannah wanted to close and lock the door to her apartment
and disappear.

It took her a while to think what to do. Finally Susannah dragged the lover out
of the tank and wrapped it in an old towel. Its withered form was surprisingly
light and much smaller than it had been alive. Clutching the bundle tightly to
her chest, she carried it down seven flights to the garbage room in the
basement. Then she pushed it away from her violently, heaving the creature and
the towel into a trash can. The sight of the gray-brown husk half hidden by
terry cloth in the bottom of the can was the final straw. Susannah fled,
weeping, back to her apartment. It was some time before she thought to empty the
tank of its tainted nutrient and bring it, and the remaining cans of fluid, down
to the basement.

Then Susannah went into some kind of mourning, reducing her already small world
to a simple loop of work and sleep. She lost weight, the former tidiness of her
apartment declined into dusty clutter. She saw no one outside of work. The
thought of people dismayed her. Friends called, Beatrice and Renata, an old
boyfriend back in town, a man from work. Susannah left the phone off the hook
and fell asleep each night to the rhythmic whine of the signal. Daily she
watched what she was doing to herself and was appalled, but inertia overweighed
everything and nothing changed.

At last Renata got through to her. A party at her place in Connecticut. Susannah
would have to come, someone would certainly give her a lift out. Of all the
people she had known from the Samaritan school, emphatic, generous Renata was
the one Susannah liked best, feared least, and was most likely to ignore. But
today Renata used her most persuasive voice and best blandishments. Perhaps,
Susannah thought, it was time to go out.

Renata was delighted. "Wonderful, wonderful! Listen, Beatie's coming I'll tell
her to give you a ride out. Wonderful! Wear something nice, sweetie. There will
be some lovely men."

Men. Susannah was not ready to consider the idea. And of all the people in the
world Beatrice was the last one with whom she wanted to ride out to Connecticut.
She thought of calling back and canceling, but the habit of inaction was just
too strong. It was easier, finally, to just go.

Beatrice was chattering before Susannah had closed the door of the copier: how
had she been, where had she been, why all the mystery? "You look marvelous,
Susah, so thin ! But you just dropped out of sight. I was right, wasn't I? You
had a new lover? My God, love, it's been months since I've seen yOU."

Susannah agreed that it had been months, and stared stolidly down at the forest
of spires below them, the slowly reemerging Manhattan skyscape.

"I should have tried harder to get hold of you, I know," Beatrice went on,
expertly guiding the copter east over the Sound. "We've been all at sixes and
sevens out at the house, even poor Felix had to get tangled up in it. Can you
imagine? We had to fire Potter."

Susannah felt a hollowness in her stomach, as if the copter had suddenly made a
two hundred foot drop. "Fire Potter? Why?"

"God, Susah, he'd been taking advantage -- they all do, it's expected, up to a
point. But Potter overstepped the bounds." Beatrice's long eyebrows arched in
amusement. "Do you know, he actually took it upon himself to throw out my little
toy? You know, that thing I had made --"

"Abelard," Susannah whispered.

"God, Abelard. What a memory you have. Felix was convinced that Potter had sold
the poor little thing on the black market, but I can't imagine anyone buying
it."

Susannah stared straight ahead. What did Beatrice know? Was this one of her
dreadful teasing games?

"I mean, there wouldn't have been any point," Beatrice continued.

She's waiting, Susannah thought, for me to pick up my cues. "Why not?" she
asked.

"It couldn't have been used by anyone but me, love. Not for long, anyway. It was
made for me. Touching anyone else that way would have poisoned it, like an
allergy. Potter knew that, the Bioform people told him, for heaven's sake. He
knew there was no point in anyone buying it. Unless he sold it as food, and
that's too revolting a thought even --"

Susannah leaned against the door of the copter, wishing it would open and drop
her into the water five hundred feet below. Beatrice went on and on and on.
Susannah didn't listen. She was concentrating on not throwing up as the copter
dipped and canted in the early evening breeze. In her mind she played over the
picture of the lover, of Abelard, draped in her bathroom towel and discarded in
the trash.

Renata was waiting for them, chivvied them into her small house, already packed
with people. "Susannah, sweetie, you look like death. You were airsick, weren't
you? Beatie, you fly that damned thing like a maniac. Go take off that dreadful
fur and find yourself a drink." She pulled Susannah into a bathroom.

"Really, Susie, are you all right? Do you want to talk?" Her ann around
Susannah's shoulders, Renata sat them both down on the side of the tub.
Distantly Susannah felt the warmth and weight of Renata's arm around her.
"Susie?"

Susannah shook her head, afraid to speak. Finally she managed, "Fighting off a
bug or something. I'll be okay. Thank you."

Renata squeezed her again, then stood up. "All right, Susie. You don't have to
tell me what it is, but fix yourself up and come out as soon as you can, will
you? This is a party, love. You're here to. . . to part." She smiled with
pleasure at her own silliness, kissed Susannah's cheek and left her.

Susannah stared around the blue and white lavatory, at the embroidered hand
towels and sculpted soap. Here to part. With what? With Beatrice? Maybe, after
all these years. Maybe. With Abelard? Another wave of deep nausea: she had
killed Beatrice's lover, she had been deadly, the damned thing had died giving
her pleasure.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was pasty white; she splashed in
icy water until some color returned to her face, then pushed at her hair until
it fell a little more softly about her face, so that some of the stricken look
diminished to mere fragility. Come out as soon as you can, Renata had said.

She thought of the lover, of the cool silence in her apartment, the safety of
it. Then, with sudden warmth, she wanted caring, the human clamor that filled
Renata's hallway, the sticky, confusing, demanding and personal world outside
the bathroom door. Friendships. Chaos. Love. It was time to go out. As she
opened the door she thought she felt something warm at the nape of her neck. A
brush of memory like Abelard's kiss.