Woman of Tissue

Sabine only had one client on Fridays. He was neurosurgeon with enough money to buy her a million times over. They had to finish up early because his daughter had an orthodontist's appointment and couldn't drive herself. As they redressed, she thought about her time at one of the state-run boarding schools for abnormally-abled children. A fuzzy memory of picking wildflowers by an electrified fence fogged her mind.

The abnormally abled—"abs" was the newest, lest offensive shorthand—were superhumans born out of chance. The men were too powerful to be with normal-abled people. Their love gave them cancer and bruised their insides. But abs women, an extreme rarity, could be with any person, which was why Sabine's client list had some of everyone. Smart, gifted abs who had useful abilities got to be superheroes, military personnel—people like her Friday client. Those like Sabine sold sex.

He left the money on the bureau and went out through her apartment's side-door like she'd told him to. She showered and put on a wrinkled housedress from the laundry basket. For breakfast, she had a boiled egg wrapped in cheese.

Sabine ate standing up, thinking of how the boarding schools were still in operation in spite of all the recent protests. All her life, she'd wondered why the schools existed. Her mind held a loose constellation of answers: Cold War politics, domestic terrorism threats. Fear. Her rage grew so large until it imploded into eroticism, a bearable emotion. She thought of her first client ever, an abs navy officer who'd purchased her for a half-an-hour the summer she turned nineteen. Though she hated his kind, her body orgasmed anyway, bleeding underneath the weight of his bulk like a squished peach. She was so young then. He told her he would've preferred a real working girl, but that he also took wicked pleasure in fucking the meekness out of the new hires. The thought of him made her rub her thighs together before she even knew what she was doing. She looked down at her nails and saw that they'd gone blood red again. Red, the color of sex and violence.

Sabine was the only abs member of her family. Her abnormality was that her emotions made her nails change color. The government had caught her later than usual, in grade school rather than at birth. All her life, her mother made her wear gloves, telling teachers she had psoriasis. The school nurse started testing kids for signs of super-abilities because of a new law. Sabine had to strip down completely, which made her nails turn pink, then grey, then crimson, then grey again. When he left the room, she told herself that she would be okay, that she couldn't possibly be in danger if she wasn't a danger herself. Why would anyone bother going through the trouble of reporting her? It wasn't like she could fly through protected airspace or explode oilrigs with her mind. Though she couldn't yet explain privilege, she believed having blonde hair would somehow help, and if not that then certainly her dad's presidency at an investment bank.

The memory of childhood ruined Sabine's appetite, blunting her desire to eat while leaving behind her hunger. She threw the half-eaten egg into the trash. Her stomach's emptiness screamed out at her.

Her neighbor Dave Temples slipped something under her door as she got ready for her second job at a law firm. She heard the familiar clunking sound of his clogs and the wrinkling of paper. When she got down on her knees, his feet had already disappeared from small slit underneath the door. He'd left her a note. His handwriting was spidery like the lines on an EKG machine. What you're doing is wrong, from Dave Temples.

The scold wasn't anything knew. Her family still wasn't talking to her because of her lifestyle. She hid his letter in between the pages of a cookbook she never used and headed off to work, already late. She did breathing exercises on the train. Her head swam like it had the day armed men escorted out of her old preparatory blindfolded. Why me? was the only thing she could think. Why is it always me?

#

Dave had trailed behind Sabine for what felt like forever, their paths running parallel to each other without intersection. At twelve and thirteen respectively, Dave and her went to the same boarding school, a converted Gilded Age mansion in the mountains. At eighteen and nineteen, they were staying at a flophouse just outside the city. Dave studied something impressive-sounding at an engineering college while she hustled at Plaisir just a block away. Sabine wasn't surprised when they both wound up moving into the luxury apartment. His room was across from hers. He shared his place with a tall, reedy woman who stopped showing up long before Sabine became aware of her absence. They'd talked, Sabine and the woman, but only in passing, greeting each other in the stairwell that smelled like rancid garlic. The woman was a bohemian. Her nipples poked through the fabric of her loose-fitted tunic.

The boarding school teachers said that the road to success for people like them was a narrow one, so Sabine thought it was only natural that she and Dave would wind up bumping into each other forever. Their relationship existed in a liminal space where they knew each other's names and odd bits of gossip about the other despite never having talked. Sabine had heard that Dave was always trying to ween himself off unfiltered cigarettes; that he had super strength, an abnormality that belied his boyish frame; that he only smiled when left alone; that his coffee-black hair was actually blonde because he dyed it to appear mature. Sabine was pretty sure he did something with computers for a living. He was scrawny. He wore a tiny cross necklace and smoked on the fire escape.

He knew about her secret job, no doubt collecting evidence against her. Now he might report her to the police for prostituting without a permit. She'd made it so obvious, dressing in fishnets during the work week. Even when she wore coatdresses, people seemed to know. Her family found her out immediately, right after she'd tried moving back in with them. She meant to tell them about her life eventually, but never got the chance. One of her sisters—either Serena or Sally-Jo—went through Sabine's purse while she was in the bathroom, taking out Plaisir's calling card and placing it on the coffee table for all to see. Their parents called her a cab. They made her wait in her old bedroom, which looked the same as when she left it: pink and lace-trimmed, the tiny village of Madame Alexander dolls peering down at her from atop the Queen Anne dresser. Sabine quit Plaisir to hook on her own soon after, desperate to make her exile complete before anyone else could do it for her. She ended things with Oona, a black redhead who worked as her madame, wore 36F silk bras, and liked watching Sabine dutifully service her most overendowed patrons from behind. Sabine had grown tired of Oona never giving her more than a few appointments a week, instead keeping her for herself. Though Oona had many special girls—pixyish tomboys of every color—she'd come to like Sabine most, pinning clothespins to her tits when she fucked her with a strap-on.

What angered Sabine most was not knowing how much information Dave had on her. He probably wanted to blackmail her into marriage or bondage, desperate to exploit her beauty. Rich abs hired bounty hunters to steal abs women and turn them into whores, surrogates, housewives, personal sex slaves. A woman in her line of work had to know her value, and hers was high. She was a rarity: a young abs woman with a round ass and a face that was TV-beautiful. In a world overfilled with abs men, she would be in demand even in her late forties. Sabine was only twenty-three.

Worry colored her whole world. Sabine felt something heavy growing inside of her when she went to happy-hour with a good-looking manager from accounting. The manager fucked her in his studio apartment for free as she imagined Dave writing the letter. His tongue made gentle circles around her clit, which, even after all the people who'd come before him, still made her excited and fearful. He asked her if she was a virgin, and she lied and said yes because that was how he wanted her, and she wanted to please him.

The manager was a normal-abled ex-jock whose continued dedication to his own body was almost religious. She hadn't meant to have sex with him, still sore from her morning appointment. She dug her fingers into his back, making half-moons in his muscled flesh. She tried to come for him, but the memory of Dave froze her insides. He squeezed her tits, which hardened and made her breasts feel like overfilled balloons.

"Fake innocence is sexy," he said after finishing too soon. "But only when it's fake. The technique's what counts the most. You're good in bed. How many boyfriends have you had?"

He'd finished inside of her, but her body was still wound-up. She looked down at her nails and saw that they'd gone from their typical salmon color to red.

"None," she said.

"Don't believe that, sugar."

"Well, it's true."

She expecting him to press her for details. Her mind went blank until she heard the gentle rustle of his snoring. Quietly, she redressed. She crept into the deserted hallway, clutching her marabou mules in her hands.

#

When she'd first arrived at the boarding house, she was just a spoilt little rich girl from the city. She cried until the tears stopped coming. An older boy stole her patent leather school shoes when she refused to kiss him, throwing them into a ravine. She ate cafeteria food that was sometimes still frozen in the middle and knocked out the last of her baby teeth in a game of volleyball. By high school, she'd learned how to play the harmonica, tread water in the deep end of a swimming pool and make hemp bracelets. She graduated with Cs and one D, and, because she had no future plans to present to her re-assimilation counselor, found herself trapped on campus.

She skipped compulsory job-training seminars to smoke reefers with two girlfriends she always hung out with but never thought of as real friends. Both had gotten engaged to random men purely for the sake of leaving. Sabine had crushes on them. The sight of them wiggling into short-shorts in the locker room was what drove her to make out with so many pimply milk-faced boys.

Right before the two girls had gone, they snuck off campus to see a film. It was a BDSM porno. The opening started before they could sit down. The screen showed a pale redhead who was hog tied on the edge of a bed. A man appeared, pulled her by the hair and smacked her face with his erect dick. Sabine watched as the woman sucked him off. When he freed her, undoing the knotted rope and the metal clasps of her bustier, she rode him until he came, her ass fanned out on his chest in a heart shape. One of Sabine's friends—it was too dark to tell who, and they all left before the lights turned on again—gave her breathy, wet kisses all over her face and neck. She didn't have on underwear. Sabine patted around in the dark, planting her hands underneath the girl's skirt and hooking her fingers up into her one at a time. The other girl joined in, stealing kisses and all the extra room inside the girl's feverish body.

They took their time walking back to the dorms, pretending nothing had happened as they talked about the high cost of wedding dresses. They stopped for ice-cream. Sabine had a lemon popsicle that leaked onto her hands. She sucked her fingers, enjoying the salty-sweetness of sugarcane mixed together with the taste of a woman. They passed by a police officer directing traffic. She imagined him arresting them all for indecency, interrogating them, making them re-enact what they'd done in front of him while he stroked his mustache.

Sabine yearned to be just like the pretty, redhaired whore, but had no money for lacey lingerie. As spring turned into summer, she stopped wearing underclothes altogether. She got permission to leave campus during the daytime and visited a cherry orchard by herself. She met the owner, an alumnus of the school who could bring dead plants to life just by touching them. He showed her a weeping willow he'd planted in an isolated part of his property. She listened with waning interest until his soliloquy about fruit turned to how desperate he was to whip her fat ass raw and red. She let him take off her school-sanctioned pinafore, polo, underwear—everything, until there was nothing left. His fingers slipped inside her with ease. He was big and burly, his fingers like sausages. When he pulled down his trousers, his penis pointed right at her, extending far beyond the reach of his beer belly. She turned towards the tree, bent over and jiggled her whole body, crying out when he thrust himself all the way inside her on the first try. When it was over—after he'd lain her down against his leg and spanked her with his rawhide belt, jammed his dick against the back of her mouth and came down her throat in sudsy spurts that made her head tilt back—he asked if they could get married.

The idea of being stuck with the farmer and no one else made Sabine's stomach sour. She lied to the him, saying that she already had someone. He kissed her goodbye, the light sweetness of which made her recoil inside. Alone, she looked down at her pinafore, muddy and sad-looking. She stole a dress from the clothesline. It was satiny and short with a too-tight bodice that pressed her breasts upward like a squeeze bottle.

Sabine took a lesser-traveled side street back to campus, her new dress showing off the rise of her freshly-spanked ass. On her way back, she spotted a woman who recruited girls for the special whore houses. The woman came around often, always on the look-out for abs girls. Once she saw her and Dave smoking together, but thought nothing of it.

Normally, the woman dressed up like an office drone. Today was no different. Only this time, she'd stripped off her blazer. Her bra's cheetah print bled through her chemise. She looked young. Approachable.

"I want to work for you," Sabine heard herself say. "What's your name?"

The woman's lips made an o when she told Sabine her name: Oona. She had bush-baby eyes and breasts like the woman in the video. Her hair was also red, though the shade was more auburn than ginger, and her freckled skin was deep brown. Sabine's heart raced. She imagined the farmer stripping Oona down and tying her to one of his fruit trees. She wanted to bite into the woman's hardened nipples like two pitted cherries, tasting the sweetness she bore.

Oona gave her a business card with a number to call. The following week, after the administration approved Sabine's moving request, she packed up her few possessions into garbage bags. She left for Plaisir's in a chauffeured Oldsmobile the color of sunshine. Oona rode next to her in the back, her smooth legs brushing up against her, her breasts vibrating underneath the cotton fabric of her dress. An unnamed heaviness took flight in Sabine's chest. She almost missed seeing Dave waving at her from the main building's door, yelling something she couldn't hear.

"You know him?" Oona asked.

"No. He's just this guy in my class."

"Good. Clingy men are the worst. I need a long break from them."

An awkward silence settled over them. Sabine asked if how many men Oona serviced in a day. Oona yawned. She explained that she'd been made the new madame and didn't have to clients anymore. Management had wanted her to stay a whore past thirty, but she claimed to be a better businessperson than the old pimp who'd founded Plaisir.

"It's a shame," Sabine heard herself say. "I bet many men miss you."

Sabine didn't mean to flirt—at least, that's what she told herself. She only wanted to impress her new boss. At first, Oona probably didn't mean to flirt either when she told Sabine to stand up and undress, pulling out a measuring tape from her purse. Sabine did what she was told even though there were people near the windows who could see in. She shivered when one of the tape's cold metal ends grazed her nipple. The driver's eyes stayed trained on the road ahead.

"You have a pretty face," Oona said as she repacked her purse. "Pretty face, small tits and a real big ass. Unique. I knew I found a treasure when I caught you. Gosh, you're cute. Hey, I didn't tell you to sit yet. You're going to need to follow directions if you want to work for me."

Sabine had to put her hands on either side of Oona to keep herself upright. At a red light, Oona started using her hands to survey Sabine's curves. Something kept drawing her back to Sabine's ass. The car lurched forward and Sabine fell into Oona's lap. Oona's breath deepened. Her hands crept up between Sabine's leg. Sabine closed her eyes. She heard someone mewl, either herself or Oona.

"D'you know why what I do's better than hooking?" Oona whispered.

"Why?"

"'Cause I get to reel in pretty girls. Clients always want the type that's down for anything, and I'm better at finding them than men."

Oona bit one of Sabine's nipples so hard that Sabine cried out.

"So cute," Oona said. "I'm gonna dress you up in bows and pearls. Then you can be the baby doll I always wanted growing up. How 'bout that?"

"We probably shouldn't be doing this. Please, I don't want to get in trouble. It's illegal."

"The driver doesn't care."

"What if he has to report back to someone?"

"Then I'll say that I was training you. Or that I'm testing your product." She kissed Sabine twice on the lips, first lightly and then deeper, slipping her tongue into Sabine's pink mouth before drawing away. Her crimson lipstick was smeared. She left a bittersweet chemical flavor percolating on Sabine's lips. "I used to have to test out medical equipment in my other life, you know."

"What made you decide to work for, well—I mean—what made you change jobs?"

"I wanted to be patriotic when I was your age. Prove myself to people who'd never like me, abs and normal. My ability is healing small wounds, so I got to work overseas as a nurse during the war. People kept telling me I could help out even more with my body. I didn't know what they meant until someone told me. I was so eighteen. I couldn't even look a man in the eyes and thought that people hating your skin meant they'd never wanna touch it."

Sabine nodded.

"The program was supposed to be classified but everyone knows. You'd think it'd end the violence—make love, not war or whatever. We had every shape and color of girl you could imagine. They moved us around, so I've been with every type of man there is. Even the worst ones." Oona's eyes dimmed. "Earned five times as much as I was making as a nurse, though."

Sabine reached out for Oona's hand. Her nails turned redder than her flushed face.

"What a beautiful ability," Oona said.

Sabine closed her eyes and let Oona kiss her all over.

#

Sabine saw Dave in the stairwell again. She'd just come back from the manager's place. Dave was quiet when she stared him down. She wished he'd just say something, anything. By now, her nails looked as if they'd been soaking in blood. His face was flat, devoid of any expression. She waited for him to finish climbing the stairs. Sabine spoke to him as a test—of what, she wasn't quite sure yet.

"I got your letter," she said. "I think you're pretty stuck up, to be honest. Telling people what to do and all. People should mind their own business."

He exhaled. "Look, I'm not trying to be sanctimonious. I—"

"Well you are and—"

"—I just know about the trade and Oona Miller. Look, it's a bad scene. Okay? You shouldn't sell yourself like that."

"How the hell do you know Oona?"

He shook his head. "It's a long story, but I met her right before you left. We had a brief relationship—a real one. I loved her. She got pregnant, and I really wanted to keep my child and told her to quit, but she didn't want to. Said it was illegal and then got a back-alley abortion." He laughed. "Can you believe it?"