Sixty and Screwed

The shift ended at 6:40 in the morning. Nine minutes late, because Mrs. Baker on the fourth floor decided she didn't want to go to the hospital after all, and arguing with her took longer than carrying her down the stairs.

I clocked out. Shane was already at the punch board, signing the overtime sheet with his awful handwriting.

"Renee," he said, not looking up. "Happy birthday."

"Is it already?"

"Sixty-five. Big one." He capped the pen. "You got plans?"

"Drink a box of wine and go to bed."

"At seven in the morning?"

"That's the plan, yeah."

He laughed at me. Fifteen years working the same rig with this man and he still laughs at me. "Fine. But you better come to the station thing Friday. We're getting you a cake."

"You're getting me a cake."

"A big one."

Fine. I drove home in my own car, which is a ten-year-old Subaru with a crack in the dash, and the sun was coming up over the bay the way it does, all orange and showy, like the city knows it looks good.

My apartment is on the third floor of a building on Division Street. Two rooms, a kitchenette, a window that faces a wall. I've been there twenty-two years and I could find the light switch blind, which is good, because I usually come home blind.

I put my key in the lock and it turned before I finished pushing it in.

Unlocked. I hadn't left it unlocked. Twenty-two years of coming home dead on my feet and I have never once left that door unlocked.

So I did the stupid thing we all do. I opened the door anyway and walked in.

There was a woman sitting on my couch. She had silver hair cut short and she was holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and a metallic silver case the size of a briefcase in her lap. She looked up at me like she'd been caught doing something she absolutely intended to keep doing.

"Happy birthday," Christine Paulson said.

I put my bag down slowly. "How did you get in my apartment?"

"Darrin let me in."

"Darrin let you in."

"I asked nicely." She stood up. Sixty-four years old and she still stands up like she's about to give a keynote. "I texted you."

"I was working. You know I was working. You've known my schedule for forty years."

"Well. Happy birthday anyway." She held out the champagne.

Christine and I dated when we were twenty-two and twenty-three. Two years. It ended fine, no drama, we just wanted different things at twenty-four, and we stayed friends, the real kind, the kind where you can go eight months without talking and then she shows up in your living room at seven in the morning. She went and built tech. Built a company. Sold a company. Built another one. I went and drove an ambulance. We never once slept together again and I think about that maybe once a year.

"What's in the case?" I said.

"Can I say happy birthday first?"

"You broke into my apartment. Say it fast."

"Happy birthday." She sat the case on my coffee table and popped the latches. "Sixty-five. You look fantastic, by the way. Have you eaten?"

"Coffee. What's in the case?"

She lifted the lid.

Inside, folded up like a wetsuit, was some kind of garment. Dark gray. Matte. It had a collar of little gold contacts and thin lines running through the fabric like circuitry. It looked expensive and slightly sinister.

"So," she said, in the voice she uses right before she wants something. "You've heard about pleasure-tech."

"I've heard about it. I don't love it."

"Everyone says that and then everyone uses it."

"I'm not everyone. I'm a sixty-five-year-old woman with a box of wine and a plan to sleep until three."

"This is the Synesthetic Suit." She picked it up and it moved like real fabric, heavy and soft. "Full-body haptic garment. Reads your nervous system, maps your responses, and then generates sensation. Touch. Pressure. Temperature. All of it synthetic, all of it safe, all of it dialed exactly to what your body likes."

"Sounds like a sex toy."

"It is absolutely a sex toy." She grinned. She has a good grin. Always did. "But it's also a medical device, technically, which is why I can say words like dialed and calibration in public. It's legal. It's pending final certification, which is why you're getting a prototype and not a retail box."

"Why am I getting anything?"

"Because it's your birthday."

"Chris."

"And because I wanted to see you," she said it plainly. She always could say things plainly, that was always the difference between us. "You've been dodging my calls since March."

"I've been working."

"Since March."

I got a coffee going. She watched me do it. My kitchenette is six feet of counter and she still managed to lean on it elegantly.

"You know who uses this?" I said, back to her. "Twenty-year-olds with more money than sense."

"You know who the tech actually works best on?" she said. "People our age. Nerve sensitivity drops with age. The suit compensates. It amplifies. It can give you sensation your body hasn't managed on its own in a decade."

"That is a horrifying sentence."

"Thank you."

"Chris, I'm sixty-five. I just worked fourteen hours. I pulled a woman with a broken hip down four flights at six a.m."

"And you're going to drink your box of wine and sleep and wake up one day older and do the whole thing again." She came over and stood next to me while my coffee dripped. Close. Not too close. "Renee. I built this thing. Two hundred people worked on it. And the first person I wanted to put it on is you. Not a tester. Not an investor. You."

"Why me?"

"Because you'll tell me the truth. You've always told me the truth. Even when it was mean."

"It was never mean."

"It was a little mean."

I drank my coffee. She let me drink it. That's another thing about her. She knows when to shut up, which she learned from me, back when.

"The champagne's good," she offered. "It's not expensive, it's just good."

"The suit. What does it actually do, in normal words?"

"Normal words." She thought about it. "It's a second skin. It listens to you. You feel everything. Someone touches your arm, it feels like a touch on your arm. More than that, it can make you feel things that aren't happening at all. And it learns what you like."

"Learning what I like sounds like a privacy nightmare."

"It is a privacy nightmare. Legal is working on it. Darrin let me into your building because I promised him you'd say yes."

"Darrin Barclay, my super, let a tech millionaire into my apartment."

"He's very proud."

I looked at the case on my coffee table. Gray suit. Gold contacts. Sixty-five years old. I've broken up more bar fights than I can count. I've delivered two babies in the field. I once did chest compressions on a man in a burning elevator. I am not easily impressed and I am not easily talked into things.

But it was my birthday. And she was standing in my kitchen at seven in the morning looking at me like I was still twenty-two, and that's not nothing.

"If I put this thing on," I said, "it's a test run. That's all. You sit in that chair and you watch and you take notes and nothing weird happens."

"Absolutely nothing weird happens," Christine said, and her grin came back, and honestly I should have known right then.

I took the suit out of the case. It was heavier than it looked. Warm, somehow, like it had been sitting in the sun.

"Bathroom," I said.

"Door open or closed?"

"Closed. Obviously closed."

"Your funeral," she said cheerfully, and went to go open the champagne at seven-forty in the morning, which told me everything about how the rest of this day was going to go.

The suit went on easier than I expected. You step into it like footed pajamas, then it does the rest. Some motor somewhere hummed and the whole thing pulled itself snug against me, head to ankle, like being measured by a very thorough tailor.

"Okay," I called through the door. "I'm in it. It's gripping me. Should it be gripping me?"

"That's the fitting phase. Stand still."

I stood still. The suit tightened, released, tightened again. Down my spine, along my ribs, around each finger individually, which was the strangest part. Ten tiny hands checking my ten fingers.

Then it stopped. And I stood in my bathroom in a gray second skin feeling like a very expensive sausage.

"So?" she said, when I came out.

"So I look ridiculous."

"You look like an astronaut." She had her tablet out, the champagne glass sitting on my coffee table next to the case. She'd poured one for me too. I picked it up. You've got to hand it to her, she thinks about these things.

"Sit down. Arms off the armrests. This is the calibration."

I sat. She tapped something.

The jolt went straight through the suit and landed on my clit like a warm hand. I gasped. Loud. Then I laughed, because what else do you do at seven forty-five in the morning on your birthday.

"Chris! There's no warning on that?"

"There's a warning. It says calibration may cause acute sensation."

"That is not a warning, that's a threat."

She was laughing at me. I let her. My heart was still doing about double time and the spot where it had hit was warm and gone, like a kiss on the cheek from someone you thought had left the room.

"Again?" she said.

"Absolutely again."

She tapped. This time it was slower. A pressure, rolling, starting low and moving up through my hips. I put my head back against the chair.

"Oh," I said. "Oh, that's. Hm."

"Hm?"

"That's cheating. That's what that is."

"Renee. It's a machine. It's not cheating."

"It's doing in eight seconds what took me twenty minutes and a whole routine when I was fifty."

"Then twenty minutes was wasted on you," she said, and tapped the tablet again.

The sensation changed to a pulse. Quick, shallow, rhythmic. My hips actually moved, which was embarrassing, and I grabbed the arms of the chair and made myself sit still while the thing worked me over. The suit learned while it did it. I could feel it adjusting. A little to the left. A little harder. A little harder than that, thank you very much.

"How's the mapping?" I managed.

"Good. Strong responses. Consistent." She was typing with her thumb, not even looking at me. That was somehow worse. Forty years ago she used to read manuals in bed the same way, one hand busy, not even looking up.

"You could at least pretend this is difficult for you too."

"It's not on me yet."

"That's what I'm saying. Put it on and get in the chair, we'll see how consistent you are."

She put the tablet down. She looked at me over her champagne.

"That an invitation?"

"It's a test protocol. Partner mode or whatever you called it. You said it does partner stuff. Prove it."

"Renee." She set her glass down next to mine. "I've been trying to get you on the phone since March. I'm not going to misread this."

"Chris. I'm sixty-five today. I worked all night. If I'm misreading something, I'm too tired to care which direction." I did look at her then, properly, for the first time since she'd sat down on my couch with that silver case like a traveling salesman. Silver hair. Same jaw. Same way of standing like the floor was a conference stage. "Get in the suit."

She stood. She took her time about it, of course. Blazer off, folded over my kitchen chair. Shirt, folded. She talked the whole time, which she does when she's showing off.

"Prototype runs on its own power for six hours. Partner mode syncs two units within thirty feet. Sensation transmits both directions, or one direction if you set it that way."

"Less manual. More shirt."

"The shirt is part of the demonstration."

It was not, but I let her have it. Then the suit, and it pulled itself onto her the same way, and there she was, sixty-four years old, gray all over and not a bit of it apologetic, standing in my living room in a gray second skin. My apartment has two rooms. There's nowhere to hide and she'd never needed anywhere to hide anyway.

"Tablet," she said. I handed it over. She sat next to me on the couch, close, our shoulders touching through the haptic fabric, and I could feel the touch of her on my shoulder even before anything was switched on. Or I told myself I could.

"Partner mode," she said, and swiped, and everything got very quiet in the suit.

Then I felt her.

Not on my shoulder. Everywhere the suit covered, a light pressure, moving, like a hand traveling. It was her hand, somewhere, resting on her own thigh, and the suit was telling me