A Personal Touch

The first thing Noemi ever asked me was, “Is it true that the way musicians hold their instruments is the same way they hold their lovers during sex?”

I was riding a post-performance high, my arms sweaty under my shirtsleeves, her hand’s sociable grip on my elbow pleasantly firm.

I blushed, bit my lip. Her perfume had notes of aniseed.

“I like to feel revered,” Noemi said. “Worshipped. And you really looked like you revered the fuck out of that double bass.”

I knew who she was, of course: the head engineer. This fancy reception that had paid my trio twice our top gig rate—this was the launch party for a product line of smart sensory cooking appliances. The product strapline was A personal touch. Her spoons, bowls and spatulas (along with a variety of other things I couldn’t even name) were designed with sensors that communicated the taste, temperature, and mouthfeel of ingredients directly into the brain of any cook with appropriate training and neural implants. And Noemi, in her 1950s style flared red dress, she was the inventor.

To get out of the party we had to elbow our way through a protest outside: red-faced men and prim women with placards along the lines of Stop Implanting Evil and Real Women Cook.

Noemi took me home. While I nibbled her neck, enjoying her moans, a robotic kitchen contraption produced and held out two margaritas, salt and condensation glittering. She lay back on a chaise longue, which adjusted the fit of its cushions around our bodies, so I could caress her inside thighs with my tongue. She tilted back her face and the lights dimmed to a low red.

†

While she liked to be revered, I liked to experience sex as a process of study, of excelling at pleasing her. This suited her just fine. 

Sometimes Noemi wanted the responsiveness of slow, ad-lib tempo. Other times, the sure rhythm of a walking bass, or the rapid flicks of a solo.

I was a good student; she rewarded my successes.

I started bringing my instrument over to her place overnight. In the morning I would do my scales and arpeggios and she would watch, while also cooking us breakfast—robotic arms gently folding batter, flipping crepes, spreading a chocolate cream with a touch of salt. 

She studied my fingers: the muscle, the sensitivity, the callus. She asked if she could attach sensors while I played. 

†

I was two days into an international tour when Noemi was attacked. News articles were frustratingly vague on the details, but the attacker had written a manifesto, pouring vitriol over what they called her unnatural life: she was trans, she had a variety of implants, and, worst of all for some reason, she had invented cooking appliances with a sense of taste.

She was in hospital. Paralysed, but alive.

“I’m coming back,” I texted her.

“Please don’t. I’d rather see the livestreams of your shows. I am OK and I have people around me.”

The shows really were going well. Besides, we had been hooking up, not courting. Noemi did have people around her, and if she did not want to see me, she would not. She had always been in charge. 

I sent her flowers.

†

Two months later, back in town, I texted her again. 

“I’m sorry. I hate commiserations and I don’t think I’m ready to see you yet. Give me a couple months,” she replied. 

She had never apologised for anything to me before, so this apology stung more than the refusal.

†

Another few weeks, and my conscience would not let me wait any longer. I went to her home.

No answer when I rang the bell. I tried a few times, then sat on the front step.

I was about ready to leave when the door swung open.

The hallway smelled of aniseed, faintly, but also of soldering.

“I’ve missed you,” Noemi said, voice weaker, but unmistakably her.

“And I’ve missed you.”

Where once the chaise longue had pride of place in the living room, she now half-sat, half-lay in a contraption of wires and tubes. Her limbs were still.  Her chest rose and fell in sync with the lentisimo pulse of an oxygen tube at her nose. A robotic arm adjusted the pillow about her neck and… rearranged her curls? The top of her head was covered by some humming device, but her eyes twinkled at me. 

We talked. She asked about my shows on tour, picking apart what she remembered of the livestreams, praising my solos on “Honeysuckle Rose.”

“How are you?” I asked.

“Let me show you what I’m working on.” Noemi pointed, with the direction of her gaze, at her arm. Below the elbow it was wrapped in a translucent, glittering material I recognized from her sensory implements. “I’m learning to feel again.”

“If anyone can do this, it’s you.”

She smiled at that.

“Speaking of…” I said. “I’ve somewhat neglected my duties at your altar. Is that something you’d like?”

I took a few steps toward her. Knelt. Reached my hand out towards her hand, the one wrapped in sensors—and waited, the good student that I was, for a sign that this worship would be acceptable. But she frowned. I withdrew my hand.

“It doesn’t work properly yet. I won’t feel your touch. It’s probably months of work for me, before I do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Enough commiserating. I’m alive, damnit,” she said. “Fancy a margarita? My sense of taste’s gone to shit. But…”

“Oh,” I said.

“Exactly.”

While Noemi prepped us the drinks using her kitchen robotics, I followed her instructions to get a smart spoon out of a drawer. She could’ve done this with the robotics, too, but it made me feel useful. 

The spoon made a little chime when it made its wireless connection to her. 

I held the drinking straw to her lips, and tipped the spoon into the drink when she sipped, trying to match the position of the sensor approximately to the end of her straw. Then I grazed the spoon’s sensor over the salted rim of the glass until the salt whispered back with a crunch.

“Mmm,” she said. “You’re good at this.”

I swigged my own drink, met her eyes, and held up the spoon in front of my face.

“What if—” we both said in unison, then laughed. 

I licked my own thumb and—all the while holding her twinkling, fascinated eyes—ran my thumb over the sensor part of the spoon.

“How’s that?”

“If anyone can do this, it’s you.”

I brought the spoon to my lips, gliding the tip of my tongue over the sensor coating. This time she made a tiny moan and bit her lip.

Behind me,the kitchen robotics whirred. A bot arm proffered a tray. It held a whole set of sensory spoons, whisks and a spatula.

“You’ve got a whole lot more to learn,” she said.

And learn I did. 

© 2024 Anya Markov 

About the Author
Anya Markov lives in London and occasionally moonlights as a jazz musician (flute, though, not double bass). Anya’s stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Luminescent Machinations, and Grist’s Imagine2200 clifi series.