Noemie walked briskly along the sidewalk. The rain had stopped an hour ago, but the street was still wet. The empty storefronts and fallen garbage cans echoed the click-clack-scrap of her heels striking against the concrete, and the thwick-thwok of her boots picking up the dew that stuck to warm streets on cold nights. She tightened her coat with one hand and held a cigarette in the other, throwing a glance behind her before crossing the street.

Noemie had left her apartment six minutes back after receiving a beep from her best client. She couldn’t be late. She wouldn’t be late. She was Noemie: she was never late, and that was why she was still in business.

There were very few cars out, very few people. The wet streets were eerie in their emptiness, but that didn’t stop her from coming to a halt at the corner of Chestnut and 18th. She let the red light wash over her, blanketing her chills. No matter how often she did it, she wasn’t used to being out so late.

–

There was no curfew. There’d never been a curfew. Things hadn’t reached that point, and they never would — it wasn’t Communist China, for God’s sake. Two years ago, in 2064, a fatal strain of the chicken pox erupted in a fresh metropolis just south of the Illinois border, New Chicago, they’d called it—the town, not the illness. With all the business that took place on trading floors and in seedy hotels, the disease spread quickly, leaving piles of death in its wake.

After the tragedy in New Chicago, the Federales jumped to action. Informational posters and digital displays popped up overnight as the government warned the people about the dangers of touching, for this was a disease that spread upon contact. The government took over, enforcing martial law in every capital, issuing long johns and long sleeves for every person old enough to reach for another. Mothers stopped breastfeeding and kept to formula and glass battles. Subways emptied in favor of more private modes of transportation. Anything to keep from the temptation of physical interaction. If you did the touching, if you let yourself be touched, you became a danger to your fellow man.

But of course, there will always be those who think they’re above it all. Those who don’t heed the warning. Even before the initial threat passed, teenagers held parties in basement apartments, lovers sat together on park benches in protest. Where there was a gathering, there was disease, and the Federales always knew.

–

Noemie, half a block away from 13th, took a sharp turn down the dimly lit alley. Against a wall near the dumpsters belonging to an out-of-practice massage parlor leaned a man of sixty-five. This was her most consistent customer. Edward Merricous, a private practice opthamologist, husband of Aurora, father to Andrea.

Edward passed Noemie a fat dark blue envelope. She peeled it open and began to count the cash inside. Edward prepared himself as he waited.

“That was a vicious storm earlier, wasn’t it?” he asked, taking off his overcoat and folding it over the Dumpster’s handle.

“Mmm,” agreed Noemie.

He loosened the knot of his tie, swinging it over his head.

Noemie pocketed her payment. It was all there. Edward’s practice hadn’t been affected by the New Pox policies. People still needed to see things.

“The date of your last test?” she asked him.

“This Tuesday past, my dear. As soon as the results cleared, I sent for you.” Edward unbuttoned his crisp white Oxford, revealing an undershirt that was dingy in the way all undershirts eventually were. Noemie did not look away.

“And how is your wife?” she asked.

Edward considered her question, then gave a single shake of his head. He was now Edward Merricous, a private practice opthamologist, husband to no one and father of Andrea.

Noemie took her coat and tossed it over Edward’s. She stomped her feet and rubbed her hands together fast enough to start a fire under the right conditions.

Edward’s cheeks burned pink beneath the moonlight and he closed his eyes, thinking, perhaps, that she wasn’t Noemie, maybe she would become Aurora.

He remembered a time, before the sickness, when Aurora would sing as she made oatmeal for their daughter on cold mornings. A slow and lilting song about birds on windowsills and hands brushing hair. Her hair was so black, so knotted and curled. Nothing came close. He could still feel her lips, before they grew spots, the goodness of them on his knuckles and his palms when he wrapped his arms around her top and told her that even if nothing would ever be right again, they’d still survive. They’d make it.

Noemie stepped in and wrapped her arms around his middle, tentative at first, and she moved her hands over his back. She moved up to his shoulders, holding him tight, keeping him close. The most effective way to handle her clients, she learned early on, was to have as much skin on skin as the situation allowed. The act itself, the hug, it mattered, but it was the electric shock of feeling another person’s blood pumping through their system, the warmth of their veins and their guts and their matter. That was what the people missed. The knowledge that they weren’t surrounded by cyborgs, that others felt the way they did in the most important way. They felt warm, and rough, and spongy, and soft, and hairy, and fat, and goddamnit they smelled, whether bad or good it didn’t matter, so long as they smelled alive.

She began to hum.

“It’s okay,” her hum told Edward, “rest your head here.”

And he did. He hugged her back. And she hugged harder. They rocked a bit from the weight of it. They rocked and Noemie hummed and they hugged in the shadows of their rotten world.

This was Noemie’s job. This was the task she’d set for herself. This was the need she filled.

There hadn’t been a report of New Pox since August, but it was December of 2066, and no one felt much like touching anymore. It wasn’t worth the risk.

But it was an itch that couldn’t be ignored, those times when it arose, and Noemie scratched for you.

The year is 2066. Physical contact has been outlawed. Hug dealers tenderly embrace clients in the dead of night and shady people hold hands in dark streets. This is the world in which we attempt to live.