Alyx777: Dang! You got Daisy to notice something other than her follow count?
Edwinner: Haha yes! But now I feel really weird. Do you want to hang out in a couple of hours and watch the new episode of Fae Killers?
Alyx777: YASSSSSS luv u!
Talking to Alyx always made Edwina feel better. Maybe her job arranging appointments to revamp people’s faces was bizarre, but it was practically mundane compared to Alyx making tax payment apps into loveable personalities on WimWam. Edwina sent some music to her earbuds and wiped more coin into her streaming account so they could watch Fae Killers uninterrupted.
By the time she returned to work after the long Memorial Day weekend, Edwina had chalked up the window incident to exhaustion and put it out of her mind. The wildfire smoke had cleared briefly, and Jupiter rose like the business end of a bright laser pointer in the sky over Whole Foods.
She blinked up two windows. In one, she stacked the week’s appointments, and in the other she chatted with Alyx. They were excited about a new marketing campaign where the nannyshare app Babyfren came out as a Fae Killers superfan. In Babyfren persona, Alyx posted a video about how all infants secretly want Fae Killers’ naughty shape-shifter Puck to be their daddy. It instantly sucked up a thousand new Babyfren subscribers in San Francisco alone. Edwina had to admit the video was pretty hilarious, especially when the infant drew a big circle around Puck’s “tight fae butt.” Idly, Edwina wondered if Babyfren got a kickback from Fae Killers, or if maybe Memegen represented Fae Killers too. She was about to ask Alyx when a dark silhouette blocked Jupiter’s light.
It was the skinless woman again, raw face like a popped blister around her pus-slicked smile. “Hello,” she mouthed silently to Edwina, pressing her hand to the windowpane farthest from the front desk. She spread her fingers wide, trailing them behind her along the glass as she walked. Nothing cracked in her wake. The apparition paused in front of Edwina and rubbed both palms over the window as if washing it, but she left swirls of thick mud behind instead of soap. This time, Edwina didn’t pull up the alarm, and she didn’t scream. The woman swayed, almost dancing as she drew great arcs of wet brown curds over a display of snail masks. Just as the stuff blocked Edwina’s view of the Whole Foods parking lot, a smell hit her.
Anyone who rode the BART train in San Francisco knew it. People dug communal cesspits in the tunnels. Apparently using them was better than getting chipped and monitored at the city’s homeless facilities. And now the whole waiting room, with its clean white walls and spotless bottles of cream, was permeated by the unmistakable, heavy reek of day-old human shit.
Edwina’s eyes started to water. Only the most intense odors from the street could overpower the atomizer that perpetually emitted Skin Seraph’s aromatherapy mist. This had to be real. Should she call somebody? The woman grinned at her again, distorting the arrangement of blood vessels in her neck, and completed her work with a flourish of excrement in the shape of a blooming flower. And then, just like last time, she winked out.
“What… the… fuck?” It was Daisy’s voice behind her.
Edwina jumped. “What? What is it?”
Daisy had dyed one ringlet sparkly gold and wore two jeweled nourishment patches under each eye. “Is that… shit smeared all over the windows?”
Two women in spa robes and revitalization socks padded into the front room behind Daisy. “Oh my god!” one of them cried, putting a hand to her mouth and dislodging the depilation caterpillar on her upper lip. The other woman’s face was still wrapped tightly in quick-heal bandages and she couldn’t say anything. Instead, her eyes widened and she made a mewing noise in her throat. Then the bandages over her mouth went puffy and gray as ribbons of vomit slid down her neck. She ripped the bandages off, revealing a sticky red chin and an even more disgusting smell as she dripped onto the floor.
“Mrs. Landsdale!” Daisy screamed. “You can’t take those off!” She raced to help her client, grabbing a handful of soothing wipes from the counter and pulling the still-gagging woman into the back. “Ms. Desai, why don’t you lie down again in the garden suite while my colleague cleans up?” She shot a meaningful look at Edwina over her shoulder.
“It’s that hobo who begs in front of Whole Foods, isn’t it?” Ms. Desai asked conversationally as Daisy and Mrs. Landsdale disappeared into a treatment room. “I don’t know why they let her sit there. It’s private property.”
Edwina had finally processed what was happening. The woman was real. The shit was real. A woman had just vomited on the floor. And now she was going to have to be nice to a client while she cleaned everything up.
“I don’t know who it was. She didn’t look homeless.” The words felt algorithmically generated by her mouth as she looked for cleaning supplies under the front desk.
Ms. Desai leaned on the counter, readjusting the caterpillar over her upper lip. “You should report her to the police. You guys have a security camera out there, right? Just take a screenshot from it and make a report. That’s what my neighbor did when people kept stealing her Amazon packages, and they caught the guys. If the police have a face, they can find people anywhere.”
Edwina hefted the motorized window washer in one hand, its plastic tank sloshing with Clorox-spiked fluid, and looped the hose over her shoulder. She could plug it in outside. “Well, I have to do some cleaning, Ms. Desai. If you go back to the garden suite, I’m sure Daisy will be right with you.”
She didn’t bother to wish Ms. Desai a nice evening.
Soapy water cascaded over the glass, and Edwina used the hose to chase wafers of caked excrement into the gutter. As she followed the edges of the shit flower with needles of spray, Edwina realized that Ms. Desai had a point. She could review security footage and figure out what she’d actually seen. At least, once she was done here. Edwina sighed and wished Skin Seraph’s protective gloves didn’t cost twenty dollar each. It would come out of her paycheck.
The windows still looked spotty when Mrs. Landsdale walked through the lobby with Ms. Desai. Both were dressed in those yoga pants that transformed from opaque fabric into mesh netting when exposed to perspiration. Mrs. Landsdale’s bandages were newly applied. Daisy had given both women free youth-restoration elixir gift packages, gently strobing with luminescent jellyfish protein in their frosted bottles.
“My skin may never recover from that,” Mrs. Landsdale said in a voice that was meant to be overheard. “I could have been seriously injured.”
Ms. Desai shot Edwina a sympathetic look. “I hope you catch her. It’s horrifying what those people think they can do.”
They drifted outside, discussing whether to hire a rideshare or walk up the hill to their neighborhood.
As they passed out of earshot, Edwina caught Mrs. Landsdale’s parting salvo. “Did that girl just sit there while a hobo destroyed her shop?” she asked with exaggerated incomprehension. “Why didn’t she do anything? Is she profoundly basic? I’m never going to that place again.”
“Same,” said Ms. Desai. “We can always go to Nature’s Blessing in the Marina.”
Edwina made sure she’d sprayed every fleck of ordure off the windows before returning inside to start the shutdown routine. Daisy was still banging around in back, so she walked to the garden suite to check on her. Daisy was kneeling next to the orchid display, carefully emptying several tiny trash containers into a scented plastic bag. She looked sweaty and her ringlets had wilted.