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Paula's back had been itching for a couple of days. It was a strange itch, deep, persistent; unlike any other itch she ever remembered having. It was almost verging on pain, the kind you get when there's a boil on your back. That's what it felt like, a boil. But when she twisted her arm back and managed to just brush her fingertips at the edge of the spot she could tell there was nothing there.

  Most of the time she didn't think about the itch, but occasionally it intruded into her consciousness. She felt it, suddenly, in the middle of a meeting at school, when the weenie from the staff association added six items to the agenda; she wiggled until she thought she could get at it with the corner of her chair, but she suddenly realized several people were staring at her. So she put it out of her mind. The next morning she tried to see it in the mirror, but no matter how she twisted she couldn't see anything but unblemished skin. In the shower she tried to scrub it with the loofah, but the loofah seemed to be getting caught on something – and anyway scrubbing didn't help, so she just backed into the hot water and forgot about the itch, again.

  Now, lying in bed in the gray morning light, with Janet's warm breasts against her back and Janet's warm breath against her neck, Paula became aware that she could feel the itch again. This was perfect – Janet could scratch it for her. She reached a hand back and gently squeezed Janet's hip. "Janet." Janet hmmed. Paula shook the hip a little. "Janet," she said, a little louder, "can you scratch my back? It's been itching for days and I just can't reach it." Janet kissed Paula's back and then, lazily, propped her head up on her fist.

  "Okay, honey bun. Where is it?"

  Paula twisted her arm back and gestured toward the spot. "Kind of there. Give it a try, and I'll tell you when you get it." Janet started gently scratching and Paula directed her. "No, more to the left. No, my left. That's right. Almost there. A little higher. Higher. High –
yes, right there.
Is there something there?"

  Janet paused and then scratched again. "Nope. Nothing."

  "Scratch harder."

  Janet scratched. "It feels funny."

  "What do you mean 'funny'?"

  "Well, kind of elastic, or something. Like I feel like I could push it in a little bit." Janet stopped scratching, and probed a little. The skin was almost like rubber, giving gently. Janet gave a little cry.

  "What, Jan?"

  "I don't know, Paul. It's so weird, but it feels almost like . . . like my fingertip is being . . . pulled."

  Paula felt Janet pushing against her and then heard a kind of choking sound, as if Janet were struggling to swallow and breathe at the same time.

  "Paula." Janet's voice was strangely pitched.

  Paula was lying on her side, eyes closed but alert. "Yes?"

  "Paula." There was a strange pause. Paula became aware that Janet was, well, almost panting. She gave a half-laugh, and turned her head part way around to look at Janet.

  "Janet, what's the matter?"

  Janet leaned over. Paula could hear her breathing fast. "What's the matter, Jan? What is it, babe?"

  Janet inhaled, a great, ragged breath. "I don't know what's happening," she said, her voice wild, "this is too strange." She breathed again, deeply, deliberately. "Paula. One time, when I was in about grade five, I glued my eye shut."

Paula furrowed her eyebrows. What was Janet talking about?

  "I glued my upper and lower right eyelids together with epoxy by accident while building a model plane." Paula waited while Janet paused. "I remember what that felt like, and it was
not
like this," she whispered.

  "What is it, hon?" Paula asked, pushing down her impatience so her voice would come out calm and soothing.

  "Part of my fingernail's gone, it's sunk into your back, it's gone."

  Paula raised her eyebrows. Janet must be under more stress than she'd realized. What was she on about? Janet began to sob in a strangled way.

  "Paula, you're going to think I'm crazy, even I think I'm crazy." She stopped and took a deep breath. "Paula, what does this feel like to you?"

  Paula turned her head again. She shrugged. "I don't know. It feels fine. It doesn't really itch anymore. Maybe you could just stay there all day," she joked, and then laughed. The laugh died though; there was something about the quality of Janet's silence that was even more disturbing than the sobs had been. "Janet, what's wrong?" Still silence, except for a kind of bronchial rattling that must be Janet's breathing. Paula's voice rose. "What's wrong, babe?" No answer. "Come over here," she said, patting her side of the bed.

  Paula could feel Janet pushing against her back with her other hand. Finally Janet stopped pushing and spoke, and when she spoke it was as if through gritted teeth. "I can't." she said in a hoarse whisper. "I can't. I don't know how to explain this, but" – and then her voice rose into a wail like a tidal wave – "I'm stuck in your back, my finger's stuck and I can't get it out!" Then Janet panicked. By the time she stopped flailing around both she and Paula had scratches, Janet on her hand and arm and Paula all over her back – and one long one across her cheek and the bridge of her nose, which she got when she tried to turn and face Janet and caught a wild arm on a sideswipe.

  They put Janet's giant coat over both their shoulders, Paula poking her forefinger accidentally into Janet's nostril as she tried to grab the lapel; then they tried to get into the car. Eventually they managed. They would have felt like a lesbian Laurel and Hardy if they hadn't been so freaked out already.

  Paula drove them to Angie's office. Angie had been Paula's roommate when they were undergrads, and she had a thriving "woman-centered" medical practice. Paula and Janet had to sit in the waiting room, perched sideways on adjoining chairs, until some patient called in to cancel, and then Angie invited them in to the examining room. She started to make small talk but stopped when she noticed their strange clothes. She began to smile and then frowned when she saw Janet's finger stuck in Paula's back.

  First Angie tried to just pull it out. This didn't work. Then she braced herself against Paula's back and yanked, hard, on Janet's hand, causing Janet to roar in pain. Then Angie examined them more closely. She tried to probe with a Q-tip, but the Q-tip got stuck and then, when she tentatively pushed at it, was pulled in, slowly, like a twig in quicksand, and disappeared. This made Janet whimper, and Angie sat down hard in the visitor's chair and got deeply red in the face. Paula kept trying to turn around and see them, saying, "What? What? WHAT!"

  Finally Janet found her voice – a whispery, kind of choked version of her voice – "Oh Paul, you won't believe this, but Angie just pushed a Q-tip in there and it disappeared!" Paula rolled her eyes and looked over at Angie, tapping her temple and glancing meaningfully in Janet's direction – until she saw Angie's face. Angie looked like she'd just had an electrical shock. And she was shaking her head, slowly, as if trying to free herself of something.

They went home and tried to find a comfortable way to sit on the couch. Angie had said she'd do some research and call them, and to contact her if there was any change. In the meantime they had difficulty finding a way for Paula to pee, although it was no problem for Janet as long as Paula stood close enough, helped her push down her jeans, and ripped off the toilet paper for her. In the evening after they'd eaten – awkwardly, with Paula on Janet's lap, although Janet, bless her, said it was "kind of romantic" – Janet said that she could no longer see her fingernail at all. Paula felt Janet go rigid; then Janet shuddered, her whole body rippling as if a giant snake were flailing inside her. Finally, exhausted, they lay down together, in much the same spooning position in which they'd woken up. They lay stiffly, clutching hands, unable to sleep and somehow unable to talk to each other. They had no awareness of having fallen asleep until they woke up some time toward sunrise. Janet started to cry almost immediately, and shook Paula. "Paul," she whimpered, "Paul-A, my fingers, my fucking FINGERS!" When Paula got her calmed down enough to talk, Janet said that in her sleep, the two longest fingers, which had lain next to the disappearing forefinger at the spot, had been pulled in. All three forefingers were now inside. Paula began to feel queasy, and only wanted to get away and have some time to think about things, alone. This, of course, was the one thing she couldn't have.

  By late afternoon Janet's fingers had all disappeared, the veins on the back of her hand seemingly growing out of Paula's skin. Paula still didn't feel anything, except for Janet's terrible hot panting and tears against her neck. She smelled Janet's fearsweat; the whole house seemed filled with that smell now.

  Angie had phoned in the morning, sounding grim. Then she came by in the evening and looked at them; her face curled in disgust and she said they'd better try an X-ray. She drove them back to the office and they tried to take X-rays but somehow they couldn't get a good picture. Around the spot where Janet's wrist bones penetrated Paula's back there was simply no image. Angie looked pale in the empty office and offered to amputate Janet's hand at the wrist. Janet vomited right there onto the lead apron. Paula shook her head.

  That night, once again, they thought they wouldn't, but then they slept. This time though, the sleep came in small pockets, twenty or forty minutes at a time. Each time Janet woke up she cried and described for Paula the slim margin of hand that was missing that hadn't been missing before. She said she could feel the pull getting stronger now. By daylight it was up to her elbow and she couldn't stop sobbing; she was wracked by dry heaves and couldn't keep still. She had moments of panicked thrashing. She jerked Paula painfully as she flailed; her flesh, damp with fear-sweat, rubbing at the now-irritated skin of Paula's back. Paula desperately wanted her to be calm. She closed her eyes and imagined Janet in meditation, serene. It didn't help.

  Around noon Janet broke one of the fingers on her right hand during a hysterical fit in the hallway on the way to the toilet. Paula called Angie who came over and taped it up, feeding Janet samples of a sedative so she could sleep. Paula still didn't feel anything at all except a little relief that Janet would be quiet for a while. She was beginning to realize that if they survived this Janet might lose a limb, or part of one –
if
they survived. She found herself imagining what it could be like to lose Janet; she forced herself to put it out of her mind. The tension was making her sick to her stomach. More and more she felt like a giant bird of prey, some kind of bizarre vulture, only instead of a huge pair of wings she had the bigger part of a woman attached to her back. Far from being able to fly, she felt ponderous, weighed down, grounded.

  Janet slept through the night, but when she woke up she was jammed against Paula. Her speech still a little indistinct from the sedative, Janet told Paula that her shoulder was being sucked in, that the edges of the cotton jumper were starting to pull. She said that the more of her that was sucked in, the stronger the pull became. Over the course of the morning, as snow fell outside, Janet lost her shoulder and part of her left breast and she said her shoulder blades felt as if they had suction cups over them, or a wide flat vacuum cleaner. Paula's heart pounded against her ribs; she could hear the flat pain in Janet's voice, the dull agony. She suddenly felt panicky; she was trapped by Janet's body, Janet's sweaty skin pressed against her back and legs. Paula closed her eyes and pressed the panic down.

  They were deeply regretting not having let Angie amputate, but it was definitely too late now. Paula felt alternately guilty, because she wasn't the one who was being sucked away (although who knew what would happen when Janet's whole body was gone), and disgusted, by the feeling of Janet's lump of a body attached to her. And then guilty again, for feeling disgusted. Did Siamese twins feel this way? Paula squeezed her eyes shut and felt every inch of Janet's twisted body pressed against her, wanting to preserve the feeling in her mind.

  Late that night, with Janet's chin so hard up against Paula's back that her jawbone felt painfully like a vise against Paula's shoulder blade, Angie showed up with a van from the hospital; they were bundled into the back of it by two very large orderlies. It was weird, but it didn't occur to either Paula or Janet to ask what was happening. They were still thinking about how to survive through the next heartbeats, each in her own way.

  They didn't go to a city hospital, but rather to some kind of base or installation out on the north shore. Once inside, they were examined by a number of people in white lab coats who poked, probed, and asked lots of questions in strange monotone clipboard voices. By the time the examinations and tests were finished, Janet's lower jaw was immobilized. They were given a sedative and immediately began to feel powerfully sleepy. Janet said, "Aula, I ove ou," which squeezed Paula's heart and pushed a great sob up through her constricted throat. Janet cried a little before slipping into unconsciousness; Paula heard her lover's breath become calm, almost like a baby's, before slipping under herself. In the morning Angie told her Janet's whole head was gone and then immediately administered a strong sedative which took effect even before Paula could really react. She woke up after two more days of strange mindless dreams, after, they said, the last tip of Janet's right big toe had disappeared between Paula's shoulder blades like a stone into a pool of water.