arranged oils and lotions on a shelf. She was Asian, but Charlie couldn't tell from where in Asia, maybe Thailand. She was petite and had black hair that hung down past her waist. She wore a red silk kimono with a chrysanthemum design. She never looked him in the eye.
"Really, I'm just tense. I don't want anything but a completely ethical and hygienic massage, just like it says on the sign." Charlie stood at the end of a narrow cubicle, fully dressed, with a massage table on one side of him and the masseuse and her shelf of oils on the other.
"Okay," said the girl.
Charlie just looked at her, unsure of what to do next.
"Clothes off," said the girl. She placed a clean white towel on the massage table near Charlie, nodded to it, then turned her back. "Okay?"
"Okay," Charlie said, feeling now that he was here, he needed to go through with it. He'd paid the woman at the door fifty dollars for the massage, after which she made him sign a release that stated that all he was getting was a massage, that tipping was encouraged, but did not imply any services beyond a massage, and that if he thought that he was getting anything but a massage he was going to be one disappointed White Devil. She made him initial each of the six languages it was printed in, then she winked, a long slow wink, exaggerated by very long false eyelashes, and performed the internationally accepted blow-job mime, with round mouth and rhythmic tongue pushing out the cheek. "Lotus Flower make you bery relax, Mr. Macy."
Charlie had signed Ray's name, not so much as a small revenge for calling the cops on him, but because he thought the management might recognize Ray's name and give him a discount.
He kept his boxers on and climbed on the table, but Lotus Flower slipped them off him as deftly as a magician pulling a scarf from his sleeve. She draped a towel over his bottom and dropped her kimono. Charlie saw it fall and glanced back to see a tiny, seminaked woman rubbing oil on her palms to warm it. He looked away and slammed his forehead into the table several times even as he felt his erection struggling for freedom beneath him.
"My sister made me come here," he said. "I didn't want to come."
"Okay," she said.
She rubbed the oil into his shoulders. It smelled of almonds and sandalwood. There must have been menthol or lavender or something in it, because he felt it tingle on his skin. Every place she touched hurt. Like he'd dug a ditch to Ecuador the day before, or pulled a barge across the Bay with a rope. It was like she had special sensory powers, she could find the exact spot where he carried his pain, then touch it, release it. He moaned, just a little.
"Bery tense," she said, working her fingers up his spine.
"I haven't slept well in two weeks," he said.
"That nice." She reached across to work his rib cage and he felt her small breasts press against his back. He stopped breathing for a second and she giggled.
"Bery tense," she said.
"I had this thing happen at work. Well, not at work, but I'm afraid I did something that could put everyone I know in danger, and I can't make myself do what needs to be done to fix it. People could die."
"That nice," said Lotus Flower, kneading his biceps.
"You don't speak English, do you?"
"Oh. Little. No worries. You want happy ending?"
Charlie smiled. "Can you just keep rubbing?"
"No happy ending? Okay. Twenty dollar, fifteen minute."
So Charlie paid her, and talked to her, and she rubbed his back, and he paid her again, and he told her all the things that he couldn't share with other people: all the worries, all the fears, all the regrets. He told her of how he missed Rachel, yet how sometimes he would forget what she looked like and would run to the dresser in the middle of the night to look at her photo. He paid her for two hours in advance and dozed off, feeling her hands on his skin, and he dreamed of Rachel and sex, and when he woke up Lotus Flower was massaging his temples and tears were running into his ears. He told her it was the menthol in the oil, but it was the lonely coming up in him, like the pain in his back that he hadn't known