Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  While he was gone, she removed her clothes and folded them neatly on the couch. She left her panties on. Seth’s sheets were tight, and she had to wiggle to get them over her, but once she did, they were so soft that she felt herself begin to relax. “Ready!” she called, burrowing her face in the cradle.

  She heard his footsteps, and then he was shuffling around behind her. She could smell eucalyptus. He lowered the sheet and kneaded her shoulders, working her neck and upper arms. It felt like he was touching her with electric needles, tiny electric needles, shooting healing into her body. “It helps if you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” he said.

  She tried to breathe in through her nose, but on the exhale, she got nervous and gasped to get the next one in. “That’s a common point of challenge for people,” he said. “What to do after the out breath. Try to be aware of all the thoughts you’re having. Be aware of them and let yourself have them.”

  The room is cool. This feels good. I wonder whether he thinks my back is fat.

  He was digging what felt like his elbow into the spot beneath her right shoulder blade. She heard a grunt as he ran the forearm up and down her back. It was guttural and vulgar, and she was surprised that he felt comfortable making the noises. Then there was a cracking sound. “That’s lactic acid. You’re holding on to a lot. Let your breath lead you through this.”

  Seth was doing her right arm now, working all the way down to her hand. He pulled each finger out of the socket and then laced his fingers through hers. She heard a grunt that wasn’t his and was embarrassed. She didn’t grunt even in Open Flow at Bend & Bloom.

  “Good,” he said. “Let it all out.”

  When he had finished her other arm, he draped the sheet over half of her back and began to knead just above her butt. Though painful, it felt restorative. “That’s sooo gooood,” she said, aware of her inappropriately elongated vowels. He didn’t say anything. She felt a desire to make conversation, as though it could make up for the awkwardness of her groan. “I really needed this, I’m glad you suggested it. I think one of the reasons I’m so stressed out is my husband.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I just started divorce proceedings. You said at that party that your parents’ divorce ruined you, but I think the state of limbo is actually worse for my son.”

  “I used to think it was my parents’ divorce that ruined me,” he said. “Now I think my mom was always crazy, and that’s what ruined me.”

  Karen wasn’t sure why he was getting personal, but she figured he felt like he could because she had opened up. “What do you mean, crazy?” she asked.

  “I can’t really get into it, but we stopped getting along, and I’m not living with her anymore. That’s why I could only do an outcall.”

  As he rubbed her lower back, Karen could feel juice trickling out into her underpants. She prayed he couldn’t smell it. Strange things were happening to her. She was masturbating several times a day now, in the tub, with the fancy shower massager. She figured it was better to get all that energy out so she wouldn’t make a fool of herself by jumping Wesley on their next date.

  Seth moved down her thigh, working his arm against her hamstring. Then he let her leg go gently, setting it back on the table. “I’m going to hold up the sheet, and you can roll over on your back.” He lifted it, hiding her body, and she struggled to turn over, her abdominal strength shot since pregnancy.

  Seth had moved one of the dining room chairs to the foot of the massage table and sat on it. He held her right foot in his hands as if it were a newborn, cradling it delicately. She closed her eyes. He cracked her toes and laced them. His head was so close to the foot that she could feel his breath on her toes. And then she heard him speak: “Would it be all right if I . . . put it in my mouth?”

  Her eyes flew open. Had she misheard?

  He was holding her foot inches from his mouth, and his eyes were soft and pleading. “I don’t think so,” she said, lowering her foot to the table.

  He looked younger suddenly, ashamed. His head went down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got carried away. It just—it made me so happy to be doing this exchange.”

  “Do you do this to all of your clients?” she asked.

  “No! No! I only do it . . . when the spirit moves me. It just comes over me, and if the client is willing . . . But if it makes you uncomfortable—I understand.” She wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. “I’m sorry,” Seth said. “It’s just that you have such beautiful feet. Men must tell you that all the time.”

  “No.”

  “You could be a foot model,” Seth said, his hands on the tips of her toes. “The second toe comes up higher than the big toe. That’s unusual. Then afterward you have a perfect downward slope. You have short, tiny toes, and your arches are so high. I’m sorry I’ve offended you. I’ll go back to the reflexology, and we can pretend this never happened.”

  As he massaged her sole, she wondered what it would feel like. No man had ever done that to her before.

  “You can,” she heard herself say.

  “Really?” he said. “If you don’t like it, I can stop. You can see what you think.”

  And then her toes were inside. She closed her eyes but could hear him panting. She sneaked a peek and watched as he licked and sucked her big toe and moved to the next one. While he did this, he massaged the center of her sole, as if the sucking were part of reflexology, a legitimate art. After working his way down to the pinkie, he somehow managed to take all five in his mouth at once.

  By the time he reached the second toe of her other foot, Karen’s fingers were in her underwear beneath the sheet and she was coming. Her back was arched and her nipples were pointing up. She could never tell Wesley about this. He would never want to see her again; he would think she was a freak, a woman who paid men for sex.

  As her contractions subsided, she saw Seth, lips around the toe, his own eyes shut in ecstasy. Perhaps sensing her gaze, he opened his eyes, set down her foot, and wiped his cheek.

  “Are you . . . crying?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just feel—it just makes me . . .” He sobbed like a baby and turned to get a tissue.

  She was more disgusted than if she had spotted him jerking off. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You’re not supposed to cry after.”

  “I can’t help it.” Another loud honk. “It moves me.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. He seemed like the one who needed a massage. “Can I have some privacy?” she asked Seth. “I need to get dressed.”

  “Of course.” He moved down the hallway. As she changed back into her clothes, she thought about the vulnerable look on his face when he’d been sucking her toes. They all wanted Mommy, even the ones you paid.

  Gottlieb

  The hotel room phone jolted Gottlieb awake. He squinted to read the clock by his bed. Eight twenty-two. He had gone to sleep early Sunday night, exhausted by San Onofre, but still felt like he hadn’t gotten enough rest. Today was the day they were calling Universal.

  “Did you hear yet?” Topper asked. The words were indicative of good news, but the tone was grim.

  “Given the fact that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gottlieb said, “the answer would have to be no.”

  “Go on TMZ.”

  Kate came on. “Andy is on the call.” Her voice betrayed nothing. That was what she was paid for.

  Gottlieb took his laptop into bed and typed in the URL. The front-page image was a body being carried on a stretcher, eyes closed, face bloodied. Above it was the word EXCLUSIVE. The headline was FIGHTING FINGER BOOKED.

  “Is that Jed in the photo?” Gottlieb asked.

  “It would be better if it were Jed,” Topper said. “Astronomically better. That is a guy who got in a fistfight with Jed at Campanile last night.”

  “What’s Campanile?”

  “The hottest restaurant in L.A. Their Thursday grilled-cheese night is the most important indu
stry event of the week.” As Gottlieb scanned the rest of the page, his heart crumpled up and dropped into his stomach, which tried to digest it but failed because the juices weren’t strong enough.

  TMZ has learned that comedian and actor Jed Finger was arrested last night after a brawl broke out outside Campanile in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles. Finger was with a group of friends including Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride, Donald Glover, and several unidentified women. He was said to be on a bender that had begun the night before at the popular nightclub Sparkle.

  According to eyewitnesses, the men were dining when a tall blond man approached the table. Finger invited the man, Lars Nielson, 38, to join him at the table. After several rounds of drinks, the men exchanged words and a fist-fight ensued. Security threw them out and they continued to fight on the street.

  Finger was said to be shouting, “It’s payback time!” Eyewitnesses say the LAPD arrived within seven minutes, during which the man was knocked unconscious. Finger has trained at a Miami boxing gym with Angelo Dundee and also studies at a Brazilian jiujitsu school in Burbank.

  Nielson was taken to Cedars-Sinai. Finger was booked and released on bail. He is said to have minor lacerations.

  “How do we know any of this is true?” Andy said on the line.

  “It’s on every site,” Topper said. “Defamer’s got it. The L.A. Times is working on something, Deadline Hollywood has it. People are uploading cell phone pictures. There’s a rumor that the entire fight’s on a camera and the Smoking Gun is in negotiations to buy it. Anyway, I got a call from Drew Fine saying he’s withdrawing the offer until he knows how this pans out. I expect Summit, Paramount, and Fox to do the same.”

  “Can’t we just attach someone else?” Gottlieb said. “Jed’s not the only one who can play Mikey. The treatment existed before he ever came into play.”

  “No other talent is going to want to be attached at this point. The biggest story in Hollywood is that Jed Finger has put a wrench in a very promising career. The fear that every actor in Hollywood has right now is that if he associates himself with this, it’ll ruin him.”

  “We wouldn’t be delivering a script for months,” Gottlieb said. “Who’s going to be talking about this then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not saying it’s fair, but this is how it works. I’d be shocked if you had an offer by the close of business today. I’m sorry, guys. You should fly home.”

  “Universal made an offer,” Andy said. “And so did the other studios. Aren’t they legally binding?”

  “I would not advise you to pursue this. You’d have to spend a lot of money, and you could still lose. The agency would not be in support of any kind of suit, and if you did pursue it, I would have to rethink our role in representing you. I don’t mean to sound like a doomsayer. I’m just trying to tell you how it works. You never know. Your script could wind up on the Black List in December and you could get a whole new round of buzz and wind up selling it.”

  He clicked off. When the agents were blowing smoke up your ass, you couldn’t get rid of them, and when they had bad news, there was no time for you.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at Gottlieb’s door. It was Andy, carrying a bucket of ice. He went straight to the minibar, scooped ice into a glass, and emptied one of the Jim Beams into it. “It’s pretty early to drink,” Gottlieb said.

  “What else are we going to do? It’s over.” Andy took a large swig and then another. Gottlieb felt like Andy was blaming him for what had happened with Jed, as though he’d had anything to do with it.

  “Maybe he can get out of this,” Gottlieb said. “Jed’s a slippery guy.”

  “One of the sites said that guy Nielson is in critical,” Andy said, pacing. “I had a bad feeling about Jed all along, but you were so into him. I knew. I fucking knew.”

  “I was the one who noticed his ringtone! You said I worried too much.”

  “Our movie was so personal to him,” Andy went on, ignoring Gottlieb. “You can’t cast a guy as an underdog if he does jiujitsu.” He hit the first syllable hard; it sounded like “Jew.”

  Gottlieb resented that Andy was pulling an I-told-you-so when Gottlieb was the one who’d had reservations. The saddest thing was that this would barely make a difference to Andy’s career. He still had his minor celebrity. He could bounce back. He had his movie roles and TV walk-ons, and people wanted to do pilots with him. It would take him only a few days to turn it into an anecdote he could tell Craig Ferguson. Gottlieb had nothing. “Maybe this was meant to happen,” Gottlieb said, “so we could attach someone else. Maybe this leads us to a better star.”

  “Didn’t you hear what he said?” Andy said. “People in Hollywood think failure is contagious, just like success. This project is over.”

  “Robert Downey, Jr., bounced back.”

  “It took him five years, and the guy has to do like three hours of Wing Chun a day not to shoot heroin into his veins.”

  Gottlieb’s cell phone rang. “Gottleeeeeeb,” said Jed. It was unclear whether he was drunk or slurring from facial contusions. “I am so sorry.”

  “Where are you?” Gottlieb asked. Andy was waving his hands wildly in the background, having guessed it was Jed. Gottlieb put the phone on speaker.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. I’m not even supposed to talk to you. I’m not on speaker, right?”

  “No, no.”

  “But I had to call you. You’re my helmer, man. I should thank you. Something got into me last night. Just being in those rooms with you, and hearing the pitch so many times, it got to me. Got inside my skin. So when Lars Nielson came to my table, I just . . . I was tripping! I recognized him right away like no time had passed. The kid that used to beat me up. He was in town for a conference, he said. Nothing’s a coincidence, man! It was a sign. When I told him what he used to do to me, that fucker denied it. I couldn’t take it. The lying! They look back and think they’ve been oppressed. Just like in your movie! But I kicked his ass, Gottlieb. Karma’s a bitch. In the end, every dog gets his doo.”

  Clearly, he was on painkillers, because he was delusional. “It’s life imitating art imitating life,” Jed went on. “It’s meta-meta-meta. Don’t you see how good this is for us? The media kit wrote itself. People are going to be champing at the bit to see this thing. We’ll have a better opening weekend than Hangover. Seventy-five mil. Eighty mil!” Andy mimed hanging himself.

  “Topper said Universal retracted their offer,” Gottlieb said. “He expects the others to back out, too.”

  “That’s all just noise. Once Lars is discharged, they’ll get their balls back. Don’t worry. This is a fear-based community, man. You’re not fear-based, though, and that’s what I love about you. You’re a rebel Jew, man. I’ll call you when the shit dies down. In the meantime, stay real, brah. And whatever you do, stay away from the RWP.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rich white people.” He was off.

  Andy said he was going to drink himself into oblivion in his room, but Gottlieb knew he was exaggerating. “Hey,” Gottlieb said at the door. “About the other night—”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it,” Andy said. “We have so much bigger stuff to worry about right now.”

  “Promise you won’t say anything to CC?”

  “I’ve known you twenty years. I’m not going to say anything. But you fucked up.”

  “What if I told Joanne you did blow?”

  “She knows I do blow. She doesn’t care. She thinks it could help me lose weight.”

  “So you’ve never been with anyone else? In all the years you’ve been together? With everything that’s happened to you since you booked the commercial?”

  “Not once. If I lost her, I’d have nothing.”

  Andy slammed the door behind him. Gottlieb lay on the bed. How was he going to go home to CC and the boys? He had cheated on her three times. He hadn’t just betrayed CC, he’d betrayed his sons. The trip had proved what he had always suspected a
bout himself. He was a loser.

  He checked his e-mail, but the only new one was something silly from Sam—he’d written it with his mother’s help, saying he’d won his soccer game. There were a few lines of emoticons and graphics after the message. Sam loved putting pictures into his e-mails. One was a steaming pile of poop with flies buzzing around it. Gottlieb stared at it a long time. Sam must have had a great time watching the flies buzz around that cartoon shit.

  Karen

  “He’s trained in Swedish massage,” Karen told the woman on the phone, “but he can do shiatsu, sports, and also deep tissue. He works with you to find the right modality.” Seth had written out some talking points for her, which had proved useful as she fielded the calls from Park Slope mothers. They loved the word “modality,” for example, which had a completely different effect on them from “style” or “method.”

  Karen had called Seth with her proposal soon after he left: that she let him use her apartment and take over his booking in exchange for 50 percent of his hourly fee. She wouldn’t take a piece of any existing clients because she thought that was only fair. It did not take long for her to convince him to raise his rate to $140. Women in Park Slope would easily pay that much for quality service. The recession going on in the rest of America had not seemed to reach the neighborhood. This was way more bang for the buck than a supper club, and it required almost nothing of her in return.

  She had posted an ad on the Park Slope Parents message board with the headline BEST MASSAGE THIS WORN-OUT MOM’S EVER HAD. Because she spent a paragraph enumerating the challenges of single motherhood before mentioning the massage, the post got past the message board moderators, who generally didn’t approve commercial posts. The sentence she was proudest of was “I can say with no exaggeration that it has been a very long time since I experienced a sense of release like the one that Seth gave me.” Then she put the same one on Park Slope Single Parents, too.