by Mark Harris
“They’re supposed to,” she said. “I’ve got the magic hands, or so I’m told.”
“How did you learn this profession?” Officer Phelps inquired.
“When I was sweet sixteen,” said Luella, “I cut gentlemen’s hair in my father’s barber shop.”
“Where?” he asked.
“It’s long gone,” she said.
“Do you shampoo too?” he inquired.
“I do whatever you want,” she said, “as long as it’s proper and right,”
“Legal,” he said.
“Legitimate,” she said.
“How I wish I’d brought more money with me!” exclaimed Officer Phelps. “Because I might enjoy the full body massage if I tried it.”
“You better take off your good shirt if I’m to shave you,” she said, but his hands so uncontrollably trembled that he was unable to unbutton his buttons, and his helplessness frightened him further, so that his own trembling produced further trembling, and Luella unbuttoned his shirt for him and hung it on a hanger on a rod beneath the magnetic cabinet, and he lay back again, and she prepared his face with warm lather and stropped a straight-edged razor sprung from an ivory handle, with which she had shaved many men.
“This is the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Officer Phelps. “Pure luxury. But my heart is beating like mad, I don’t think I can take it.”
“Your heart is fine,” she said, feeling his heart. “You have a good heart. It’s only your imagination.”
“Sing again,” he said, and she softly sang again
“Once in a while Will you try to give one little thought to me Though someone else may be Nearer your heart”
and shaved his face, and lathered his face a second time, and he asked once, “What time is it getting to be because I really should be getting back down to the Congressman’s headquarters?” but she would not interrupt her singing to reply, and after she had shaved his face a second time she cooled it with mentholated Frost Lime by Aqua Velva — property, actually, of James Berberick, whose name had formerly appeared in ink upon a strip of adhesive tape across the bottle, but which Luella had recently removed, as she had removed his name from several other bottles of lotions and colognes in her care, thus nowhere retaining on her premises any record of either James Berberick or the late Congressman-Elect McGinley. “Hey, that’s a good feeling,” said Officer Phelps “and a good smell too.”
“You’re a smoothie now,” she said.
“Feel my heart again,” he said. “Tell me if it slowed down any.”
“It’s down a bit,” she said, feeling his heart with her warm hand, lightly massaging the area of his heart, and now his bared belly, too, plucking from his navel a thread of clothing which had somehow found its way there, and firing into his navel one short squirt of Arrid Extra-Dry Unscented, saying, “One short squirt for mankind.”
“If only I had a credit card,” he said, “I could go for a massage. I never had a massage before.”
“Well then,” she said, “remove all your clothing, Jimmy, and I’ll give you your first massage free.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1973 by Mark Harris
ISBN 978-1-4976-3393-3
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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MARK HARRIS
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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