"And it's not fertilizer. I've never heard of putting regurgitated mystery meat and processed cheese on plants to make them grow."
I shrugged. "I bet that secret sauce will do wonders for those roses, though."
He sighed and slumped back into his seat, eyes closed. I hoped he wasn't going to start round two of the heaving.
"Let's get you back to the hotel," I said. Mike didn't put up a fight. "I guess we need to take baby steps. No more gorging on delicious food. Just have a few French fries and half of a burger next time."
He cringed. "No more burgers and fries for me. Please."
I shook my head. "Baby steps, Mike. We will get you through this."
He sighed again and closed his eyes for the rest of the drive back to the hotel.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I left Mike in his room to deal with the aftereffects of his lunch in privacy. I couldn't help smirking at the image of this tall, muscular man being taken out of commission by a lowly hamburger. If he wanted to spend any more time with me, he was going to have to learn my ways and get with the program. I set out for a brisk walk to enjoy the non-stifling California sun.
Despite his absence, I could faintly hear Mike's chiding voice telling me that Melanie's death was nothing but a plain old plow horse, not a zebra. I was half expecting something inside me to disagree, to express some faint, inexpressible doubt based on my womanly instincts, but instead I found myself agreeing to the point I was ready to drop the investigation, such as it was, and move on. Detective Weakland was no sucker, and he'd seen nothing unusual about the circumstances of Melanie's unfortunate death. As I made my way past countless cute little bungalows and low-slung Mediterranean homes, and palm tree after palm tree, I found myself admitting the possibility that I had set out on this investigation merely to rationalize my keeping the rest of Melanie's retainer. There wasn't really anything to investigate, but (my theory went) if I exerted my efforts on her behalf I'd be entitled to the money. Mike was right about one thing: I could rationalize anything.
As luck would have it, my feet had inadvertently taken me down into the fashion district, a kind of heaven-on-earth agglomeration of hair salons, spas, and upscale designer boutiques. Given the fact that my stomach was still distended from lunch, I didn't feel much like shopping, which would require trying things on. But the allure of the spa was impossible to resist. I walked into the first one I passed, but they were booked all afternoon. The waif-like attendant recommended their "sister" spa across the street, which was called Eclipse.
Eclipse looked almost the same on the inside—dim lighting, curved beige walls—but it had different aromatics. A hint of ginger or coriander hung lightly in the air, with a lone candle flickering on the shelf behind the two attendants staffing the front desk.
The one who wasn't talking on the phone looked up at me and smiled. "Appointment?"
"No," I said. "Just walking in. I went across the street and they told me to try here."
She nodded, with her permasmile still in full effect. "Let me just check here. Okay. In fifteen minutes, we have openings with Lyle, Peter, and Lucinda."
My face drew a blank. Was I supposed to pick based solely on their names? "Um, can you recommend someone?"
She looked down at her fingers for a split-second, and I thought I detected the faintest of blushes creep across her face. "People say Peter is very good."
I smiled. "Peter it is," I said, while studying the pamphlet I'd picked up. "Just the shorter one, though. I don't need an hour and a half." Especially since an hour and a half cost $240.
I found myself a two-month-old copy of Coping magazine, whose premise seemed to be that everything in life was difficult and the best approach would be to find strategies for slogging through each challenge with as little pain as possible. I was grateful when an attendant led me into a small massage chamber and instructed me to remove as many clothes as I felt comfortable doing. Hell, I thought, be careful what you wish for.
My neck and lower back had been bugging me off and on for weeks, and the soft hotel bed wasn't doing them any favors. So I removed my top and bra, as well as my shorts, and then I kind of scrunched my panties halfway down my butt to allow access to my lower back. I lay face down on the massage table and covered my rear end with an insanely soft towel. My face happily buried itself in a small silk pillow.
I lost track of time as the soothing and quiet Asian-inspired music and ginger aromatics calmed me down into a nearly comatose state. The only thing keeping me awake was my growling stomach. When Peter finally arrived, it could have been five minutes later or an hour. I had no idea. I crooked my head up a little to get a look, and it was immediately apparent why the desk attendant had blushed. Peter was a masterpiece of the TDH school, a tall, dark, and hot vision in a tight white shirt and pants, a kind of younger, Greeker version of George Clooney. He smiled at me faintly and pretended not to examine my naked torso. Although I was facedown, I knew the sides of my unnaturally firm breasts were fully visible. Which isn't to say that I minded.
He asked me if anything had been bothering me, and I mentioned my lower back, which seemed to ache every time I sat down for more than five minutes. Peter made a soft grunt of acknowledgement and began working his strong fingers into the muscles next to my spine.
"Very tight here," he said softly, as his knuckles worked out a knot.
The first ten minutes produced a mixture of pain and relief as Peter's expert hands did their work. After that, once he poured a few dollops of oil on my back, the experience transformed from therapeutic to decadently pleasurable. His fingers were working different pressure points on my back, but it was more of a gentle caress than a firm pressure. I couldn't help groaning a few times, and eventually the tight-lipped Peter began making small talk. It turned out he was Italian rather than Greek, born near Milan but a California resident since he was twelve.
The combination of his soft, low-pitched voice, twinged with his Italian accent, and the gentle touch of his expert hands, was driving me wild. Eventually he found a spot just behind my ear, which made me purr involuntarily, and when he pressed on it my whole body began to tingle. It started with tingling, but then waves of warmth began flowing through me. The heat began boiling in my core and then started expanding out to my extremities, first in short bursts and then in wave after wave of quasi-orgasmic sensations that alternated between pins and needles and outright, momentary numbness. Peter, sensing how I felt, began increasing the pressure and speed ever so slightly, his hands locked in a repetitive symphony on my neck and back, working me over as though he owned me, which at that point he did. The minutes flew by as I lost myself in the experience. I felt my breathing become halting, with occasional herky-jerky staccato inhalations punctuating long, deep exhalations, the relaxation and waves of warmth flowing through me and triggering pleasure sensors I didn't even know I had.
Apparently, however, it was possible to become too relaxed. Neither the soft music, nor the quiet sounds of hands on flesh, could mask the unmistakable sound of intestinal gas escaping through my back door. My face, once happily flushed, now became engorged by blood in a rush of utter embarrassment and mortification. Horror would not be too strong a word, especially after Peter started sniffling and let out a delicate cough, a concession to the undeniable offensiveness of the odor, which was an affront to the delicate ginger scent that the spa's managers had probably selected with great care. His reaction was so polite, in fact, that it made things worse. It would have been far preferable to have a laugh out of what, after all, is a normal bodily function, especially after the lunch I'd devoured a few hours earlier. We could have laughed and then moved on. But by being so discreet about it, I sensed Peter was pitying me, that he was embarrassed for me, and that, not coincidentally, the massage was just about over.
"Sorry," I muttered, consumed with self-loathing.
He paused for a second. "About what?" he asked.
I grimaced and let it drop, hoping against all h
ope that the spa would be struck by lightning, or, better yet, that the Big One would finally strike Southern California and immediately tear the earth asunder, sucking the spa and everything in the vicinity into a miles-deep crevasse from which no sounds, or smells, could ever escape. But the heavens were not so kind as to terminate my existence at that moment, and the gods, no doubt getting a grand chuckle out of my misery, left me there to twist slowly, slowly in the wind. So to speak.
Right on cue, Peter coughed again softly and removed his hands from my back. "Well, that's all the time we have. I hope it was enjoyable."
I'm sure he was fixing me with a pleasant, businesslike smile, but I didn't have the heart to look back at him. My eyes were shut so tight it hurt, as though I could just will the awkwardness to be over. "Thanks," I murmured, and then, mercifully, he closed the door.
After he left I planted my face firmly into the soft pillow, wondering if it was possible to suffocate myself to death in that fashion. It wasn't. It turns out the body apparently has an aversion to being deprived of oxygen, and so some damnable part of me pulled up for air after only a few seconds. I let out a long sigh. Was it karma? Was I being punished for taking Mike out for fast food and then secretly finding pleasure in his own gastrointestinal woes? It seemed likely, but if that were true then I wondered why the gods that controlled these things had nothing better to do than mock a wannabe ex-stripper who had the gall to try to get a massage and make her body feel good for once.
I lay there another few minutes to ensure that Peter began his next appointment and that I wouldn't have to pass him in the hall on my way out. As I got dressed, I wondered if he'd run out and shared the unfortunate incident with his fellow masseuses and other staff. I figured they probably relished little tidbits about uppity, fake-boobed clients who couldn't enjoy a back rub without passing gas like a Clydesdale. The only good thing was that I had paid in advance, so I could slink out of there without everyone snickering at me.
Or so I thought. I had forgotten all about the tip, which is a big deal for masseuses, and since my own mortgage was covered by tips, I took such things seriously. The same girl who checked me in had me fill out the slip to leave the tip. I didn't have any precedent for how much to tip when your interaction has resulted in irreversible damage to the ozone layer, so I put an X down on the line and threw fifty bucks in cash on the counter. I couldn't get a read on her face. The paranoid schizophrenic in me, which is to say all of me, thought she must have known about The Incident, but her facial expression wasn't giving away very much. Was that twinkle in her eye a sign of mirth, at my expense? I hadn't noticed it earlier, when I checked in. And there was definitely at least a ten-degree arch in her eyebrow, a telltale signal of insider knowledge. At least, that's the way my mind worked. I shuddered and got the hell out of there as fast as I could, making no further eye contact with anyone as I fled.
The sun nearly blinded me as I burst out the door into the late afternoon, and at random I turned to the right and headed in whatever direction that was. If nothing else, it was downhill. My head was spinning, my psyche still in the throes of embarrassment. When you have a mental disorder, as I assumed I did, you can't rely on things like common sense to talk yourself out of trouble. It was useless to try to console myself with the realization that I would never see Peter again, or the fact that he had probably experienced the same thing a number of times. Hell, maybe he even took it as a compliment, the way chefs in some cultures take a post-meal belch as a sign of honor. Doubtful. The only way I could get through it was to rely on the healing power of time, which might mean I would be able to joke about the event in, say, twelve hundred years. Oh, and self-medication would be a big help.
By four o'clock I had found my way back to the hotel and made a beeline for the bar, which was empty except for a couple of middle-aged men sitting together but communicating with unseen others through their smartphones. I sidled up to the opposite side of the bar and ordered a double gin and tonic on the rocks, a drink I figured would be both refreshing and sufficiently self-medicating.
The young bartender was surprisingly plain-looking for someone in the LA service sector, where most people seemed to be either aspiring actors or models. But then again, that might explain why he was employed at a sleepy hotel bar at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. The problem wasn't his looks, though. It was the fact that I was thirsty, and he was taking forever to mix my drink. It wasn't that complicated. Two shots of gin, ice, fill glass with tonic water. Finally, he delivered my drink, a sheepish look hanging on his sallow face.
"What's this?" I asked, eyeing the drink suspiciously. It was an iridescent shade of blue, with an orange slice and a cherry as garnish. All that was missing was the little umbrella.
He smiled. "I thought you'd like to try something new that I've been working on."
I wanted to jab a fork in his eye, but resisted the urge.
I tried to use my most polite tone of voice. "Never mess with someone's drink, especially if she's a gin-drinker."
His eyebrows shot up. "Why's that?"
"Because gin-drinkers know what they want. They're not looking for the flavor of the month, or the latest in quote-unquote mixology," I explained, using air quotes around that distasteful term. "If a girl's drinking gin, she's been drinking gin for decades and will continue to do so, unabated, until death or dementia kicks in."
He grimaced, seeming genuinely apologetic.
"The same also applies to scotch, by the way," I muttered.
He nodded seriously. "I'll be right back."
Given my first experience with him, I doubted that he'd be "right back," so I busied myself by scanning the uninteresting hotel décor and sneaking a curious peak at the other two guys in the bar, neither of whom had said a word to each other since I sat down, their heads bowed solemnly in unison as they texted or emailed their oh-so-important messages. It was something I was beginning to notice everywhere: people being together physically, but worlds apart mentally and emotionally.
As boredom quickly set in, my eyes fell upon the dissed drink still sitting in front of me. I had always been a liquor snob, having been properly raised on manhattans, martinis, scotch, and the other warhorses of proper drinking culture, and so I had never deigned, not even in college, to try a girly drink, or even a drink that had any kind of soda (other than club) as part of its heritage. But so great was my need to wash away the afternoon's embarrassment that I decided to throw caution, and class, to the wind. Hesitantly, I sniffed at the blue concoction, which reeked of orange peels and other well-worn gimmicks of the cocktail culture.
"Huh," I said out loud. This isn't half bad. The drink was not sweet at all, but citrusy and refreshing, kind of like a margarita without the sugar. The bartender returned when my glass was half-empty.
"You like?" he asked hesitantly, fearing my wrath.
I shrugged. "It doesn't completely suck," I said, not willing to admit that the drink was growing on me. He left the drink there, but I pushed it aside in favor of the gin and tonic, which was now refreshingly ice-cold. It was chilly going down the hatch but nevertheless produced an immediate and familiar warm glow in the center of my chest, a feeling of comfort not unlike that of an old childhood blanket.
One of the guys at the end of the bar finally looked up from the phone he'd been fiddling with. Unfortunately, it was at exactly the same moment I was glancing vaguely in his direction, and we exchanged a look he must have found meaningful. I cringed internally. One of the hazards of being even remotely attractive is that men tended to get ideas in their heads that had no business being there. At my club, men invariably failed to consider that I worked for tips, meaning they took at face value any little compliment I might drop. If I laughed at their jokes, they thought I actually found them funny and charming rather than viewing them simply as human ATMs. And outside of the club, the most casual and chaste of glances or gestures could be misinterpreted as a sign of interest. All I wanted to do was to slam my drink, or
der another one, then get up to my room and sleep it off. But it was clear that wasn't going to happen. I was just too damned nice.
His name turned out to be Alex, and I let him buy me a drink. He was a lawyer in town for a deposition that had been postponed until tomorrow, and Alex followed a well-worn path to try to impress me. His thought process went something like this: I'm a big, wealthy, powerful guy, and even though I'm twenty years older than you, and forty pounds overweight, you should be attracted to me because of my success. Think of how your life would change for the better if you began associating with someone like me! It was a tale I'd heard countless times, a tale full of sound and fury but signifying nothing, and the ending was going to be the same. He cooled off a little bit, especially after I mentioned my "boyfriend," but it was clear he wasn't going to let up, so I politely excused myself, carrying both of my drinks away with me.
It was getting to be late in the afternoon, and I hadn't heard anything from Mike, who I assumed was still fighting the aftereffects of his deliciously toxic lunch. By the time I got back to my room, I realized that the two double gin and tonics I'd consumed had found their way into a mostly empty stomach, which meant they were hitting me hard, and I was no lightweight. I wasn't about to raid the minibar for food, though. Even in my compromised state, I refused to pay eight bucks for a bag of pretzels.
In a fit of awful but not unprecedented judgment, I decided to hit the ice machine and refresh the blue concoction the bartender had made me, empty stomach be damned. The problem was that I had left my room key, purse, wallet, and brain inside my hotel room. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have taken the blue drink with me when I went downstairs to the front desk to get help, but there it was, resting on the desk as I tried to explain to the clerk why she should issue me a new key for Room 731 despite the fact that I had no identification and was obviously intoxicated, and quite probably a little touched in the head. A small part of me sensed that trying to not sound drunk probably had the opposite effect, judging from the woman's facial expressions. Not getting anywhere, I finally had the bright idea to call up to Mike's room. He'd vouch for me, assuming he was still alive.
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