That evening he decided to take action to ease some of the tension in his life. Or at least it was decided for him when Jane and her girlfriend Cassandra showed up at the apartment and offered to watch Sophie.
"Go, find a woman," Jane said. "I got the kid. "
"It doesn't work that way," Charlie said. "I was gone all day, I haven't spent any quality time with my daughter. "
Jane and Cassandra - an athletic, attractive redhead in her midthirties, who Charlie promised himself he would have asked out if she hadn't been living with his sister - pushed him out the door, slammed it in his face, and locked it.
"Don't come home until you've gotten some," Jane shouted over the transom.
"Does that work for you?" Charlie shouted back. "Just go find someone to do you, like a scavenger hunt?"
"Here's five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars works for anyone. " A wad of bills came flying over the transom, followed by his cane, a sport coat, and his wallet.
"This is my money, isn't it?" Charlie shouted.
"It's you that needs to get laid," Jane shouted back. "Go. Don't come back until you've done the dance of the beast with two backs. "
"I could just lie. "
"No, you can't," Cassie said. She had a sweet voice, like you'd want her to tell you a bedtime story. "The desperation will still show in your eyes. And I mean that in a nice way, Charlie. "
"Sure, how else could I take it?"
"Bye, Daddy," Sophie said from the other side of the door. "Have fun. "
"Jane!"
"Relax, she just came in. Go. "
So Charlie, thrown out of his own home, by his own sister, said good-bye to the daughter he adored and went out to find a total stranger with whom to be intimate.
Just a massage," Charlie said.
"Okay," said the girl as she 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 tabl
e, 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.