“No name. Only number.”
Ann asked her questions while lying on the massage table. She noticed that the tear in Number 19’s underpants was getting larger and wondered why she didn’t use some of her tip money to buy a new pair. She ended up not asking her, but the question remained in her mind.
Before she left, the masseuse stared up at Ann’s face.
“Nice,” she said.
Ann furrowed her eyebrows.
Number 19 pointed to Ann’s eyes. “Very pretty.”
About two weeks later, Marie told her some bad news at work. “The bitch laid me off. Said I talk too much. I think it’s just an excuse because business has been so slow.” Marie ripped the apron from her waist and whirled the combination on her locker in the back room of the restaurant. “It’s just as well. I’m sick of L.A. I’m going back home.”
Ann couldn’t remember where home was, but it was some state shaped like a rectangle in the middle of the U.S.
“You can get another job.”
“Yeah, another one at a dump like this. It’s not worth it anymore.” Marie removed her purse from a hook in the locker and looped it through her arm. “You know, Ann, you might think of moving on too.”
Ann was jumpy all day. She messed up two orders and accidentally broke a juice glass. She was relieved that she worked the day shift and had the evening to herself. When she got home, she noticed that the pickle jar was only halffull of change, not nearly enough for a full salt scrub, but enough for the use of the jacuzzi. At least she could see Number 19. It was early evening on Thursday, past 7:00, so maybe she would be on her last customer. They might even have time to go out, have a cup of coffee, thought Ann.
Number 19 was in the middle of a massage when she arrived. Her customer was a tall, thin woman, about Ann’s size. Ann watched from the jacuzzi, her eyelashes clumping together in the steam. Two other women were in the tub; one had placed a wet towel over her forehead and had closed her eyes.
Number 19 seemed in an unusually good mood. She smiled a couple of times and dipped her head down to her customer’s ear. And then-no, it couldn’t be-it seemed that Number 19 was laughing. Ann wiped the sweat drops from her eyelashes. She stumbled out of the tub, her knees almost sliding on the tile. But Number 19 didn’t bother looking her way.
Ann slipped on her clothes without properly drying her body, so the sleeves of her shirt clung awkwardly to her upper arms. She felt embarrassed about being so upset. This was Number 19’s workplace, after all. She had to be friendly to all the other customers.
Ann left the massage room and crossed over to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls. Since she didn’t have any clubs, she had to rent a nine iron too. She hadn’t hit balls since her mother’s ex-boyfriend had left them. Seven irons were the most versatile clubs, her mother’s ex-boyfriend had said. If you had a decent swing, you could even tee off with a seven iron at a three-par course. You could never go wrong with that club.
She placed a ball on a one-inch plastic tube, a substitute tee, on the plastic grass pad. She then overswung three times, missing the ball completely. Remember not to muscle the ball, her mother’s ex-boyfriend had said. Don’t force it. Just use the laws of nature and gravity. Ann relaxed and slowed down. Soon she was in a groove and the ball was sailing past the hundred-foot marker.
“Hey, lady, you want more balls?” asked a teenager who was collecting the empty metal buckets at some point.
Ann looked down and saw her bucket was empty. How long had she been taking swings without the ball?
“It works better with balls, you know.”
After the sun went down, Ann decided to return to the massage waiting room. The wooden box was unlocked and the desk clerk was slitting open the tip envelopes with a knife. On top of the reception table were neat stacks of twentydollar bills.
“We closed,” the clerk said, finally noticing Ann. She smiled as if she knew of an inside joke. Her magenta lipstick looked freshly applied.
Ann couldn’t imagine why the clerk needed to looked well-groomed to count money. She figured the clerk must be a higher-up, maybe a manager. “You know that’s their money, not yours.”
“We pay them tomorrow. They will get their money, I assure you.”
Once Ann returned to the apartment, she ate a bowl of tomato soup she had bought from the 99 cents store. It was a brand she had never heard of; the soup, which had the consistency of silt, was a strange crayon orange color. Marie had been right-business had slowed down considerably and now people were leaving their spare change instead of dollar bills for tips. Ann looked for Marie’s cell phone number in her purse and dialed it. A man answered the phone.
“Is Marie there?”
“Huh? I think you got the wrong number.”
Ann ended the call and tried again.
“I told you that you have the wrong number, okay?!” The man then cursed, warning Ann that there would be consequences if she called a third time.
That night Ann fell asleep to a repeat of a late-night talk show, voices laughing at jokes that didn’t make much sense anymore.
The next evening, Ann returned to the block where the spa was located, but this time she waited at Number 19’s bus stop. She didn’t know if she would recognize the masseuse with her clothes on, but the minute she and another masseuse walked across the street, Ann got up from the bench.
“Did you get your tip money?” she asked.
The masseuse and her friend looked afraid.
“This is America. You have rights-it doesn’t matter if you’re illegal or not.”
Just then, a bus roared to the stop and the two women rushed to get inside.
“Next time I’ll give you the tip. Or give me your address. I’ll send you the money,” Ann said from the street. The doors folded together; the bus sighed before joining the lines of traffic.
“I’d like to see Number 19.” Ann stood in front of the check-in desk of the spa on Friday. It was the same manager, only this time she was wearing tangerine lipstick instead of magenta.
“One hundred dollars.”
Ann wasn’t about to admit that she didn’t have the money. “I just need to speak with her.”
“Number 19 working.”
A couple of other women in yoga pants entered the waiting room and the manager turned her attention to them. Ann kept her place at the front of the line, but the manager just moved over to the side to collect the women’s money and give them their towels and robes.
“You bother our customers,” the manager said after they left for the locker room.
“I need to talk with Number 19.”
“Number 19 doesn’t want to see you.”
“You didn’t even speak to her. You don’t know.”
The manager adjusted her glasses and pointed to a sign above a glass shelf that held beauty products. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE, it read. Ann was very familiar with the sign. They had the same one at the restaurant.
“Listen,” Ann said, raising her voice, “I can close this place down, you know.”
“Yah, yah.” The manager turned her back to Ann and rearranged some bottles of body scrub on the glass shelf.
“I’ll tell immigration that you’re using illegals.”
The manager snapped her head back toward Ann. “What has Number 19 told you?”
Ann’s stomach felt queasy. Maybe she had gone too far. The last thing that she wanted to do was get Number 19 in trouble with her boss. “Nothing,” she said. “Just that you better watch out.”
Ann walked out of the waiting room and went to the driving range to release some tension. This time she chose a spot on the far left side so she could keep an eye on the massage room door. One of her balls was sailing to the hundred-fifty-foot mark when she noticed someone leaving the massage room.