at the desk in front, being both receptionist and staff. Nice reading with the place quiet, the city quiet.
Nice being alone, except for the occasional customer who spotted the Grecian Massage sign while driving up Grover half a block from Sunset. Most of the Sunset Boulevard massage parlors had been closed in the recent crackdowns. Bad for other businesses, the citizens groups and police said. Brought crime and violence to a neighborhood. Same on Santa Monica and Hollywood boulevards.
Perhaps. She doubted it, but perhaps. She didn’t really pay much attention to the other girls and their men. She herself had no man, except for her customers.
And she wouldn’t have a man until she was through with this scene. And until she met someone she rather doubted existed.
She turned the page, smiling at Philip Roth’s sexist insanity, and heard the bell tinkle. She put the book down, marking her place, and glanced at her wrist-watch. Two o’clock. Only then did she look up.
The man was old: late sixties or early seventies. He was a little drunk, and very nervous. He’d once been big—tall and husky. You could see the bone structure, the sagging folds of flesh. He was now gaunt, raw-boned. He had a few gray wisps of hair, a grayish stubble of beard.
She stood up. His eyes went over her, quickly, guiltily, and he cleared his throat. She was five-five, dark-haired, full-breasted, full-bottomed, long-legged, serious and pretty and dressed in a mini toga, a pale pink wisp of nylon with matching bikini panties from Fredericks of Hollywood. Arthur insisted all his girls wear the same outfit.
“I’m Diana,” she said, smiling easily. “Would you like a massage?”
He cleared his throat again, and laughed. His laugh was very deep. His voice, when he said, “Yes, a massage,” was a basso’s, suiting what had once been an impressive physique.
She liked that. She liked his suit, a blue pinstripe, a good suit, even though his jacket was rumpled and his tie pulled awry and his shirt wilted at collar and cuffs.
She walked around the desk, which brought her close to him. He smelled of alcohol and tobacco, and while she neither drank nor smoked herself, she didn’t mind it in some men.
She took his hand, something she didn’t always do. “This way, please.”
She took him all the way to the back, even though the other three booths—little alcoves, side by side, holding a massage table and chair, separated one from the other by curtains—were empty and closer to the front where she could hear the bell. Only the back booth had solid walls and a solid door. It was the one the girls used when they thought they saw a full trick—coitus—shaping up.
She didn’t see that, though it could be. She only wanted the privacy that would relax him.
She opened the door, throwing the wall switch. He stepped past her, glancing around. He looked at the massage table, the chair stacked with towels, the ceiling fixture.
“Why don’t you disrobe and lie down on the table? Cover your middle with a towel.” She turned to go.
“Uh . . . on my back or stomach?”
“Stomach, to start.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Just to get some lotion.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a drink here?”
“We used to serve wine, but the police and ABC used it as a means of hassling us, so we don’t anymore. I think you’ll find you won’t need it.”
He began to speak again, but she went out, closing the door behind her. She wondered how far age had gone in ruining that fine man. She hoped not too far, at least in performance, so he could come away with the victory that an orgasm represented for most of his generation.
She didn’t think of age in relation to herself, but knew that twenty-eight was no longer young; not in this business. And she felt a good deal older than twenty-eight.
She took the squeeze bottle of lotion from the locker, and the credit-card machine from the drawer. She did it this way whenever possible, reducing the obviousness of payment. In the Lotus Massage they had made her run the credit cards through at the reception desk, a distasteful operation for both her and her clients.
When she entered the room, he was lying on his stomach, face pressed into the little pillow. He had a towel across his bottom, and one across his back and shoulders too.
She put bottle and machine down on the chair and removed the top towel. He shifted weight a little.
She stroked his shoulders—broad, the bones showing through. Freckled skin and some muscle tone. Not a bad torso.
“You’re built well. Are you a police officer?”
He turned his big head and stared at her. She said, “We have to ask that of each client. To avoid entrapment.”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“Like a chief, a commissioner.”
He smiled, putting his face down again. “I’m Harold Lowndes, general insurance, retired.”
She got the machine. “Can I have a credit card, Harold? We take Master Charge, Visa, and American Express.”
He looked up. “Now?”
She nodded.
“In my jacket. Breast pocket.”
She got the wallet from the jacket draped over the chair. He gave her his card and she ran it through and explained that the charge was twenty dollars for a basic massage. “The rest is between the two of us. The free-enterprise system.”
“Let’s wait and see if I’ll want more than a basic massage.”
She put the wallet and machine away and spread lotion on his back and began to knead the flesh. Some of the girls barely stroked their clients, getting down to the genitals as quickly as possible, raising the question of masturbation, or more, for a price. The price varied with the girl, the client. You tried for as much as you thought the traffic would bear. For masturbation, anywhere from an additional ten on up. For fellatio, or “head” as the girls called it, an additional twenty on up. For coitus, if the back room was free, whatever the traffic would bear, but often the same as for head.
Diana gave head only when the spirit, and the man moved her.
She could count the times she’d laid a client.
She had lean, delicate hands. Most times the client reached orgasm before he could ask for anything more. She had a list of regulars who preferred masturbation with her to coitus with other girls. She made between eight hundred and a thousand dollars a week, working seven days most weeks. Except when she took a “vacation” on the late shift.
She was now stroking his waist, reaching under the towel to brush his buttocks. His face remained in the pillow, but he sighed a little. She pushed the towel down, and felt him tense. He had long buttocks that were still hard to the touch.
She probed them, stroked them, massaged them.
He sighed again, and relaxed.
She ran a little lotion down his legs, kneading the calves. She went back up and did the same to his arms, his biceps—big biceps, but much soft flesh before she could find strength, hardness.
She asked him to turn over, and was pleased to see that there was strength and hardness where it counted. The towel, which she’d arranged as he’d turned, tented high.
She smiled into his face. He wet his lips. “What was your name again?” the deep whisper asked.
“Diana.”
“The huntress. What are you hunting now, Diana?”
“Pleasure.”
The ruin of age was far more evident in front, despite that erection. She kept her eyes from the looseness of pectorals,