Rubdown (12 page)

He’s gay.’

‘A model, seriously?’

‘Yeah. Based in New York. Travels all over. Jasper totally scooped the family gene pool.’

‘Come on, Simone, you didn’t do too bad yourself.’ He bumped my waist with his hip.

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen me in high school. Chunky and spotty with an assortment of unfortunate haircuts. I wasn’t that popular with the boys.’

‘At least you weren’t a skinny, redheaded music nerd.’

‘I’m sure you’ve made up for lost time since becoming a hot shot detective.’

He put on a tough-cop voice. ‘You better believe it, baby.’

The vegetables were all chopped and stacked on a plate. He put brown rice and cold water on the stove. Absorption method.

Good. Meant we still had forty minutes of drinking time.

I leaned on the counter and elaborated on my day. When I got to the part about Wade chasing me up the street Sean cracked up laughing and grabbed the pantry door for support.

‘It’s not funny.’ I started laughing too. ‘I’m in deep shit.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll check the computers tomorrow and see if Wade’s put in a complaint. And I’ll help you get your car back.’

‘Thanks. Hey, you know how to unlock a mobile?’ I dug Tammy’s phone out of my bag and handed it over. He pressed a series of buttons and gave it back unlocked.

‘Cool. Is that something they teach you in detective school?’

‘Nah. I just tried 1234.You’d be surprised how many people use it for a PIN.’

I could have kicked myself.

I went into the names section, selected ‘search’ and typed in ‘Lulu’. There were two numbers: a home and a mobile. The home phone rang out and a recorded message told me the mobile was switched off or out of range.

You could buy a CD-ROM of the white pages that worked like a reverse directory: type in a number and the corresponding address popped up. Or you could ask your friendly neighbourhood senior constable after he’d finished stirring the rice.

‘Piece of piss,’ Sean said, ‘but you have to do something first.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Dance with me.’ He plucked the wine glass from my hand and led me to the middle of the lounge room, turning up the music on the way. It was the Gershwin tune, ‘S’Wonderful’.

‘For real?’

‘You’re an ex-stripper. Surely it’s not beyond you to bust the occasional move?’ He slid an arm round my waist and twirled me about. I stepped on his feet.

‘Relax into it, let me lead.’

I closed my eyes and tried to go with the flow. The less I thought about it the better it worked. I rested my head against his shoulder and smelled the aftershave he’d put on that morning, muted and mixed with the warm scent of his skin. When the horn section got loud he spun me out and around a couple of times then back in tight. I had one hand on his shoulder and my other palm on his shirt, feeling his firm chest beneath the thin white fabric. His fingers had slipped from my waist to my hips, found their way to the gap of flesh between the bottom of my shirt and the top of my low slung jeans. I felt each separate fingertip sear into my skin.

I said, ‘So this is what people do when they don’t have television,’ trying to sound flippant even though my stomach was fluttering right up into my throat. I had always thought old time dancing was wholesome and chaste, something your grandparents did in between lawn bowls and attending church. Boy, had I been mistaken.

Sean pulled me closer and crooned the words in my ear, hips swaying into me. He was hamming it up. Or maybe he wasn’t. My boobs pressed against his chest and I felt the temperature of his body surge like someone flicked a thermostat.

‘S’wonderful,’ he whispered, warm breath tickling my earlobe.

‘S’marvellous.’ He pulled back and looked at me. He was a couple of inches taller than I was, maybe five ten. I dragged my gaze from his perfectly formed lips to his blue-denim eyes. I closed mine and somehow our lips came together, then our tongues, melting in, all soft and buttery.

Maybe I took too much bad acid in the nineties, but I fancied we were alone in a fifties dance hall, spinning around in slow motion, a mirror ball showering us with points of light. Then even that image disappeared and all I felt was liquid heat from Sean’s palm pressing the base of my spine and a warmth that bloomed and spread wherever our bodies converged.

I’d had some great kisses in my time, but that one, shit. It took me outside myself, floating around some distant universe. Sean’s lips were narcotic and I’d definitely OD’d.

A tinny electronic song interrupted my swoon. Louder and louder, impossible to ignore. Sinatra’s ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, mobile phone style.

Sean pulled his lips away and reality slapped me like a Narcan hit. Everything was grey and cold and smelled like boiled rice.

I was seriously coming down.

He dived across to the kitchen bench for the phone. ‘Yep. Uh-huh. Be right there.’

I stood in the centre of the room, hugging myself as he gathered up his jacket and car keys. ‘What is it?’

‘Sword fight outside a nightclub.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘I shit you not. Gotta go.’

‘What about the stirfry?’

‘Save me some.’ He winked. ‘And hold that thought.’

The next morning Sean still hadn’t come home. I’d been curious about such a terrific guy not having a girlfriend. Now I knew why.

I schlepped around the kitchen in my PJs wondering how I was possibly going to make it up the road for coffee without first
having a coffee when I opened the pantry door and realised I was in love.

A packet of Lavazza and a single cup plunger sat on the middle shelf, tied together with the sort of cheap red bow you can buy from any newsagent. A small card with Garfield the cat in one of his wide eyed, manic moods hung from the ribbon and read, Don’t drink it all at once.

He must have bought it the night before and stuck it in the cupboard while I was in the shower. A goofy grin sprouted on my face and stayed there while I brewed coffee and breakfasted on leftover stirfry. I played Ella Fitzgerald again and danced around the kitchen thinking about the night and feeling all kind of sparkly.

I wondered what time Sean was getting home. I wondered if I should buy something to cook that was healthy, but tastier than tofu. From the tuna in the pantry I deduced he wasn’t averse to fish. Maybe salmon, seared, on some kind of bok choy thing? And good wine. Champagne. Not the crap sparkling I usually guzzled.

I could afford to live a little, still had nearly four grand. I could even afford a new top and maybe a blow dry. No, no blow dry. He was the type of guy who’d know I’d had one and realise I’d put in the effort. Shit. Life had been so much easier when he was gay.

I showered, dressed in jeans, a black scoop neck t-shirt and denim jacket. Pulled my hair into a ponytail and stuck it through the back of a baseball cap. I’d get my car from Brighton when Sean got home and for now would tram it to Malvern to talk to Lauren the massage girl. Before I left I ducked into the bathroom and found a square glass bottle. Sean’s cologne. I spritzed a bit on my wrist so I could smell it through the day and be reminded of him. I liked to think this sort of behaviour was cute but probably it was borderline obsessive.

I was sitting on the burgundy suede-feel couch in Hannah’s waiting room, flicking through an astrology magazine while she made peppermint tea.

My April horoscope indicated a career upheaval and warned of conflict and minor injuries when all I really wanted to hear was that I would win the lottery and shag myself silly with a succession of well built toy-boys. I tossed the magazine aside.

The forty year old businessman on the couch opposite looked up from his
National Geographic
and smiled. I smiled back.

A female voice floated down the hallway. ‘Great to see you too. Have a wonderful day.’ I heard the front door shut and then Rachel the budding financial guru poked her head into the waiting room. These girls sure got around.

‘Hi, Peter. Like to come through?’

He set his magazine on the side table and followed her into the hall. Today the scent in the oil burner was orangey and the music the sort that pygmies played on tiny flutes as they skipped around the Brazilian rainforest.

Hannah returned with two mugs of tea and sat next to me on the lounge. Her red curls were gathered into a loose bun on top of her head and she wore orange drawstring pants and a cheesecloth top that fell off her freckled shoulders.

‘Lauren won’t be long. Her booking finishes in five then, she’s got half an hour to talk to you before the next one.’

‘How’d you get into the handshake biz anyway?’ I blew on my tea.

‘My husband.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘This may be hard to believe, but ten years ago I was really straight, married and living in Sydney. I worked as a nurse, he was an insurance assessor and we had a brick veneer on a quarter acre block in Parramatta.’

‘Great Australian Dream.’

She lifted one corner of her mouth and folded her legs up under her. ‘I got sick one night during my shift and came home early. Ian wasn’t there. He showed up half an hour later, looking pretty surprised to see me. Said he’d been out for drinks after work but didn’t smell like alcohol. He smelled clean. Typical suspicious wife, I thought he was having an affair, so when he went to bed I looked through his wallet and found a card for a place called Mystic Liaisons.’

I screwed up my face.

‘I know,’ Hannah said. ‘Who names these places?’

‘Did you confront him?’

‘No. Next day I went there to see what it was. I thought it would be a brothel, but there were no beds, and no sex was allowed. Just massage and hand relief.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Asked for a job.’

‘No way.’

‘Uh-huh. I was working when Ian came in for his regular five-thirty wank. I walked into the waiting room and introduced myself.’

I couldn’t help laughing. Hannah was turning out to be a total headcase. It was brilliant.

‘You should’ve seen his face. He grabbed his briefcase and ran out. When he called later they wouldn’t put him through. All the girls thought it was hilarious.’

‘Did you break up with him?’

‘Look, I was prepared to work things out.’ She pushed a stray ringlet of hair behind her ear. ‘I said if it was okay for him to go there, it was okay for me to work there. He didn’t agree. Then I found out from the other girls that he’d been a terrible customer.

Always groping, hassling for extras. Funny, I could have forgiven him anything except being a bad client. We got divorced soon after, but I stayed massaging. It paid better than nursing and wasn’t nearly as messy. I actually started studying massage, then got into natural therapies as well.’

‘How’d you end up in Melbourne?’ I sipped my herbal tea and the strong mint cleared out my nose.

‘Moved here five years ago. I’ve always loved the city, but the massage scene is terrible. Places like Bodyworld have six rooms but they’ll put on twenty girls. They encourage you to do blow jobs for an extra twenty and half the girls are doing full service. Most massage places in Sydney’ll fire you if they catch you doing oral or sex. I found the only places you could work without having to do extras were shitty down market brothels like Nev’s, where they have both services available, or illegal joints. Eventually I decided to open my own place.’

‘Can’t you get a licence?’

‘I’ve applied, but it’s hard. Takes over a year while they investigate your background and unless you’re buying an established premises you need a building in an industrial area, the owner’s permission if you’re renting and a green light from council, which is notoriously difficult to get. I’m looking around for a suitable venue and trying to get a contract pending council approval but, it’s practically impossible.’

I heard a door open and a statuesque girl with chin-length blonde hair and pouty lips appeared in the waiting room, her long legs poking out of a towel.

‘Lauren, this is Simone,’ Hannah said.

‘Hi, listen, Jonathon wants to extend for another half hour.

Can we do this another time?’

‘Later on this afternoon?’ I suggested.

‘Lauren’s booked out after this,’ she said.

‘What about when you knock off?’

‘Boyfriend’s picking me up and we’re going straight to his folks’ house for tea.’

She chewed on her plump bottom lip. ‘Later in the week?’

‘Speed really is of the essence.’

‘Hang on, I’ve got an idea.’ She raced back to the room and came out a few seconds later. ‘Jon doesn’t mind if we talk while I massage, he’s a regular of mine.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think he’s kind of turned on by the idea.’

I thought about it for a moment. It was pretty damn unprofessional, but I couldn’t remember anything in my class notes that
expressly forbad inquiry agents from discussing a case in front of oiled up, naked men.

Hannah and Lauren looked at me.

Lauren must have mistaken my hesitation for nervousness, because she said, ‘I heard you used to be a stripper. I thought you’d be cool with it.’

Yeah, I was cool. Like a frost free fridge.

‘What the hell,’ I said.

My eyes gradually adjusted to the dim orange lamplight and I made out a small room with heavy velvet curtains covering the windows and walls decorated with mirrors and framed Gustav Klimt prints. Thick green towels draped an ergonomic massage table and a man lay face down, buck naked, head in a hole. Lauren flung her towel onto a cane armchair and I saw she was pale and slender, boobs the size of mine but with pink puffy nipples.

Feeling overdressed I removed my jacket. Then I crossed my arms and pretended to be interested in a ceramic oil burner.

‘Jonathon,’ Lauren said, ‘this is Simone.’

He lifted his head and smiled at me in the mirror on the wall in front of him. ‘So you’re the detective.’ He was in his early twenties with a gym toned body, tousled dark hair and straight white teeth. I’d been expecting someone fat, hairy and clad in a grubby raincoat.