9 hours ago
Chapter 53: Jenny Anderson
Scene 1
The sun was not up yet, but the sky outside Jenny’s window had gone from black to a soft, dusty gray. Her apartment sat on the third floor of a renovated walk-up in the Mission, and at this hour the only sounds were the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the far-off clatter of a bus braking on Valencia Street. She stood in front of the full-length mirror by her closet, naked, arms loose at her sides, her hair still messy from sleep.
The floor was cold under her feet. She rocked from one heel to the other, feeling the wood creak, and studied herself the way she studied a client before a wax. Head to toe. No sentiment.
Her breasts were small and high, the kind that did not need support to sit up on their own. B-cups, just barely, with pink nipples that had already gone hard in the morning chill. She watched them tighten as she inhaled, the little bumps around the areolas rising, and she made a mental note that she had not gained or lost anything in the last month. Good. She turned a quarter to the right. Her stomach was flat, with a faint shadow of muscle running down the center. She pressed two fingers to it and felt the give. Still tight.
She turned a full ninety. Her ass looked back at her from the side of the mirror, round and high, no sag. That was the gymnastics. Twelve years of it, from the age of six until her senior year, and even now she could still hold a handstand against the wall for a full minute. Her thighs were strong and a little thick at the top where they met her hips, and when she squeezed them together she felt the small, firm muscle there flex. No tan lines. She had driven up to Baker Beach last weekend, found the stretch where the families did not go, and lay on a towel for three hours reading a paperback with nothing on but sunscreen. Her skin was even all over, pale but not white, a soft California gold. She liked it this way. She thought everyone should like it this way.
She turned back to face herself. Between her thighs, the little triangle of hair was neat and trimmed, almost a perfect shape. Platinum blonde, a shade lighter than what was on her head. She had shaped it two nights ago, standing in the shower with a small pair of scissors, and now she leaned in and checked the edges. Still clean.
She picked up the bottle of lotion from her dresser. It was a French brand, expensive, something one of her regulars had given her at Christmas. She squeezed a generous amount into her palm, rubbed her hands together to warm it, and started at her shoulders.
She worked methodically. Down the arms, into the crook of each elbow, across the forearms, between the fingers. She moved to her collarbone, then to her chest. She cupped each breast in her hand and rubbed the lotion in slow circles, starting at the base and moving up to the nipple. She did not linger, but she did not rush either. Her nipples hardened all the way, standing out like little pink pencil erasers, and she looked at them in the mirror with a small, amused smile. They did that fast. They always had.
She moved to her stomach, then her hips. She turned and did her back as far as she could reach, bending one arm behind her and then the other. Her ass got a full handful of lotion, each cheek worked in slow circles until the skin shone. Down the fronts of her thighs, then the backs. Her calves. The tops of her feet.
Then, finally, she slid her hand up between her legs and rubbed lotion into the soft skin at the very top of her inner thighs, right where the trimmed blonde patch started. She did not touch herself the way someone else might. She touched the way a professional touched a body. But she did let her fingers skim the little triangle, checking the length, feeling for anything uneven.
“Practice what you preach,” she said to the mirror, under her breath, and her mouth curved up at one corner.
She walked to the closet. The hardwood was warmer near the rug. She pulled open the doors and looked at the rows of hangers. Black slacks on the left, blouses on the right, everything grouped by color. She ran a hand along the silk.
Black slacks, the ones that tapered at the ankle and made her legs look even longer than they were. A cream silk blouse with small buttons down the front. She pulled them down, laid them on the bed, and stood for a second looking at them.
She put on the slacks first, stepping into them and zipping up the side. They fit her at the hip and left a little gap at the waist, the way well-cut slacks did. She took the blouse off the hanger and slid her arms in. The silk was cool against her skin, and she shivered for a second before buttoning it from the bottom up.
She looked in the mirror again. Her nipples pushed right through the silk. Two small, clear points, one on each side. She tilted her head, considered it, even turned to check the side view. The blouse was not tight. It was not sheer. But the silk was thin and her nipples were hard and that was that.
She let out a long breath through her nose.
“Professional,” she said, out loud this time, and went back to the dresser.
She pulled out a thin bra, the kind with almost no padding, nude colored. She did not like wearing one. She had not worn one in high college, had not worn one in beauty college, and she would rather not wear one at all. But there was a father-in-law of a friend on the books today, and a few male clients booked for the afternoon, and she had learned to read the room.
She unbuttoned the blouse, slipped the bra on, clipped it behind her, and buttoned everything back up. She looked again. The points were gone. Just the soft curve of her breasts, hinted at, not stated. That was the line she walked at work.
She brushed her hair, straight and shoulder length, the platinum catching the first real light coming in the window. She did her makeup quick and light, the way she had practiced a hundred times. A swipe of mascara, a little pink on her lips, a touch of bronzer along her cheekbones. Small pearl studs in her ears.
She grabbed her leather tote from the hook by the door, slid her feet into the flats she had left by the entrance the night before, and picked up her car keys.
She glanced over her shoulder once, at the empty bed, at the mirror, at the small apartment that was all hers. Then she shut the door behind her and went to work.
Scene 2
The drive from the Mission to Fremont took forty minutes on a good day, an hour if the Bay Bridge was being difficult. Jenny drove with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a paper cup of coffee, sunglasses on even though the sun was still low. She had made this drive five days a week for almost three years. She knew every bump in the 880, every place the radio cut out, every gas station where the bathroom was clean.
She thought about the salon as she drove. When she had signed the lease, she had been twenty-one, fresh out of beauty college, with a loan from her grandmother and a name she had sketched on the back of a napkin. Teddy Bare Waxing. Her mother had told her it was a stupid name. Her best friend had told her she was going to go broke in six months. Neither of them had been right. The trick, she had figured out fast, was that people did not go to a waxing place for the wax. They went for the feeling of being taken care of. They went for a room that did not smell like a doctor’s office. They went for someone who would not make them feel small for being naked. She had built the whole business around that, and it had worked. She had two other techs now, a receptionist, a waitlist on Saturdays.
She pulled into the strip mall lot just before eight and parked in the spot marked JENNY in faded white paint. She unlocked the back door, flipped on the lights, turned on the diffusers, started the music low. Lavender and eucalyptus. Piano, no lyrics.
She went to the front desk and opened the appointment book. She still kept a paper one, even though everything was also in the system. There was something about seeing the names written out in ink.
Her finger stopped on the nine-thirty slot.
Vanitha Sivakumar. And next to it, in her own handwriting from yesterday, father-in-law’s first American makeover — manzilian package + chest + back.
Jenny smiled.
She had met Vanitha almost a year ago now, back when Vanitha had walked into the salon with a list of questions about Brazilian waxes and a phone full of reels she wanted to start shooting. Jenny had not known anything about Instagram saree content at the time. Vanitha had explained it to her while lying on the table in her underwear, both of them laughing at the camera angles Vanitha was trying to plan. By the end of the appointment they had exchanged numbers. A week later Vanitha had brought her a box of Indian sweets. A month after that, Jenny was getting tagged in Vanitha’s posts and suddenly had three new South Asian clients a week.
Vanitha had texted her last night. Bringing my father-in-law in. He’s never had anything done. Be gentle. He’s a good man.
Jenny had texted back a winking emoji and the thumbs up.
The bell over the door chimed at nine twenty-eight. Jenny looked up from the computer and smiled right away.
Vanitha came in first. She wore dark jeans and a simple cream top, no saree today, but she still had the gold at her ears and the mangalsutra at her throat, and her hair fell in one long, glossy rope over her shoulder. She looked like she had stepped out of an ad for something expensive.
“Hi, honey,” Jenny said, coming around the desk.
They hugged, quick and warm, and Vanitha pulled back and pointed behind her with her thumb.
“This is Selvam, my father-in-law. Mama, this is my friend Jenny.”
The man standing by the door was tall, taller than Jenny had expected, and his shoulders filled out the cotton shirt he wore in a way that made her look twice. He was older, but not in the soft way most men his age were older. He was lean. His forearms had the kind of veins that only came from real work. His hair was salt and pepper, thick, and his jaw was set tight. He looked like he did not want to be there.
Jenny put on her best professional smile and stepped forward, hand out.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Selvam. I’m Jenny.”
Selvam took her hand. His grip was firm, polite, quick. He pulled his hand back like he was not sure what the rules were.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh, god, no ma’am,” Jenny said, laughing. “Just Jenny. Come on in. Sit anywhere.”
Selvam sat on the edge of the couch, knees together, hands folded on top of them. He looked at the floor. Then at the wall. Then, for one quick second, at Jenny.
He had not meant to look. He had told himself on the drive over that he would keep his eyes down and his mouth shut and get this over with. But the shop was smaller than he had pictured, and the girl was closer than he had pictured, and she was nothing like any woman he had ever stood next to in his life.
Her hair was almost gold. That was the first thing. Blonde the way he had seen blonde in movies, something almost golden, like the inside of a shell. Her eyes were blue. Not a polite blue. A real, bright blue, the kind of blue he had only ever seen in pictures. Her skin was so fair he could see the faint pink of her cheeks where the blood moved under it. She was small, maybe a head shorter than him, but her body was tight and strong and she moved like she knew exactly where her feet were. Her slacks fit close at the hip. The silk blouse shifted when she breathed. He looked away so fast it made his neck hurt.
His heart was moving fast. A warm feeling was crawling up the back of his neck and into his ears. He had never been this close to a white woman in his life. Not once. He had seen them on planes, in airports, across parking lots. He had never been in a room with one, never shaken one’s hand, never been about to ... his mind stuck on the word ... never been about to take his shorts off for one.
He swallowed hard.
Jenny noticed. Of course she noticed. She had seen that look on men for a decade now. The quick flick of the eyes. The sudden interest in the floor. She did not make a thing of it. She just smiled a little to herself and sat down across from him, knees together, hands on her lap, and got into the part of the job she was good at.
“Okay, Selvam. Vanitha told me we’re doing the manzilian package today, plus chest and back. Have you had any kind of waxing before?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Totally fine. First time for everything, right?” She kept her voice easy. “Let me walk you through it so you know exactly what’s going to happen. No surprises. That’s my rule.”
He nodded.
“So the package is everything from your chest down. We’ll do your chest, your stomach, your back. Then for the lower half we wax the pubic area. That means the hair at the base of your penis, all the way down the shaft, and your balls. Then we do the butt crack. The whole thing, front and back.”
She said it the same way she would have said we do the chest and stomach, because at work those words were just words. Selvam, on the couch, felt his ears go hot. He shifted. His hands gripped a little tighter on his knees. Penis. Shaft. Balls. Butt crack. In the clean clear voice of a young blonde girl sitting three feet away from him.
He nodded without looking up.
“It takes about an hour and a half,” Jenny went on. “I’ll explain each step as we go. If you need me to stop at any point, just say stop. Easy as that. Sound good?”
“Sound good,” Selvam said.
Jenny smiled.
Vanitha, sitting next to him on the couch, squeezed his shoulder once. The kind of squeeze that said, I know, you’re okay.
Jenny stood up and smoothed her slacks.
“Alright. Let’s get you set up.”
Scene 3
Jenny paused at the doorway to the back hall and turned, one hand on the frame.
“Quick thing,” she said. Her voice dropped a little, more private now. “Some of my male clients like it if their wife or a family member comes back and stays in the room. Some prefer privacy. It’s totally up to you, Selvam. Would you like Vanitha to wait out here, or come back with us?”
Selvam opened his mouth. He did not know what the right answer was. Part of him wanted Vanitha back there with him, because she was the only familiar thing in this whole building. Part of him, a louder part, did not want Vanitha back there, because having her watch a young white girl wax the hair from around his cock was more than his heart could hold at once.
Before he could answer, Vanitha answered for him.
“I’ll step out, mama,” she said. She stood up and touched the back of his hand. “You don’t need me hovering. I’m going to run some errands. I’ll be back in a few hours, okay? Jenny will take good care of you.”
He looked at her. She was already reaching for her bag.
“Okay,” he said.
Vanitha leaned in and kissed his cheek, the quick daughter-in-law kind of kiss that anyone watching would read as nothing at all. Her lips brushed his jaw and were gone.
“Be nice to him, Jenny,” she said.
“Promise,” Jenny said.
The bell over the door chimed, and Vanitha was gone. The salon suddenly felt a lot smaller.
“Alright,” Jenny said, tilting her head toward the hall. “This way.”
Selvam stood up. His legs felt stiff. He followed her.
She walked ahead of him down the short hallway, and he tried very hard not to look at her, and he looked at her anyway. He could not help it. The black slacks fit her across the hips and came in at the waist, and above the waistband the silk of her blouse moved with each step. Her ass was small and high and round, and it shifted under the fabric in a way that seemed almost rude for how early in the morning it was. Her shoulders were narrow. Her hair swung just above them. He dragged his eyes up to the ceiling. He looked at a framed photo on the wall. He looked at his own feet.
His heart was loud in his ears.
She opened a door at the end of the hall.
“Here we are.”
The room was smaller than he had expected, and cleaner than he had expected. White walls. Soft yellow light from two lamps in the corners, no harsh overhead glare. A long padded table in the middle, covered with a fresh white sheet, a folded towel at one end. A rolling cart next to it with a pot of something warm, a stack of strips, and a line of small bottles. The air smelled faintly of lavender and something sweeter underneath, like honey. A small speaker on the shelf was playing the same piano from out front, soft enough that it was almost just a hum.
Jenny stepped inside and gestured to the table.
“So, the way this works. I’m going to step out for a minute and let you get ready. When I come back, we’ll start with the chest and the back, the easier stuff, and work our way down. Sound good?”
“Sound good,” he said again. It was the only thing his mouth seemed to know how to say.
She moved to the cart and picked up a folded square of soft white cotton. She turned and held it out to him.
“Okay. So when I leave, you’re going to take off your shirt and your shorts. Underwear too. Everything off. You can use this sheet to cover yourself from the waist down while I’m doing the top half. We’ll work the sheet around as we go, so you’re never more exposed than you need to be. Does that make sense?”
He nodded. He took the folded cotton from her. His fingers almost brushed hers and he pulled his hand back a little too fast.
Jenny did not seem to notice. Or if she did, she did not let it show.
“Great.” She checked the pot on the cart, gave the wax a stir with a wooden stick, then looked back at him with a warm, easy smile. “I‘ll knock before I come back in. Take your time.”
She stepped out and closed the door with a soft click.
Selvam stood in the middle of the room for a second, just breathing.
He looked at the folded sheet in his hand.
He looked at the table.
He looked at the door she had just closed.
A young white woman, the same woman his eyes kept going back to, was on the other side of that door. In a minute she was going to come back in here, and he was going to be lying on this table with the sheet over him, and she was going to lift the sheet, and she was going to see his cock. She was going to put her hands on his cock. She was going to pour warm wax on it and on his balls, and she was going to press strips of cloth over it, and she was going to pull the hair off, and she was going to do it with the same calm voice she had used to say the word shaft out there in the lobby, as if it were nothing.
He had never, in forty-eight years on this earth, been in a situation anything like this.
A thick warmth was moving through him now. Not the clean warmth of exercise. Something slower. It had started at the back of his neck when he had first shaken her hand and now it was in his chest, in his stomach, and lower. He could feel his heart in his throat. He could feel it in his wrists.
He told himself, sternly, the way he used to tell himself when he was a younger man lifting heavier than he should, to get a grip. He was a grown man. This was a job. The girl was a professional. She did this every day. She had probably seen a hundred men today already. She did not care about him. She did not see him the way he was seeing her. He was one client in a long line of clients, and when she pulled the wax off his balls she would be thinking about her lunch.
He told himself all of this. None of it slowed his heart.
He began to unbutton his shirt. His fingers were clumsy. He got the buttons wrong on the second one and had to redo it.
He pulled the shirt off and folded it, because folding it gave him something to do. He set it on the chair in the corner. He hooked his thumbs into his shorts and pushed them down, stepped out of them, folded them too. His underwear went on top. He stood there for a second, naked, in the soft yellow light, with the smell of lavender around him, and he felt absurd and enormous and small all at the same time.
He climbed onto the table. The padding was warm. He unfolded the sheet and laid it across his hips, covering himself from belly button to thigh. He lay back. He stared at the ceiling. The ceiling had one small water stain in the corner.
He closed his eyes.
He waited for the knock.
Scene 1
The sun was not up yet, but the sky outside Jenny’s window had gone from black to a soft, dusty gray. Her apartment sat on the third floor of a renovated walk-up in the Mission, and at this hour the only sounds were the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the far-off clatter of a bus braking on Valencia Street. She stood in front of the full-length mirror by her closet, naked, arms loose at her sides, her hair still messy from sleep.
The floor was cold under her feet. She rocked from one heel to the other, feeling the wood creak, and studied herself the way she studied a client before a wax. Head to toe. No sentiment.
Her breasts were small and high, the kind that did not need support to sit up on their own. B-cups, just barely, with pink nipples that had already gone hard in the morning chill. She watched them tighten as she inhaled, the little bumps around the areolas rising, and she made a mental note that she had not gained or lost anything in the last month. Good. She turned a quarter to the right. Her stomach was flat, with a faint shadow of muscle running down the center. She pressed two fingers to it and felt the give. Still tight.
She turned a full ninety. Her ass looked back at her from the side of the mirror, round and high, no sag. That was the gymnastics. Twelve years of it, from the age of six until her senior year, and even now she could still hold a handstand against the wall for a full minute. Her thighs were strong and a little thick at the top where they met her hips, and when she squeezed them together she felt the small, firm muscle there flex. No tan lines. She had driven up to Baker Beach last weekend, found the stretch where the families did not go, and lay on a towel for three hours reading a paperback with nothing on but sunscreen. Her skin was even all over, pale but not white, a soft California gold. She liked it this way. She thought everyone should like it this way.
She turned back to face herself. Between her thighs, the little triangle of hair was neat and trimmed, almost a perfect shape. Platinum blonde, a shade lighter than what was on her head. She had shaped it two nights ago, standing in the shower with a small pair of scissors, and now she leaned in and checked the edges. Still clean.
She picked up the bottle of lotion from her dresser. It was a French brand, expensive, something one of her regulars had given her at Christmas. She squeezed a generous amount into her palm, rubbed her hands together to warm it, and started at her shoulders.
She worked methodically. Down the arms, into the crook of each elbow, across the forearms, between the fingers. She moved to her collarbone, then to her chest. She cupped each breast in her hand and rubbed the lotion in slow circles, starting at the base and moving up to the nipple. She did not linger, but she did not rush either. Her nipples hardened all the way, standing out like little pink pencil erasers, and she looked at them in the mirror with a small, amused smile. They did that fast. They always had.
She moved to her stomach, then her hips. She turned and did her back as far as she could reach, bending one arm behind her and then the other. Her ass got a full handful of lotion, each cheek worked in slow circles until the skin shone. Down the fronts of her thighs, then the backs. Her calves. The tops of her feet.
Then, finally, she slid her hand up between her legs and rubbed lotion into the soft skin at the very top of her inner thighs, right where the trimmed blonde patch started. She did not touch herself the way someone else might. She touched the way a professional touched a body. But she did let her fingers skim the little triangle, checking the length, feeling for anything uneven.
“Practice what you preach,” she said to the mirror, under her breath, and her mouth curved up at one corner.
She walked to the closet. The hardwood was warmer near the rug. She pulled open the doors and looked at the rows of hangers. Black slacks on the left, blouses on the right, everything grouped by color. She ran a hand along the silk.
Black slacks, the ones that tapered at the ankle and made her legs look even longer than they were. A cream silk blouse with small buttons down the front. She pulled them down, laid them on the bed, and stood for a second looking at them.
She put on the slacks first, stepping into them and zipping up the side. They fit her at the hip and left a little gap at the waist, the way well-cut slacks did. She took the blouse off the hanger and slid her arms in. The silk was cool against her skin, and she shivered for a second before buttoning it from the bottom up.
She looked in the mirror again. Her nipples pushed right through the silk. Two small, clear points, one on each side. She tilted her head, considered it, even turned to check the side view. The blouse was not tight. It was not sheer. But the silk was thin and her nipples were hard and that was that.
She let out a long breath through her nose.
“Professional,” she said, out loud this time, and went back to the dresser.
She pulled out a thin bra, the kind with almost no padding, nude colored. She did not like wearing one. She had not worn one in high college, had not worn one in beauty college, and she would rather not wear one at all. But there was a father-in-law of a friend on the books today, and a few male clients booked for the afternoon, and she had learned to read the room.
She unbuttoned the blouse, slipped the bra on, clipped it behind her, and buttoned everything back up. She looked again. The points were gone. Just the soft curve of her breasts, hinted at, not stated. That was the line she walked at work.
She brushed her hair, straight and shoulder length, the platinum catching the first real light coming in the window. She did her makeup quick and light, the way she had practiced a hundred times. A swipe of mascara, a little pink on her lips, a touch of bronzer along her cheekbones. Small pearl studs in her ears.
She grabbed her leather tote from the hook by the door, slid her feet into the flats she had left by the entrance the night before, and picked up her car keys.
She glanced over her shoulder once, at the empty bed, at the mirror, at the small apartment that was all hers. Then she shut the door behind her and went to work.
Scene 2
The drive from the Mission to Fremont took forty minutes on a good day, an hour if the Bay Bridge was being difficult. Jenny drove with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a paper cup of coffee, sunglasses on even though the sun was still low. She had made this drive five days a week for almost three years. She knew every bump in the 880, every place the radio cut out, every gas station where the bathroom was clean.
She thought about the salon as she drove. When she had signed the lease, she had been twenty-one, fresh out of beauty college, with a loan from her grandmother and a name she had sketched on the back of a napkin. Teddy Bare Waxing. Her mother had told her it was a stupid name. Her best friend had told her she was going to go broke in six months. Neither of them had been right. The trick, she had figured out fast, was that people did not go to a waxing place for the wax. They went for the feeling of being taken care of. They went for a room that did not smell like a doctor’s office. They went for someone who would not make them feel small for being naked. She had built the whole business around that, and it had worked. She had two other techs now, a receptionist, a waitlist on Saturdays.
She pulled into the strip mall lot just before eight and parked in the spot marked JENNY in faded white paint. She unlocked the back door, flipped on the lights, turned on the diffusers, started the music low. Lavender and eucalyptus. Piano, no lyrics.
She went to the front desk and opened the appointment book. She still kept a paper one, even though everything was also in the system. There was something about seeing the names written out in ink.
Her finger stopped on the nine-thirty slot.
Vanitha Sivakumar. And next to it, in her own handwriting from yesterday, father-in-law’s first American makeover — manzilian package + chest + back.
Jenny smiled.
She had met Vanitha almost a year ago now, back when Vanitha had walked into the salon with a list of questions about Brazilian waxes and a phone full of reels she wanted to start shooting. Jenny had not known anything about Instagram saree content at the time. Vanitha had explained it to her while lying on the table in her underwear, both of them laughing at the camera angles Vanitha was trying to plan. By the end of the appointment they had exchanged numbers. A week later Vanitha had brought her a box of Indian sweets. A month after that, Jenny was getting tagged in Vanitha’s posts and suddenly had three new South Asian clients a week.
Vanitha had texted her last night. Bringing my father-in-law in. He’s never had anything done. Be gentle. He’s a good man.
Jenny had texted back a winking emoji and the thumbs up.
The bell over the door chimed at nine twenty-eight. Jenny looked up from the computer and smiled right away.
Vanitha came in first. She wore dark jeans and a simple cream top, no saree today, but she still had the gold at her ears and the mangalsutra at her throat, and her hair fell in one long, glossy rope over her shoulder. She looked like she had stepped out of an ad for something expensive.
“Hi, honey,” Jenny said, coming around the desk.
They hugged, quick and warm, and Vanitha pulled back and pointed behind her with her thumb.
“This is Selvam, my father-in-law. Mama, this is my friend Jenny.”
The man standing by the door was tall, taller than Jenny had expected, and his shoulders filled out the cotton shirt he wore in a way that made her look twice. He was older, but not in the soft way most men his age were older. He was lean. His forearms had the kind of veins that only came from real work. His hair was salt and pepper, thick, and his jaw was set tight. He looked like he did not want to be there.
Jenny put on her best professional smile and stepped forward, hand out.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Selvam. I’m Jenny.”
Selvam took her hand. His grip was firm, polite, quick. He pulled his hand back like he was not sure what the rules were.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
“Oh, god, no ma’am,” Jenny said, laughing. “Just Jenny. Come on in. Sit anywhere.”
Selvam sat on the edge of the couch, knees together, hands folded on top of them. He looked at the floor. Then at the wall. Then, for one quick second, at Jenny.
He had not meant to look. He had told himself on the drive over that he would keep his eyes down and his mouth shut and get this over with. But the shop was smaller than he had pictured, and the girl was closer than he had pictured, and she was nothing like any woman he had ever stood next to in his life.
Her hair was almost gold. That was the first thing. Blonde the way he had seen blonde in movies, something almost golden, like the inside of a shell. Her eyes were blue. Not a polite blue. A real, bright blue, the kind of blue he had only ever seen in pictures. Her skin was so fair he could see the faint pink of her cheeks where the blood moved under it. She was small, maybe a head shorter than him, but her body was tight and strong and she moved like she knew exactly where her feet were. Her slacks fit close at the hip. The silk blouse shifted when she breathed. He looked away so fast it made his neck hurt.
His heart was moving fast. A warm feeling was crawling up the back of his neck and into his ears. He had never been this close to a white woman in his life. Not once. He had seen them on planes, in airports, across parking lots. He had never been in a room with one, never shaken one’s hand, never been about to ... his mind stuck on the word ... never been about to take his shorts off for one.
He swallowed hard.
Jenny noticed. Of course she noticed. She had seen that look on men for a decade now. The quick flick of the eyes. The sudden interest in the floor. She did not make a thing of it. She just smiled a little to herself and sat down across from him, knees together, hands on her lap, and got into the part of the job she was good at.
“Okay, Selvam. Vanitha told me we’re doing the manzilian package today, plus chest and back. Have you had any kind of waxing before?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Totally fine. First time for everything, right?” She kept her voice easy. “Let me walk you through it so you know exactly what’s going to happen. No surprises. That’s my rule.”
He nodded.
“So the package is everything from your chest down. We’ll do your chest, your stomach, your back. Then for the lower half we wax the pubic area. That means the hair at the base of your penis, all the way down the shaft, and your balls. Then we do the butt crack. The whole thing, front and back.”
She said it the same way she would have said we do the chest and stomach, because at work those words were just words. Selvam, on the couch, felt his ears go hot. He shifted. His hands gripped a little tighter on his knees. Penis. Shaft. Balls. Butt crack. In the clean clear voice of a young blonde girl sitting three feet away from him.
He nodded without looking up.
“It takes about an hour and a half,” Jenny went on. “I’ll explain each step as we go. If you need me to stop at any point, just say stop. Easy as that. Sound good?”
“Sound good,” Selvam said.
Jenny smiled.
Vanitha, sitting next to him on the couch, squeezed his shoulder once. The kind of squeeze that said, I know, you’re okay.
Jenny stood up and smoothed her slacks.
“Alright. Let’s get you set up.”
Scene 3
Jenny paused at the doorway to the back hall and turned, one hand on the frame.
“Quick thing,” she said. Her voice dropped a little, more private now. “Some of my male clients like it if their wife or a family member comes back and stays in the room. Some prefer privacy. It’s totally up to you, Selvam. Would you like Vanitha to wait out here, or come back with us?”
Selvam opened his mouth. He did not know what the right answer was. Part of him wanted Vanitha back there with him, because she was the only familiar thing in this whole building. Part of him, a louder part, did not want Vanitha back there, because having her watch a young white girl wax the hair from around his cock was more than his heart could hold at once.
Before he could answer, Vanitha answered for him.
“I’ll step out, mama,” she said. She stood up and touched the back of his hand. “You don’t need me hovering. I’m going to run some errands. I’ll be back in a few hours, okay? Jenny will take good care of you.”
He looked at her. She was already reaching for her bag.
“Okay,” he said.
Vanitha leaned in and kissed his cheek, the quick daughter-in-law kind of kiss that anyone watching would read as nothing at all. Her lips brushed his jaw and were gone.
“Be nice to him, Jenny,” she said.
“Promise,” Jenny said.
The bell over the door chimed, and Vanitha was gone. The salon suddenly felt a lot smaller.
“Alright,” Jenny said, tilting her head toward the hall. “This way.”
Selvam stood up. His legs felt stiff. He followed her.
She walked ahead of him down the short hallway, and he tried very hard not to look at her, and he looked at her anyway. He could not help it. The black slacks fit her across the hips and came in at the waist, and above the waistband the silk of her blouse moved with each step. Her ass was small and high and round, and it shifted under the fabric in a way that seemed almost rude for how early in the morning it was. Her shoulders were narrow. Her hair swung just above them. He dragged his eyes up to the ceiling. He looked at a framed photo on the wall. He looked at his own feet.
His heart was loud in his ears.
She opened a door at the end of the hall.
“Here we are.”
The room was smaller than he had expected, and cleaner than he had expected. White walls. Soft yellow light from two lamps in the corners, no harsh overhead glare. A long padded table in the middle, covered with a fresh white sheet, a folded towel at one end. A rolling cart next to it with a pot of something warm, a stack of strips, and a line of small bottles. The air smelled faintly of lavender and something sweeter underneath, like honey. A small speaker on the shelf was playing the same piano from out front, soft enough that it was almost just a hum.
Jenny stepped inside and gestured to the table.
“So, the way this works. I’m going to step out for a minute and let you get ready. When I come back, we’ll start with the chest and the back, the easier stuff, and work our way down. Sound good?”
“Sound good,” he said again. It was the only thing his mouth seemed to know how to say.
She moved to the cart and picked up a folded square of soft white cotton. She turned and held it out to him.
“Okay. So when I leave, you’re going to take off your shirt and your shorts. Underwear too. Everything off. You can use this sheet to cover yourself from the waist down while I’m doing the top half. We’ll work the sheet around as we go, so you’re never more exposed than you need to be. Does that make sense?”
He nodded. He took the folded cotton from her. His fingers almost brushed hers and he pulled his hand back a little too fast.
Jenny did not seem to notice. Or if she did, she did not let it show.
“Great.” She checked the pot on the cart, gave the wax a stir with a wooden stick, then looked back at him with a warm, easy smile. “I‘ll knock before I come back in. Take your time.”
She stepped out and closed the door with a soft click.
Selvam stood in the middle of the room for a second, just breathing.
He looked at the folded sheet in his hand.
He looked at the table.
He looked at the door she had just closed.
A young white woman, the same woman his eyes kept going back to, was on the other side of that door. In a minute she was going to come back in here, and he was going to be lying on this table with the sheet over him, and she was going to lift the sheet, and she was going to see his cock. She was going to put her hands on his cock. She was going to pour warm wax on it and on his balls, and she was going to press strips of cloth over it, and she was going to pull the hair off, and she was going to do it with the same calm voice she had used to say the word shaft out there in the lobby, as if it were nothing.
He had never, in forty-eight years on this earth, been in a situation anything like this.
A thick warmth was moving through him now. Not the clean warmth of exercise. Something slower. It had started at the back of his neck when he had first shaken her hand and now it was in his chest, in his stomach, and lower. He could feel his heart in his throat. He could feel it in his wrists.
He told himself, sternly, the way he used to tell himself when he was a younger man lifting heavier than he should, to get a grip. He was a grown man. This was a job. The girl was a professional. She did this every day. She had probably seen a hundred men today already. She did not care about him. She did not see him the way he was seeing her. He was one client in a long line of clients, and when she pulled the wax off his balls she would be thinking about her lunch.
He told himself all of this. None of it slowed his heart.
He began to unbutton his shirt. His fingers were clumsy. He got the buttons wrong on the second one and had to redo it.
He pulled the shirt off and folded it, because folding it gave him something to do. He set it on the chair in the corner. He hooked his thumbs into his shorts and pushed them down, stepped out of them, folded them too. His underwear went on top. He stood there for a second, naked, in the soft yellow light, with the smell of lavender around him, and he felt absurd and enormous and small all at the same time.
He climbed onto the table. The padding was warm. He unfolded the sheet and laid it across his hips, covering himself from belly button to thigh. He lay back. He stared at the ceiling. The ceiling had one small water stain in the corner.
He closed his eyes.
He waited for the knock.
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