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Have I been misreading Anna? “Not even you, Jamie?”
“Um, I guess we could have gone together…” He’s looking at me like I have two heads. Why is my question so weird?
“Sebastian Greer?” A male spa attendant is calling through the door. “Your eleven AM wax is now.”
“Getting all shined up for a special someone?” Jamie bobs his head with a grin.
“There’s no one,” I grumble. “Anyway, you were saying?”
“Mr. Greer, please come with me,” the attendant insists. “The aesthetician is waiting.” Jamie waves me away.
“Have fun!”
I follow the muscular attendant through the lobby and down a long corridor full of doors. The waxing room is small and white, with doors on two sides.
“Here you are,” the attendant says, handing me off to a glowering, gray-haired woman. “Through there is a steam room.” He gestures towards the door at the back of the space. “It’s clothing optional, of course. We recommend fifteen minutes in the steam after your wax. It will further open your pores.”
“Yup, great.” I’m barely paying attention. I need to talk to Jamie. If it would be strange for Anna and Jamie to have a couple’s massage together, but she came on the cruise for him, then what is their deal?
“I will wax you today,” the wax lady says in a heavy Eastern European accent. She snaps on gloves with unsettling thwacks. My mouth goes dry. In the corner, a pot of pink wax steams and burbles. “Robe off, lay there, face up.” She points at the table. “I’ll be back.” Like that’s not ominous.
I strip bare and tuck myself under the sheet provided. Staring at the ceiling, I try to listen to the spa’s calming music, but the burbling of the wax is far more noticeable. I could go now, just leave the spa. Except I need to know what’s up with Anna. What if she’s not a cheater? What if she’s here with a friend who’s into a man… and not into her? What if…
“You have very black hairs, Mr. Greer.” The waxing mistress is back, prodding my chest with a gloved hand. She messes with the cauldron of wax, and it snaps as she stirs. My pulse rises. “Here we go,” she says, and then, without further warning, she lays down a burning pink tarmac from my ribs up to my collarbone. Before I know what’s happening, she smooths a cloth over the hot paste on my skin.
“Ten, nine, eight…” Why is she counting down? “Five, four, three…” What comes at the end of…
Holy mother of god that hurt!
I shriek, grabbing at my chest. That high, piercing, eight-year-old-girl scream is coming from me. The evil wax mistress grins, lifting a cloth strip containing dark hair and half the skin from my left pectoral. My chest is on fire, my pulse a roar.
The wax-witch sets aside the dead-squirrel she ripped from my body and dips her wand back into the burbling cauldron. “Here we go,” she says again, lifting her steaming instrument of torture. The wax nears my skin. I can feel the heat.
No more. I shove the witch away, leap from the table, and barrel through the door to the steam beyond. And then I slam into something soft,someone soft, and we fall.
* * *
ZOEY
My masseuse is huge and muscular, meaning this massage is going deep. I’ve explained to him about my injury and we have a plan to ease tension in my upper leg, which will help my muscles realign and reduce inflammation. Plus, we discussed some gentle foot reflexology that should help with lymphatic drainage. But not, of course, before I get the full body kneading that the stress of playing Anna is starting to require.
“There’s a table for your things along this wall,” the masseuse says. “Through that door is the steam room. I recommend about fifteen minutes there, after the massage. Towels are beside the door, but the steam room is, in fact, clothing optional. Do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“Sounds amazing,” I say, fully intending to use the shit out of those towels.
“Now, I’ll step out and get you that mint water you wanted. Why don’t you undress, then lay below the sheet, face down,” he says.
I am naked and about to slide under the heated sheet when I hear a shriek somewhere nearby. The voice is high pitched and thin with pain. It sounds like someone has been stabbed. But more likely, they slipped on the tile in the steam room. What if it’s Gertrude? She’s almost ninety! She could have broken a hip!
I rush for the door, remembering my robe too late, so instead I grab the towel sitting on the stand. It turns out to be tiny.
Once I’m in the steam, I screech to a halt. Through shifting clouds, Oscar stares at the floor with horrified eyes. Oscar is holding his own tiny towel in front of him, clamped over his nethers as tightly as I have mine pressed over my front. Below him on the tile, Jamie’s hairy ass glows in the dim light of the room, his legs twisted with someone else’s long, muscular limbs, which are covered in coarse, dark hair.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god…” someone is muttering. Jamie scrambles backwards on the tile and Oscar throws him an extra towel. Then he stands and covers up, leaving only Sebastian on the floor, naked.
Sebastian whips his hands over his groin with lightning speed, but not before I see that, in fact, Woody the Woodpecker has nothing on him. I blink, shoving my gaze up to his face. There’s an empty rectangle of tan skin on his chest.
I start laughing. Maybe I’m in shock, I don’t know. Imagined scenes spin through my mind. Sebastian’s hit and run waxing. Sebastian and Jamie colliding. The two men writhing around on the floor together, legs slipping between legs. Sebastian’s long, tan shaft, exposed against his muscled thigh… Lizard Brain, heel!
