‘What kind of business are you in?’ she asked.
‘I’m not in business.’
Her hands twitched. She couldn’t keep them still. She was supposed to be working. This was her job. Her hands were warm. I couldn’t bear it any more. I jerked away.
‘No … more … massage!’ I shouted.
The hands went limp as if they were dead. The girl was shocked — she had no idea what she’d done wrong. There were footsteps outside and she burst into floods of tears. Maybe I had gone too far. I got up, opened the door and went out. The people who’d gathered in the corridor drifted away. The manager rushed up and put a hand on my arm.
‘Please tell me, sir, how the girl has failed to attend to your needs.’
‘Failed to attend to my needs? She attended a bit too much!’
The manager pushed past me into the cubicle and shouted at the girclass="underline" ‘What have you done to our guest?’
‘Nothing!’ she protested. He turned back to me.
‘What’s the matter, sir? We do proper massage here!’
‘He didn’t want a massage … ’ said the girl.
‘You didn’t want a massage?’ the manager shouted. ‘So what are you doing here? Did you come to the wrong place? Are you crazy?’
Maybe I was crazy, though I’d never had any trouble before. Some of the girls were giving me funny looks. Just then our guest came out, still doing up the belt to his trousers. He pretended not to see me. Water was there too, looking horrified. I could understand why — I knew what my little scene would do for our business with the provincial hospital. What I didn’t know was why I had done it. All I knew was that I couldn’t bear that place any more. I was contaminated. I had to get out of there, I had to go somewhere clean.
I went home. The kid was asleep and my wife was folding the quilts. They were piled all over the sitting room chairs. The light was very bright, glaring off the cotton covers. Was this really my home? I had no idea we owned so many quilts — our sitting room looked like a warehouse. I panicked, I couldn’t breathe. My wife said something to me but I didn’t hear what it was. She carried a quilt out of the room, holding it against her stomach so she looked pregnant. The corner brushed against me and I backed away … and trod on something. The floor was covered in Lego and grubby old dolls. My wife spoke again. She seemed to be asking if I was hungry. I didn’t answer, just went into the bathroom and shut the door, overwhelmed by a strange feeling of emptiness. The smell of cosmetics, cologne and moisturiser clung to me faintly, like a distant memory. After I had stood there for a while, my wife knocked on the door, came in, hitched up her nightie and sat down to pee. Just like that. Right in front of me. It felt like a bad joke, as if I was a voyeur. I suppose I shouldn’t have felt like that. After all, she was my wife. But it was disgusting. I left the bathroom and got into bed. It was cold as ice, strange. I wanted the light off. I could only find peace in darkness.
3
My phone rang. It was Water.
‘What’s up with you, mate?’ he said.
‘What do you mean, what’s up?’ But I knew just what he meant.
He laughed.
‘Are you so in love that massage parlours make you feel dirty?’
‘Huh! Who would I be in love with? Love’s a losing game … ’
‘Don’t go telling me it’s because your wife’s so beautiful,’ he said.‘However beautiful your wife is, she’s still your wife, and you’re going to get tired of her eventually. You can’t stick to the same dish your whole life, can you?’
‘Piss off.’
‘Besides, the very fact you chose yourself such a hot wife shows that you’re a randy bastard.’ He was laying it on thick.
‘You think those hookers were so attractive?’ I glanced nervously in the direction of the bathroom. ‘Leave me alone. I’m going to sleep.’
‘Who with?’ Water wasn’t giving up easily.
‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘You want to get tested for HIV, mate.’
There was a burst of laughter from the other end of the phone.
‘Better die getting some than stay alive and not get any.’
I could hear my wife’s footsteps. I put down the phone and turned off the light.
How many men were still out there, screwing around in bars and massage parlours? There were any number of places to go to. How many men were having sex with women who weren’t their wives at that very minute? How many men started the night in another woman’s arms and finished it lying beside their wives? Weren’t they worried the other woman would see them one day, walking down the street with their wife? What would the other woman think of her? Poor wives, they didn’t know they were sharing their husband’s penis — revolting — like sharing a toothbrush. They had no idea, no idea where they’d picked up that embarrassing infection. They probably thought they’d caught it off a public toilet.
The woman living upstairs was always going up and down in the lifts with bags — shopping on the way up, rubbish on the way down. They had so much rubbish because they bought so much stuff. They must have been addicted to the consumer lifestyle. When I was taking the lift, I would watch her in the mirror as we descended. She was always so demure. I never struck up a conversation. The bags of rubbish were so heavy she had to struggle to drag them across to the bins.
‘It must be heavy for her,’ I said.
‘Who?’ my wife asked. I hadn’t seen her come in.
‘The couple upstairs. She does everything in their house.’
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ asked my wife.
‘Her husband takes her for granted.’
‘You should pay more attention to your own family,’ said my wife. ‘Where shall we go and eat this weekend?’
Going out to eat was our weekend ritual. Home cooking had lost its appeal, we ate the same old things in the same old ways — fried or steamed, skinned or whole, spicy or plain. So at weekends we ate out. We ate all sorts of Chinese regional delicacies. Then we tried foreign food — Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s, a steak dinner or Japanese. But none of it was really satisfying. We even tried Korean teppanyaki, where you can watch the cooks at work and have a go yourself, but it soon palled.
‘Anywhere,’ I said.
‘Where do you mean, anywhere?’
‘Let’s not bother.’
‘Why ever not?’ she yelped. I’d never said anything like this before.
‘I’m busy,’ I said. Being busy was always a man’s best excuse.
‘Busy? You’re not too busy to watch the TV.’ She grabbed the remote off me.
‘You don’t know what just happened.’
‘What happened?’ She sounded worried.
‘There’s no point in telling you.’ I wanted to change the subject.
‘Then it’s obviously nothing.’
‘You’re so infuriating!’ I flared up. Something had happened — but what? ‘You’ve got it too easy,’ I carried on. ‘You never even notice the people upstairs.’
‘What’s wrong with them? I saw them out on their stroll today, as usual.’
‘What’s it got to do with going out for a stroll? It’s all fake!’ I shouted. ‘You should feel sorry for her.’
‘Why don’t you feel sorry for me?’
The conversation was heading in an alarming direction, so I tried to calm her down. ‘Let’s ask the kid where we should go and eat.’
It was kind of ridiculous — my daughter was only three. As soon as she heard me talking about her she piped up ‘Mum! I want Natrol Sleep Restore!’ She was watching the Natrol advert on TV, the jingle warbling ‘The only gift for Mum and Dad is Natrol Sleep Restore!’
‘Let’s go and have monkey brains,’ I said.
‘Sure,’ said my wife. ‘I saw that leaflet too. A Manchu Han Imperial Feast monkey brain soup.’