Linda woke with a start and looked at her clock; it was five twenty-five in the morning. She switched the alarm before it could go off and penetrate the early morning quiet. She stretched, yawned, and moved the cat off her legs, and then reached under the covers for her warm bathrobe and socks and pulled them on. Just put your feet on the floor, feet on floor. She reached down and gave her dog a couple of pats before stepping around him. She headed to the kitchen to turn the heat up slightly and start the coffee maker, and then to the bathroom where she plugged in the small auxiliary heater and pulled her thick socks up higher. It was always so cold and she could never seem to warm up completely. She wished she could afford the luxury of not worrying about the heating bills, just once. She sat for a few minutes in front of the noisy little heater, rubbing her hands together as she did.
The coffee maker signaled it was ready; she went back into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of the liquid gold and settled at the table. She pulled the small blanket from the back of the chair and wrapped herself in it, rubbed her eyes, and then reached for the stack of bills, notices, and papers, finding the yellow permission forms she had forgotten to sign the night before. She reached for a pen and signed them both, folded them, and put them on the counter. She finished up her coffee, reached over for a refill, and headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her to keep the heat in.
In the shower, she went over in her mind every detail she needed to remember for the day. Today would be the first time opening up by herself. She knew where the key pickup was and what her opening duties were, as well as where her boss had told her the money from the night before had been stashed. Linda thought about the other girl who had been hired; she had worked at a few of the spas in town and had a lot of regulars, but there was something about the new girl that Linda couldn’t quite put her finger on. What was it? And then her thoughts were abruptly interrupted.
“Mom … Mom … I have to go pee and you locked the door again.” The morning had begun.
“Okay, you guys, let’s go over this one more time. Rules?”
Kaitlin looked at her mom, rolled her eyes, and said, “Mom, I’m not a kid. I’m almost fourteen and I have a babysitting job almost every Saturday, that I get paid for, you know!” her eyes showing her impatience and a slight touch of indignation.
Linda looked at her eldest child and couldn’t help but feel deeply moved by her strength and resilience. “Oh, I know, honey. I just want to make sure you’re both okay ’til I get home from work, that’s all.”
Kaitlin sighed and said, “Mom, please! None of my friends’ moms make this big a deal out of working late. Relax, Mom; I got this.”
Linda persisted, this time looking to Ben. “So please, give me the rules. One more time, okay, sweetheart? Come on; just humour me.”
Ben, who hadn’t been talkative lately, perked up and said, “Come on, Mommy, we know the rules. Don’t answer the door; stay inside; don’t make a mess, or burn the house down; and do our homework.” Linda bent down to rebutton his shirt, and his little hand touched her cheek. “It’s okay, Mommy,” Ben said earnestly, “we know you have to be at work. We’ll be good.”
She drew him in close to her chest and hugged him tightly, fighting back tears as she did, and then straightened up and said, “All right, all right. I know you’ll be good; you’re always good and brave, and I love you both so much.”
“Mom, we gotta go or we’ll miss the bus again,” Kaitlin said in her most grown-up tone, showing her new sense of responsibility and the seriousness with which she was taking it.
“You mean, we have to go. There is no such word as ‘gotta,’” Linda said.
Kaitlin rolled her eyes at her mother and repeated slowly for dramatic effect, “Mom, we have to go. Come on, Ben,” she said, taking his hand in hers, “Let’s go, buddy.”
Linda waited at the curb until they were on the bus, and waved and blew kisses. It was something Ben had asked her not to do anymore when other kids were watching, but she couldn’t help herself; she always forgot and did it instinctively. She smiled and sighed, and went back into the house to get dressed and ready for work. Before leaving, she made two plates of snacks, covered them with plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge. She reached for the notepad and wrote both her children little notes, and placed them on top of their snacks. She gathered up her bills and put them neatly in her purse. She took a final glance around the house, made sure everything was turned off, lowered the heat, and put the dog out in the backyard before locking up and leaving. She drove over to Katya’s house to pick the keys up and a few minutes later got to work.
She parked a few blocks away as a safety precaution, got her gym bag out of the trunk where she kept it hidden from the kids, swung it over her shoulder, and walked the short distance to the rundown building. Waiting on the front steps was her first customer, Bill, who waved enthusiastically as she approached.
“Hi, Brandy. Can I have the first appointment today?”
“Hi, Bill. Well, sure, but you know you have to wait ’til I get ready, okay? You know we don’t open for twenty more minutes.” She caught herself talking still in mommy mode.
“Yeah, I know, but I like to be here early, before you get too sad.” Bill was slightly simple but brilliantly observant.
Once inside, Linda went and got the stash and put the envelope in a new spot. She then went to the change room, pulled out her makeup, took off her baseball cap, and changed into her work clothes. She squeezed into her good luck slinky, tight, short black dress, with too much cleavage, and a lacy bra showing just a bit more than enough. She brushed, fluffed, pulled up her long, blonde hair, and applied too much makeup. She had totally transformed herself. Several minutes later she came out and opened the business for the day. “How are you today, Bill?” she asked and led him into a small back room. “So, what are we doing this morning, Bill? How much are you tipping today?”
Bill pulled out his money and Linda counted two hundred dollars. She asked him to get settled and said she would be right back. When she had given him a few minutes, she knocked at the folding door and entered; he was already eagerly lying on the table. He always finished so quickly; for that she was glad. Linda gathered her belongings and said she would give him a few minutes. Her day had just begun; she still had nine hours to go. She went to the washroom and cleaned herself up; the lilac soap permeated the small space briefly, overpowering the scent of Lysol. She avoided looking at her reflection in the mirror; she couldn’t bear to. It made her feel shy and vulnerable, and she had no time for those emotions — not this early in the shift.
Back at the front desk, she entered a brief, cryptic note in the book, added fifty dollars to the envelope in the back, and then reapplied her lipstick and turned on the radio. Bill came out several minutes later and said, “Thanks, Brandy. I’ll see you next week. Maybe we can go for a coffee one of these days.”
“Yeah, maybe one of these days,” said Linda with a sincere enough smile. Bill left and Linda pulled from her purse the bills and final notices she had brought from home, opening them one by one. The phone bill and the electricity were overdue. She picked up the phone and called the power company, following twelve different prompts before she got a live person. “Hello? Oh, good, finally a real person. Yes, I’d like to arrange to make a payment today on my way home from work.”
“Can I have your account number and address, ma’am?”
“You mean the information I already entered?”
“Ma’am, I have a job to do, and in order to do that I need to make sure I have the right account information, so I need you to repeat it.” Linda repeated her account number slowly. “I see you are in arrears, and have been issued a disconnection notice scheduled for Friday,” the faceless woman on the other end of the phone said.
“Yes, I know,” replied Linda, “but I want to make a payment today. A hundred dollars — no — make that two hundred dollars, and I’ll pay the rest tomorrow in full when I get paid,” she said, a little irritated.
“That will be fine, but you will have to get a proof of payment from your bank and call collections with it. So, we can expect the balance to be paid by tomorrow, then?”
“Yes, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” said Linda, feeling the sting of shame.
“There’s no need to be rude with me, miss,” said the agent.
“I’m sorry. Can I have the number to call to report my payment please?”
The woman rattled off a number too quickly for Linda to jot down, and then was disconnected — or was it hung up on? Linda hung up the phone in frustration. It wasn’t as though she had borrowed money from the bitch personally, geez!
Coffee: she needed more coffee, and went to put a pot on. The phone rang and she raced back to pick it up; it was the other new girl, saying she would be late. “That’s okay, take your time,” said Linda, relieved that she would be alone for a few more hours at least. She needed the money and didn’t want to have to split the customers. She peered out the window, looking to see if there was anyone else waiting outside, but there wasn’t. It might be a slow day, she thought, and was worried she wouldn’t make enough money. Slow days were always the worst; they dragged on and on, and left far too much room for reflection. Linda pulled out her journal.
Somewhere between what we know to be true of ourselves, what we have been led to believe to be true of ourselves, and what we wish to be true of ourselves lies a close replica of who we might be. I have been trying for longer than I can remember to become a version of me that I would recognize. I have never before felt such a huge gap between the possibilities of me as I have recently become familiar with. Close to my heart is the me I hope to be, but outwardly is the version I have been shaped to become. And the struggle to figure out how I feel, or how I respond to anything seems to differ from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. I feel unsure and lost most days, save for a few moments when I am defending others — so well, as I do — perhaps because I know the yearning to be championed and defended. I can morph into whoever you need me to be for brief periods of time, because you need me to. But I cannot live in it for long before my inner self betrays me, and I waver awkwardly as if unsteady and unsure of myself entirely.
A soft knock at the door interrupted her thoughts; she quickly closed her journal, gathered her bills, notepad, and calculator and dragged them across the desk and into the drawer. She answered the door with a smile. “Hi, Paul, it’s so nice to see you. Please, come in.” Paul quietly entered and shuffled his feet nervously. Expertly, Linda assured him by taking him by the arm and asking if she could take his coat.
“No … no … no … tha … tha … thank you, Brandy,” stuttered Paul.
Linda made her way to the little room down the hall and opened the door for him. “You get settled, Paul, and I’ll be in shortly.” Paul nodded with relief and Linda closed the door and walked back to the front office. She took the BACK IN TEN MINUTES sign from the desk and put it on the door and locked it, and then bent down and turned the lock on the bottom of the door.
She walked down the hall to Paul, waiting in the little room; she accepted the money he handed her and proceeded to fulfill his wishes. Although he made her feel sad, he always returned each Wednesday since she had started and always paid her the same amount — she couldn’t complain even if she wanted to. He was her very first ever customer. He was so kind to her, when she fumbled and shook and wasn’t able to hide her fear and uncertainty, and eventually a few tears spilled from her eyes. He had said it was okay, and she had said it wasn’t and she would lose her job if anyone knew. He swore he would not tell a soul; he stuttered less in the wake of her self-conscious inabilities, and paid her anyway. That was only four weeks earlier, and she thought about how quickly she had adjusted to the job. She did what she had to to make it work — to pay her bills, and put food on the table, and heat the small house.
She finished up, forcing a brilliant smile to indicate she really enjoyed her time with him, and then left him to shower and get dressed. In the private staff bathroom, she washed his residue away as best she could before returning to the front desk.
She tried to purge the memories of her clients from her mind, and the acts she depended on now to make her living. She thought back to different times when she lived without the weight of looming responsibilities — when she was travelling and was utterly happy. She first began her love affair with sailing when she was nineteen. It was as if she had been born to sail, she used to think; she loved all of it. She had been crewing on the Miss-chief, a fifty-five-foot sloop, in Florida when she met the man that would become her first great heartbreak. He was a day tripper and had signed up for a day of sailing. He was there for a month on vacation between jobs and had three weeks left, and said he couldn’t imagine how he could have not noticed her in the little marina bar. They were crazy about each other from the beginning, and spent the rest of the month together in crazy, silly, new, and happy love. She moved back to Canada just to be with him. Nine months later Kaitlin was born, and less than a month after that he was gone and so was the great, big, silly, happy love. It seemed a lifetime ago to her.
Paul interrupted her thoughts as he stood there by the desk and repeated her name. “Oh, sorry, Paul; what did you say?”
“I, I woo … won’t be he … here ne … ne … ne … next week; I … I we … we … will be away, okay?”
Linda looked at him and realized she hadn’t thought about what his life was like, what he did, why he stuttered, why he came here. Did he have family, children, a wife? She looked at him quizzically and meant to ask him about himself, but didn’t want to make him labour with the answers so instead she said, “Okay, Paul. Well, thank you for letting me know. Will I see you the week after?” Paul smiled and nodded; Linda got up from the desk and went to the door to remove the sign. She bent down to unlock and open the door for him and said goodbye. She watched as he walked down the street confidently, until he turned the corner and was out of sight. She sighed and thought about his challenges, and she hoped somebody, somewhere, loved him.
She poured more coffee and wondered how the school field trip was going, and hoped Ben wasn’t sitting all alone on the bus, or lingering several feet back behind the others, lost in himself as he often was. Sipping her coffee, she reached for the rest of her bills; she opened up every single one of them this time and took the calculator out of the desk drawer. She wanted to be able to send Kaitlin to riding camp and Ben to sailing camp in the summer, which was fast approaching. These were the two things she had loved when she was younger. But as she punched the numbers from each bill into the calculator, she felt her heart sink a little more.
There were her long overdue student loans to repay, which could no longer be deferred. There was rent to catch up on, but thankfully her landlady, Katya, had been so understanding. Then there were Kaitlin’s orthodontist payments, which were due upon arrival of each monthly visit, and Ben’s therapist at a hundred dollars a pop. Add to that all the other bills, and she was overwhelmed and desperate, which was how she ended up working at the massage parlour. It was sheer desperation and lack of options, or if there were other options she sure hadn’t found them yet. But just in case, she searched the classifieds each day, and bought a daily lottery ticket for two dollars. It was an investment, she’d tell herself; a chance at least. Something that offered her a small piece of hope for a different life than this one.
She topped up her coffee and went back to clean the second room. She changed the sheets, set out fresh towels, and threw the two sets of used ones in the washing machine in the little back alcove. She heard keys turn in the lock and the bell ring as she walked down the hall; she adjusted her dress and smoothed her hair before she reached the sparsely furnished reception room. It was the owner, her landlady, and she was carrying shopping bags.
“Here, let me give you a hand with those, Katya,” said Linda a little too eagerly as she reached her hands out to gather up some of the bags.
“Here, these are some new towels and sheets, and I hope these ones don’t end up walking out of here, too.”
Linda looked at her, suddenly unsure if she was being blamed for something or not. “What do you mean?” said Linda naively.
“Oh, don’t worry. I know exactly who has been stealing from me, and so far it hasn’t been you. But nothing surprises me with you girls; you girls never seem as grateful as you ought to be with this good paying job.”
You girls. The words stung Linda. You girls. What the hell did that mean anyway? She tried to process it, and although she couldn’t identify it right away, she knew that those two words had been meant to belittle.
“So, the money from last night — how much was there?” she demanded in a thick eastern European accent.
Shit, thought Linda. “Oh, I’m sorry, Katya. I forgot to count it; it was sealed in the envelope so I just put it in the place you told me to. I’ll go get it.” Linda went directly to the back alcove and retrieved the money from today’s hiding spot, and came quickly back to the front room. “Here you go.”
Katya took the envelope from her, sat down at the desk, and briefly glanced at all Linda’s bills and notes. “Linda, this is kitchen table work. Get rid of it and don’t bring it to work again,” said the cranky older woman, pushing the papers to the edge of the desk.
Linda quickly gathered everything up, crumpled them, and stuffed them in her bag nervously. “Sorry, Katya. I didn’t think you really cared what I did between customers.”
Katya settled her accounts, jotted notes in a little book she pulled from her pocket, and put the thick bundle of money in a pouch she wore as a necklace hidden inside her sweater. She surveyed the spa and pointed out odd jobs that were to be done between customers. “Take some notes, take some notes,” she said impatiently, “I can find lots for you to do when it’s not busy. This place is dirty; no excuse for that. You clean here like you clean your house, okay? You understand?”
Linda awkwardly nodded in agreement. She watched as the woman picked up her overstuffed purse and keys, forced herself to almost smile — or as close as she seemed to ever get to a smile anyway, thought Linda — and left Linda standing there in a bit of a daze. Who the fuck did she think she was? Sometimes she seemed almost genuinely kind and compassionate. But just as quickly, she became mean, gruff, bossy, and extremely demanding, with little thought or concern for the life-changing work that Linda found herself doing.
Linda resented her as much as she was thankful for her. Just when she had given up all hope, and thought she might have to apply for welfare — which meant she couldn’t afford to stay in the little house that she had rented over eight years ago — Katya told her she would give her a job if Linda thought she could do it. Well, here she was. From where she came, it was the last place she ever expected to be, but her rent was paid and the fridge was full. She began to have her regulars, and most days an average of five customers left their odour. It was a living.