PEDICURE

by Melodie Johnson Howe

I’m sitting in a large, beige, leather massage chair. A young Asian woman whose name is Diane is giving me a pedicure. My life is frantic. My daughter is getting married this Saturday, and I am deep in revisions of my new novel. I have come here to relax and get my toes painted red.

But the chair is doing something strange to my body like rolling large hard marbles up and down my spine. Then without warning it thumps me in the lower back, and I lurch forward.

“I hurt you?” Diane looks up from my toes.

“No, no.”

The seat of the chair folds into me, pressing my thighs together. I jerk my hands up from my lap. I’m suddenly feeling claustrophobic. I wait for the chair to release my lower body. Slowly, very slowly, it lets go.

Settling back, I try to enjoy being massaged instead of fighting it. I must learn to give up control. I listen to the voices of the Asian women working here. Their singsong cadence reminds me of wind chimes. The chair is squeezing my thighs again. I wonder if it is secretly molesting me in some perverted-chair way. The balls are running up and down my back. Diane begins to thump my right foot with her fists. My eyes pop open.

“Good circulation,” she singsongs. “You have flu shot yet?”

“No.”

The chair is still pressing into my thighs. I peer at the controls and push what looks like an off button. It’s not. The chair is now kneading and vibrating me. I wonder if I should call Gloria Allred.

A man sits down next to me and takes his shoes off. He’s getting his feet done? Okay, I’m a sexist. I don’t want men to get pedicures. At least not sitting next to me.
What’s happened to men?! I must’ve been gawking because he smiles at me. I smile back. The young woman is digging into the cuticles on my big toe as if she’s exploring for some ancient relic. I jerk my foot back.

“Hurt?” she asks.

I nod.

“Not too long.”

She goes back to probing.

“Ouch!” I yell.

Nobody seems to have heard my scream. They’re all singsonging to each other. The chair seat is rubbing against my thighs again in some illicit way. The man is rolling up his pant legs revealing big, veined, hairy calves. He places his feet into the tub of water his pedicurist has filled for him. He lets out a sigh and turns his chair on. Now both of our bodies are shuddering and rolling. The seat of my chair finally releases me. I want to slap it.

The man turns his head toward me. “Wonderful, isn’t?”

I nod.

His belly is shaking from the vibration. I look at mine. Oh my God, my stomach is moving. This is embarrassing.

“What do you do?” He asks me.

Both of us are undulating, I turn my head toward him. I feel like we’re lying in bed together. I’m waiting for him to light a cigarette and ask, “Was it good for you?”

He asks again, “What do you do?”

I think of telling him I’m a veterinarian. My pedicurist is now talking on her cell while terrorizing my other foot.

Wincing, I dutifully reply, “I’m a writer.”

“I knew you were,” he says, proudly.

“How? The glasses?” I ask, tersely.

“No your whole persona.”

I wonder if this is a new kind of line. If I said I was a vet would he have said the same thing?

He continues, “It’s the way you talk, the way you handle yourself. I’m very observant.” Pleased with himself he leans back and closes his eyes. Oh my God, he’s acting as if we’re married.
His pedicurist sits down and lifts one of his large feet out of the water.

“How do you turn this thing of?” I snap at mine.

She points to a red button. It’s always the red button. I push it and my chair abruptly stops, catapulting me into a very erect sitting position.

“Comfortable?” Diane asks

“Oh, yes.”

I glare at the man, still undulating next to me, and say, “I don’t know any writer who has the persona of a writer. “

But the man is snoring contentedly.