Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [13]
“Hey, lady, you want more balls?” asked a teenager who was collecting the empty metal buckets at some point.
Ann looked down and saw her bucket was empty. How long had she been taking swings without the ball?
“It works better with balls, you know.”
After the sun went down, Ann decided to return to the massage waiting room. The wooden box was unlocked and the desk clerk was slitting open the tip envelopes with a knife. On top of the reception table were neat stacks of twentydollar bills.
“We closed,” the clerk said, finally noticing Ann. She smiled as if she knew of an inside joke. Her magenta lipstick looked freshly applied.
Ann couldn’t imagine why the clerk needed to looked well-groomed to count money. She figured the clerk must be a higher-up, maybe a manager. “You know that’s their money, not yours.”
“We pay them tomorrow. They will get their money, I assure you.”
Once Ann returned to the apartment, she ate a bowl of tomato soup she had bought from the 99 cents store. It was a brand she had never heard of; the soup, which had the consistency of silt, was a strange crayon orange color. Marie had been right—business had slowed down considerably and now people were leaving their spare change instead of dollar bills for tips. Ann looked for Marie’s cell phone number in her purse and dialed it. A man answered the phone.
“Is Marie there?”
“Huh? I think you got the wrong number.”
Ann ended the call and tried again.
“I told you that you have the wrong number, okay?!” The man then cursed, warning Ann that there would be consequences if she called a third time.
That night Ann fell asleep to a repeat of a late-night talk show, voices laughing at jokes that didn’t make much sense anymore.
The next evening, Ann returned to the block where the spa was located, but this time she waited at Number 19’s bus stop. She didn’t know if she would recognize the masseuse with her clothes on, but the minute she and another masseuse walked across the street, Ann got up from the bench.
“Did you get your tip money?” she asked.
The masseuse and her friend looked afraid.
“This is America. You have rights—it doesn’t matter if you’re illegal or not.”
Just then, a bus roared to the stop and the two women rushed to get inside.
“Next time I’ll give you the tip. Or give me your address. I’ll send you the money,” Ann said from the street. The doors folded together; the bus sighed before joining the lines of traffic.
“I’d like to see Number 19.” Ann stood in front of the check-in desk of the spa on Friday. It was the same manager, only this time she was wearing tangerine lipstick instead of magenta.
“One hundred dollars.”
Ann wasn’t about to admit that she didn’t have the money. “I just need to speak with her.”
“Number 19 working.”
A couple of other women in yoga pants entered the waiting room and the manager turned her attention to them. Ann kept her place at the front of the line, but the manager just moved over to the side to collect the women’s money and give them their towels and robes.
“You bother our customers,” the manager said after they left for the locker room.
“I need to talk with Number 19.”
“Number 19 doesn’t want to see you.”
“You didn’t even speak to her. You don’t know.”
The manager adjusted her glasses and pointed to a sign above a glass shelf that held beauty products. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE, it read. Ann was very familiar with the sign. They had the same one at the restaurant.
“Listen,” Ann said, raising her voice, “I can close this place down, you know.”
“Yah, yah.” The manager turned her back to Ann and rearranged some bottles of body scrub on the glass shelf.
“I’ll tell immigration that you’re using illegals.”
The manager snapped her head