The lobby of Heavenly Massage Parlor was a cramped square room. Paintings of smiling girls in skimpy outfits riding clouds decorated the walls. There were two easy chairs, a desk, a small color TV, a radio, and a frayed silver sofa. Ashtrays sat on the desk and atop the TV. "Sabrina" (as Debbie had been christened the day before) sat on the sofa and opened up Delores Claiborne. She soon shut it and tried watching the VH1 video with the other masseuses.
Debbie thought back to the previous morning when she had been interviewed and hired. The owner of Heavenly was a bone-thin bald man named Larry McNab. He had been adamant in saying there were certain rules that his "masseuses" had to follow and one was that they all wear a bodysuit. That was Debbie's first letdown: she thought a fat girl would look better in a skirt. Larry ("call me Larry," he admonished) supplied Debbie with a cast-off when she said she didn't own a bodysuit. She was pleased to find that it fit and took that as a good omen: it must mean other fat girls have worked here.
The garment that now stretched over Debbie was a pale pink number decorated with tiny red hearts. But she worried that it only accented her blubber. SometimesButterball almost seemed like her real name.
Debbie Wilcox tried to look at the positive side. She had large brown eyes and her black hair was thick, naturally wavy, and hung down to her hips.
But her face was covered with pimples! Layers of Clearasil couldn't hide it. Maybe, she told herself, there was a bright side to that, too. She was always being asked to show ID to prove she was over eighteen. Men who go to . . . these places . . . like them young, Debbie had heard. So maybe the zits would be a help.
She lit a Virginia Slim and eyed the three other women as nervously as if she were peeping into someone else's house. One was a strawberry-blond in her mid-twenties wearing a blue bodysuit and knee-high white boots. Another was a large-breasted Goth-style girl about Debbie's age with black hair, lipstick, fingernails, and bodysuit. There was also a dark-skinned pretty lady whom Debbie believed must be at least forty years whose bodysuit was an ugly shade of gray.
The thought kept repeating in Debbie's head: these women are prostitutes. PROS-ti-tutes. Hookers. Whores. They . . . these three women . . . the women sitting here and now right by Debbie . . . have sex with man after man . . . with perfect strangers . . . for money.
God, Debbie shuddered as she exhaled, how could she ever be one of them?
Maybe she wouldn't even get the chance to find out, she thought glumly. She was sick at the thought of doing it with ugly old men.
But she was also sick at the thought of not doing it and going home with no cash. Something was wrong with Debbie Wilcox; she just couldn't make a living. When she drove past the dirty, homeless people her stomach tied up in knots: I could be one of them.
And soon!
Debbie owed the city of Los Angeles $100 for running a red light. Her phone had been cut off. She hadn't paid the utility bill and they had sent the second cut-off notice. There was enough Spam to last a few days . . . and she had potato chips and beer. Also a moon pie . . . no, she remembered, she ate the last moon pie this morning.
She couldn't ask Mom for more money because Mom and Dale (Mom's new husband) had paid for her last month's rent.
One thing about being a whore -- however low it was, she'd been relieved when Larry didn't make her fill out a job application form. She hadn't had to lie again and say this was her first job because she'd been living with her parents or taking care of a sick brother or some bullshit. Which is what you have to say when all you've done since high school is get fired.
Her last job had been in a 7-eleven as a cashier. She worked there for awhile, then got fired for being too slow. Before that she worked the cash register at a fast-food joint but then quit because . . . oh yeah . . . she'd gotten sick and the supervisor yelled at her the next day right in front of everyone so Debbie said the hell with it. Before that she'd worked cash register at another fast-food thing and got fired on her third day for being too slow. Before that she'd waited table at La Guerre and was fired for -- what else? She just couldn't speed up no matter how hard she tried.
In this awful place, Debbie thought, she at least wouldn't have to hear hurry up, hurry up. If she got fired from Heavenly, she thought, it would be for a new reason.
She had thought about prostitution while driving from place to place using up gas and filling out forms. Pros-ti-tu-tion--when people said the word, when Debbie herself said it, it was the way you say murderer. Not as bad, of course, but it meant evil and sick and abnormal.
Bells jangled. The first customer! A young, slim, handsome Oriental with shoulder-length hair wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans.
"Ladies!" one of the masseuses shouted and they gathered in a line in front of the man.
The guy looked at each of the women. Debbie's stomach made a light lurch. She smiled and jutted her chest out thinking as hard as she could, please!
He picked the strawberry-blonde.
Debbie sat down, dejected as the pair went to the darkness of one of the massage rooms. Also puzzled. A young good-looking guy . . . why doesn't he have a girlfriend?
The next customer looked more like what a prostitute's customer should look: a bespectacled balding pinhead in a business suit. Debbie grinned at him, hoping her urgency would somehow reach him. 'I'll do anything for you, honey! I'll take less money, I'll do more for you, just pick me, pick me!' she thought as hard as she could.
He picked the older lady in gray. Debbie didn't seem to have any ESP at all.
A few minutes later, he left and bells jangled again.
"What?" Debbie asked.
"He didn't take a massage," the lady replied. "Just looked at the prices and split."
"Oh."
Debbie tried to read but even Steven King couldn't get her mind off money. God, she thought, her driver's license wouldn't get suspended if she couldn't pay a ticket -- would it?
She was so fat. That had to be it. But then again, she thought, perhaps the men could tell somehow that she wasn't a real prostitute.
"Sabrina?"
"Sabrina?"
"Sabrina?" Someone touched Debbie's arm.
"Yeah?" She looked up from her book.
"You've got to remember that name," said the strawberry-blonde.
Sabrina. Sabrina. Debbie's name was Sabrina.
