Torrance, the second row city behind the posh ocean communities of Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, was Los Angeles neighborhood that received the bare minimum of city services. Hawthorne Boulevard had two wide driving lanes and a third lane for parked cars. Parked cars were spaced sparse due to a lack of stores and high density apartment buildings. The non-descript buildings had paint bleached by decades of glaring California sun. On the lazy Sunday noon, there were hardly any cars in the road.
Tamiko guided her two-car-generations-old Toyota Corolla down the road with both her hands diligently gripping the steering wheel on top. Her fingers were short and stubby like those of a mole. The faded steering wheel barely held onto its original color. The cars paint was dulled by age and endless tiny scratches from harsh kitchen sponges instead of car grade terry clothes. Gentle jazz music fizzled out of the CD player from a CD with pirated songs.
The suspension had the soft sagging feeling of a worn out mattress. It bottomed out, when Tamiko slowly drove over the curb to enter the drive way. The square two story building had a crumbling façade. The driveway past the building was narrow. She carefully turned her head left and right to watch the tips of her side mirrors. Her head turn was energetic and demonstrated the strong yang energy inside of her. Her movements had a simplistic linearity about it. She'd reach and move in a straight line with sudden acceleration and stop. There was no graceful swing, no elegant acceleration, and no playful embellishments about it. Yet, she seemed bottled up with energy.
Behind the building was a small parking lot: gray pavement and a car shade. The car shade was made from corrugated metal sheet suspended by four steel beams in the air. It would have been right at home in a Third World country. The parking spot lines were long gone – worn of by tires and seasonal rain. The business owner was very meticulous about where employees parked. Tamiko found the imaginary outlines of her spot with pride.
Tamiko stepped out of her car. She was short and stout. Her body was lean. Yet, her strong bones made her stout. She wore white sneakers, a black drawstring workout pant, and a dark green t-shirt. The t-shirt was a snug fit, which was not so much her trying to be sexy, much rather her being from Japan with a different sense of fashion. Her hair was the dark, thick, fluid famous Asian kind of hair. The hair was neck long. Her face had simple features. Her eyes were deep, dark, and intelligent.
She put on black plastic glasses to shield herself from the blinding California summer sun. Even the sky was bleached to a pale baby blue. A few large trees with dried, washed out green leaves rustled their leaves in the remnants of the ocean breeze that made it this far. The air was standing. All human activity seemed suspended. There was silence in the background noise of this Sunday.
The keys turned the lock to let herself in. The stair case was dimly lit from the strong sun through a tiny glassy window. The stone tiles were easy to clean. It had almost been a week for the next cleaning. A cheap railing with thin poles guided her to the second floor. There were no decorations in this almost factory like hallway. Yet, it was an apartment building, where her employer had converted an apartment into a spa.
It was one of those fly by night spas that operated without a license or paying taxes. An Asian immigrant wife had taken her spare time and her husband's salary to open a spa. She served other Asian immigrants and low middle class people of her neighborhood. The conversion was very simple. A sign printed on the home desktop computer announced the name of the spa "Elegant Touch" on the front door. The reception was small room with two white plastic chairs against the wall. The plastic chairs had the varnishes of having stood outside in the pollution and rain for a couple years. A hand-me down desk presented the appointment book with dog ears. A five-dollar poster of a flower bouquet in a hand tried to say 'serenity' and 'beauty.' A corner next to the scotch tape was already torn.
Tamiko had a smile on her face. Her customer would arrive soon. She opened one of the two treatment rooms. It had a fold out massage table put in square ways, because the room was otherwise too small. There was a little table, a foot high, in a corner. It had a candle and a Chihuahua sized ghetto blaster. A no-name CD with burned mp3's of soft orchestra music and nature sounds was inside.
Tamiko lit the round white candle and checked up on the massage oil bottle. She pulled the old white, thin, cotton sheets of the massage table. There was a canvas bag behind the desk for them. She put on new sheets. They were cool, a little stiff, and very thin. They were the ten for a $1 kind. Rather than a fitted sheet, she placed on of the sheets down on the table. The other was folded on top to suggest itself as a cover to the customer later.
While setting up the room, her t-shirt exposed a slit of her belly. It was without the shades of muscle definition. Yet, the shape was smoothly curved that her leanness was evident. Her strong arms had wide spaced stubbles of strong body hair that she regularly shaved. The skin was smooth, milky, and of perfect health for a woman in her early twenties.
The buzzer rang. Tamiko jumped down the stairs with athletic strength. She smiled big and slightly bowed at the customer. Her face was gleaming with hospitality. The man was in his mid-thirties. He was average tall, perhaps on the shorter side. He was dressed in clean jeans and a checkered shirt, both of which purchased at a discount store. His hair was neatly trimmed, yet not stylish. He had a little belly. He looked somewhat strong from his job that probably involved manual labor. His face spoke of a long career as a shipping clerk or tool shop attendant. He was definitely the kind that would spring for the cheap services offered by a local neighborhood immigrant business.
He followed Tamiko silently up to the office. He stood in the room waiting. Tamiko's movement tried to show that she was working hard to be hospital. She bent forward showing her back to the man, while she let hot water out of the water fountain. The white cup with a printed photo from Toronto held a tea bag that slowly swirled with the water pouring in. Once done, Tamiko held out the cup with straight elbows to the customer. Her face gleaned with pride.
The man accepted the cup slowly. His stance was uncertain, like he was mentally trying to figure out what to expect from this back alley business. He could sense the young inexperience in Tamiko and thin pretense of being a real business in the room's décor. He couldn't quite fall into the inner stance of being in a service business with a clear workflow and expectations for him to behave. All he could sense was him being much older and secure than the young, foreign girl. He could feel that to every little move, she reacted. It was like he was going to set the rules in this relationship. Little hope snuck in his mind of tales from his buddies at the bar about unregulated massage parlors in the forgotten part of town that offered real happy endings.
Being in doubt, he went with being charming: "You have wonderful hands. You probably give a great massage."
