Anne Calter pushed her leather chair back from the big oak desk and sighed. A native of New Jersey, she had graduated with high honors from Princeton and received a law degree from Harvard. You could tell a Harvard man, but you couldn't tell him much. Or woman. After serving as a staff attorney in Washington, Anne had written her popular book, None Dare Call it Mediocrity. A merciless critique of liberal media bias, it had sold well and enabled her to give up the practice of law and focus on propagating her political views.
On shows such as "Larry King Live" and "American Morning," she had argued, loudly and relentlessly, for her point of view. Sometimes, though, as she approached the age of 35, Anne sometimes wondered whether the ideologues of D.C. really meant what they said or merely lobbed verbal grenades for money. It did not escape her notice that many of the standard Left Wing versus Right Wing debates in D.C. had a ritualized, kabuki-like quality.
Anne Calter was a lean, mean rhetorical machine. She ran daily, yet hadn't entirely erased the urge to smoke. Did she contradict herself? Very well, then. She was large; she contained multitudes. Well, she wasn't really large. Just large in the philosophical sense. In reality, she was quite svelte. More and more, her ideological fury was fueled by caffeine rather than fervor.
As Anne Calter's ideological passions waned, other things waxed. Her legs, for example. But she was a true fitness fanatic. Yes, the lure of the unfiltered Camel still mocked her. But she dedicated and rededicated herself to physical fitness. And yet there was a void. Yes, her nights were filled with passionate debates about the nature and reach of foreign policy. Yet, when the hot studio lights were extinguished, she longed for a different kind of passion. When passion's trance was overpast, if tenderness and truth could last. But she digressed.
And so, as she sat back in her leather chair, her eye caught a book title on the distant shelf. An old McLuhan book, The Medium is the Massage. Ah, McLuhan, once billed as another Freud, as the second coming of Newton. The second coming? She could certainly use a second...never mind. A massage, perhaps that would relax her blithe spirit.
But what type of massage? In the last few months, in order to offset the stress of appearing nightly on talk shows, Anne had become something of a connoisseur of massage. She'd had to, as the repeated whipping about of her long blonde hair to express disdain had resulted in chronic pain in the neck, and she dared not to admit this to anyone, fearing puns.
Anne ran over the list of her massage options. She certainly had no need of the structural integration massage, which re-educated the body of its subjects to appear taller and slimmer. She was partial, certainly, to the European Hydromassage. Was there anything better than floating in the arms of a massage specialist as the pulsating hydrojets danced on her skin like tropical rain? However, she'd been detoxified so many times lately by the hydrotechnique that she was beginning to develop permanent wrinkles on her fingers and toes. And the isogei treatment, while exotic enough to pique her interest, promoted cellulite reduction while it toned her body and face. Anne was afraid that if her whip-thin body was reduced any more she'd be down to bare bone.
The peppermint twist reflexology treatment; that's just what she needed. No, it had nothing to do with Joey Dee and the Starliters. Anne made a quick call to her main massage coodinator, Salomon Gonzales-Gonzales, and yes, he was available immediately. Filled with nervous energy, Anne eased out of her leather chair, and sped to the spa. As she drove her carjack-bait Jag down the road, Anne began to sing "I can't get no satisfaction." Then she halted, concerned about Freudian implications.
On arrival at the spa, Anne was greeted by Latonya, the spa's receptionist. As Anne waited on the sofa, she chatted with Latonya about jogging, one of their common interests. Latonya, who was conspicuously fit, her light coffee skin glowing with health, seemed almost a walking advertisement for the spa. As she waited, flipping through People Magazine, Anne noticed the bank of security cameras on Latonya's desk.
In a moment, Anne was ushered into the massage room by a Salomon minion. There Anne slowly unzipped her hot pink gogo boots and drew them sensuously off her ravishingly toned calves. She decided to let Salomon make the call on removing her toe ring or not, and though it wasn't strictly necessary for reflexology, Anne unhooked the Some Like It Hot flirty demi-bra with pink threaded ribbon that matched her boots and let it brush slowly across her nipples before it dropped to the floor.
When Salomon came into the room with his vials of aromatic oils and stimulating peppermint finishing lotion, she was sprawled lazily across the massage table draped only in an April-fresh towel. She smiled at him, then froze as two more people entered the room behind him. "I'd like you to meet Alain de Bottom and Ingrid Deneuve, my two new massage interns. They are 23 and would like to observe and learn." Taken aback, Anne pulled the towel a bit higher, concealing her concern and her cleavage.
She was torn, and all out of faith. However, Anne was soon warmed by Salomon's table-side manner and granted permission. Alain was French, dressed in once-trendy black. Ingrid was Swedish, and her white tank top and white shorts fit closer than the candy apple paint on a restored 1957 Vette. Salomon, who helped train students for the American Rubalogical Council, knew just how to handle the situation. In his calm, logical voice, he explained to Anne that it was only natural that she would be uncomfortable being the only one nude, so he and the trainees would put on their work clothing. Being a businesslike person herself, Anne assented, pausing just for a second to explain the lint-specific risks of black to Alain.
For approximately 30 minutes, Anne's feet were soaked in water scented with lavender and tea. She was then treated to a soothing foot massage using peppermint lotion. Anne then received heated "cozy toe" stones and an aromatic eye pillow. Upon completion of these procedures, Anne was far too relaxed to protest when Alain emerged from the locker room wearing black silk boxers. In a second, he was joined by Ingrid, dressed for business in a lace trim petal pink thong and a lace trim triangle bra, neither of which did a thing to hide her lush body.