Free, and Clear

He quickly removed his clothes and left them folded on the floor. Should he lie face up or down? Did she tell him? Down seemed the safer choice.

He struggled with the sheet and finally got it to cover him. Then he set his face into the padded doughnut and exhaled.

Okay now, he thought. Just relax.

Almost immediately, the tip of his nose began to itch and burn. A hot dollop of snot eased out of his left nostril.

He'd left his Kleenex with his clothes.

He scrambled out of the bed, grabbed the box, and got back under the sheet. Ah, facial tissue, his addiction. Like a good junkie, he always knew exactly how much product was in the room and where it was located. While making love he kept a box near the bed. He preferred entering Margaret from behind because it kept his sinuses upright and let him sneak tissues unseen.

Edward propped himself on his elbows and blew, squeezed the other nostril shut, and blew again. He looked around for a place to toss the tissue. At work he had two plastic trash bins: a public one out in the open, and a small one hidden in the well of his desk to hold the used Kleenex. But he didn't see a trash can anywhere in the room. Was it hidden in the cabinets?

A knock at the door. Edward pitched the tissue toward his clothes and put his head back in the doughnut. 'Okay!' he called casually. He tried to arrange his arms into what he hoped looked like a natural position.

The door opened behind him and he felt her warm hand on his shoulder. 'Feel free to grunt and make noises,' she said.

'What's that?'

She peeled back half of the sheet and cool air rippled across his skin. 'Make noises,' she said. 'I like feedback.' He heard a liquid fart as she squirted something from a bottle, and then felt her oiled hands press into the muscles around his neck.

Well, that felt good. Should he tell her now, or wait until it got even better? And what feedback noises were appropriate?

Ropes began to unkink in his back. She used long, deep strokes for a time, then focused on smaller areas. She pressed an elbow into the muscle that run along his spine; at first it felt like she was using a steel rod, but after thirty seconds of constant pressure something unclenched inside him and the whole muscle expanded, softened. 'You work at a computer?' she asked.

It took him a moment to realize it was a question, a moment more to remember how to answer. 'Uh-huh,' he said. His mind had gone liquid. Grunt to give feedback, he thought.

Annit was strong for being so small. She finished his back, then rearranged the sheet to do his legs. The top half of him was loose as a fish, but from lower back to his feet he was aching with tightness. How could he not have noticed this before now? When a long stroke reached to his buttock he felt the first twinge of an erection, but then she pressed her thumbs between the muscles of his legs and he could think of nothing but the cold fire of cinched muscles stretching apart.

Time became slippery. He might have fallen asleep if it weren't for the persistent tightness in his forehead and eyes. Still blocked. It's what Margaret would ask as she watched him honk into a Kleenex: Still blocked? Still. Always. Margaret would circulate the house, emitting little disgusted sounds as she plucked hardened clumps of tissue from the kitchen table, from between the cushions of the couch, from inside his forgotten coffee cups. 'Why don't you take another pill?' she would ask, irritated. But Margaret was a free-breather and could not understand. Antihistamines clamped down on his nasal passages, setting up killer headaches. Psuedoephedrine only made his nose drip incessantly without ever coming close to draining his constantly re-filling reservoirs of snot. 'Here, Daddy,' Michael would say, and hand him a tissue.

Annit touched his neck. 'Okay, Edward,' she said very quietly. 'Let's turn over.'

She held up the sheet between them and cool air hit his skin. He rolled onto his side and had to stop himself from rolling right off the table. He shuffled his body over and Annit let the sheet settle over him like a parachute.

His nose was full and a sneeze was growing. 'Could I...' He looked for the Kleenex box. 'Do you have a...?'

She opened a cabinet door and steam drifted out. She handed him a warm, moist, cotton hand-towel.

'Oh no,' he said, appalled. 'I couldn't.' He talked from the back of his throat, trying to hold back the sneeze.

'This is part of the therapy, Edward. You must use the towel. No harsh paper.' She smiled and touched the back of his wrist, prompting him to lift the towel to his face. He couldn't hold back any longer: he sneezed explosively. And again. And again.

Weakly he wiped the tip of his nose, his upper lip, and the delicate frenulum. He was ashamed, but the warm cloth felt wonderful.

Annit whisked it away from him and he leaned back into the table and closed his eyes. His nasal passages re-filled like ballast tanks, but at least the sneezing fit was over.

Long moments later Annit lifted his ankles and set them onto a pillow. She oiled his feet, working the surface tissue with firm strokes. A groan of pleasure escaped him. She had a gift. She understood his body. She knew its hidden pockets of tension, and one by one she'd burst them all.

She seemed to change her grip, and he felt a sharp prick, obviously accomplished with a metal instrument. He tensed his body, but said nothing. She stabbed him again and he nearly yelped.

With some effort he lifted his head and looked down the landscape of his body. Annit's hands were empty. 'What's that you're doing?' he asked. Trying to sound mildly curious.

'Reflexology,' she said, and smiled. 'The note from your wife said you wanted to try this.'

'Oh.' The voodoo thing. He let his head fall back against the table and thought, maybe she won't notice the toe.

With thumb and forefinger she held his right foot just below his ankle in a delicate grip that burned like sharpened forceps. He sucked air and waited for her to release.

'So,' he said casually, his voice tight. 'What points do those correspond to?'

'The penis and the prostate.'

'Ah,' he said, as if he'd guessed as much. She continued to hold the foot. My God, he thought, my balls are on fire. After a time she shifted to his other foot, and in the three-second gap between feet a chill coursed up his spine and he thought, hey, that's good.

'You have six toes on your left foot,' she said. 'That's wonderful.'

The words made him flush. He knew he should make a joke, ask about correspondences, but was too embarrassed to speak. Margaret disliked the extra toe, barely acknowledged its existence. She only mentioned it in public once, obliquely, in the delivery room; she looked down at Michael's perfectly numbered digits and said, 'Thank goodness he has my feet.'

Annit worked the tips of his toes, the areas the Cosmo article had linked to sinuses. Her fingers were like needles but he began to anticipate the pain and move into it. Grunt for feedback.

Annit's voice drifted up from the other end of the table. 'Do you trust me, Edward?'

Her finger punctured his small toe like a fondue fork.

'Ugh.'

Time slipped away again. He thought about Annit's carbon-black eyes, her earnest, non-American voice: The key to therapeutic sucsase is trust. He should have told her about his daydream, about Joe Louis.

Grunt to give feedback.

Sometime later she moved to his face and massaged his cheek bones. 'Urrm,' he said, a little hesitantly. She hooked her fingers into the ridges above his eye sockets, three fingers to each socket, and pulled back. Bones creaked and he sighed. She pressed her palms to each temple and squeezed; he hissed. She wedged her thumbs against his nose and pushed east, south, west, north.

'Okay, Edward,' Annit said, a little out of breath. 'How are those sinuses?'

He tried to inhale through his nose: A wall. He tried to exhale and the air was forced out his mouth. 'Still