Healing hands

I turned up at Trixabell’s massage studio in a lather. It was a hot morning and I’d been rushing. Sweat was trickling down the sides of my face and soaking through my shirt in the usual places. I’d better have a shower, I said. There wasn’t one, she said. Nor was she worried about a bit of sweat. Trixabell was as friendly and talkative as she had been when she gave me her card in the gym. I should take off everything except my underpants, she said. As I stripped, she told me about how embarrassed she’d been at the garage earlier, not having enough money to pay for the repairs to her car. New alternator, £230, she said, when I pressed her for details. About the design on my underpants, a series of crossed shipbuilders’ riveting hammers over a Tudor castle, in claret and blue, she made no comment.