A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames (popular books to read TXT) 📗

So I took my plate into the small living room, where I have an old wooden table, and ate quickly. The pickle and the sauerkraut I thought of as my vegetables and my fiber, and the mackerel was my protein.

My eating habits are odd but healthy.

I was out of the house and headed down the stairs by 6:10, and George went out to his little wire enclosure, off the kitchen, to say goodbye. There’s a doggie door in the kitchen door, and the eight-foot enclosure beyond it—like a chicken coop—lets George get some fresh air when he wants to while keeping him protected from coyotes. He can also use it as a pissoir when necessary.

“Goodbye, George,” I said, and his eyes were sad, but I steeled myself and didn’t look back.

As I drove to work, I left Lou a message. Being even more old school than I am, he didn’t have a cell phone but a landline with an answering machine; he lived in a small unit of the Mirage, which came with a kitchenette and its own phone. He’d been living there for about ten years and the room was a perk of his job as the night man at the motel.

The answering machine made a beep—there was no outgoing message—and I said: “Lou, it’s Hank. Thought about what we talked about. I’d like to do it. Let’s go to the VA and find out if we match.”

Then I paused. I almost said “I love you,” but I didn’t. I just said, “So call me,” and hung up. I have no problem telling George or the plants or the trees in my yard or my house that I love them, but with people it doesn’t come so easy.

4.

My night job was at the Thai Miracle Spa, on the second floor of a two-story strip mall at the corner of Argyle and Franklin, not far from my house.

I got there at 6:20, and Mrs. Pak, the owner, was working the desk. She lowered her reading glasses to give me a look but didn’t say anything. She was in her midsixties, but her hair was still lustrous and black, like oil. She was always very serious, but when she smiled, which was rare, she was radiant. That night, she was wearing a man’s white shirt, blue work pants, and simple black shoes. Her usual costume.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said.

“It’s okay. It’s quiet,” she said, then she pushed her reading glasses back up her nose and went back to her Korean-language newspaper.

I took my usual seat on the other side of the waiting room, across from the desk, and fished out the novel I was reading, which was in the front left pocket of my jacket. The book was The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy, and it was my second time reading it—I’m a sucker sometimes for sadistic-daddy books with a military angle—and I settled in and began the long wait for trouble, which might not come.

Mrs. Pak also owned the Laundromat and the nail salon on the ground floor, and I had been doing my laundry at her place for a long time, and about a year before, when I was waiting for my clothes to dry, she asked me if I could provide security at the spa in the evenings. She knew I was an ex-cop and ran my own business, and she thought it might be a good fit. I was broke and said yes, without really thinking it through, and so I became the muscle at a jerk-off farm, which wasn’t something to be proud of.

I did seven years in the Navy, ten years in the LAPD, and since 2004 I’d been on my own. Working the Thai Miracle Spa was not where I thought I’d be at fifty, but it’s where I ended up, working Monday through Saturday, six to midnight.

During the day at the spa, it was a mix of female and male clients, but the night trade was different: there were almost no women customers and a lot of the men had their drink on, which was why Mrs. Pak had wanted security. The strip mall is right near the entrance to the 101 and a lot of these drunks stopped off at the spa on their way home to the Valley.

Of course the girls weren’t supposed to have sex with the customers, but Mrs. Pak looked the other way at what she called “prostate release.” What she didn’t look the other way at was the extra cash it brought in, which she split 60/40 with the girls—60 for her, 40 for the girls. Which was much better terms than most.

It was supposed to be a Thai spa, but all the girls were from China, and it was a crew of about twenty. They worked at all three locations—the Laundromat, the nail salon, and the Miracle—and it was like a big family. Mrs. Pak’s eightysomething mother cooked for everyone. In the back room of the salon, lunch was served at one, dinner at nine.

Mrs. Pak had one son—an ER doctor at Cedars-Sinai, whom she put through medical school at UCLA—but he never came around. Her ex-husband, a gambling addict and an old-fashioned morphine addict, lived in Reno, and so I was the only man on the premises, other than customers.

That night things were slow at first and I was tearing through the Conroy novel. In the Navy, they called me the Dictionary because I always had a book and liked to do crossword puzzles.

Then around eight things began to get busy, and whenever a man came in, I stood up and gave him a look while he conducted his business with Mrs. Pak.

Once the man paid, she’d lead him through the beaded curtain on the other side of the room and then down the hallway, which had eight little massage rooms, four on each side.

The look I gave the men wasn’t meant to frighten them off but to