Chapter 3: The Friendly Massage
He couldn't eat. The Thai food she’d ordered sat in its cardboard container on the coffee table, the smell of peanut sauce and ginger now just a greasy, nauseating fog. James stared at the screen, his fingers tracing the cold metal edge of the laptop. The silence in the room was a physical thing, thick and humming.
His mind kept snagging on her words from earlier. 'Michael just leans on the partition and types on his phone, pretending to be busy. It’s so obviously just to stare.'
It wasn’t just to stare.
He opened the archive again. The search parameters this time were narrower, more surgical. He filtered for timestamps shortly after the "casual dress" incidents. He was looking for proximity. Lingering. He fast-forwarded through the grainy, silent snippets of her at her desk, a braless silhouette against the glare of the monitor, men orbiting her like vultures circling somnolent prey.
Then he found it.
The timestamp was from forty-one days ago. Stacy was at her desk, her blouse unbuttoned one more notch than was proper, the fabric gaping. Bill was there, leaning over her chair, one hand on the backrest. His mouth was moving. James cranked the volume, the tinny audio hissing to life.
"...stiff from all this typing, huh?" Bill was saying, his voice a greasy murmur. "How about a friendly massage. I'm actually pretty good at this."
Stacy’s face was that placid mask. She gave a slight, robotic nod. "That would be nice."
Bill’s hands came down on her shoulders. They kneaded. For a moment, it could almost be mistaken for a genuine, if inappropriate, massage. Then his hands slid down, over the front of her collarbones, his thumbs dipping beneath the open fabric of her blouse. His palms cupped the full curves of her breasts, his fingers squeezing. On screen, Stacy’s head lolled back. Her lips parted. A soft, airy sigh escaped them, a sound of pure, mindless pleasure. It wasn’t her. It was a recording playing from her throat.
James’s own breath hitched. He felt a jolt of heat, immediate and shameful, followed by a wave of acid disgust that burned his throat.
Bill’s hands moved, fondling her through the fabric, then under it. He touched her like she was a piece of fruit in a market, testing for ripeness. He whispered something James couldn’t catch. Stacy moaned again, the sound low and wanton. One of Bill’s hands left her breast, traveled down her side, over her hip. He was wearing a wedding ring, a cheap band of gold that glinted under the fluorescent lights as his hand slipped beneath the waistband of her skirt, groping the swell of her ass. She just sat there, blank-eyed, emitting these soft, encouraging noises.
The clip ended. James sat back, the chair creaking. The apartment was quiet.
The apartment was quiet.
Only the faint drone of the refrigerator, and the ragged sound of his own breathing.He closed the video player. The desktop wallpaper—a photo of them hiking at Miller’s Point, Stacy laughing, her hair whipped by the wind—glowed innocently back at him.He minimized it. He couldn’t look at her face, not yet.He went back to the archive. His movements were mechanical now, a code he was debugging.Find the pattern.Isolate the variable. The search felt like digging a grave with his bare hands.He found Michael next.The timestamp was from last Thursday. Stacy was leaning against a filing cabinet in what looked like a supply room, her skirt just a little crooked, as if hastily adjusted.Michael stood close, too close, his body crowding hers. The audio was muffled but clear enough.
“…just a friendly massage,” Michael was saying, his hands already reaching for her upper back. “Let me help you out.”
“Okay,” Stacy breathed, her voice empty and sweet.His massage was less theatrical than Bill’s. It was possessively intimate. His hands slid around her ribs from behind, palms flattening against her stomach, pulling her back into him. One hand rose, cupping her breast through her shirt, his thumb making slow, deliberate circles.Stacy’s head fell back against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed.A low, continuous hum of pleasure vibrated in her throat.
James leaned forward, his nose almost touching the screen. He watched Michael’s fingers find her nipple through the fabric, pinch and roll it. Stacy’s mouth opened in a silent ‘O’, then a sharp, gasping moan escaped her lips. It was a sound James knew, one she made in the dark of their bedroom when she was right on the edge. Hearing it here, in this context, stolen and played for this grinning asshole, felt like a murder. His fists clenched. The knuckles were white. He forced them to relax, to keep scrolling. He found Carl. Stacy was standing, sorting through a stack of warm paper. Carl sauntered up, said something with a smirk. The audio crackled. "You’re all tense. Friendly massage. A quick one. My treat.”
She turned, that blank smile on her face.“Thank you.”
Carl didn’t bother with shoulders. He stepped behind her, his hands going directly to her waist. They slid down, over the curve of her hips, and disappeared beneath the hem of her pencil skirt. James could see the muscles in Carl’s forearms flex as his hands, now under her skirt, fondled the bare skin of her ass. He squeezed, kneaded, groped with a crude, claiming rhythm. Stacy stood perfectly still, a statue being defaced, but another one of those soft, surrendering moans drifted from the speakers. Carl leaned in, his mouth close to her ear, whispering something that made his own smile widen.James slammed the laptop shut. The sharp crack echoed in the silent room.
James’s hands remained on the closed laptop, the plastic still warm. His breathing was a ragged thing in the dark. After a long minute, his fingers flexed. They found the latch again. The hinges emitted a soft, metallic whine as he lifted the lid, and the blue light flooded back, painting the room in cold, forensic detail.
The screen glowed, a portal into a past she couldn't remember.He found the clip with Carl again. His cursor hovered over the play button.His stomach was a tight, sour knot.He clicked.
The grainy footage stuttered to life.Stacy was by the printer, her back to the hall. Carl approached, his stride confident.The audio hissed, then cleared. “...stiff from standing.How about a friendly massage? My hands are magic.”
“A massage would be lovely,” Stacy said, her voice a monotone melody.
Carl’s hands were on her instantly, one sliding around her front to her belly, the other going straight to the small of her back, dipping lower. He pulled her against him. She was a doll in his hands, pliant and unprotesting. For a few seconds, it was a repeat of the others—the groping, the soft moans.Then Carl shifted.He withdrew the hand from beneath her skirt. He wrapped that arm around her, his fingers working at the buttons of her blouse with a practiced ease. The fabric fell open. His hand slipped inside, palming her bare breast, his thumb rubbing slow circles around her nipple.The other hand remained under her skirt, moving now with a different, more specific intention.
James leaned in.The video was poor quality, but the movement was unmistakable. The rhythm of Carl’s forearm, the hitch in Stacy’s shoulders. Her soft sighs, caught by the tinny microphone, began to change. They grew louder, more urgent, losing their empty smoothness for something raw and physical.A sharp gasp cut through the speakers.
On screen, Stacy’s body tensed. Her head fell back against Carl’s shoulder, her mouth a dark circle of silent cry.Her legs trembled. A series of quick, shuddering breaths rocked through her as Carl’s hands worked, one kneading her breast, the other hidden beneath her skirt. She collapsed forward, her hands slapping against the desk for support. A stack of papers wavered and slid to the floor in a silent, ghostly cascade.
Carl held her up, a smirk playing on his lips.He whispered something into her ear. Then he slowly withdrew his hands, buttoned her blouse with deliberate care, and smoothed down her skirt. He gave her ass a final, proprietary pat and walked out of frame.Stacy remained slumped against the desk for a full minute, breathing heavily. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, she straightened up. She blinked, looked at the papers on the floor with mild confusion, and bent to pick them up. She hummed a little tune, something pop and mindless, as she neatly restacked them.The clip ended.
James sat perfectly still.The only sound was the low whir of the laptop fan. He saw the sweat gleaming at her temple in the fluorescent light. He saw the way her fingers had clutched at the desk edge.That was hers. That shudder, that collapse, that was a piece of her soul, excavated and stolen while she was gone.A phantom orgasm for a phantom woman.
He closed the laptop again, softer this time.The blue light died. In the sudden dark, the afterimage of her body, shuddering against that cheap office desk, burned on his retinas. He stood up, his joints stiff.He walked to the hallway and looked toward their bedroom door, slightly ajar. A slice of soft darkness.He had the triggers now.Two of them. “Casual dress.” “Friendly massage.” One stripped her. The other made her feel. He knew what they did.He knew what they could do. The knowledge sat in his chest, a heavy, living stone. The horror was absolute. The curiosity was a sharper, brighter wire.