Chapter 7: The Massage
The martini-glass hour in The Edison Box had stretched into two, then three. They talked about everything and nothing. The terrible movie he’d done for the paycheck early in his career, the sound of vinyl crackle in her empty gallery after hours, the peculiar loneliness of a hotel room in a city you’re supposedly conquering. They left separately, a tactical decision that felt absurd and necessary. No goodnight kiss, just the lingering press of his hand over hers, and a look that promised the conversation was merely paused.
A week later, the high-gloss mundanity of his life held a secret current. He found himself at the gym on a Tuesday afternoon, not because of his schedule, but because it was her time. He saw her from across the room, a flash of charcoal athletic wear, her headphones on as she methodically worked through a set of Romanian deadlifts. Her form was impeccable, a study in controlled tension.
He didn’t approach. He went through his own routine, a superset of pull-ups and rows, the memory of spotting her a persistent ghost in his muscles. It was during his third set of heavy shoulder presses that a familiar, deep ache bloomed. An old injury, a twinge from a poorly staged fight scene years ago. He lowered the dumbbells with a soft grunt, rolling his right shoulder in a slow, painful circle.
“You’re favoring the left.”
Her voice was close. He turned. She stood there, a towel draped around her neck, her breathing even. She’d finished her workout.
“It’s an old thing,” he said, attempting another rotation and wincing.
“Rotator cuff?”
“Labrum. From a movie where I was supposed to be a superhero. The only thing it supered was my ortho bill.”
A faint smile touched her lips. She glanced around. The gym was sparse, only a couple of people lost in their own worlds on the far side. “Sit,” she said, nodding toward the rolled-out stretching mats in the sunlit corner.
He raised an eyebrow. “You’re full of imperious commands. ‘Sit.’ ‘Don’t come to my gallery.’”
“And you’re full of poor life choices regarding shoulder biomechanics. Sit.”
He obeyed, lowering himself onto the dense foam. The citrus-scented cleaner mixed with the warmth of her as she knelt behind him. Her shadow fell over his shoulder.
“May I?” Her fingers hovered just above his shirt, over the curve of his deltoid.
He nodded, a tight jerk of his chin. “Yes.”
Her touch was clinical at first. Firm, searching pressure through the fabric of his thin performance shirt. She found the knot, a hard, angry bundle of tissue near his scapula. “Here?”
“Jesus.” The word was a hissed exhalation.
“Language,” she murmured, but there was no censure in it. Her thumbs dug in with precise, unyielding force.
A wave of sharp, bright pain radiated out, followed almost immediately by a spreading warmth. He dropped his head forward, his breath coming in short bursts. It was agony. It was exquisite. Her touch was professional, but the simple fact of it—her hands on him, in this silent, sun-drenched corner—sent a current through him that had nothing to do with the manipulation of muscle. He was intensely aware of her fingertips, the heat of her palms, the quiet steadiness of her breathing just behind his ear.
“You should see a bodyworker,” she said, her voice low and focused.
“I am.”
She paused, her hands stilling. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. You have very good hands.” He tried to keep his tone light, but it came out strained, ragged.
Her hands resumed their work, kneading deeper. The pressure stole his breath. He could feel the faint tremor in her fingers now, a minute vibration that betrayed her own lack of steadiness. It was the only crack in her composure, and it thrilled him. She was not unaffected.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said, almost to herself.
“The massage or the fact that you’re giving it to me?”
“All of it. This… clandestine gym fellowship. It’s a ridiculous premise for a subplot.”
He laughed, a choked sound. “It’s not a subplot. It’s just Tuesday.”
“For you, maybe. For me, it’s a series of calculated breaches in my own operational security.” Her thumbs carved a fiery path along the ridge of his shoulder blade.
“Operational security,” he repeated, amused. “You make this sound like espionage.”
“Isn’t it?” Her voice dropped even lower. “Exchanging information in neutral, darkened locations. Establishing physical contact under a plausible pretext. Assessing vulnerabilities.”
He turned his head slightly, just enough to catch her profile in his peripheral vision. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, a tiny line appearing between her eyes. “And what have you assessed?”
She met his glance, her hands still working. “That you’re tighter than you pretend to be. That you hold stress here,” she pressed, eliciting another gasp, “and here.” Her fingers grazed the side of his neck, a whisper of contact that made every hair on his body stand up. “And that you like to pretend this isn’t happening.”
“Is it happening?”
Her hands finally stopped. They didn’t leave his skin, but rested there, a heavy, warm weight. The ambient hum of the treadmill nearby, the clank of a distant weight plate, it all receded. The only sound was their breathing, out of sync.
“Matt,” she said, his name a statement, a question, a warning.
He turned fully on the mat, moving out from under her hands. Now they knelt facing each other, knees almost touching on the grey foam. Her eyes were wide, her composure fissured. He could see the rapid pulse at the base of her throat.
“I’m not pretending,” he said quietly. The gym, the world, felt a hundred miles away. “I haven’t pretended since you walked into my gallery and chastised me for touching a painting I wasn’t supposed to see the heart of.”
She swallowed. “This is where it gets complicated.”
“It already was.”
A man walked past them toward the water fountain, glancing with mild curiosity. Dasha’s gaze flickered to him, and the gallery owner’s mask slid partway back on. She stood up smoothly, offering him a hand. “You should ice that. Twenty minutes on, twenty off.”
He took her hand, letting her pull him up. Her grip was strong, certain. He didn’t let go immediately. “What’s the protocol now, Agent Waldorf? Do we enact a cooling-off period?”
She slipped her hand from his, bending to pick up her towel. “The protocol is common sense. You ice your shoulder. I go back to my gallery.” She slung the towel around her neck. “And we don’t make a habit of… physical therapy sessions in public.”
He nodded, accepting the boundary. “Understood.”
He wasn’t pretending. And for the first time, he was certain neither was she. The game was no longer about crossing zones or breaching security. It was about two people, in a sunlit corner, deciding what to do with the undeniable, complicated fact of their own hands.
He watched her walk toward the locker room, the straight line of her spine refusing to look back. The ghost of her hands was a brand on his shoulder, a heated map of pressure points. He grabbed his water bottle, the cold plastic doing nothing to douse the warmth spreading under his skin.
Thursday arrived with a brittle clarity. The script read-through had bled into a network lunch, all faux laughter and strategic compliments. He drove to The Edison Box on autopilot, the city’s twilight a blur of streaks and sparks. Pushing through the frosted door felt like entering a different atmospheric pressure.
She wasn’t there.
The same bartender nodded. The same brass light glowed. Her corner stool was occupied by an older man reading a battered copy of Kerouac. Matt’s stomach dropped, a sudden free-fall. He’d misread. He’d been a temporary fascination, a breach in security she’d now sealed.
He took a stool anyway, ordering the same overpriced gin. He drank it too fast, the ice knocking against his teeth. He checked his phone, a pathetic reflex. Nothing.
Halfway through his second drink, the door opened. A cool draft, a shift in the light. She entered, wrapped in a long wool coat, her cheeks flushed from the evening chill. Her eyes found him immediately, as if she’d known he’d be there. She didn’t smile, but the tension in her jaw released a fraction.
She slid onto the stool beside him, not the corner one. Her coat sleeve brushed his forearm. “Sorry,” she said, shrugging out of it. “A client wouldn’t stop talking about his divorce and his new Rothko. It was a tragic combination.”
The relief that flooded him was embarrassingly profound. “I thought you’d enacted the cooling-off period.”
“I considered it.” The bartender placed a glass of white wine in front of her without being asked. She took a sip. “Then I spent two days thinking about your shoulder. Not in a medical way.”
“In what way?”
“In a way that compromised my ability to authenticate a very expensive sketch. I had to send Milo home because he kept asking me why I was distracted.” She finally looked at him, her gaze frank. “So, no cooling-off period. Just a tactical reassessment.”
“And the assessment is?”
“That you’re a problem I can’t solve with professional distance.” She said it plainly, no drama. “My usual methods aren’t applicable.”
He swirled the gin in his glass. “What are your usual methods?”
“Analysis. Categorization. Controlled exposure.” She tapped a fingernail against her wine glass. Tink, tink, tink. “You defy categorization. And control seems… mutually impossible.”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “What if we stopped trying to solve it? What if we just… let it be a problem?”
“Problems have consequences, Matt. Unplanned ones.” Her eyes dropped to his mouth, then back up. “I like plans.”
“I know you do.” He reached over, his fingers gently covering hers on the stem of her glass, stopping the nervous tapping. Her skin was cool.