A Happy Ending
Short Story
Since his divorce, Mike Fray had been to three massage parlours, but he’d never gone back to a single one of them. Though the quality of the massages had, in their own right, been acceptable, the happy endings themselves were nothing remotely special.
About three months after his divorce was finalised, Mike had frequented the Relax+Calm establishment on the North Shore. Although the small woman had managed to work out a lingering twinge in his lower back, the happy ending was overpriced and over-jerked; the masseuse didn’t even use massage oil, and gripped his penis with a choking, clenched fist, like one might a toilet plunger.
Three weeks later, after he’d confirmed that his foreskin was still attached and hadn’t rolled up to the base of his penis, he visited the Rub&Rub in Maroubra. For an affordable price, the hand-job was pleasant, but the masseuse — this time a larger woman with terrifyingly long fingernails — was disinclined to jerk with much enthusiasm. It turned into a slow, practised affair, but when she went to the toilet for the second time in ten minutes, he got himself to the verge so that she could finally finish him off (hopefully, after washing her hands).
Another month rolled by before he tried again. This time it was an establishment down south; he’d seen a TripAdvisor review that raved about the place and their ‘offerings.’ This one was attended to by a second masseuse at the same time he was receiving a cranium massage from the first. This division of labour was efficient — perhaps too efficient. Roughly forty seconds later and he was being slapped with the bill and his clothes handed back to him.
“Jesus,” said Mike’s best friend, Tim, who he told one weekend after he’d received the third happy ending. “There’s not a lot of consistency out there.”
Mike nodded, finishing his beer in one last gulp and placing it back down on the table they’d managed to snag at the Beresford Hotel after work.
“Did you ever try to instruct them?” Tim asked.
Mike shook his head. “I don’t think that’s part of the package,” he said.
“What if you offered a tip? Another twenty on top?” suggested Tim.
“I’d love to, but that extra twenty has already gone to child support,” said Mike.
“Ah, kids. What would we do without them?” said Tim. He had two daughters in primary school; Mike’s were a little older, and he had a son, too.
“Very well, I’d imagine,” said Mike, chuckling.
When he went home that night, pissed and hungry, he heated up a box of party pies and whacked off in the shower to memories of his ex-wife. The tears, brought on by the loneliness felt after the masturbation to images of Courtney, had finally ceased. Though a void still remained, the melancholy had, ever so subtly, dimmed.
It was the next Thursday, before it was his turn to take the kids, when Mike arrived at Mrs Chan’s for his fourth foray. Being a bricklayer, he finished mid-afternoon after starting at the crack of dawn, and his search for a massage parlour in the area he was currently working had rendered all but one for the picking.
Mrs Chan’s had no ratings online, and the photo didn’t have any discernible signs or attractive paraphernalia advertising its physical location. But as Mike pulled up at the address, the gold lettering that matched the cursive font of the house number and read ‘Mrs Chan’s’ confirmed that he had indeed arrived.
There was nothing special about the townhouse; like most on the inner-city block, it didn’t share the same colour as those next to it. What wasn’t coloured by a very pale yellow had been overtaken by wide-leaved ivy. There was no electronic doorbell. Hitched in its place was a small brass bell with a golden clapper dangling out of it, inviting a ring.
Mike stepped up to the door and rang the bell. He was still in his high-visibility shirt from work; he kicked nonchalantly at the doormat in his concrete-flecked boots as he waited, only feeling a little self-conscious on the neat front porch.
The door opened a crack. A single eye peered out.
“Hello? What do you want?” said the voice belonging to the eye. The question was asked in clipped English. It was decidedly Asian-influenced, but the owner of the voice had done an excellent job making her accent less prominent.
“Are you Mrs Chan?” asked Mike.
“Yes,” said Mrs Chan. The door remained a hairline open.
“Do you do massages?” asked Mike.
“Yes,” said Mrs Chan. There was a pause.
“Can I…have one?” he asked.
“Did you book?” she asked.
“No, but—”
“I only take bookings,” Mrs Chan told him.
“Can I make one?” Mike asked.
“For when?”
“Now.”
“What’s the time?”
Mike dug around his trouser pocket to find his phone.
“Just after three,” he told her.
Mrs Chan abruptly shut the door. There was no response from the inside, and he turned to walk away.
As soon as he reached the end of the path, the door reopened. This time it swung outward to reveal the rest of Mrs Chan.
She was a short, thin woman. She had on a black polo shit, and wore similarly coloured yoga pants. Her hair was tied back into a sharp ponytail; her wide Asian cheeks and nose sat below fiercely focused eyes. Mike was stumped at where to put her age — she could have been twenty-five or forty-five. Her skin was clear of wrinkles or blemishes. The only clue offered as to her age was the worldliness that emanated from her poised figure.
Mrs Chan stepped our of the doorway and ushered Mike inside. He did so, and after she had closed the door, she slipped past him in the hallway and beckoned for him to follow.
All Mike managed to catch a glimpse of was a clean, ordered living room, before being pulled into the studio.
It was a small, neat room. The massage table stood in the middle like a plinth. Bottles of oil and clean towels sat on a bench at one end of the room, while a vase with fresh flowers in them adorned the other end. A large-bladed fan rotated lazily above; the lighting was low, owing to there only being two small windows in which light streamed. Outside, a vertical garden provided the only view. Small succulents littered the dirt wall, with the gaps being filled with some breed of tiny, white flowers.
“Clothes off,” ordered the brusque Mrs Chan.
Mike did as he was told, his heart fluttering with a sense of anticipation as his pants slid to the floor. He hurriedly bundled them up, along with his shirt and shoes, and passed them to Mrs Chan, who slipped them into a vacant pigeonhole at the bottom of the bench with the vase atop it.
“Lie down,” she said.
The bench was covered with cheap, possibly fake leather. Mike lay down as told and planted his face through the hole at the end of it. He felt Mrs Chan lay a towel over his waist. A moment later, some warm massage oil began to run down his back.
After liberally applying the oil, Mrs Chan began.
She started with the knots at the bottom of his back, and wound her way slowly upward. Mike couldn’t help but let out soft groans as she ground away at his shoulder blades. Mrs Chan dug deep into his neck and the length of his shoulders; she plowed her strong thumbs into the grooves at the base of his skull.
As Mrs Chan hammered away and began to work on his feet, calves and thighs, Mike tried to lose himself in his thoughts, but to no avail. He remembered Courtney once telling him that she’d fallen asleep in one massage. She’d been jolted awake as the masseur had run the towel down her back to mop up the oil.
Yet Mike couldn’t quite let himself go that much, no matter how hard he tried. So he concentrated on nothing except for acknowledging each movement made by Mrs Chan.
Before long, Mrs Chan tapped him on his side to get him to roll onto his stomach. In his anticipation, Mike almost rolled off the bed, but managed to catch himself just before he did. The bed rocked, and Mrs Chan steadied it with her hip before placing the towel over his upturned waist and underwear.
The flurry of massaging his chest and head quickly gave way to a more exciting rubbing of his inner things. Just when his thoughts began to run rampant, Mrs Chan took away the towel and slid his underwear down to his knees in a single, practised motion.
Eyes still closed, Mike flinched as he felt massage oil being poured onto his penis. It stood to attention — erect and well in its own mind.
From the first upward jerk, Mike was sure he wasn’t in a massage parlour in Sydney’s inner-east, but in some sort of hand-job heaven. Mrs Chan’s movements were precise, at perfect speed and strength; she jerked as if she had owned a penis herself for thirty years.
Yet even that thought did not dwell for long. Mike was focusing intensely on not blowing his load too soon. After all, for the price he was paying and the quality he was receiving, a thirty-second rub-and-tug was too quick.
A door slammed somewhere down the hall, but Mrs Chan did not halt her rhythm, so Mike paid it no mind. He felt Mrs Chan raise the towel up against his left thigh — like a sort of screen, without losing the momentum on his penis.
Suddenly, the door opened. Mike’s eyes shot wide open in terror only to discover that the intruder was a small Asian boy in a well-pressed, private school uniform, wearing a blindfold over his eyes. Mike panicked, beginning to buck wildly in an effort to recover his clothes and escape, but Mrs Chan’s strong hands held his hips down. She continued the hand-job, albeit with a slower rhythm in an effort, it seemed, to be totally silent.
The kid dropped his bag by the door and hopped up onto the bench with the towels and massage oil, behind where Mike’s head lay.
“Hey Mum,” said the kid. Mum? thought Mike.
“Hello son. Did you have a good day at school?” said Mrs Chan. Her voice had softened. The firm edge present when Mike was at the door was completely gone.
To his surprise and disgust, Mike’s erection, which had, in his panic, receded, was already back and throbbing in Mrs Chan’s hand.
The kid, who Mike saw shrug in his periphery, said, “It was OK.”
“How was Mrs Chapman?” she asked her son.
The kid shrugged again. “Alright. She’s already given us homework,” he replied.
“Already?”
“Yep. She wants us to write a story with a happy ending in it,” said the kid.
“A happy ending?” asked a concerned Mrs Chan, continuing to tug away. Mike’s heart felt like it might explode out of his chest; he dared not breath.
“Yep. And I don’t have any idea where to start,” said the kid.
Mrs Chan slowed a little more. The massage oil meant that her hand-job was silent, which he was glad for. She found the bottle and poured more over his genitals.
“Well the Client and I could help you think one up,” proposed Mrs Chan. Mike shot up and glared at Mrs Chan, objecting with his eyes, but she pushed him back down.
“If that’s OK with you, Mr Client?” asked the kid.
“Um…yes…sure,” bumbled Mike.
“Ok, hmmm,” mused Mrs Chan, staring at the ceiling.
“Hmmm,” agreed Mike.
“Alright, what about this: there once was a boy named Kenny,” began Mrs Chan.
She slapped Mike’s balls to hand over the story baton, making him gasp and tear up a little.
“Ow! Um…and he lived in a housing estate,” said Mike, scrambling.
“A housing estate? What’s that?” asked the kid, curious.
“A place where the government puts poor people,” said Mrs Chan, before continuing. “And Kenny was in love with the girl in the apartment above him. Her name was Melanie.”
“OK,” said the kid.
Another whack to the testicles, and it was Mike’s turn.
“But Melanie was blind. And her father was a coke addict,” said Mike.
“What’s a coke addict?” the kid asked again.
“Someone who like Coca Cola too much,” said Mrs Chan. She picked up the pace of the hand-job, pouring even more massage oil on Mike’s crotch. “So Kenny couldn’t go and ask to play with Melanie because her father was very protective of his Coca Cola and of her. Somehow, Kenny decided, he had to get her to hear him play an instrument and be impressed that way.”
“So he learned the drums,” said Mike.
“The French horn,” said Mrs Chan.
“An electric guitar.”
“The cello.”
“An acoustic guitar.”
“All of them?” asked the kid.
“No, just the acoustic guitar,” said Mike. He was beginning to get a little short of breath now; he was rapidly getting closer to finishing.
“So his mother picked up a cheap guitar, along with a book on how to play from a garage sale,” said Mrs Chan.
“Yes! And he learned it by practising everyday,” said Mike, half shouting now. Mrs Chan was on fire. Every stroke was perfectly pumped.
Multitasking Mrs Chan picked up the thread of the story and continued, “One day, Melanie’s father came around to complain about all of the noise that Kenny was making on the guitar. He and Melanie were on there way to…”
“Visit a lighthouse!” yelled Mike.
“…but Melanie told her father that she enjoyed the ‘noise’ and wanted Kenny to play some more of it, just for her,” said Mrs Chan.
“So her Dad — he went — to the pub!” cried Mike, between great, heaving breaths.
“And Melanie listened to Kenny play, and then to him talk,” said the never-tiring Mrs Chan, pumping away like a jackhammer now.
“They became friends!” shouted Mike.
“And then lovers,” said Mrs Chan.
“They moved — to Norway!” Mike yelled.
“And had three lovely children,” said Mrs Chan.
“AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY — EVER — AFTER!” Mike screamed as Mrs Chan brought him to an earth-shattering climax.
The room receded into silence for a moment, save for the sound of Mike’s breathless pants.
“Thanks Mum. And thank you Mr Client,” said the kid. He hopped off the cabinet and ran towards the door, his blindfold thankfully still on. As he picked his bag up off the floor and opened the door to leave, he called out behind him, “Give him a discount, Mum.”
The kid bounded away, and as he thumped his way up the stairs at the end of the corridor, Mike heard him say to no one in particular, “And they all lived happily ever after.”
