Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

him which leg it was? I hoped not, because I couldn’t remember. Luckily, my normal rocklike tension saved me. Howie began prodding the muscles in my right leg, and before I knew it, I was screaming. Then he squeezed the calf on my left leg, pressing his fat fingers in so deep they could have touched each other. Again, I embarrassed myself.
    “Hey,” I said. “Easy.”
    “It’s only a matter of time until the other one goes into spasm,” he said, as serious as an undertaker. “You’re very tense.”
    I guess he’d be eligible for Mensa now that he’d figured that out.
    “I only have time to work on your legs today. I have a client coming in twenty minutes. But you’ll need to do more than just this if you want to stay out of trouble.”
    He handed me a cotton smock, telling me to strip from the waist down. Right, like guys weren’t telling me that since I grew tits. Leaving my underpants on is sort of a rule I have when I’m around strange men. And if ever there was a strange man, it was Howie Lish . Wearing the smock, I got back up on the table. Now what? Was I supposed to call him? Or just lie around in my skivvies hoping he’d eventually return?
    Howie came back into the room carrying a thick blue towel, which he laid over one leg, and a bottle of lavender-scented oil. Standing at my side, he put a strong, gentle hand on my back.
    “Howie, I can’t tell you how—”
    “ Shh ,” he said. “This is going to hurt.”
    I heard him rubbing his hands together. When they landed on my bare leg they were warm, wet, and slippery. He began to massage my leg in long strokes, first up the back of the leg, then on the sides, and after it had gotten warm, the blood circulating nicely, thank you, he began to dig into the calf, and I heard someone cry out in pain and realized afterward that since it hadn’t been deep enough to have been him, it must have been me. Again.
    Saying nothing, his hot, slimy hands never stopping, going back and forth between the painful kneading and poking and the delicious long strokes that ended right at the edge of my tiger-striped underwear, Howie worked on my legs for over half an hour. At the end he took my feet, one at a time, in his big, strong hands and did exquisite things to them. I was sure it couldn’t be legal to feel this good.
    “Better?” he asked.
    “Wonderful,” I told him. “Thank you.”
    “I’ll go out so you can get dressed.”
    I pulled on Lisa’s leggings, then turned. Howie was standing in the doorway. Had he just come back? Or had the little weasel been there all along? I picked up Lisa’s turtleneck and put that on too, breaking eye contact with Howie for the moment the shirt slipped over my head.
    “When you get home, take a long, warm bath,” he said, as if nothing untoward had happened. “Not hot,” he added. “Hot baths make you more tense .” His face looked hot. At any rate, his nose and cheeks were as red as if he had been in a sauna. “You’re pushing yourself very hard, physically and mentally. Your body gave you an important message today, to lighten up on yourself. You ought to pay attention to that. And I’d like to see you again on Friday.”
    I bet you would, I thought.
    “I can fit you in at three thirty.”
    “Perfect,” I said. I could always call and cancel later.
    I wondered what Lisa had said to make him cry. I didn’t think it would take much.
    “You’re probably eating badly, too,” he said.
    “What am I supposed to be, a vegetarian or something?”
    Howie smiled. “No, but raw, organic vegetable juice can really help give you the stamina you need for t’ai chi. You don’t need to be a vegetarian, but you certainly should watch your fat intake—”
    Look who’s talking.
    “But I’m not—”
    “It’s not for your weight. Your weight is good. Fat’s been linked to—”
    “ Slop. I’m feeling too good to hear the list of diseases you get from each food group. I read the papers. The trouble is, they change their minds every week or so. You know, one week it’s oat bran, the savior of the human race, then it’s selenium, or green tea or beta-carotene. You know what I’m saying, Howie?”
    “I do,” he said, shifting his weight and looking uncomfortable. “Sometimes you sound just l-like her,” he said, looking down at his Fred Flintstone feet.
    “You mean Lisa?”
    Howie’s face got all splotchy, and his neck flushed red. He nodded.
    “It’s hard to get a handle on her,” I said. “We