Chapter 6 Foot MassageNature's Story

Don't laugh, but in aromatherapy they warn you never to light a lemon and cinnamon candle with an alfalfa candle and a cedar and nutmeg candle at the same time.They just won't tell you why... In terms of feng shui, they never make sense, but as long as the bed is placed in the wrong place, enough qi can be gathered to kill a person.You can abort a fetus that is too old with acupuncture alone.You can also use crystals or scents to make people get skin cancer. Don't laugh, but there are really some inhuman methods that allow you to turn some new century things into killing tools.

In the last week of massage school, they teach you to never press into the lateral reflex zone of your heel.Never touch the back of your left foot.In particular, you can't touch the outermost place on the left.But they don't tell you why.This is the difference between the light masters and the dark masters in this line of work. You go to school to learn foot reflexology, which is the art of massaging one's feet to heal or stimulate a certain part of the body.The basic idea is that the human body is divided into ten different energy points.For example, your big toe is directly connected to your head.To treat dandruff, massage the spot behind your thumbnail.For a sore throat, massage the middle joint of the big toe.These are not health care methods covered by any kind of health insurance.Doing this kind of work is like being a doctor, but it doesn't pay as much.The kind of people who want you to massage between each toe to cure brain cancer, most of them don't have much money, don't laugh, but even if you have years of experience in foot massage, you will still find yourself poor Doing foot massages for people who don't make big bucks.

Don't laugh, but one day you saw that girl who used to learn massage with you.That girl is as old as you.Both of you have worn bead necklaces before.The two of you wove together dried sage leaves and burned them to cleanse your energy fields.You two wear tie-dyed clothes, go barefoot, and are young enough to feel regal when you massage the feet of the filthy bums who come to the free practice clinic attached to your school. That was an unknown number of years ago. And you, you are still poor.The hair on the top of the head started falling out.Because of poor eating or gravity, people will think you have a bitter face even when you are not frowning.

What about the girl you went to school with for a massage, you saw her come out of a fancy hotel downtown, the concierge held the door for her, and she came out like a gust of wind with a flying fur coat and a reflexology therapist The kind of high heels that you never tie your feet into. When the concierge was going to hail a taxi for her, you were so close that you called out, "Landi?" The woman turned around, and it was indeed her.Real diamonds shone around her neck.Her long hair was shiny and thick, like waves of red and brown.The air around her was softly scented with roses and lilacs.Her fur coat and leather gloves on her hands, smooth and white, finer than the skin on your own face.The woman turned and raised her sunglasses over her hair.She looks at you and says, "Do we know each other?"

You used to be classmates, when you were young—much younger than you are now. The concierge opened the taxi door for her. Of course she remembered, the woman said.She checked her watch with its diamonds glaring in the afternoon sun, and said she had to be across town in twenty minutes.She asked, can you go with me? The two of you get into the back of the taxi, and the woman hands the porter a twenty-dollar bill.He tipped his hat and said it was always a pleasure to see her. The woman told the driver where she was going, a place in Uptown, and the car hit the road. Don't laugh, but that woman—Randy, your old friend—she pulled a fur-coated arm out of the handle of the purse, opened it, and it was full of cash.Layers of fifty and one hundred dollar bills.She reached in with her gloved hand and retrieved a cell phone.

She says to you, "It won't take a minute." Sitting next to her, your Indian-dyed cotton dress, your sandals that look like slippers, and your necklace with brass bells don't look very stylish anymore.The dark shadow around your eyes and the faded paint on the back of your hands make you look like you haven't showered.Compared to her diamond earrings, your favorite silver earrings look like dime store Christmas tree charms. "I'm on my way," she said into the phone, "I can pick up the three o'clock, but only for half an hour." She said goodbye and disconnected.

She stroked your hair with a soft, smooth glove and said you looked fine.She asks what you've been doing lately. Oh, you're still doing your job, you tell her.foot massage.You now have a group of regular customers. Randi bit her lower lip, looked at you, and then she said, "Then—are you still in the massage business?" You say yes.You don't know when you will retire, but you have to make money to live. She kept looking at you, and the car drove a whole street away, and she didn't say a word.Then she asks if you are free for the next hour.She asks if you want to make some money, not paying taxes, and do a four-handed foot massage with her for the next guest.You just have to be one foot.

You tell her you've never had a foot massage with another person. "One hour," she said, "we make two thousand dollars." You ask: Is it legal? Landi said: "Two thousand per person." Just foot massages, you ask? "One more thing," she said, "don't call me Randi," she said, "when we get there, my name will be Angelica." Don't laugh, but it's true.It's the dark side of the massage industry.Of course we all know something about this.We know that massaging the underside of the big toe can make that person constipated.Going around the instep and massaging the ankle can make that person have diarrhea.Massaging the inner surface of the heel can make men immobile or cause migraines.But doing none of this will make you money, so why bother?

The taxi drove to a pile of stone sculptures, which was the embassy of a Middle Eastern oil country.A uniformed guard opened the door, Randy got out of the car, and you got out of the car.In the reception hall, another guard searches you with a metal detector, looking for pistols, knives, etc.Another guard was on the phone at a table with a smooth white stone top.Another guard checked Randi's purse and pushed aside the bills, only to find her cell phone. The elevator doors open and another guard waves the two of you in. "Just do what I do," she said. "It's the easiest money you'll ever make."

Don't laugh, it's in school, you've heard the rumors.A foot massager who claims to be a good one is likely to be tricked into going to the dark side.If there are a few points on the soles of the feet that will bring happiness, massage can give people the results that can only be said lightly, which is what those people who are laughing on the side say "feet refreshment". The elevator doors opened, and in front of it was a long corridor leading only to a pair of double doors.The walls on both sides are of smooth white stone, and the floor is also of stone.The double doors had frosted glass, and in the room inside was a man sitting behind a white desk.He and Randy kissed each other's cheeks as a gift.

The man behind the desk, he looks at you, but he only talks to Randi.He called her Angelica.Behind him was another double door leading into a bedroom.The man waved the two of you in, but he stayed outside and locked the door.lock you inside. In the bedroom a man lay face down on a large round bed covered with white satin sheets.He was wearing a silk pajamas, a shiny blue silk, with his bare feet sticking out over the edge of the bed.Angelica took off a glove.She takes the other glove off, and you two kneel on the thick carpet, each holding a foot. You can't see the man's face, you just see his well-combed, shiny black hair, and black hair growing in his big ears.The rest of the head was buried in a pillow of white satin. Don't laugh, but those rumors are true.Massaging where Angelica pressed, under the reflex zone of the genitals at the bottom of the heel, she made the man moan, face still buried in the pillow.Before your hands get tired, the man growls, sweating profusely, blue silk sticking to his back and legs.After he calmed down, you couldn't tell if he was still breathing, Angelica said softly, it's time to go. The man behind the desk gave you two thousand dollars each, cash. On the street outside, a guard stopped a taxi for Angelica. When you get into the back of the taxi, Angelica hands you a business card with the phone number of a holistic medical practice.Beneath the number, there was a handwritten line: "Lenny please." The soft leather gloves on her hands, the rose scent of her perfume, and her voice all said, "Call me." There are all kinds of reasons for people who know the foot massage industry.Like giving your family a better life.It can give your mom and dad some comfort and security.Maybe even buy a car.A house by the sea in Florida. The day you hand over the keys to that house to your parents is the happiest day of your life.They cried that day, admitting they never thought their precious child could get by by rubbing other people's stinky feet.This is a day you will spend the rest of your life buying. Don't laugh, but that's not illegal.You just had a foot massage.No sex, just your client has an orgasm and is too tired to walk for a day or two.It's the same whether it's a man or a woman.You press the right place on their feet and they come like a spasm.Strong enough to be incontinent and you can smell it.It was so intense that most of the guests could only look at you, drooling from one corner of their mouth, pointing you with trembling fingers to get the stack of hundred-dollar bills on the dresser or coffee table. Lenny calls from the clinic and you board a charter flight to London.The clinic calls and you fly to Hong Kong.The so-called clinic was Lenny alone, a man with a Russian accent who lived in a room in the Park Hampton Hotel, and you had to give him five percent of the income.On the phone, in a heavily accented voice, Lenny tells you which flight to catch and which hotel room or private island the next guest will be waiting for. Don't laugh, but the downside is that you don't have time to go shopping at all.The money piled up.Your uniform is a fur coat.To be fit for this new world, you have to buy good gold and platinum jewelry.Gotta have really perfect and shiny hair.Sitting in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, you may see a few classmates who used to learn foot massage, now wearing Armani suits and Chanel dresses.People who used to be vegetarians rode bicycles, but now you see them getting in and out of big cars, and you see them eating alone at small tables in restaurants in big restaurants.Sip cocktails in the private airport bar while waiting for the next charter flight. An idealist who used to be full of dreams, he is now a professional foot massager for Allure. Those nasty girls with long hippie hair and skater punks with goatees, you now hear them on the phone telling their stockbrokers to buy and sell.Hide money in accounts overseas, or in Swiss bank safes, and haggle over uncut diamonds and South African gold coins. The boys who used to be called Trout and Pony, Lizard and Oyster were all called Dirk now.The girl who used to be called Goldilocks is now called Du Minicole. Such an influx of people doing foot massages keeps the prices down, and soon the clientele is no longer tech billionaires and oil country maharajas, you're now mingling in big hotel bars, wearing last year's Prada clothes, You can press the last button for 20 yuan.You sneak under the table and massage the feet of the people who are sitting in the boxes at the back of the restaurant for the annual meeting.You pop out of a fake birthday cake, give a massage to an entire football team, and go to a bachelorette party just to keep paying the mortgage on the house your parents are retiring to. Before long, you'll have to use the French manicure kit in that silk set to fix bad toenails. You do all these things just because you borrowed money from Lenny and his gang of Russian Mafia and you have to pay interest on it.Stocks bought with borrowed money collapsed.All the stocks Lenny recommends you buy.Or bought the jewelry and shoes that Lenny said you must have if you want to enter this industry. You're in the bar at the Hampton Inn on the Park and trying to convince some drunk businessman to go with you to the men's room for ten bucks for a foot massage.That's when you see her, Angelica, walking down the hall, toward the elevator.Her hair is shiny.Her fur coat dragged on the carpet behind her high heels.Angelica still looks gorgeous.Your eyes meet and she raises a gloved hand to beckon you over. When the elevator came, she said she was going to Lenny's penthouse suite, which meant going to the clinic. She looks at your scuffed heels, your broken nails."Let's see what the next wave of growing business is..." she said. The elevator stopped on the fiftieth floor, and the entire penthouse suite was rented out to Lenny. Two muscular men in pinstriped suits stood guard at the door.Lenny's cut, which is half of your income per item, is given to people like these two thugs.One of the bodyguards speaks your names into the small microphone clipped to his collar, and the door lock opens with a loud hum. It's just you and Angelica and Lenny in there. Don't laugh, but, like you get a foot massage and live a lonely and lonely life--Lenny's life looks much worse.Closed in a suite on the top floor, wearing a white terry bathrobe all day, counting banknotes and talking on the phone.The only piece of furniture was an office chair, which was stained and filthy.A mattress is thrown against a wall of glass curtains that look out across the city.On the computer screen, stock prices are running non-stop. Lenny walks towards you, his bathrobe open, a pair of crumpled striped boxers, and white socks that have turned yellow.Lenny held out his hands to Angelica's face and said, "My angel, my darling," and cupping her face between his hands, he said, "How are you?" Angelica, in high heels, was probably a head taller than him.She smiled slightly and said, "Lenny..." And Lenny slapped her, hard, across her face.He said, "You lied to me, you can do it." He held up one hand, fingers spread, and was about to slap her again, and Lenny said, "You're doing business outside, aren't you?" Angelica covered her face with a gloved hand to cover the red mark from Lenny's slap, and said, "Honey, don't..." Lenny put his hands down, and he turned his back on her.Lenny walked over to look out the window, the city spread out beside his mattress. "Honey," Angelica said, "let me show you something new." She came and stood beside him, and put her gloved hands on his shoulders from behind.Angelica said: "Come on, Mommy will show you how much she still loves her little baby..." She pulled Lenny to sit on the mattress, then let him lie down and took the yellowed socks off his feet. "Come on, baby," she said.She took off her gloves and said, "You know I'm the best at foot massage..." And then Angelica does something you've never seen.She knelt down and opened her mouth, lips wide and thin, and stuck out her tongue to lick the soles of Lenny's feet.Angelica put her mouth full around Lenny's heel, and Lenny started moaning. Don't laugh, but some things are worse than you can imagine.A media mogul who had never suffered from high blood pressure died in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel from a cerebral hemorrhage.A rock star, always physically strong, died of kidney failure after a foot massage at the Mammoth Hotel. We massage the feet of presidents and sultans, corporate executives and movie stars, kings and queens.We know how to make a paid assassination look like a natural death. This is what Angelica tells you as she takes the elevator down the stairs.It was after Lenny moaned and twitched.At that time, Angelica was licking his feet, and finally Lenny sat up straight on the mattress, pressed his chest with both hands, and looked at Angelica, who was still sucking his heels, with his mouth wide open.After his heart stopped, Angelica pulled the sheet up to his chin, wiped the lipstick off his feet, and put it on her own.She unplugged the phone and told the bouncer that Lenny was going to take a good nap. In the elevator down the stairs, Angelica tells you that this is the last time she gets a foot massage, the kind that makes a million people, cash.A rival company hired her to take down Lenny, and now she's out of business for good. Downstairs in the lobby bar, the two of you had a cocktail to get the smell of Lenny's feet out of her mouth.It's the last farewell drink.And then Angelica said, look at the bar, those men in suits, those women in fur coats, they're all massage killers, she said.Feng Shui killer.Physio killer. Angelica said that during physical therapy, just putting a crystal quartz on someone's heart, an amethyst on his liver, and a citrine on his forehead can make him unconscious lethal.Just by sneaking into a room and moving some furniture in someone's bedroom, a feng shui expert can cause lesions in that person's kidneys. “Moxibustion,” she said, a practice of burning incense on a person’s body for acupuncture, “can kill. So can acupressure.” She drank the rest of the cocktail in her glass.He unfastened the pearl necklace from his neck. All those remedies and medicines claim to be 100% natural, so 100% safe.Angelica laughed.She said: "Cyanide is natural.So is arsenic. She gave you the pearl necklace and said, 'From now on, I will be "Landy" again. ' This is what you want Angelica to be in your memory, not the way you read it in the paper the next day, fished out of the river with a wet fur coat on.Her earrings and diamond watch were taken away, so as to pretend to be a robber.She didn't die from a foot massage, but rather traditionally, with a bullet hole in the back of her head in a perfectly french updo.This is a warning to all Dirk and Dominique who want to jump ship. The clinic called, not Lenny, but another guy with a Russian accent, saying he was going to send you to a client, but you didn't trust them.Those two bodyguards saw you with Randy and went up to the penthouse suite, they must have prepared another bullet hole to put in the back of your head. Your parents call from Florida to say there's a black car following them, and someone calls to ask if they know how to find you, and by the time you're a flophouse running to another flophouse Small hotels, giving foot massages in back alleys to earn a little cash to get by. You tell your parents: be careful.You tell them not to give massages to people they don't know.You call them from a public phone and tell them never to touch aromatherapy, acupoints, or qigong.Don't laugh, but you'll be traveling for a while, maybe the rest of your life. You can't explain it.By this time, you've also run out of change, so you say goodbye to your parents. Our first week we ate Beef Wellingtons stuffed with beef tenderloin with foie gras, and Miss America knelt before every doorknob, trying to use the one she borrowed from the Savage Duke. A palette knife picked the lock. We ate piebald bass, and Miss Sneezy ate pills and capsules poured out of those banging bottles and cans in her trunk.He coughed into his mouth with his fist and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his sweater. We eat turkey gratin and Mrs. Homeless plays with her diamond ring.She turned the platinum ring and spoke to the large diamond that seemed to be held in her palm. "Peckel," she said, "it's not what I imagined it to be at all." Mrs. Nomad said, "The environment is not... ideal, how can I write good things?" Of course, the gossip detective was recording her on the machine, and the Earl of Slander took his cassette recorder and recorded every word. Cough here, cough there.Complaints here, curses there, complaints everywhere.Miss Sneezy says the air is full of poisonous mold. Someone moved here, someone coughed there.No one works, no one, no one writes. The scrawny Saint Gutless, with his face always upturned and his mouth open like a bird, poured hot sauce, apple pie, or mince pies into silver plastic bags.His Adam's apple jerked up and down with each swallow, his tongue licking the warm food that passed between his teeth. The matchmaker chewed tobacco, spit the juice on the stained carpet, and said that this dank house and these dark and damp rooms were nothing like the writers’ training camp he imagined: everyone wrote manuscripts by hand, and there was a large green area in front of them. Meadows; the writers eat box meals and each live in their personal log cabin.The apricot orchard was full of white flowers, afternoons napping in the chestnut trees and playing croquet. Miss America said she couldn't make it before she even wrote the outlines for the screenplay of her life's masterpiece.Her chest was too sore for her to write, and her arms were too tired.As soon as she smelled the veal that was going to be eaten today, she couldn't help but spit out the crab cakes she ate yesterday. Her period was almost a week late. "It's called bad building syndrome," Miss Sneezy told her.Her nose, which was red from wiping herself, was already tilted to one side because she kept wiping it to one side. Mrs. Bumbo ran her fingers over the railings and the carved backs of the chairs to show us how dirty they were. "Look," she said to the large diamond in her hand.She said, "Peckle? Packle, this is outrageous." For the first week we were locked up, Miss Sneezy coughed, breathing slowly and deeply, like an organ. Miss America shakes the locked door and pulls back the green velvet curtains in the Italian Renaissance lounge to find the windows are all bricked up, she uses the handle of the pink exercise wheel to stain the stained glass of the Gothic smoking room The window was broken and there was a concrete wall behind it, with electric light bulbs connected by wires to create fake daylight. In the Louis XV hall in France, the chairs and sofas are covered with blue velvet covers printed with cornflower patterns, and the walls are covered with stucco scrollwork, all painted gold.Miss America stood there in her pink tracksuit, demanding the keys.Her hair was piled behind her head in a wave of blond curls, and she asked for the key so she could go out, just for a day or two. "Are you a novelist?" said Mr. Whittier.Even with my hands resting on the chrome-steel armrests of my wheelchair, my fingers were still telegraphing invisible, my veiny, wrinkled, bony hands were constantly shaking. "Movie writers," Miss America said, fisting at the waist of her pink tracksuit. Looking at her tall and slim figure, "Yes," Mr. Whittier said, "then write a movie script with fatigue as the theme." No, Miss America needs to see an obstetrician.She needs a blood test.She needs prenatal vitamins. "I need to see someone," she said.her boyfriend. Mr. Whittier said, "That's why Moses took the Israelites into the desert..." Because these people had been slaves for generations.They have learned to be helpless. To create a race of masters out of a slave race, Mr. Whittier said, to teach a group of controlled people how to create their own lives, Moses had to be a jerk. Miss America, sitting on the edge of a blue velvet chair, kept nodding, her blond hair bouncing up and down.She understands, she understands.Then she said, "Where's the key?" And Mr. Whittier told her, "No." He put a bag of silver vacuum-packed baijiu chicken nuggets on his knees, and there were sticky black mold marks on the surrounding blue carpet.Every wet mark is like a black shadow with teeth and claws.A moldy ghost.Mr. Whittier scooped up a spoonful of baijiu chicken nuggets and said, "Unless you ignore your surroundings and do what you promise to do," he said, "you're going to be at the mercy of the world forever." "Then what do you call this?" Miss America said, stirring the dusty air with her hands. Mr. Whittier said what has since been said a million times, "I just want you to keep your word." And: "What's holding you back here is what's holding you back your whole life." There will always be too much of something in the air.Your body is too sore or tired.Your dad drinks too much, your wife is too cold, and you always have excuses not to live your life. "But what if something happens? What if we run out of food?" Miss America said. "Then you'll have to open the door, won't you?" "Not now," said Mr. Whittier, his mouth full of half-chewed chicken nuggets and cauliflower. "Our food is not finished." Yes, it is not finished.Not finished yet. The first week we were there, we ate vegetable curry with rice.We had Kabayaki salmon.All freeze-dried. Among the food, there are green beans sealed in vacuum-packed bags that cannot be torn apart by hand.Each silver bag has the words "Pest Resistant" printed in black.We have bug-proof green bean and chicken pies, and whole golden sweet corn on the cob.In each bag, something rattled like broken twigs, stones, and sand.Each bag inflates into a silver pillow and is filled with nitrogen to ensure nothing is alive inside.Whether it's lasagne bolognese or cheese buns. Bug proof or not, our Lost Link can tear it open with his hairy hands. Before cooking, most people cut open the bag with scissors or a knife, and grope inside to find a small tea bag filled with iron oxide - added to absorb any remaining oxygen.After removing the tea bag, drop the bag into that many cups of boiling water.We have a microwave and we have plastic stubble and spoons.Paper plates, and running water. Read ten pages of a vampire novel, and dinner is served, and instead of steak and hot water, that silver pillow is filled with homemade meatloaf, or goulash with mushrooms and sour cream Silk. We sat on the blue carpeted stairs in the lobby, which looked like a blue waterfall with flowing water.Each step was wide enough that we could sit on it together without our elbows touching each other.It's the kind of stroganoff that presidents and members of Congress eat deep underground in the event of nuclear war.Made by the same manufacturer. Other silver bags read: "Chocolate Devil Cake" and "Fired Banana Ice Cream."Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, freeze-dried french fries. All that, good food. Each bag has an expiry date, long after we're all gone, long-lived enough that most of us who are still babies are dead. A strawberry cake that can live for a hundred years. We ate freeze-dried lamb with a freeze-dried mint sauce, and Mrs. Tramp found out from the bottom of her heart that she really, really loved her dead husband.She loves him, and she puts her hands to her face and weeps.Her shoulders shrugged in her mink coat, shaking from crying.With the big diamond in her palm, she needs to get out and bury her three-carat husband in their family graveyard. We ate Denver omelets while the Savage Duke cracked his nicotine gum bites and said this really wasn't the time to quit.And Sheng Gutless lost consciousness in his left hand, which was caused by repeated movements to orgasm without picture stimulation. Negative Inspector's cat, the one named Cora Reynolds, ate the rest of the fish, and the Countess of Vision and the Godless Priest were concerned for our safety.We walked into a trap and they were afraid that someone would find us and... they told Mr. Whittier that they had to keep moving, hiding, running to stay safe. Holding a Barbra Streisand novel, the atheist priest wriggled his split blood-sausage lips to read the lyrics, and said to the Earl of Slander's cassette player, "I thought we'd have a stereo here." In the viewport of the Gossip Detective VCR, the Killer Chef puts a spoonful of soupy green soufflé into his fat-faced mouth, saying, "I'm a professional chef, I'm not Food critic. But I can't drink instant coffee for three months..." Of course, everyone said they were still writing, writing their poems and novels.They will complete their masterpiece.Just not here.not now.You have to wait later, after you go outside. The first week we were here, we got nothing done.Except complaining. "It's not an excuse," Miss America said, cupping her flat stomach in both hands. "It's a personal life." Miss Sneezy coughs into her mouth with her fist.She sucked her nose, her eyes were bulging, bloodshot behind her tears."My life is in danger here," she said, reaching into her pocket for another pill. Of course, Mr. Whittier shook his head and said no. Mr. Whittier sat in the blue velvet chair, and the hall was all gold and velvet around him."Tell me a story about the boy's father," he said to Miss America, "tell me about how you met him .” The Gossip Detective's video camera zoomed in to capture a close-up reaction shot of Miss America's face.