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more clearly in the beam of the pool’s light. And it was then that he thought he saw someone sitting unmoving behind the steering wheel.
    Crossley ripped his robe off and dove naked into the pool.

NUMBER 19
    BY N AOMI H IRAHARA
Koreatown
    T he Korean women, lined up in black bras and underpants, pushed and pulled the flesh on their individual tables as if they were kneading dough.
    Ann watched for a moment and then dipped down into a steaming bath a few yards away. She was naked and unadorned, aside from a locker key dangling from a bright orange plastic bracelet around her wrist. She didn’t know why she even bothered securing the locker. There wasn’t much worth taking. Her beat-up jeans, size four, extra skinny, extra tall, and a simple T-shirt. A ratty bra with a rusty clasp and twisted underwire and matching panties. A fake leather hobo-style purse, bought at a discount store on Hollywood Boulevard, a couple of miles from her apartment. Platform shoes that stank of too much wear. She didn’t have a car right now, so she traveled with a monthly bus pass. In her wallet was a fresh twenty—for the tip her coworker Marie told her to bring—and a couple of ones.
    The spa had been expensive—a hundred dollars and then the twenty dollar tip—but Marie told Ann that she needed to treat herself when she was feeling down. “Who needs antidepressants?” she had said. “Just get a salt scrub in Koreatown.” Marie was the only other waitress who bothered to speak to her at work. The other girls seemed scared of Ann, as if she had some kind of sickness that they were afraid to catch.
    Ann lifted her face from the hot water and brushed away wet hair plastered on her forehead. She tried not to stare at the masseuses working in the open spa, but it was hard not to. Marie had forewarned her about their lack of clothing. “Only makes sense, you know? It’s the same for the masseurs in the men’s section. They scrub off your dead skin and then rinse you off. Everyone gets wet. If they’re going to get soaked, they might as well wear bathing suits.”
    But these weren’t swimsuits—at least it didn’t look that way from the jacuzzi.
    About every ten minutes, a masseuse would leave her station and call out an assigned number into the open spa. Ann’s masseuse was Number 19, which was written and circled on the envelope she had received, along with two square pink washcloth mitts. The texture of the cloth was rough, like sandpaper. “You’ll feel like you’re getting rid of all of the asshole customers we had to deal with this past week,” Marie had told her. “A little pain for pleasure.”
    Ann was all for pain. She preferred hot baths—scalding ones, in fact. Her fingers right now were becoming shriveled, to the point that the outside layer of skin was almost melting off.
    “Nine-teen. Nine-teen.” One of the masseuses called out. The slick plastic table next to her was empty.
    Ann drew herself out of the tub. The tile floor was slippery and she clutched onto her washcloths and envelope while holding her thin cotton robe and towel over her bare front. The massage table area smelled dank and slightly syrupy—not a fragrance that she had ever encountered before.
    Number 19, her black hair frizzed from a bad perm and held back with bobby pins, must have been in her mid-forties at least. The skin around her jowls, below her armpits, and around her belly seemed soft and pudgy. Ann had seen that look before. It was comforting, reassuring. She could imagine melting in those fleshy arms so that her body would no longer be floating without an anchor.
    Number 19 took Ann’s robe and towel and hung them on a hook beside a steaming barrel of water. The envelope went on a shelf. “Lie down.” She nudged Ann toward the slippery plastic table. Even that gentle touch made Ann flinch—when was the last time someone had touched her bare back? Ann did as she was told, turning her head toward the left. She could see that the