Freelance masseuse gives Chow Kah more than a massage

[Pix of model for illustration purpose only]

“Last call!”

We down the last of our drinks and get ready to leave. I get down from the bar stool and wipe my lips with a handkerchief. Chow Kah, almost inebriated, pulls out his wallet and settles the bill. He gives Jessica a tip, pecks her on the cheek and burps.

She looks at me. “Can you give me a lift home? My car’s under repair.”

“My pleasure.”

I drive to Ampang where Jessica rents a room. "I need to borrow your loo," I say, stopping the car outside the single-storey house.

"Come on in, then," Jessica says.

As we go in, a woman comes down the stairway with a man. Their arms entangle, and they talk like lovers. The woman wears a spaghetti-strap top and tight shorts -- so tight that a slit forms at the crotch. Her lips are painted fire-engine red and traces of her former beauty can still cause a flutter in many a man's heart.

After Chow Kah and I have relieved ourselves, we go outside to the car.

"Who's she?" Chow Kah asks, lighting a cigarette.

"That’s my landlady. She's a former masseuse in a health centre,” Jessica says. "My landlord's a sex toy distributor who's always home late. When her husband isn't in, my landlady would invite male friends over. I’ve asked the neighbour about the goings-on and he said the men were my landlady's former clients during her massage-parlour days. She's free-lancing to support her compulsive gambling habit. And if she likes the man, she can give more than a masssage, and for free. F-R-E-E. She's a lonely woman."

Eyes aglow, Chow Kah stretches out his arms. "Funny, my body’s aching these few days." He winks at Jessica. “Can arrange a session for me?”

"Come again tomorrow afternoon," she says. "I'll have a word with my landlady.”

The next day, Chow Kah goes early to Jessica’s house, lugging me along for company. He disappears into the master bedroom upstairs with the ageing sex bomb, and I sit in the living room to chat with Jessica. Without her make-up and togged up in casual-wear, she looks like the girl-next-door, so innocent, so naive.

A minute later, her landlady comes down the stairs and goes to the kitchen. She opens the fridge, takes a paper towel and a can of beer and returns to the room.

A car stops in front of the house, and a man with the built of a gorilla walks in. His cheeks are pock-marked and he wears an ear-ring; the dragon tattoos on his arms make the hair of the back of my neck bristle. It’s Jessica’s landlord. He strides straight up to the master bedroom.

His holler can be heard in Timbuktoo. "So! You're the one who's been fooling around with my wife!"

Chow Kah scrambles down the stairway two steps at a time. Jessica closes her eyes with her hands, giggling away. “Eeeeeeek!”

Chow Kah -- stark naked -- hightails for his car parked at the roadside.

/end