It was my birthday last week and my good friend L gave me a coupon for reflexology—so thoughtful as I once told her my idea of heaven is having someone work on my feet.
“And you can walk there,” she told me, something she also knows I love, to be able to walk where you are going in LA.
The New Age healing center where my appointment was scheduled is a place I’ve often passed. It’s a brutal looking two-story post war affair less than half a block from the freeway.
My reflexologist was late. I sat in the waiting room reading the magazine published each month by the center. I was deep into an article on “recognizing verbal abuse” when a tall man appeared in the doorway. I was bemused because I had all ten signs of having just been verbally abused by my husband that very morning—and I thought we had enjoyed a fairly mellow time. Obviously the writer of the article has a low opinion of the quotidian dialogue between long married members of the Hebrew race.
The tall man was wearing an Indian tan color gauzy shirt and a crystal around his neck. He bore more than a striking resemblance to two very different looking people: the unsettling Bill Cosby; and a good friend of ours, the reassuring John Axness, a very blond, Nordic type. Right away, the Cosby part worried me. While the Axness part reassured me. Here I was in an empty building on a Saturday afternoon with a complete stranger who looked like Bill Cosby. Yet, John Axness is the one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.
“How much water do you drink?” he asked.
“Not enough,” I replied, which is entirely true.
“Here, before we start our work, it’s good to hydrate. I’ll go get you a cup of water.”
“No,” I insisted trying to hide my nervousness! “I just had a big drink, I forgot!”
I smiled. C/A nodded. Then he did this really weird thing, he closed his eyes and did, a New Age version of an Orthodox Jew daven-ing, rocking back and forth. With his own addition, a fluttering of the eyelids. I didn’t ask if he was praying over me, I just sat there and watched him.
“Take off your shoes. I start with the hands first. Then I move to the feet.”
I took off my shoes, he motioned to the table. At least I didn’t drink the water, I thought.
I lay down and C/A took my right hand. This went on for a while, and part of me was just getting into it. But part of me, I have to admit was on guard.
When he got to the feet, I began to remember a voodoo book I had purchased in New Orleans when I was nine years old. The voodoo Queen binds one set of healthy feet to another set of corpse feet. The blood of the living miraculously rouses the dead back from the underworld. The real question was: if C not A was working on my feet could he do mischief with them?
In spite of all my misgivings. I began to relax. Sort of. It’s hard not to feel good when an experienced practitioner is working on your feet.
I kept nodding off. I dreamed for a minute or two, an anxiety dream I will spare gentle readers.
I was awakened by the sound of a phone on silent mode. This went on for more than a minute. I started counting muted buzzes.
C/A dropped my foot and whispered into the phone, “I can’t talk, I’m in session.” He listened. He told whoever it was, “I can’t talk. I’m in session. You can’t call me when I’m in session.” He didn’t sound at all happy. I thought of the ten signs of verbal abuse. He wasn’t abusing whoever it was on the other end. He didn’t like that person calling. He was pissed. But he was “holding his mud” as they say. I took that as a good sign.
I closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was daven-ing over my body. Bowing, eyes fluttering. And then, all at once, it was over. I was putting on my socks, tying up my running shoes, and C/A was telling me, “I accept gratuities.”
“Wonderful!” I declared, fished in my purse and looked for a ten and settled happily for a twenty. He wasn’t C. He wasn’t A. What he was happened to be a pretty damn good body- worker.
“Thank you so much!”
I ran out the door down the stairs of the empty creepy building and leaned against the door. It was locked.
Fuck. I thought. It’s like Jason in Friday the 13th. You think he’s dead, but he ain’t dead, he is risen and he’s going to kill you.
C/A was coming down the stairs.
“I forgot! The door is locked.”
And that was it. I ran out of there, under the freeway, past the homeless encampment, the new track for the metro, past Ralphs, heart pounding in my chest all the way home.
My heart is pounding still as I type this.
by 
