My name is Zeng Xue. Thirty-five, creative director at Madison Advertising, E cup. In my line of work all three count as assets. Only the last one, this month, I’ve wanted to take a knife to.
The thing in my left breast, I found it in the shower last month. The size of a soybean, and a dull ache when I pressed it.
Breast clinic at the Provincial People’s Hospital: forty minutes in line for registration, the ultrasound probe pressed three times on my left side. The doctor was in his forties and didn’t even look up from the images: “Mammary hyperplasia, BI-RADS category 2, nothing to worry about. Get angry less, keep regular hours, have a regular sex life.”
A regular sex life. I sat in the parking garage for ten minutes and said those four words three times over.
Zhou Haiming had slept at home six nights this month, and on four of those six he came in at two in the morning. He was forty-one, Asia-Pacific VP at a German auto-parts company, eighty flights a year. Our daughter Yinuo was seven, first grade, and the nanny did the pickups and drop-offs.
His closet held eleven identical navy ties; mine held six identical white blouses. Our home was like a show flat: everyone was busy, too busy to spare the other a glance.
The last time he touched me was three weeks ago. He came back from a trip, showered, moved on top of me for four minutes, rolled over and slept. I lay there staring at the ceiling spotlights, counted to a hundred and twenty, then got up and changed my panties.
“Go get a breast lymphatic detox.” Lin Meng said it in the pantry. She was the account director, thirty-two, B cup, and since finishing that project her face glowed like it could reflect light.
“Detox what?” “Lymph. Don’t you keep saying your left side feels swollen? Fourth floor of the MixC, Yueyan. Give them my name.” She dropped her voice. “And ask for Xiao Kai.” “Xiao Kai? A guy?” “Only a guy’s hands are strong enough.” She walked off with her coffee, took two steps and threw back over her shoulder, “Your husband’s never home anyway.”
I chewed on that line all afternoon. Wednesday, three p.m., the fourth revision of the formula-milk client’s pitch done, I slapped the folder shut on my desk, told my assistant I was going to see a client, and drove to the MixC.
On the way, Yinuo’s homeroom teacher posted in the parents’ group: craft project due Friday, to be completed by parent and child together. 99+ messages. I hit like and turned my phone face-down on the passenger seat.
Yueyan was at the far end of the fourth floor, a pot of white phalaenopsis by the door, and lavender hit you the moment you pushed it open. The manager’s surname was Lan, forty or so, red lips, nails done in nude pink.
“Ms. Zeng, right? Referred by Director Lin. Breast lymphatic detox, sixty minutes, six hundred eighty.” She slid the price list across. “Our best therapist is a man. Would that bother you, Ms. Zeng?”
I looked at the line “breast lymphatic detox” on the price list and said nothing.
“If it doesn’t bother you, I’ll put you with Xiao Kai. He went to Guangzhou specially to learn his lymphatic technique. If it does, the female therapists are all in rooms right now, it’d be an hour’s wait.” “It doesn’t bother me.”
Miss Lan gave a little smile, one I’d seen on clients’ faces before: the smile of a deal closed. “We have a rule here. Wherever the towel covers, the hands stop. Anywhere it doesn’t, the therapist asks before he moves, and if Ms. Zeng says no, it’s no.”
“Fine.”
Room 3 was at the end of the corridor. Passing Room 2, a woman’s moan slipped through the crack of the door, very soft; Miss Lan’s heels didn’t pause. The light was warm yellow, only the one bedside lamp on, a diffuser in the corner puffing white mist, water drops dripping from the speaker, drip, drip, the kind of sound that goes soft in your lower back. The bed was heated, dressed in a disposable sheet, and beside the pillow lay a white towel folded into a square and a pair of disposable panties.
I took off my blouse, took off my bra, swapped my panties for the disposable pair, thin as paper. Lay face-down, towel over my ass. A knock at the door, three times.
“Sis, I’m Xiao Kai, twenty-eight, six years in this trade.” I turned my cheek and glanced at him as he came in: white T-shirt, black trousers, not tall, long fingers, a layer of callus at the base of the thumb. “I’ll open up your back first, warm you up, otherwise the chest won’t work through.”
The oil in his hands was warm. “Sis, rose or lavender?”
“What’s the difference?” “Rose gets the blood moving, lavender calms the nerves. You’ve got nodules, sis, so rose.” “Rose then.” “How long have you been doing this, sis?” He poured the oil into his palm and rubbed it warm. “I mean, the swelling.” “A month and change.” “And your last breast massage?” “Never had one.”
“Then you can hold out, sis.”
He pushed down from the nape of my neck, thumbs pressing either side of my spine, one vertebra at a time. When he got to my lower back I let out a hum and he stopped. “Sis, sore here?”
“Your husband doesn’t rub it for you?” “He hasn’t got the time.” “Busy?” “Eighty flights a year.”
“Then this waist of yours is going to waste, sis.” He said it very quietly, hands not stopping, circling from the sides of my waist up to the ribs, fingertips grazing the edge of my breast. I was face-down, tits pressed into the bed, and his hand made one of them sway.
“Sis, turn over. I’ll get the towel over you.”
I turned over. He shook the towel out and laid it over my chest, collarbone to navel. Under the lamp, the shape of both nipples showed clear as day through the towel. I closed my eyes.
His hands went in from the edge of the towel, under the collarbone first, pushing toward the armpit. “Sis, this lymph node under your arm is swollen. Can you feel it yourself?”
“No.” “That means it’s blocked.” His thumb circled the edge of my armpit, once, twice, worked round to the outer side of my breast, and stopped. “Sis, you’ve got a nodule here.”
He pressed the one on the left, dead center. My back went rigid in an instant.
“Hurts?” “A little.” “There’s more than one.” His fingers moved lower. “Here, and here, small ones. Sis, this is from bottled-up anger, too much heat, not sleeping well at night, am I right?” “How would you know.”
“I can feel it.” His hand circled my breast under the towel, each circle bigger than the last, each one closer to the center, backing off at the edge of the areola and coming round again from the outside.
At some point my legs had clamped together. A patch of the disposable panties was wet, stuck to my skin, cold. I cursed myself under my breath: Zeng Xue, you’re thirty-five, he’s doing your lymph.
“Sis, with your legs clamped that tight the lymph can’t drain.” His hands kept going. “Relax. Open your legs a bit.” I didn’t move.
“Sis?” His hand pressed against the outer side of my breast and stayed, waiting. “Sis, if you don’t relax I can’t work in.” I opened my legs a little. Just a little.
“Right, like that.” His hands started moving again. “Sis, you’ve been holding it in too long, it’s all hard lumps in here. I’ll knead them open for you.”
His thumb brushed the edge of the areola, never touching the nipple, and my whole body went numb from my toes to my scalp. Under the towel, both nipples were tenting two little peaks. I didn’t need to look to know he saw them.
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. “That’s enough for today.”
His hand stopped. It stayed for two seconds before he took it away. “Okay, sis. I gave that left one an extra ten minutes. Use a hot compress when you get home.”
“Sis,” he turned at the door, “when you do the compress, don’t let your hand get lazy. Push from the outside in, same as I just did.” “Got it.”
He left. I sat up, and the disposable panties were wet enough to wring out. I wiped myself with the towel, three times, threw it in the bin, and put my own back on.
Miss Lan swiped my card at the front desk and the CCB text popped up: account ending 4471, 680 yuan spent. “Ms. Zeng, Xiao Kai’s hands are all right, aren’t they?”
“Not bad.”
“Sis, let me add you on WeChat. Next time book straight through me, skip the front desk.” Xiao Kai stood at the mouth of the corridor, phone already raised. I scanned it. His WeChat name was “Kai · Lymphatic Drainage,” his avatar a bottle of rose oil.
Home at eight. Yinuo was already asleep, and the nanny had left soup warming in the Midea rice cooker, switched to keep-warm. Zhou Haiming’s WeChat had come at seven forty: “Not coming home tonight. Flying to Singapore first thing tomorrow, two weeks.” I replied, “Okay.”
Zhou Haiming’s suitcase was still standing in the entryway; he hadn’t come to get it today and probably wouldn’t tomorrow either. In the shower I felt the nodule on the left. Whether it was smaller I couldn’t tell, but as my hand moved lower, all my head held was that callused thumb circling my areola. I leaned against the tiles, turned the water up as hot as it would go, two fingers inside, under a minute.
I came out toweling my hair and my phone buzzed. Kai · Lymphatic Drainage: “Sis, that nodule on your left, surface work alone won’t do it. Next Wednesday I’ll do the deep-tissue on you.”