THE GORILLA AND THE DAY SPA

The place gets quiet when the gorilla walks in.

The women stop talking.  No more, “Can you believe that Charley?  Leaving Muriel like that?  After 25 years of marriage?” or “I was just there last week, and I’ve gotta tell you, the Hamptons … they just aren’t this season.”

He nervously chuffs and shifts his weight from foot to foot as they stare.

He is a handsome gorilla.  Middle aged, just starting to show signs of gray on his back.  He appears four times his size in the cozy waiting room of the Dorit Baxter Day Spa.

“Can I help you?” Maurice, who sits behind the reception desk, raises an eyebrow.  Maurice is proud of his facial hair, so much more than side burns and a goatee.

The gorilla rests a fist on the desk, and it creaks dangerously.  He begins to nervously pick imaginary nits from the thick hair of his arm.

“I have …” It comes out all cracked and squeaky.  He clears his throat and starts again.  “I have an appointment.  1 o’clock?”

The women whisper, imagining the stories they will tell over dinner. “Harold, you’ll never guess what came into the spa this afternoon …” They will illicit so much more than the standard bored “mmmmm” tonight.

“Name sir?”  Maurice makes the request sound as if he is forced to pick up dog poop with his bare fingers.

“Joe.  Joe Kong.”

Maurice shuffles through the day’s appointment slips to a spattering of titters from the women.

“Joe Kong …  Joe Kong …  Hmmm, I’m not finding anything.  Could it be under a different name?”

“Probably get tons of gorillas in here huh?  Easy to get lost in the multitudes.”  The joke falls flat.  The gorilla smiles grotesquely at the silence and then whispers, “Try Mighty Joe Kong.  That’s my full name.”

The room echoes with Maurice’s voice, “Mmm, Mighty Joe Kong?  Let’s see…  Ah yes, here it is, under ‘M’.”

The gorilla slaps the table.  It sounds like a gunshot.  The waiting room jumps.

“There I am!  Once was lost but now I’m found!”

The echo of the slap bounces around the room like a super ball.

Dorit Baxter materializes at the gorilla’s side.  At 5’1” she should be dwarfed by him.  She isn’t.

“Maurice?”  She packs 14 queries into 1.

“This is Mr. Kong.  He’s got a 1 o’clock.”  Maurice sounds scared when he answers. He waits for her response nervously.

“Full treatment?”  There is menace in her voice.

“No, just a massage.”  Maurice prepares to dive behind the desk.

Dorit smiles, and Maurice relaxes.  She turns to the gorilla, her small square hand darting out to take him by the forearm.  The gorilla jumps.

“Mr. Kong, will you come with me please?”

She leads him past glass pitchers filled with ice water, fresh mint, and orange slices, past the crustless watercress sandwiches, past the little room with the white fluffy robes.  She opens a door and ushers him into a small cramped room filled with equipment at the end of the hall.

“Ultrasound de what you la?”  His brows furrow as he reads the printing on one of the machines.

“I beg your pardon Mr. Kong?”

He straightens cracking his headcrest against a device that looks like a cross between a pistol and a hair dryer. It is attached to a swinging arm.  It makes a ringing spring sound as it pendulums across the room.

“I was just reading the label.”  He bares his teeth nervously and rubs at his head.

“I see.  Mr. Kong, have you ever been to our day spa before?”

“No.  This is a gift.  Girlfriend.”  His voice vacillates between too loud for the room and too soft to be heard.

“How nice.  Mr. Kong, please remove your…” He isn’t wearing any clothing.  Dorit’s face flushes red, and she grinds her teeth for 2 seconds.

“Quite.”  She taps the small massage table set up in the center of the room, tugging at the towel sitting on top of it with her fingertips.

“Please lie face down on this table, placing this towel over your… self.  In a few minutes I’ll send in Maria.”

She leaves him in the tiny room.  He gingerly taps the massage table with his finger and then picks up the towel.  He holds it across his body as if he were sizing a t-shirt.  It is very small and white next to his black skin.  He holds it in his left hand, using his right to steady the table as he begins to climb up onto it.  It rocks slightly, teetering back and forth.  He hefts on all his weight to a chorus of pings and pops.  Holding his breath, he waits for the chorus to silence, when it does he slowly, gingerly turns to lie face down.

There is a knock at the door.  “Mr. Kong?  Are you ready?”  The voice is small with a slight accent.

“Umm, yes, I think so.”

The gorilla looks to his left to see the towel still in his hand. He has forgotten to cover himself with it.  He looks back to the door, a flush of embarrassed fear in his eyes.

The door begins to open.

“Umm, wait, uhhh, one second…” His voice is quiet.

He begins to shift back and forth trying to twist his left arm far enough behind his back to deposit the towel.

“Just one more second.”

The door opens wider.  He begins to thrash, his eyes wide.  The table is creaking.  It begins to tick and pop.

“Almost ready.”

The door is almost all the way open now. With one last lurch the gorilla pinions his torso, dropping the towel.  It falls slowly, like a dead leaf, to land across his thighs.  He spins back into place as Maria Gonzales, the only person in the building smaller than Dorit, enters the room. Her arms are loaded with bottles of almond scented massage oil.

“Are you ready for a nice relaxing massage, Mr. Kong?”

The table cries out in pain.

“Call me Joe.”

The table collapses.  It sounds like the whole building coming down.  The gorilla is trapped, pinched between the folded and bent legs.  Maria will later explain to her husband Julio, how she has no idea how she made it out of the room alive.  “Era solamente instinctual, tengo ni idea como me fue.”

A collective shriek rises from the waiting room. Dorit’s eyes grow cold. Maurice dives behind the desk. He is a survivor.

The gorilla thrashes, hooting in frustration and pain.  He tangles himself tight into the remnants of the table, and pulls the various pieces of equipment in the room down on top of himself.  When Dorit appears at the door, a tub of hot bikini wax tips with a slorp, covering the gorilla’s left thigh. He howls.

“MR. KONG!”

He stops thrashing.

“Mr. Kong, please!”

She works with the precision of a surgeon.  In seconds he is free and limping behind her as she leads him back to the waiting room.  The women watch him enter in hushed silence. The gorilla stares at the floor.

“Mr. Kong,” Dorit chokes out the words, “There is the door. I suggest you use it.”  She points.

“But,” he still looks down, “it was a present …”

“Mr. Kong, just go.”

“My girlfriend, she …”

“There is nothing to discuss here.”

“She said I was so tense… so tight…”

“Mr. Kong, I am not interested in your relationship issues.”

“This is supposed to be a birthday present.” He looks up at Dorit.  Her arms are crossed.

“She paid good money for this.”

Again, Dorit points to the door.

“Listen, I’m not trying to be unreasonable, it’s just that…”

She interrupts him, “Mr. Kong, I don’t care about any of this.  You’ve made a mess of my spa, scared my clientele, I’m going to ask you to leave nicely just one more time.”

“Hey!  I’m a paying customer too, just like them.  I’m a client!”

“I hardly think so, Mr. Kong.”

“I wanted the little sandwiches and the bathrobes too!  Just because I’m a gorilla doesn’t mean…”

Dorit spits out an angry bark of laughter.  “That is precisely the problem, Mr. Mighty Joe Kong.”

“What?”  His voice is quiet and controlled.

“You are a gorilla.  This is a day spa.  Gorillas don’t belong in day spas.  Gorillas belong in the zoo.”

It is too much. His angry howl rattles the windows.  He machine gun pounds his chest and begins to run sideways around the room slapping the floor with his broad, flat hands.  Deep chuffing sounds spray from his lips like a steam locomotive.  The women cower behind the spindly couches and fragile chairs.  His fingers rip up imaginary grass from the floor. The water pitchers tinkle and shudder.

Dorit stands in the center of the room, weight resting on her left foot, arms still crossed.  She looks bored.

The gorilla slaps and pounds at his chest again, walking upright towards her.

She raises an eyebrow.

The gorilla charges, arms above his head, each step shaking the floor.  His teeth are bared, thin stands of saliva run like streamers from his mouth.  He is three feet from her. Two.  She taps her teeth with her fingernail.

“Are you quite finished?”

The gorilla stops and teeters, arms still held high over his head.

“Mr. Kong?  Are you done with your little display?”

“Yes.”  He collapses.

“I assure you, we are all quite impressed, but if you’ve finished, perhaps we could continue this conversation in a more civilized manner?”

“Ok.”  His face turns down.

“As I was saying, our little day spa here can not cater to your specific needs.  We try to create a comfy, safe environment here for our female customers, and I’m afraid, as you’ve just displayed, that you can not be part of this environment.”

The gorilla looks around the room.  The women’s heads peer out at him behind, under, and through.

“You can see your effect on them.”

His eyes are wet.  “But I wasn’t trying to…  I was just…  It was a gift from my…  It just doesn’t seem fair.”

“Life rarely is, Mr. Kong.  I am willing to return the fee for our services… minus some for the damages of course.  You may not be aware of this–that is fairer than life usually treats one.  It is, of course, all relative.”

Dorit holds her hand out to her side.  She clears her throat.  Maurice appears from behind the desk, makes a nervous run to her side, and deposits several crisp, green bills into her hand.  He quickly retreats back behind the desk.

Dorit presents the money to the gorilla.

“I think I have been more than fair.”

The gorilla deflates like a blimp at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  “It’s just so unfair.”  Only Dorit can hear his last words.  He takes the bills from her hand, careful not to accidentally brush his fingertips against hers, and knuckle-walks to the door.  He opens it, and stands halfway through for several long seconds.  He breathes in deeply, and for a moment it seems as if he is going to turn back around to say something.  He doesn’t.  The women slowly emerge from hiding.  They are like springtime poppies.  The gorilla lets the breath go, steps all the way out of the spa, and clicks the door quietly behind him.

As he walks to the elevator he can hear the volume of their voices slowly rise.  He pushes the button and waits.  The ding startles him, and he jumps.  He steps inside, and presses the button for the first floor.  As the door slides shut, just before it closes completely, he can hear the first of the women’s laughter.