To say that the massage Stella gave him was uneventful would be honest enough. But, for Harry, it was a turning point. It was obvious from her skilled touch that she knew what she was doing. She’d either been professionally trained or had studied under someone who had. She knew her anatomy, could trace the paths of musculature and the routes of congestion. She kneaded his glutes like twin mounds of bread dough, dug into the painful points between his shoulder blades with her knuckles, and plowed furrows in his back with her elbows. She found the pressure points on his scalp and on the soles of his feet that magically triggered the immediate release of tension in other places. He was getting his money’s worth.
Aldo had cautioned him that, where special favors were concerned, you don’t get
