“Isn’t it strange?” he suddenly asks. You’re caught a little off guard. Customers rarely like to talk in the spa.

“Isn’t… what strange?”

He seems to be caught off by the response. Maybe he was just talking to himself, and you misstepped by replying to him.

Gee, no tip tonight.

“Oh, just…” he started again. “This commodification. Isn’t a little strange, isn’t it? This is rather intimate too, but it’s all for sale, and one day you won’t be here anymore.”

Now that’s a strange thing to say, and your thoughts were clear, though you might not have intended them to be.

“Aha, I don’t mean you won’t be here, just that you won’t be… here, in this building, one day… unless you want to be here? But even then, maybe you’ll move up in ranks, or maybe you’ll work different hours, or something like that.”

Pausing the massage, you think for a short moment, before remembering what you were doing. Relax. You’re supposed to be relaxing him. It’s what you’re getting paid for. “I… suppose so, sure.”

“You’ve done so much for me, and I’ll be thinking about it in a week from now, and maybe even a month, but will I remember it in a year?”

You keep going.

“How strange it is, how strange it is… Aha, I wonder if anyone will remember a place like this a year after visiting? Maybe one day, you won’t even remember it yourself.”

You keep to your work. “Maybe.”

“… And what a shame it would be. You’ve really done up the place.”

His head settled back down, and he returned to lazily staring at whatever he’d been so preoccupied with before.