The evening air outside the Lotus Serenity Massage Parlor was heavy with the distant rumble of traffic along the boulevard, a faint pulse of city life that seemed worlds away from the quiet venom brewing under the parlor's awning.
Robert and Gregory sat shoulder to shoulder on a cushioned bench, their white robes loose and slightly damp from the steam of their hour-long massage, their skin flushed a faint pink from the heat and the unresolved fury that simmered in their veins. Each clutched a magazine, Robert's a glossy sports rag, its pages splayed open to an ad for overpriced watches he'd never buy, Gregory's a creased medical journal, its cover featuring some breakthrough he hadn't bothered to read.
Their conversation was anything but casual, their voices low and jagged, laced with a resentment that had festered for weeks, now spilling out like poison from an open wound.
