Free Plus One by Christopher Noxon

on his thighs. “How long does this dong-hanging typically take? I probably should get to work at some point.”
    â€œSeriously?” Huck said, swiveling his steering wheel with the heel of his palm. “We can’t put a clock on this. Take a personal day.”
    Alex settled back into his seat. “So what might that involve, generally?”
    â€œHit the Gem Spa, get a massage, then I dunno. I gotta cook tonight—maybe we hit Malcolm’s for some protein.”
    Alex frowned and nodded. He considered putting a call into the office, and then stopped himself. He’d play hooky, full on—no need to spoil it with a tense exchange about a fictional childcare crisis or trumped-up tummy trouble. He left a message for Figgy that something had come up and she should pick up the kids.
    Gem Spa was a four-story co-ed spa in a downtown building once occupied by a department store. Thankfully, the dong-hanging portion of the experience was brief, limited to the few minutes it took for Alex and Huck to stash their clothes in a locker and change into the Gem Spa shorts and T-shirt and head up to the jimjilbang , a windowless floor where napping housewives were splayed out on slabs of heated jade. Along two walls were doors leading to specialty saunas, one lined with salt crystals, another coated with ice, another containing an enormous pit of chalky, orange clay balls. Alex noted that he and Huck were the only Caucasians in the place.
    â€œThis is amazing,” he said, wiggling into the ball pit. “I feel like I’m in some sort of seventies future. But Communist. Like aNorth Korean Logan’s Run .”
    â€œI know, right?” Huck said. He motioned to a flat screen mounted on the wall of the sauna, tuned to a subtitled Korean soap opera. “Awesome, it’s Honor Bride . Guy in the silk poofy hat is a ghost. Super intense.”
    Alex squinted in the heat and tried to make sense of the show, which from what he could tell revolved around a princess, an opera singer, and a magical cantaloupe. They watched until droplets of sweat began leaking into Alex’s eyes.
    â€œHuck—can I ask you something?” He jiggled back and forth on the top layer of balls, dry heat radiating across his back. “How do you have time for this? With me, anyway? Don’t you have a whole crew….”
    Huck turned toward him. “Most of the guys in our position are too busy with their…” he rolled his eyes and spoke in a self-important bluster “… projects —photo exhibits and screenplays and artisanal, organic whatever-the-fuck,” he said. “You give a guy a little room to breathe and they trip out, I’m telling you. I wish I’d had someone show me the ropes.”
    Alex nodded and shifted his weight, clay balls rattling under his back. “So what’re Bing and Penelope doing while we’re here in this…ball pit?”
    â€œThey’re with their lovely and devoted nanny,” Huck said. “Today is dance class. Or sign language. Maybe percussion. I forget. Anyway, they much prefer the nanny to me or Kate. Mama Bear gets weird about it sometimes, but I keep telling her: Everyone’s happy, why stress? Hakuna matata, right?”
    â€¢ • •
    Malcolm’s Meat and Fish was a narrow storefront beside a nail salon on Virgil, the Edwardian script of the logo a clear signal to the local fooderati that this was not just a run-of-the mill butchershop. “You’re going to freak,” Huck said, leading the way through the glass door. “Malcolm’s a genius. Dude’s not a butcher. He’s a consigliere of meat.”
    Alex stepped inside, a rich mineral tang heavy in the air. The boxcar-size store was immaculate and spare, the floors honed concrete and the walls chalkboard black. The glass case was a quarter filled, each item individually spotlit, the beef marbled and precisely trimmed, the poultry