Read Online Everybody Goes to Jimmy's by Michael Mayo - Free Book Online

god-awful and not cheap, let me tell you. But for one night, it was mine. The truth is that I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do that night, but I knew that this was the kind of place you did it in, whatever it was.
    â€œListen,” I said to her, “I gotta tell you that I still feel kind of bad about the race and everything. You didn’t know that I do this stuff all the time.”
    â€œYou didn’t talk me into anything. I did it all by myself.”
    â€œAnd so now you’re here to do whatever I tell you to do, right?”
    She stood a little straighter. “Yes, that was the bet.”
    â€œOK, I’ve got things figured out,” I lied. “I know, because you’ve told me about it, that you have to share a bathroom with six other girls. Isn’t that right?”
    She nodded, looking confused.
    â€œSo I want you,” I said as I walked across the room and opened a door, “to spend at least the next hour doing whatever it is that girls do in the bathroom.”
    She snorted a surprised laugh and put a gloved hand over her mouth to smother it.
    Now, to picture this bathroom, imagine one of those Turkish baths made of sparkling white tile and with nozzles and fixtures and such that I had no idea what they did, and a bathtub big enough for the twenty-seventh president of these United States when he stayed at the Chatham. Taft weighed in at more than three hundred pounds, and Mr. Stebbins claimed that their tub was deeper and wider than the one Taft had installed in the White House.
    So, what was I doing? Looking back on it, I think I just wanted to get Anna naked when I was under the same roof, and then I’d see what happened.
    All right, you could say, “Jimmy, why didn’t you just get the room, take off your clothes, and hop into the big Taft-sized bed and be there waiting for her to arrive?” I admit that the idea occurred to me, and at first, that was the plan, but when the time came, I chickened out. I was too frightened, too inexperienced, too immature, too whatever you want to call me to carry it off.
    And so away she went into that vast bathroom, and I could hear water running for the longest time. Then I turned on the radio, and I don’t remember what I listened to, but I didn’t really hear it anyway. I was imagining what was going on behind that door. I could see her stripping off her clothes and sliding into that ocean of a tub and pouring in all the lotions and bath salts and potions that the head maid had told me women like. And there was a champagne cooler in there beside the tub, but it was full of bottles of beer.
    Some time later, I don’t know how long, I heard her. Her voice sang out sweet, “Jimmy Quinn, Jimmy Quinn, Jimmy Quinn.”
    â€œYes,” I said, and then I said it again when she didn’t hear me.
    â€œTurn off all the lights. Do it now.”
    Hmmm? I turned off all the lights and stood by the door in the dark. “OK, I turned off all the lights.”
    â€œCome in, then.”
    I gulped and opened the door. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. It was dark outside, and the only light came in from nearby buildings, reflecting onto all the tile, and through the perfumed fog, I could see what I needed to see.
    She said, “It’s steamy in here. Take off those clothes.”
    I was wearing a suit and tie. I remember how clumsy I was with the shoes, how they thumped on the tile floor. She had moved some towels off a small table and had it up next to the tub with a bottle of beer within easy reach.
    The tub was full, and she let herself float up to the surface through the perfumed steam and the faint light, and I saw a woman’s breasts and pubic hair for the first time. I think I stopped breathing. I know my knees shook.
    She said, “Come here. You paid for this tub tonight. You ought to enjoy it.”
    Somehow, I managed to walk the few steps to the tub without