"What are you going to do?"
"What does it look like?" she asked.
"I’m going to shave you."
"I shaved this evening."
She laughed.
"Not your face, stupid." She reached out a hand and pressed him back onto the table. "I want to see what you look like underneath all that fur."
"But- "
"Lie still," she said fiercely, already beginning to brush the lather on his chest. "I won't cut you.
I used to do this all the time when I worked in the hospital."
The lather was oddly soothing. "You worked in a hospital?"
She nodded.
"I graduated from nursing school when I was twenty," she said. "Cum laude, too."
"Why'd you leave it?"
He scarcely felt the razor moving over his body.
She turned to rinse it under the tap.
"Sixty-five a month, eighteen hours a day," she said, turning back to him. She began to lather the other side of his chest. "And too many jokers thinking it was free."
He laughed as the razor glided across his stomach.
"That tickles."
She rinsed the razor again.
"Turn over," she said. "I want to do your back and shoulders."
He rolled over on his stomach and rested his face on his arms.
The faint menthol smell of the lather came up into his nostrils. He felt the razor moving quickly over him.
He closed his eyes.
She tapped him on the shoulders and he opened his eyes.
She reached into the cabinet and took out a bar of soap.
Breaking off the wrapping, she handed it to him. "Now take a hot shower and scrub yourself clean."
The water shot down at him in a needle spray, filling the stall with steam and the scent of jasmine from the soap.
He could feel his skin beginning to tingle and glow. When he came out, his face was ruddy and smiling.
She held a large bath sheet toward him.
"Dry yourself and get back on the table."
He toweled himself quickly and stretched out.
She took a small hand vibrator from the cabinet and plugged it into the socket. She began to massage him slowly.
The buzzing sound of the vibrator seemed to stretch and loosen the muscles in his body.
"This is better than a Turkish bath," he said.
"This is a Turkish bath," she said dryly, then switched off the vibrator and threw the towel over him. "Now, you just lie there for a few minutes."
He watched as she leaned over the marble tub and turned on the water. She tested it carefully until it was just the temperature she wanted, then let it run.
When the water had risen about four inches up the side of the tub, she turned it off.
"O.K.," she said. "Get up." He sat up, the towel falling behind him. "You know," she said, "you don't look half bad with all that hair off." She kicked the bathroom door closed, revealing a full-length mirror on the back. He looked into the mirror and a smile broke over his lips.
She was right.
Suddenly, he looked twenty years younger.
His body was clean and white under all that hair. He even felt slimmer.
She smiled at him in the mirror.
"Enough narcissism," she said.
"Get into the tub." He sat down in the water.
It was just slightly warmer than body temperature. "Stretch out.
I’ll be right back."
He leaned back in the tub and in a moment, she came back into the bathroom.
In one hand she carried a magnum bottle of champagne, in the other a small vial. She put the champagne on the floor, opened the vial and let a few drops from it fall into the water.
The heavy scent of jasmine immediately filled the room.
She put the vial back on the basin and picked up the champagne bottle.