Made For Sex

by Joan Elizabeth Lloyd

  He heard the sounds of clothing rustling. She was dressing. He was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to curl up next to Mary in a big bed, doze and make love all night. Now she was leaving. “But…”

  “No buts,” she said. The door opened a crack and Rick closed his eyes against the sudden light. “This isn’t my room. I just took it for this. And I put the key into the pockets of about a dozen men so I don’t even know which one you are. The ribbon was to assure that only the first man to arrive would get in. You were very prompt.”

  “So you don’t know who I am and I don’t know who you are.” His eyes were slowly becoming adjusted to the light so he squinted and made out the silhouette of a woman in a long dress standing beside the door.

  “No, and I don’t want to. Totally anonymous sex has always been a fantasy of mine, so it will stay anonymous. Good night, John.”

  Rick smiled. Making love to a fantastic yet nameless and faceless woman had always been a fantasy of his as well. She had arranged it and it had been wonderful. He would return home tomorrow with a magic memory, untarnished by any trace of reality. “Yeah,” he said. “Good night, Mary.”

  The woman left, closing the door behind her. Rick fumbled, found a lamp and flipped on the light. He blinked and, when his eyes adjusted, he gazed around the small sitting room, memorizing the furniture, the colors, the smells. Slowly he gathered his clothes and dressed. Unable to find his tie, he searched for several minutes. Unsuccessful in his search, he realized that she must have kept it. He had thought that he had seen something hanging from her hand as she left. And on the coffee table was a sheer light blue scarf. It was hers and she had left it for him. He pressed it against his nose, inhaling her fragrance.

  With a sigh, he tucked the scarf into his pocket with the red ribbon, his souvenirs of an amazing evening. Then he turned off the lights, and left.

  Fran Caputo sat back on her chair and reflexively tightened the scrunchy on her ponytail. Rotating her shoulders to relieve the tension, she clicked the mouse-pointer on the spellcheck icon and worked her way through the story, fixing typos and correcting her usually atrocious spelling. When she reached the end of the document, she clicked on the print icon and, while the printer turned out its pages, went into her tiny kitchen and poured herself a Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi. Slugging down the entire glass, she realized it was long past dinnertime and she was ravenous. Quickly she slathered peanut butter on one slice of white bread, topped it with another and took a healthy bite.

  She looked at the clock on the front of the microwave oven. 8:26. I have to stop doing this, she thought. I get a story banging around inside my head and I can’t rest until it’s on paper. She refilled her glass, wandered back to the spare bedroom she had set up as her office and picked the pages off the printer tray. As she rearranged them with the title page on top she reread the beginning. The Room Key by Nichole St. Michelle. “Nicki,” she said out loud, “you do write the most delicious stuff. You devil you.”

  Grinning, she stuffed the sandwich into her mouth and washed it down with the second glass of Pepsi. Finished, she dropped the pack of pages onto her desk chair. Tomorrow she would do some final editing, although her writing seldom needed much, then go through the list of erotic publications to which she had become a semi-regular contributor and decide who would get the first chance at The Room Key. The money was small but nice and it was a thrill to have her efforts rewarded. She had to be constantly reminded that she could write a good erotic tale.

  She rubbed the back of her neck. Where had the evening gone? It had been partly gone before she had left work. Jenny, who was supposed to relieve her, had been almost an hour late for her shift at the video store again. She had called, of course. “Hon,” she had said, “cover for me until I get there. Brad got the afternoon off and we, well, you know. Well, maybe you don’t, but you understand. Please, hon?”

  Jenny’s husband drove a long-haul truck and it seemed that whenever they had a moment they were in bed together. Had her own short-lived marriage ever been like that? Fran wondered. Not really. Sex had been something they did sometimes. They did it because it was Tuesday night and they hadn’t done it in a while. Eric would grab her breast, fondle her for a while, rub her crotch and, when she got damp, stuff his cock into her. Sometimes she really enjoyed it and a few times, when Eric climaxed, she had found herself disappointed that things were over. At other times, she merely endured and masturbated in private.

  “But Jenny,” Fran had said into the phone, “it’s already past four.”

  “I’ll be there by five,” Jenny had said. “Be a good guy.” And the phone had gone dead.

  “One of these days,” she had muttered, but she knew that she’d probably never say anything. She had sighed and worked until Jenny had arrived at almost five-thirty.

  Fran turned off her computer and walked into her bedroom. Why was she lamenting the passing of an evening? It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go or anything to do except look forward to Designing Women reruns. She should call her mother or her sister, but, as she stretched out on the bed, she couldn’t work up the enthusiasm. It wasn’t as if she could tell them what she had just accomplished. They’d be horrified.

  She was startled when the phone rang. “Hello,” she said into the receiver, hoping it was a wrong number so she could click on the TV and become a vegetable.

  “Hi, Fran. It’s Eileen.”

  Fran grinned. She was always glad to hear from Eileen Brent, her literary agent and friend. “Hi. I haven’t heard from you in weeks. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is something really great. I didn’t want to call you at work because I know how secretive you are and your whooping and yelling would have led to questions.”

  “Whooping and yelling?”

  “You’ve been nominated for the Madison Prize.”

  “You’re kidding.” The Madison Prize was one of the most prestigious awards for writers of romance novels. Although there was no actual money involved, receiving the Madison Prize meant increased sales plus better up-front money, promotion and placement for ensuing books.

  “I’m not kidding, babe. The Love Flower is up for novel of the year.”

  “You’re for real?”

  “For real. You’ve got some stiff competition, but I think you’ve got a shot. You know I’ve loved that book from the beginning.”

  “But how can they even consider it? It’s much too spicy for those eggheads up there. It’s erotica. Pure and simple.”

  “It’s a good novel and it’s a love story so it’s considered a romance novel, erotic or not. I think the publisher pushed for it, too. Sandy told me, in confidence, that they really wanted to see this book do well, and this is one very good way.” Sandy McFadden was Fran’s editor at Majestic Books. “I understand that she’s got some pull with one of the judges.”

  “Is this fixed?” Fran said, horrified.

  “Of course not,” Eileen said quickly. “Sandy only got your book noticed. The judges read it and the book did the rest. It’s not only good publicity for you, it’s good for Majestic to have a nominee as well.”

  “Wow,” Fran said, sitting down, then flopping back onto her pillows and propping her feet on the patchwork quilt on her bed. “Wow!”

  “Yes. Wow and double wow. You’ll have to be in New York for the dinner, you know. And because it’s hooked up with the Madison Romance Writers’ Conference, there will be a cocktail party Friday evening, some ‘meet the authors’ things and general being-seen beforehand.”

  “I’ll have to be there?” How could she? She was Fran Caputo. It was Nichole St. Michelle who was nominated. Sophisticated, worldly Nicki. Not small-town Fran. And how could she face people who had read the erotica she had written. She flushed at the thought.

  “Yes, my dear. You and Sandy can have quite an effect on the book’s sales. People get all excited about buying a book written by someone they’ve actually met ‘up close and personal.’ And you’ll have a book s
igning, too.”

  “But I can’t,” Fran said quickly.

  “You can and you really should. No one can force you, but you really can’t let Sandy go through all this and not cooperate. Take a couple of weeks off, come to the city and we’ll get you all set up. And it’s a great opportunity to get known at Majestic.”

  “Look, Eileen, this isn’t the Oscars, after all. It’s only the Madison Prize.” She giggled. “Did you hear what I just said? Only the Madison Prize.”

  Eileen’s rich laughter filled the phone. “That’s like saying it’s only a bestseller. This could do that, you know.”

  Fran scrubbed her hands over her unmade-up face. “But Eileen, really. I can’t take that time off from work. And what if anyone found out?”

  Fran had worked for Manhattan Videos for almost seven years, ever since she moved to Omaha after she and Eric split. Almost four years ago she had, for a lark, written an explicitly sexy short story and submitted it to a pulp magazine. Buoyed by the magazine’s rapid acceptance of the manuscript and the small check that came with it, she wrote more and more erotic short stories until finally she had written The Love Flower, a full-length erotic novel. Through a series of query letters, she had become connected with Eileen Brent’s agency and, over the last year and a half, they had become fast friends, despite the fact that they had never met face-to-face.

  No one knew that she was Nichole St. Michelle. Not her parents in Colorado or her sister and brother-in-law in Southern California. No one. And she wanted to keep it that way. After all, her mother hadn’t brought her up to write slutty stuff like The Love Flower.

  As Fran thought about going to New York, she had very mixed feelings. She would love to see the book do well, maybe make enough money for her to leave her job and write full-time. An author. A real author. It had always sounded like such a dream, but now, with this nomination and the recognition that she really could write, it just might be possible.

  But it wasn’t really Fran Caputo who was nominated, she reminded herself. It was Nichole St. Michelle.

  “You can do this, Fran,” Eileen said. “I mean Nichole can do this.”

  Eileen knew more about Fran’s life than anyone, and Fran was tempted. She lifted her head and pulled the scrunchy from her ponytail, allowing her gray-streaked brown hair to fly free. Rubbing her scalp, she said, “Maybe Nichole can, but where she goes I go, and I can’t.”

  “Fran, look,” Eileen said. “You have vacation time coming to you. You’ve told me over and over that you haven’t taken time off since Eric. At two weeks per year, you should have about fourteen weeks saved up.”

  “Actually you can only keep three weeks from previous years.”

  “Okay, so you have this year’s two and three from past years. That’s a lot of weeks.”

  “But Nichole’s bio says she’s a free-living swinging divorcée. That’s nowhere near what I am.”

  “So come here and take a week or two to become used to living as Nichole.”

  “Living as Nichole? As a swinger? Not on your life.”

  “Why not? You’re over thirty, single and smart enough to know which chances to take and which not. We’ll get you out of those sneakers and jeans and into some real city clothes. A few dinners and whathaveyou and you’re set.”

  Fran giggled. “It’s not the dinners, it’s the whathaveyous that scare the shit out of me.”

  “And well they should. But isn’t it about time you practiced what you write about? I can’t understand how you can be as naive as you claim to be and still write the steamy sex scenes you write.”

  “I am not naive.”

  “You told me you have a hard time just going into the back room and rearranging the XXX-rated videos. Ever watch one?”

  “No.”

  “So where do you get the ideas for those hot love scenes. Are there men in your past I don’t know about?”

  “Not even one besides Eric, and sex with him wasn’t the stuff steamy sex is made of. Actually, it’s just a good imagination, lots of reading and midnight masturbation.” Fran swallowed hard. Had she really just said that? To Eileen, whom she had never really met?

  Through the phone Fran could hear Eileen’s sudden burst of laughter. “You’re a riot. Listen. Think about it and call me in a day or two. The dinner is the first Saturday in May so you have a few weeks to consider it.”

  Fran looked out of her window at the black March sky and her snow-covered windowsill. She would think about it, she realized. She really would. But she couldn’t. She really couldn’t.

  In the living room of her five-bedroom colonial in Commack, Long Island, Diane Barklay was stretched out on the bed beside her husband Zack. “Being nominated is a great honor,” Zack was saying.

  “Honor, shmonor,” Diane replied. “I was nominated once already. This time I have to win.” She knew Zack could feel her whole body stiffen, but he must understand how important this was. “No one’s ever been nominated a second time and not won.”

  Diane gazed at the framed covers of her six romance novels. From Magic Love to Addie’s Travels, they traced her last five years. She also had a framed copy of the certificate that Lovers in the Spring had earned when it had been nominated for the Madison Prize two years earlier. “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” her editor had said at the time. “There are tens of thousands of romances published each year and only the top five get nominated for novel of the year.” But she had lost. Nominated isn’t winning and despite what all her friends had said at the time winning had been, and still was, the only thing that mattered.

  Diane stared at the spectacular cover the art department had come up with for Addie’s Travels. A great cover. Violets that symbolized Addle’s search for the perfect lover. And a perfect diamond, from the mine that Trask owned, the diamond that brought them together. It was a great story, Diane knew, but that wonderful cover was part of the reason that Addie’s Travels had been nominated for the Madison Prize this year.

  “Then I’m sure it’s in the bag for you,” Zack said, his hand slowly stroking his wife’s arm. “Who else was nominated?”

  “Well, there’s Virginia Cortez for Come to Papa, Mary Kate Allonzo for Miranda, Paul Ng for The Joys of Paris and Nichole St. Michelle for The Love Flower.”

  “Well, I’m sure those are all worthy competitors, but Addie’s Travels will win hands down. It’s got everything a good romance needs.”

  Diane smiled and willed her body to relax. “It’s really a good book, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is,” Zack said, still stroking Diane’s upper arm. “You’ve probably read the other nominees. Is there any real competition?”

  Diane grinned. “I guess I do read a lot of romances and yes, I have read them all. They are all good books, of course, except for The Love Flower. It’s just a sexy piece of trash. Lots of steamy love scenes and very little story.”

  “Who’s the writer?”

  “Her name’s Nichole St. Michelle and this is her first novel.” She frowned. “Her first novel and she gets nominated.”

  “Nichole St. Michelle. Have I ever heard of her?”

  “Probably not. She’s supposed to be very French for an American. There was an article about her in one of my romance magazines. Wait a minute.”

  Diane knelt beside a bookshelf filled with magazines and rummaged through the stack. “November. I think it was in November. Why can’t I find November?” She located the missing issue and crawled back onto the bed. She thumbed through the magazine until she found the full-page photo of the cover of The Love Flower. Grudgingly she had to admit that it was an adequate cover. The love flower was a blood-red orchid and the outlines of the graceful hands of the hero and heroine reached for the flower from opposite sides, their fingers not quite touching.

  She turned her attention to the biography of Nichole St. Michelle on the lower half of the facing page and read aloud. “‘Nichole St. Michelle, brilliant new author of The Love Flower, is a free spirit. At
thirty-two she is eight years divorced and, with no children and few encumbrances, Nicki, as her friends call her, lives a life of freedom and indulgence. Left a substantial sum by wealthy relatives, Nicki is free to travel the world, being wined and dined by the influential and the infamous. This writer has it on good authority that Nichole hasn’t done all the naughty, sexy things she writes about in her hot first novel, but I’m told she has experienced most of the erotic games that her characters play. When I tried to get an interview, I was told that Ms. St. Michelle was traveling in southern France and was unavailable for comment.’”

  Diane closed the magazine. “She’s a personality and I’m just a housewife. She’ll come to New York, dazzle all the judges and I won’t stand a chance.” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.

  Zack enfolded his wife in his arms. “It’s all right. I know you’ll win. We’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you win. It’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Zack. It won’t necessarily be fine. She might win. Any of the others might, too. And I can’t lose again. I just can’t.”

  Fran lay on her bed in silence for a long time after she hung up with Eileen. Despite what she had said about it being just erotica, she knew that The Love Flower was a good book. She had worked on it for a year, honing the characters and the plot. The sex scenes were very hot, but so was the plot, which centered around a young woman’s coming of age, emotionally and sexually, under the tutelage first of the elders of the tribe and later of a sailor from a visiting schooner. The sex scenes were an integral part of the book. Fran smiled. Well, not entirely. She had enjoyed writing the hot parts almost more than the rest and they seemed to flow from her fingers. The scene where Rhona was first initiated into the rites of womanhood by the priest of a neighboring tribe had taken her only about two hours to put down on paper and she had enjoyed every minute of it. She loved that scene.

  Rhona walked into the hut and stood silently as she had been told to do. A priest would come to her on this, the tenth day after her first woman’s flow after her sixteenth birthday. They would be together in this hut for an entire week. A high priest had done so with all the women of ‘the people’ since the gods created the tribe at the beginning of time. This hut had been erected on the first day of the planting and would be torn down the following year, making way for a new hut that would stand on the same spot, far from the village, as such huts had done for thousands of years. It comforted her to think of the continuity of it all, the joining of the women of the tribe through the ages.