She couldn’t.
Ten…eleven…twelve…fourteen, and here they were. She stepped out of the elevator and stared blindly at the room number directions painted on the wall. Her room was number 1457. Which direction did that mean? Her brain was gone. Liquefied. Soon it would seep out of her ears and that would be that.
Adonis cleared his throat, gestured to the left. May smiled and thanked him, grateful when her tight voice didn’t crack. She really didn’t want him there if she opened the door to Trevor. Didn’t want anyone to bear witness to her nervous meltdown. But what choice did she have? She didn’t have Dan and his calm, protective, take-charge strength to go back to. She was on her own.
Sally forth. She reached 1457, thrust the key card into the lock. Green light went on. Door opened. May went in.
Empty.
She took a few more steps in; the bathroom door was open.
Empty, too.
Oh, thank God.
A rush of delighted relief made her bestow a giant smile of gratitude on Adonis and give him five dollars, which in her estimation was a ridiculously enormous tip but for him probably branded her as Cowpoke Cathy.
He accepted the cash, gave a slight bow and exited the room.
So.
Panic over, she turned to survey her home for the next week. In a word: exquisite. A king-size bed with an arched headboard of two-toned wood, cherry and maple, dominated the room. She sank onto the thick down comforter in geometric patterns of black, white and burgundy. Bliss. She lay flat, her no-longer-aching head relishing the soft pillows, then stretched her right arm over the empty side, imagining Trevor lying there.
Along with the thrill of anticipation came an unexpected stab of nervous pain and longing for Dan. She put her hand to her chest where his grandmother’s locket had rested for so many years. It still felt empty.
Enough. She sat up abruptly, padded over the thick cream carpet with a burgundy border, past the elegant spare desk that echoed the two-toned wood of the bed. On it, a bouquet of white and burgundy alstroemeria reflected the colors in the room; the feathery greens added a fresh, living contrast. On a slender-legged table near the window stood a giant bouquet of at least two dozen red roses. With a card. “I can’t wait to see you. Trevor.”
She smiled and rubbed the edge of the card back and forth across her chin. Dan was in the past—and possibly again in her future someday. But he didn’t exist to her here. This would be a really, really nice week.
She drew back the gauze curtains and gazed out at the cityscape, at the people hurrying along the sidewalk. It was so peaceful away from all that rush and chaos. She let the curtain fall.
What else? Drawing back the doors on the entertainment center exposed a TV twice the size of hers at home, a VCR, a DVD player and in a narrow cabinet, video-recording equipment.
Gulp.
To the left, a black lacquer tray displaying fancy bottled water, glasses and ice. A bowl of apples, clementines, kiwis and grapes, and a basket of rolls and crackers. In the minibar along with the usual assortment of booze and snacks, lay foil-wrapped French cheese, pâté and tins of smoked oysters.
Oh, this was so not what she was used to. Ginny would freak. May would have to take careful note of everything to report back to her glamour and celebrity-hungry friend. What heaven. At least for a while. Eventually it, too, would get dull and predictable, like everything familiar.
In the bathroom she discovered a huge whirlpool tub, a portable showerhead, a bathrobe, a beautifully arranged basket of high-end cosmetics, lotions, shampoo and specialty soaps—all a hell of a lot fancier than the stuff she bought from the Pick ’n Save in Oshkosh.
Total fantasy. Impulsively, she turned on the tub and left it filling. That’s what she needed. A nice soak to get rid of the travel smells, the city smells and the cigarette smoke smell that still clung to her from the woman in line at the cabstand. To refresh herself.
And if Trevor showed up in the middle of it, so much the better.
She smiled wickedly, went back into the room to undress and noticed the message light blinking on the black-and-gold old-fashioned style phone. She punched the button and unpinned her French twist. Receiver pressed against her cheek, she shook her head to let her long hair flow past her shoulders, wicked smile turned dreamy.
The machine picked up; the message played. Trevor’s voice.
She listened. Hit Replay when the computerized voice gave her the option, and listened again. Just in case she hadn’t heard right the first time. Just in case the second time through would be different.
It wasn’t.
Trevor wasn’t coming.
MEMORANDUM
To: Staff
From: Janice Foster, General Manager, HUSH Hotel
Date: Monday, July 7
Re: Beck Desmond
Most of you already know that we are hosting author Beck Desmond in 1217. I’m posting another reminder that he is not to be approached for autographs or chitchat. While strolling the various parts of the hotel, he is often deep in concentration and we don’t want to be responsible for interfering with his work. It’s an honor that he’s chosen HUSH as inspiration for the setting of his next thriller. Anyone who bothers him will be transferred immediately to the pet area for waste removal duty.
Note for Shandi Fossey, bartender, Erotique:
See if you can get me Beck Desmond’s autograph. Janice
BECK DESMOND took the phone away from his ear and stared at it with immense irritation. From the black receiver emerged the shrill heavily New York–accented voice of his agent, Alex Barkhauser, chattering away. He felt like affecting a high thin voice and saying, “Yes, dear” at regular intervals.
Except that was undoubtedly what she wanted him to do.
After a deep breath, he put the receiver back to his ear. Might be a good idea to hear at least some of what she was saying.
“…me wrong here, Beck, your books are great, you know they’re great and you know I love them. But I just feel…”
He pictured her squinting off to one side, gesturing in swooping circles the way she always did, as if she were beckoning the words out of her mouth. “Yes?”
“I just feel like we’re sitting on something that could get bigger, you know?”
“Bigger.” He let the word drop, then waited. Old sales technique his father taught him; let the silence sit and your opponent will fill it with what you need to know.
“Sharon and I think you should try more emotion in your stories, more warmth, add a girlfriend for Mack, soften him up a little. Believe me, you’ll double your readership. Women will buy you in droves. Right now you’re selling to men. Women are a huge market in book sales. Huge. This is the next big step in your career.”
Beck leaned back in the chair he’d brought with him from his condo on East 97th Street, spanned his temples with his thumb and middle finger and squeezed to try and relieve the ache. “Let me get this straight. You want me to take my hero, Mack, who has seen more of the baseness of human nature than anyone alive, and—”
“Soften him up. Give him more heart. Give him more sensitivity. Give him…”
“A puppy?”
He heard a sharp thwack, and knew Alex had slammed her palm on the desk, a sure sign his complete joke of an idea excited her. “Yes! Perfect! A puppy. Small one, the kind women love to stop and pat in the street. He could meet his—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Alex.” Next she’d want Beck’s ruthless detective spending afternoons shopping for shoes. “Mack is a man. No, he’s more than that, he’s the man.”
“So make him the man with the woman.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a loner, he’s a tough guy. It’s not him.”
“Give him a woman strong enough to change him.”
“Strong enough to—” Beck reached for his bottle of Evian water and found his fingers trying to strangle it. Change him? Change the man Beck had l
ived with in his imagination for seven years, through more harrowing adventures, more near-fatal experiences, more death-defying risks than any mere mortal could stand? The man who’d taken down serial killers, drug lords, crime bosses, international art thieves, muggers, murderers and everything between? Change him? With a woman? “I thought women knew never to get involved with a man hoping to change him.”
“She can change him without trying. Simply by being who she is and affecting him that way. Having him become a better person because of loving her.”
“The only effect I want any woman to have on Mack is a raging hard-on. I don’t write romance novels.”
Alex made the sound of exasperation New Yorkers excelled at, a cross between a cough and a raspberry. “I’m not asking you to write a romance novel. Just make him more human.”
Beck exhaled his annoyance. The very quality that made Alex Barkhauser an incredibly effective agent on his behalf, also made her a formidable opponent. Namely, she was a pit bull. “I’m sorry, I can’t see Mack—”
“Here’s an example.” Pages rustled over the line. “The sex scene you have here with whatsername.”
“Tamara.”
“Tamara.” Alex’s voice turned scornful. “Total stripper name. Call her Susie or something.”
“Susie? Susie wears pigtails and scuffed sandals, not black lingerie. And women named Susie don’t masturbate.”
“Well no woman masturbates like this.”
“Like what?” The defensive edge in his voice disgusted him.
“Like a male fantasy from a porn movie.”
Beck’s mouth opened to protest. Then closed. Because it had nothing to say. That’s exactly what had inspired the scene. A movie he’d snuck in to see as a teenager and had never forgotten.
“You can’t tell me your girlfriends do it like that when they’re alone. Wearing this entire black lace getup, do you have any idea how itchy and uncomfortable that stuff is? Plus, you have to be five-eleven, one hundred and ten pounds but oh, yes, somehow with enormous boobs, to look good in it. And the ten-inch dildo? Please.”
“Alex. Can we move on to—”
“Make it more real, Beck. That’s what I’m saying. The book rocks otherwise. But make Mack’s relationship with women, his attention to women, his sex with women, more real. Less like a teenage boy’s wet dream. Let’s start there and see where it takes us, okay?”
“Where it takes us? To five percent sell-through, that’s where it takes us. For every female reader we gain, we’ll lose two men. I guarantee it.”
“No. Your stories are great, Beck, this story is great, that won’t change. You’re not going to lose men over a love interest for Mack. Most men have actually been in love, you know.”
“But this is fantasy. They read my books to escape all that.”
“To escape being in love?”
Beck closed his eyes. “That came out wrong.”
Or maybe not. Weren’t most men wanting to escape now and then from the female-directed rules of “relationship” into something nice and tidy like good guys blowing up bad guys?
Relationships had to be examined and worked on in exhaustive detail. Men had to be told they weren’t doing this, that or the other to female satisfaction. And always the question, what happened to the wonderful romantic men they used to be?
The wonderful romantic men they used to be disappeared about the same time the adoring sweet women they were dating became critical, judgmental shrews.
“Just try it, Beck. Try it. Soften up the sex scenes. Especially make Tamara’s self-pleasuring scene more real. Try that one first. And when Mack joins her, make him feel it in his heart as well as his dick.”
“Alex—” Beck sighed. It was hopeless. When your editor and agent were against you, things were tough. Add in the members of the marketing department and the ever-dreaded focus groups, and you might as well bend over and take it.
If he had a dime for every person envious of a writer’s so-called complete freedom in his work…
Well, if he did, he’d be rich enough to keep Mack’s mind on his dick during a sex scene, where it belonged.
“Okay.” He ran his hand over his aching head and jaw. “Just on the one scene with Tamara. See how it feels. How it reads.”
“Wonderful. You’re fabulous. It’s going to be so much better, you’ll be amazed, I promise.”
“Right.” He shook his head and hung up the phone harder than he needed to. Got to his feet and strode over to the window, pulling back the sheer curtains to gaze out at Madison Avenue.
Damn it to hell. He might have known this would hit eventually. This or something like it. He didn’t know a single writer who hadn’t come up against a brick wall at some point in his or her career. And Beck’s journey so far had been relatively easy. Alex had picked him up when he was still unpublished, working as an editor, still learning the craft in his own writing and from that of his authors. She’d seen enough raw talent to judge him a good commercial risk.
After extensive revisions, his first book had sold, then his second and his third. Mackenzie “Mack” Adams had starred in six books in the past six years, and for a while it seemed Beck’s star would never stop rising. Three years ago he’d quit his job to write full-time. Then the flattening sales, the apparent loss of reader interest.
And now back to extensive revisions. And the girlification of a true man’s man.
Worse, to rewrite the scene the way Alex et al wanted him to, Beck was going to have to find a woman who would be willing to describe her masturbation practices for him.
Of all the research he’d done, this was potentially both the most enjoyable and the most agonizing. Not to sound arrogant, but the women he’d dated hadn’t needed to touch themselves when he was around. And asking old girlfriends their current autostimulation techniques wasn’t the most tactful way to get back in touch.
No way would he ever admit to male friends he needed a woman to ask. He didn’t have any female friends close enough to broach a topic like this. His brothers would tease him unmercifully or slug him if he suggested asking their significant others.
The ideal would be a sexually open complete stranger he could talk to and never see again. Like that was going to happen. Though if it were possible, HUSH was as likely a spot as any to find one.
This was all too depressing. Next he’d start contemplating hiring a hooker.
His cell rang again and he rolled his eyes and reached for it to check the display. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone at the moment.
Oh.
Mom.
“Hi, Mom.” He rubbed his forehead, waiting for his headache to get worse. He loved his mother, loved his whole family, but his idea of how much time was appropriate for a man his age to spend with them differed vastly from theirs.
“Hello, Beck, how’s the writing going?”
“Fine. Just fine.” She asked every call, to be polite, and every call he answered fine. His entire family was in the restaurant business, an Italian place on West 55th Street—he was the black sheep. They wouldn’t care or understand about his line of work, so he generally didn’t bother sharing.
And he was pretty sure asking his mother about masturbation would not be a good way to start.
“Thursday night is the thirtieth birthday party for your brother Jeffrey.”
“I know.” He screwed his eyes shut, the predicted worsening of his headache making its first throbbing appearance. Of course he knew, Dad had called him two days ago to remind him and Mom a week before that. “I’d really like to come. But I have revisions due on Friday, and it’s going to be close.”
“Sure, close, you can’t get away for an hour?”
No use. He could try to explain that it wasn’t just the minutes he’d spend away from his keyboard he’d miss. It was the mental buildup, the interruption, the wind-down time it would take to get back into his work. And how was he to know if Thursday night was going to be a particularly creative time, when
everything would come together in a huge burst of output?
“I’ll come if I can, Mom. I promise.”
“Good enough. Everything okay there? You want me to send you some food to the hotel? Something decent? Some of your dad’s osso bucco?”
“Thanks, Mom, they’re feeding me fine.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll go. But everyone wants to see you, the whole family misses you. You sit in that room all day long working, it’s not healthy.”
He chuckled. “I should be out in the fresh air?”
“I get it.” She laughed. “You’re not a little boy anymore. Moms are all the same. But if you need anything, you call me.”
“I will.”
“Even if you don’t. Just to say hi. Okay?”
“Deal. Thanks for checking on me.”
“You’re a good man, Beck. I worry about you.”
“I’m really fine. Bye, Mom.” Beck clicked the phone off before she could start listing single women she knew, then stood there imagining her bustling to the front of the restaurant, making sure everything was perfect, flowers and candles on the tables, menus clean and carefully piled, staff in place, complimentary antipasto dishes lined up in a neat row.
That world could have been his.
Sometimes he thought he’d been switched at birth, and somewhere some serious scholarly couple were wondering how they had ended up with a boisterous half-Italian chef for a son.
He needed a drink.
More than that, he needed one out among people. Usually he was content to be in his room, or prowling the hotel; he was a loner at heart like most writers, something his jovial family of extroverts couldn’t understand. Tonight, for some reason—probably that the soul was about to be ripped out of his life’s work—he’d rather indulge his demons with strangers around than tackle them on his own.
And who knew? Maybe his sexually open female stranger was at the bar right now, waiting for him.
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