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To Dee, as always, thanks.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
1
“OKAY, SAM, THAT’S A WRAP.”
The hot television lights were powered off, and Sam Porter pulled back from the small desk on the sound stage. He took a last drink of his water, and wanted nothing more than to be home in bed, preferably alone, nursing a cold beer, and watching the tape of today’s show.
Four a.m. was too early for any human being of sound mind to be up, but he’d sacrificed in order to prep for this interview, which had been a slam-dunk. The Connecticut Senator was political roadkill, although now Sam felt like death warmed over and the night was still young.
The crew began arranging the studio for the next broadcast, cameras being rolled away to the side of the set as the mechanized take-down duties were performed.
He nodded in the general direction of his floor director. “Thanks, Kristin. See you tomorrow.”
Kristin winked at him, putting aside her clipboard and headset. “Maybe you’ll see me. I’ve got a hot date—think I’m going to elope.”
He rubbed at his face with his palms. “Just as long as you’re back in the morning. Don’t make me break in another one of you.”
“Sure, boss,” she answered.
The crew started to take off. Goodbyes were always the shortest when the weekend was lurking nearby. Today was only Wednesday, but his staff were forward thinkers and Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
“Sam, wait a minute, will ya?” The voice of his producer boomed over the studio speakers, and Sam scowled in the general direction of the production booth. He wanted to get home, and Charles Whistleborne Kravatz III could be excruciatingly long-winded when he put his mind to it.
Charlie ambled into the studio, squawking into his cell. Impatiently, Sam tapped his foot until Charlie noticed, gave Sam an apologetic smile, and then kept talking for another ten minutes. Sam was just turning to leave when Charlie finally hung up.
“We’ve got a problem. The city manager pulled out and we’ve got to find another guest for Thursday’s show.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Sorry, Sam. Your fan base isn’t huge out there.”
“Yeah, well, someday. So what are we going to do? Know any Northern California radicals to put on?”
Charlie scratched his neck, parting the Brooks Brothers shirt buttons around his ever-expanding stomach. “I think we should do something less political. To offset the judicial expert’s talk about the nominee for the Supreme court. Big yawner. Give it some balance.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Human interest. Fluff.”
“I don’t like fluff,” warned Sam.
“No lectures, Sam. Hear me out. You’re doing two solid days of hard, depressing crap. We need something more upbeat. Happier. Maybe not birdies and rainbows, but something to put people in a good mood.”
At the moment, Sam was several emotions removed from a good mood. “I don’t know, Charlie. Let me think. I’m tired and I need sleep.”
Charlie nodded. “Do that. And let me know.” He turned around to leave, and then turned back. “Hey, I got a call about you while the show was taping.”
“Not another death threat, I hope?”
“Hehe, no. One of your fans. Chairman of your favorite New Jersey political party. He tried to play coy, but I pegged him. They want you to be their drop-in candidate for the House Seat in the Fifteenth District, after Detweiler pulled out. Four months before the election? Who does that?”
Sam started to laugh. “Me? A candidate? You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
Eventually Sam realized that Charlie was serious, mainly because Charlie was always serious.
Politics. His smile faded. “Really?”
“Yeah. Since we’re right up against the election, it’s got to be a write-in candidate, and the party knows you’ve got the name recognition to pull it off. They know they can trust you, your platforms are right. It’s not that big of a leap, Sam.”
“You’re kidding,” repeated Sam, still slightly in shock. It was flattering, it was intriguing, and most of all, it was something that he’d never thought about before. “I’m in television. I talk about politics. I don’t do politics,” he said, weighing the arguments out loud.
“I take it that’s a ‘no’ then. I’ll send your regrets.”
Sam almost corrected that, but something held him back. “Yeah, just tell them no,” he said, finality in his voice.
“Glad to hear it ’cause we’d have to kill the show, and I for one would not be happy. Hell, I’d have to find a new show. And I don’t even wanna think about the network. You’re a cash cow, and cash cows are hard to come by these days.”
“I didn’t think about losing the show,” Sam murmured, wrapping his mind around the possibility of a new direction in his daily routine.
“You’re thinking about losing the show, Sam?” asked Charlie, his faded blue eyes still sharp as they’d always been.
“How long do I have?”
“You gotta decide fast. Ten days is all you’ve got.”
Politics. It was something he talked about, studied, read about on a daily basis, but he’d never considered himself a politician. He was a journalist. But wouldn’t it be nice to be able to work for the country instead of bashing do-nothing politicos on a nightly basis? His practical side laughed at the idea, his sentimental side was flush with new ideas.
“I should say no,” he answered, his practical side winning the argument. Sam had enough to think about right now. Like what to fill in on Thursday’s show.
“But that’s not a ‘no’?”
“It’s a not yet,” answered Sam. “I’ll take the ten days, Charlie. Let me think.”
After Charlie left, Sam headed for the dressing room. Finally a chance to lose the suit, and he pulled on his jeans with a contented sigh. He would never be a suit, and although he played a talking-head on TV, and did it well, blue jeans were his natural habitat.
The television studio was a cold, lifeless place with cameras, overhead banks of monitors, and the smell of sanitized air freshener, rather than the smell of hard work.
Sam’s dad had been a plumber, who came home smelling of plumber’s grease and somebody’s clogged drain pipe, and Sam had learned to appreciate the smells that came with an honest day’s labor. It was the primary reason his dressing room smelled like pen ink and microwaved chicken rather than the ‘clean fresh scent that follows a soft summer’s rain.’
His ratty, overstuffed couch was always waiting for him when he wanted to lay down and think, and the sounds of Bob Dylan, Toby Keith, and Springsteen were permanent playlists on his iPod. He needed it to drown out the city noise. At his heart, Sam was a Jersey boy, born and bred, and although Manhattan paid his salary, his home sat on the blue-collar side of the Hudson River.
Sam cast a longing look at the couch, but he had places to go and people to meet. The couch—and much-needed sleep would have to wait.
Two long East-West blocks covered the distance from the studio to the bar on 11th where he was headed. A few fans stopped, waved, but New York wasn’t the target market for the Sam Porter show. A conservative talk show host in Manhattan garnered more death threats than autograph requests. Since Sam was a firm believer in the right to bear arms, as well as carry them, he wasn’t fazed.
The cool September air blew around and through the concrete jungle, and it was a great night for a walk, the perfect way to wake him up. It might be Wednesday, but New York never knew it. Midtown was bustling, cabs lined up bumper to bumper, the night lights starting to illuminate the sky. Yeah, city life was okay.
He passed by a bookstore on the way, and the photograph in the window caught his attention. Sam stopped.
He knew that face; a face he’d had on his show—once.
Mercedes Brooks.
It’d been over a year ago, and he’d pushed her from his mind, or so he thought, but the photograph stirred up a visceral reaction that surprised him with both its appearance and its intensity.
He studied the picture. She hadn’t changed, her long, long dark hair was deeper than the shadows.
Her eyes were just as dark as her hair, and the photographer had caught a wicked gleam in them.
Those eyes had made him wonder.
Did they tease a man first thing in the morning, or were they cloudy with sleep? Did they ever grow blind with passion, reckless and unknowing?
It might only be a photograph, but the camera had captured a part of her, and the gleam stayed there. How far would she go? A teasing Lolita, a brazen Delilah?
He stood and looked for a minute, happy for the anonymity of a busy street where no one cared if a man stood a little too long, or stared a little too hard.
Then, spurred on by an impulse that he didn’t want to examine, Sam walked inside, picked up a book off this display, and started to read. He should’ve known it’d be a mistake, everything about her yelled “mistake” but he wanted to know, and his eyes followed the evocative words, blood-heating words:
He wasn’t a man she’d ever see outside the bedroom, because his world wasn’t hers, and she couldn’t adapt to his, so they met in private, in the dark, and for a few hours, they would pretend.
She loved lying next to him, his body so much stronger and bigger than hers. Sometimes she would trail her fingers over his arms, following the ridges and dips, the curling hairs tickling the pads of her fingers. He had lovely arms that sheltered her, and kept her warm when the world was cold, cherished her when she felt unloved.
His body was built to pleasure her with his big, hard, workman’s hands, among other parts. She loved when he rubbed his hands over her, slow at first, almost shy. He wore a ring on his right hand, cold silver that jarred when he drew it over the heated skin of her breasts. He would do that to her, and at first she thought it was an accident, but by the third time, she grew to love that ring, and the simple wanton pleasure of cold silver against a naked breast. Her breasts weren’t the only place he teased. He liked to delve between her thighs, the ring pressing against hot, swollen flesh. A single touch that would pull her out of her skin, but never fast. Always slow, excruciatingly slow…
“Sam Porter?”
The voice jerked him out of that dark, blissful place that he’d just visited with his vivid imagination. He glanced down. At his body.
Quickly he covered his fly with the book and turned.
An older woman stood there, her eyes as curious as a kid. She was bundled up in a wool cardigan and carried a stack of books in her hands. “You’re reading that?” she asked, the bright eyes dipping to the lurid cover.
Instantly Sam put on his fan-face. “Oh, no. Just keeping up with the state of the world.”
She clucked her tongue, the faded red hair shaking in disapproval. He saw that look a lot. “Sad what’s happening. Sometimes I think I’m getting too old, that I don’t understand the young. Sex, sex, sex. Seems like we get bombarded with it everywhere. Books, television, health insurance. Can you believe it, they’re using sex to sell health insurance? You should put that on your show.”
Carefully, unobtrusively, Sam replaced Mercedes’s sex book, then gave the woman an empathetic nod. “I think you’re right. I’ll talk to the producer.”
The woman stared at the dark, gauzy cover displaying a man and a woman locked in a shameful, wicked, indecent embrace that looked…
Sam looked harder.
…really inviting.
Time to cut to a commercial. “Listen, I need to run. There’s never enough time, is there?”
The woman held out her hand, and Sam took it in his two. He’d learned many years ago that women really liked that move, no matter the age.
“Watch us next week. We’ll be heading out to San Francisco on Thursday and Friday.”
The blue eyes grew wide with shock. “San Francisco? They’re very liberal out there, aren’t they?”
Sam smiled and gave her his confiding laugh. “New judge on the Ninth Circuit, and there’s a legal scholar who’s written about the court. I’ve got some questions. That’s the way it starts. I always have questions.”
Visibly she relaxed. “That’s what I like about you. You won’t let anybody get away with anything. I won’t miss it. Can I ask you a favor?”
“What can I do for you?”
She held up the stack of books in front of her. Law books. “I got a problem with the social security department. Foolish computer error, that’s what it is.”
“What what is?”
“They think I’m dead, and I don’t know how to prove I’m alive. The state of New York issued a death certificate as a mistake. I was in the hospital four months ago, stupid heart. I should exercise more, I suppose.”
“You need some help?”
“Could you?”
Sam thought for a minute. “I’ll need your ID. Just to make sure you’re not pulling one over on me.”
She laughed, and then handed over a well-worn card. “Here you go,” she answered.
Sam pulled out his cell, and punched in a few numbers. “I know just the guy.
“Dan. It’s Sam. Need a favor—”
“You’re not going to put us on the show, are you?”
“No, no, you’re in the clear—this time. I have a citizen in need.”
“It’s after five, Sam. Can it wait?”
“Come on, Dan, I’ll owe you one, and best of all, it’s easy.”
“Will we get a kudos on the air?”
“For you, I’ll do a special segment.”
“Okay, what’s up?”
“I have a lady here, living, breathing, and talking to me, that the social security department thinks is dead. Can we correct the state records, and mail one of your official letters to those nasty bureaucrats in Washington that wouldn’t know a heart if it was, well, a living heart?”
“Name of the un-dead?”
“Geraldine Brady,” answered Sam, and then reeled off the rest of Geraldine’s pertinent info while she beamed as any non-dead citizen would. “Got all that?”
“Yeah. Blockheads, all of ’em. I’ll fix it.”
“You’re a prince among men, Dan.”
“Save it for your fans, Sam.”
He just laughed and hung up. “I think it’s taken care of it, but here’s one of my cards, and let me know if you don’t get a letter in a couple of weeks.”
Geraldine put down her books and gave him a hug. Right in the middle of the bookstore. Sam smiled politely, because he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the touchy-feely aspects of his job, especially not under the wicked, gleaming eyes in the photograph of Mercedes. Sam ran a finger under the collar of his leather bomber jacket, feeling the sweat that had collected there. Somehow, some way, he was absolutely sure Mercedes Brooks was laughing at him. He swore under his breath, and shook his head, clearing the ghosts, clearing the image of her.
O’Kelley’s was a much-needed reprieve from the bookstore. The place was casual, dark, and ear-poppingly loud. He scanned the room for the guys, spotting them at a table against the black-paneled wall, underneath the Harp beer sign. Bobby was a journalist who he’d bonded with when he was a political reporter for WNBC. Across from him was the reason for the dinner—Tony Rapanelli. Seven years ago, after a particularly rowdy New Year’s Eve party, Tony had mistaken Bobby for a mugger and tackled him in the middle of 8th Avenue. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.
Things had been quiet for awhile, but now Tony was going through the last throes of a painful divorce, and it was sucking the life out of him slowly and surely. For the past few months, Sam and Bobby had been working with Tony, trying to cheer him up, trying to let him see life after a break-up. Tony—who had been married for seventeen years, with two kids, two dogs, and one house on Long Island—hadn’t even cracked a smile.
However, they were determined to keep trying.
Sam plastered a grin on his face. “Hey! Didn’t mean to keep you all waiting.”
Bobby stood and they knocked fists, an odd mix of formality and urban America. Although he always wore a jacket, Bobby was half Puerto Rican, half Italian and still carried around some of the ways of the street. “My man, how’s things?”
“Eh,” Sam answered, ordering a Diet Coke from the waitress.
He settled into a chair and grabbed the bowl of pretzels, the best he was going to manage for dinner.
Tony raised his glass. “To women.”
At that, Sam raised a brow. This was new. Maybe they were lucky and Tony had gotten laid. In Sam’s experience, sex always put a rosy spin on life.
“Today is Tony’s anniversary,” muttered Bobby, before Sam could get too carried away with excitement. “Listen, Tone, the wife has a friend. Now, she’s not a stunner, but she’s nice—”
The table broke out in groans. “And she got a boob job last year,” he finished.
“Age?” asked Tony.
“Thirty-two.”
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked.
“Now, wait a minute,” Sam interrupted. “Tony, you’re thirty-seven. Absolutely nothing is wrong with you, and there’s no reason to assume that there’s a problem.” Sam believed in fighting injustices wherever they occurred, even in his friends.
“Point taken,” admitted Tony, and then turned back to Bobby. “So what’s wrong with her?”
“Were you listening?” said Sam. “There doesn’t have to be anything wrong with her. Right, Bob?”
Bob got all shifty-eyed and Sam groaned. “Look, she’s got this voice. Kinda Brooklyn.”
“No, absolutely not,” said Tony, using two syllables at the end, just like any good Long Islander would do.
“Jeez, how do you plan on meeting any women if no one is good enough?”
Bobby laughed at Sam. “Spoken like the eternally single man that you are.”
“I was married. Once,” said Sam.
Bobby rolled his eyes. “Anything before twenty-six is too young to count.”
Bobby was right about that. The marriage had been too short, too casual to count, and Sam had stayed far away since then. Maturity and wisdom would do that to a man. But today, he found himself wishing there was someone to go home to. Not because he wanted a home-cooked meal, oh, no. His reasons were more basic. Sam was still carrying around an extra seven inches of pain and misery from a little too much “cold silver against a naked breast,” and it would be nice to have someone to take the edge off.
Like Mercedes Brooks, for example.
Sam closed his eyes and groaned, low and painful, and a mere two decibels louder than he intended.
Tony looked at him sideways. “What’s wrong?”
Both his friends were staring, because Sam didn’t have problems. He didn’t groan. He didn’t complain. And usually he didn’t suffer from slip of the tongue disease. Lack of sleep, lack of sex seemed to be taking its toll. Damn. Sam shook it off. “It’s the show. We got stuck without a second guest for Thursday night. A city manager broke his leg, and now I’m guestless, except for the judge.”
“What does Charlie say?”
“He wants to do something lighter.”
“What do you want?”
It was a loaded question because up until that moment, Sam would have answered differently, but his whole body was tense and taut, and the more he considered it, the more he thought that maybe Charlie was right. They did need something lighter. More provocative. “Sex.”
Bobby howled. “Hard up?”
“I meant for the show.”
“Then book a sex therapist.”
“No.” His mind was racing along various roadtracks, but he kept coming back to the same endpoint.
“A hooker? You know, they’re trying to unionize in Canada. That could be both sexual and political.”
You know, Bobby had a point, but not now. And not in San Francisco. Sam was busily pondering other plans for San Francisco. “No.”
“Sam, you’re boring.”
“I’m not boring,” he protested.
“So find somebody.”
He knew somebody. She’d be the perfect somebody. They could discuss the white-noise of sex in America. She could blissfully talk about sex—meaningless, passionate sex between two consenting adults, locked in a tangle of bare flesh, while he drove inside her, tasting the curve of a firm naked breast…
Damn.
Sam really needed to get laid. It’d been over three months since he’d broken up with Shelia. She’d been nice enough, but she wasn’t The One. She wasn’t even The Maybe One.
“Book somebody, Sam,” said Tony with an almost-smile.
“Great looking,” added Bobby. “It’s about time that your guests weren’t old, fat and bald.”
“Can you guys give me a break? Enough about my show, let’s talk about something else. Like Tony. The purpose of this dinner. Remember?”
Bobby nodded. “You got to get back on the horse, Tone. Sam’ll find some club, you’ll meet women, see them all nicely dressed, or undressed, and remind you of what you are.”
“What’s that?” asked Tony.
Bobby smiled, wide and slow. “You’re the rarest of the rare. A precious quantity to be savored and sipped, and tupped as often as you like. You’re a single, heterosexual man in New York.”
He might as well have thrown his friend in front of a bus, for all the good it did. Tony attempted a weak smile. “I don’t know that I can do this.”
Tony was going to need all the reassurance he could get. “Don’t worry about it,” Sam said. “I’ll call Franco. He knows the good places.” Sam made a note to himself to call Franco, and stuck around for another couple of rounds. But tonight, it wasn’t the taste of alcohol that put him on fire. It was one Mercedes Brooks.
On the way home, he stopped by the bookstore in Paramus and picked up a copy of her book, buying it quickly before anyone noticed.
When he got to his house in north Jersey, he settled down to read, and got halfway through the first chapter when he made up his mind. Mercedes Brooks was going on his show. Charlie was right. What would be so wrong with a little talk about sex?
He laughed at himself. Yeah. Since when did he agree with his producer? He looked down at the book, flipped to the cover, watching the faint images come to life in his mind. It wasn’t politics he was thinking of now, far from it. She’d stayed there in his head for nearly a year. Maybe it was time to see Mercedes Brooks again.
In the flesh.
2
THE LITERATURE PANEL AT the Algonquin Hotel had been the idea of Portia McLarin, Mercedes’s agent. At first, Mercedes had thought it’d be a blast. After all, the Algonquin was a New York landmark for the literati. When Mercedes had stepped through the dark oak entrance, she knew she had made it to the big leagues. At one time, the hotel’s Round Table hosted the likes of Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber and Robert Benchley. And tonight—the one, the only—Mercedes Brooks.
Yeah, right.
There were two other authors besides Mercedes. Linda who wrote fiction, and Cecily the poet. Linda was snazzily attired in a nipped-waist blazer that was probably Marc Jacobs. She’d paired it with jeans and a tie, although the shoes were a little too penny-loafer for Mercedes’s taste. All things considered, the outfit was wonderfully chic.
However, the positive aura was spoiled when Linda proudly announced that she had received an MFA from Columbia and wrote “lit-ra-chur.” Mercedes slunk an inch lower in the leather-backed chair.