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.
The second girl was Cecily, a Bohemian-vegan type with frizzy brown hair, and wire-rim spectacles, and absolutely no sense of fashion or style. Cecily wrote “abstract poetry” and lived in a warehouse in Brooklyn, no surprise there.
They were only twenty minutes into the discussion, and the bright lights were already starting to make Mercedes sweat, as was the moderator, a stuff-shirted academic. As someone who wrote about sex, and had just published a book of erotic fiction, Mercedes really didn’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with someone who desperately needed to get their rocks off, assuming he had any.
“Miss Brooks, can you tell us why you feel the urge to write fiction designed to titillate?” The man’s voice sliced down her spine like broken glass, but Mercedes was determined to stand up for the constitution, especially that pesky first amendment.
“Why does any writer need to write?” she asked, dodging the titillate word deftly. “It’s part of documenting the human condition.”
“But don’t you feel your—work,” he said, with a dismissive sniff, “reduces the human condition to a training manual on copulation?”
“No, I believe some other literary author won the award for bad sex writing. Not me. I believe my fans are more discerning than that.”
He stroked his goatee, quirking one brow. “And what about probing the deep, dark places where man is afraid to tread? Isn’t writing about sex selling out?”
“Now, this is only the opinion of one poor, lowly author, but the whole point of writing erotica is to write about those deep, dark places where man is afraid to tread.” She turned to Linda, who was the panelist next to her and smiled politely. “What is your book about?”
Linda sat up straight and cleared her throat. “My book is a soul-stirring exploration of a mother’s love for her children, who murders them in the end, as a tribute to the transcendental nature of life.”
The moderator sighed, a goofy fan-girl sigh that pushed Mercedes over the edge. When had a weight the size of the Titanic fallen on the scales of justice? It truly wasn’t fair. “And you sniff at my book?”
“I do not sniff at art,” the moderator snapped.
“I bet you never break wind, either,” Mercedes muttered under her breath.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Cecily.
Mercedes checked her watch. “This has been lovely, but I gotta go. Autographing at Rockefeller Center.”
“Rockefeller Center?” asked Linda, her voice embracing the words in a sad lover’s caress. Dream on, sister.
“Of course. It’s a rite of passage for every author, don’t you think?”
Linda nodded, her eyes dreaming of booksignings she would never have, and Mercedes gave her an encouraging pat on the back. “Someday,” she said, a hint of encouragement in her voice.
She tried not to strut as she walked off the dais, but okay, maybe there was a kick in her heels. What was success if not to be enjoyed? And after all, somebody needed to right those scales of justice. Mercedes thought she was just the one.
Sadly, her moment of fighting for truth, justice, and the American right to read about sex was fleeting. There wasn’t a booksigning in Rockefeller Center; Mercedes had made that one up, being nothing if not creative.
ACROSS TOWN ON THE LOWER EAST SIDE, Mercedes was back in her apartment, which wasn’t exactly an apartment, more like a closet with living accessories. The tiny studio had a couch that folded into a bed—when she took the trouble to pull it out. Other amenities included a sink, a one-burner stove, and a half-height refrigerator. At least the bathroom had a tub, her one necessity in life.
She punched the answering machine button and got a message from Andreas.
“Hey, Mercedes, listen, something’s come up tonight, so I won’t be by. We’ll talk later. You’re the best.”
She hit the erase button with a little more force than necessary, mainly because of the music playing in the background. Okay, he wasn’t the world’s best boyfriend. Actually she didn’t even call him her boyfriend because that would imply some level of emotional foreplay in their relationship, and there was none.
Andreas was like so many guys in the world, not really interested in anything but a good time. Mercedes didn’t let it bother her. She wrote erotic fiction, after all, and could chalk the whole relationship up to research and not lose a bit of sleep. Of course, that would imply she didn’t lose sleep, which she did. More than she would admit to anybody.
A single woman today was supposed to be hard and emotionless when it came to love and sex, and Mercedes wanted that. When you felt nothing, you didn’t hurt, you didn’t bleed. After almost ten years of rejections from publishers, it was helpful to grow a thick hide and let the slings and arrows of the world bounce off of you. But sometimes an arrow got through the castle walls, and that’s when it was time for a bath—with lavender-scented bubbles to ease the pain away.
Mercedes drew the hot water, pipes clanking as always, and poured in the magic liquid. Quickly she shed her clothes and slipped into the one place where she could hide from the rest of the world. She leaned her head back against the ancient cast-iron tub and closed her eyes. Her dreams weren’t easy ones. She wanted to hit the New York Times list, somehow, someway, somewhere.
She supposed her life would be less stressful if she wasn’t so ambitious but her mother had always encouraged big dreams. Mercedes had always wanted to be a writer, to explore the depths of humanity. The good, the evil, and the sexual. When she started the sex blog, the Red Choo Diaries, it’d been a lark. A way to make a name for herself without having the publishing credits that were required, and make a name she did. The blog had gotten her an agent and a two-book deal. And as a bonus, her brothers had found true love because of the