LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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