Midtown Masters

by Cara McKenna

  “That must be so much fun,” she said, pouring a generous glass for each of them, “making people up. Telling them what to do, watching them fuck everything up. Hell, watching them fuck, period.”

  “Very. Villains are my favorite, though.”

  “Oh, right. Can’t have a detective without a stable of baddies. What do I have to do to get you to name your next villainess Suzy?”

  He laughed. “Nothing personal, but I’m afraid your name doesn’t exactly send shivers down the spine.”

  “That’s what Evil Suzy wants you to think. Nobody would ever suspect a Suzy. Not even Jacob Russo,” she said, and clinked her glass to his.

  “You may be on to something, there.”

  “I haven’t read any of your books. Does Jacob have a girlfriend?”

  “Sometimes. He was seeing the same woman for three books running, but then she was murdered. By the same serial killer he’s trying to thwart in Pittsburgh, in fact.”

  “Yikes.”

  “He’s about to sleep with a new woman,” John said, and took a thoughtful sip, seeming to approve of the wine. “Though he’s feeling very fraught about it, in his defense.”

  “Is there going to be a sex scene?”

  “A brief one, I think. It’s two chapters away, and I’m absolutely dreading it.”

  “You’ll do fine.” Suzy headed back to the chaise lounge, then changed her mind and sat cross-legged on the bed. To her delight, John did the same. It was only a shame it was such a big bed. “You’re fully armed with all your Tuesday night notes, right?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  “I’m happy to critique, if you’re really that worried about it.”

  “Now I’m even more terrified.” He smiled, sipped his wine.

  “What’s Jacob like in bed?”

  “Well, that’s part of the problem. I don’t think I gave him any sexual charisma at all. It hadn’t occurred to me that I should. The sex just sort of . . . happened. There wasn’t much emotion to it.”

  “I’m sure all that’s about to change.”

  “Hopefully. I’d like to channel a little of Mr. Parks in this book.”

  “Oh man, Meyer’s going to be so full of himself when he hears that.”

  “If it goes well, I will find some covert way to thank the two of you in the acknowledgments.”

  “‘To S. and M.,’” she dictated, then caught herself. “Shit, even that sounds dirty.”

  “I hope it translates—my notes, I mean. Everything you two bring to the bedroom, I hope I can figure out how to describe it on the page. I’m not exactly a master of what’s called ‘deep POV.’ Point of view, that is. My books are ninety-five percent plot and action, and that seems to be what I’m good at, what people are after when they buy my stories. But even if the sex is only five hundred words in the whole book, I want them to be good ones. I want to keep getting better.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m no great literary talent. I write page-turners. I’m an airport read, and that’s fine. That’s lucrative, if nothing else. But I don’t want to just coast on what I’m good at.”

  He was talking more quickly, more animatedly, and Suzy bet he was a little buzzed. She let him go on, enjoying this side of him.

  “Plus the lousy reviews do hurt. People probably assume they don’t, that I’m laughing all the way to the bank or whatever, but it’s funny . . . You remember the criticisms so much more sharply than the praise. Even fifty glowing write-ups can’t wash the taste of a nasty one off your tongue.”

  “It must be hard to live that publicly. Back when Meyer and I were camming for free, just for fun, we used an outside Web site for it. You can put your videos in the archive, and we did, a couple times, and then people can rate them. We had really great rankings—like close to five stars, with thousands of people rating and reviewing. But I know what you mean, because I couldn’t quote you a single one of the nice reviews, but the mean and creepy ones are seared on my brain forever.”

  “That has to be hard. Having your sexual performance or appearance judged by strangers must take way more bravery than some novel.”

  “I couldn’t say . . . But a book you work on for months, I bet. Or years.”

  “About six to eight months. I leave the years-long labor to the literary types.”

  “Still. That’s got to be its own kind of intimacy, putting your creativity out there into the cold, cruel world. Or maybe I’m just more comfortable with people judging my naked body than I would be them judging my brain or my thoughts or my feelings.”

  “I think it’s hard for me because I don’t like disappointing people. It hurts to imagine someone’s shelled out twenty dollars for a hardcover and didn’t feel it was worth it.”

  She chuckled. “See, that’s something. When I read the whiny reviews of our early videos, I did think, ‘Hey, fuck you. That was better than ninety-nine percent of the free porn out there, you ingrates.’”

  “I still don’t think of what you do as pornography,” John said thoughtfully.

  “We put a lot of heart into it. And we enjoy it. I don’t think people expect much humanity from their porn—though they should! And porn with heart does totally exist. You just have to dig through a load of garbage to find it. It’s got to be daunting for the casual porn consumer.”

  “Very.”

  “How did you find us, anyway?”

  “I waded through message board posts about romantic pornography, and ‘porn for women,’ I think, and one woman had posted a long, gushing review of your site. So I checked out the clips, then that sample. And I’ll admit it—I was mesmerized.”

  “Aw.” She smiled like a dork, glowing from her toes to her cheeks.

  “I’d thought I was looking for the sorts of things a typical female reader would want in their written sex scenes,” John said. “I never would have guessed I’d find what I was looking for, myself.”

  “I bet you never would have guessed how much you’d shell out for it, either.”

  “No, I hadn’t gone in looking for webcam performers. I knew that was a thing, but it hadn’t occurred to me to consider it as a research option. Not until I paid for the hour-long ‘romantic lovemaking’ sample.”

  “Mesmerized, huh?” she teased.

  “You have no idea. I’d seen passing love scenes in mainstream movies that excited me, and wished they were longer, that you got to see more. Then I found you two, and it was almost like there was a backstory. Your so-called marriage, and these two dynamic characters who clearly felt something for each other. Knew each other. Like you know each other’s bodies as well as you do your own.”

  “That’s cool. I never thought about it like that.”

  “I doubt many people would. My head tends to get in my way where sex is concerned.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It probably sounds ridiculous, coming from me, but it is a little sad, how utterly unsacred sex has become. How un-special. I’m as guilty as anyone of helping to commodify it, and to turn something private into one massive, X-rated selfie. Sacred, special, private sex just isn’t for me, is all.”

  “No?”

  “It’s great when you’re with someone who needs that. I like to be what a guy—or a girl, on the odd, rare occasion—wants. It’s wired way deep in my sexuality, for whatever reason. So if I’m seeing a guy who wants what I imagine you do, then that’s what I want, too. For a while.”

  “And then you get restless?”

  She pursed her lips, hating herself a little. The truth felt likely to blow any chance she had of sleeping with John, but she wasn’t about to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, or pretend to be capable of something she wasn’t.

  She nodded. “I need variety. Either the option to have multiple lovers, letting me be all of the different people who live inside me, sexuall
y, or one lover like Meyer, who’s like going to bed with a different man every night, depending on his mood.”

  “I don’t understand why you two aren’t simply a couple. Romantically.”

  She shrugged. “There’s just something missing. Close but no cigar.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly made the most of what’s right between you two,” John said, watching the remains of his wine swirl in his glass.

  “We have, yeah. I’ll look back on this year with a lot of fondness. It’s taught me more about myself, sexually, than I learned in my first thirty-two years.”

  “And you two have taught me more than I ever knew, in, what? Two months?”

  Suzy felt a warm wash of heat flood her cheeks at his words. “That’s nice to hear.”

  John drained his glass and nodded to her nearly empty one. “Refill?”

  “Please. It’s delicious, by the way. Nice choice.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She watched him cross the room. He didn’t move with Meyer’s thoughtless elegance. He was stiffer, more locked in his body. Not clumsy, but lacking the grace his clothes implied. She watched his shoulders and arms fidget as he freshened their drinks, and wondered what his body was like, beneath the pressed cotton and soft wool.

  Fuck, I’m so unprofessional. That was her own voice, but another hovered just behind it, one that sounded distinctly like Meyer. If you’re going to take it there, just take it. Sooner rather than later. If it’s a forgone conclusion, trying to fight it is only going to make it more of a letdown if there’s no chemistry at the end of the day.

  Sound logic, though there was a final voice that she needed to hear, and that was John’s very real one, telling her, yes, he wanted that too, or no, he didn’t.

  He returned with the glasses, filled near to the brim.

  “Wow, generous pour,” she teased, accepting hers carefully with both hands.

  “The bottle was so close to done.” He sat on the bed once more, a little closer this time, she thought.

  “I might need help with mine,” she said. “You’ve probably got, like, seventy pounds on me and the alcohol tolerance to prove it.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure—I’ve already drunk as much tonight as I normally might in a week.”

  She laughed. “Well, I am not guilty on that count. I have a date with a glass of wine and Netflix most nights.”

  His eyes narrowed, attention dropping to the bedspread. “May I ask you something that’s none of my business?”

  She grinned and rearranged herself, carefully making her way onto her belly with her glass clutched before her on the bedspread. “You better. Those are the only sorts of conversations that really help you get to know a person.”

  “After you and Meyer . . . After you do a performance.”

  “Mm?”

  “Do you stay over? Or does he?”

  “No, almost never. Occasionally if he passes out in Mr. and Mrs. Parks’ bed and I can’t wake him up, I’ll just leave him there and go sleep in my own room. I have a two-bedroom apartment,” she added. “Mrs. Parks’ room is way classier than mine, incidentally.”

  “Huh. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me.”

  “What we do makes a decent amount of money. I’ll probably go back to having a roommate once it’s over, though. I like company.”

  “Better you than me; I always hated having roommates.”

  From there they cycled easily from one conversational topic to the next, talking about old apartments, college experiences, vacations, finally arriving back at cohabitation.

  “I’ve no experience with it, romantically,” John said. “Obviously. Have you lived with a boyfriend?”

  “Yes. And with a girlfriend. In both cases it was a relationship killer. Living together magnifies everything that annoys you about the other person—and them about you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “With the girlfriend it was a full-blown romantic impulse. I think we’d been dating about three months. We didn’t even make it three weeks into the new lease before I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. With the guy it was a case of his roommate moving out, my lease ending, us getting kinda serious. We had one happy month, a couple not-so-great months, then it all spiraled into mutual frustration and resentment. I haven’t tried living with anybody since that one. That must’ve been . . . Jeez, six years ago.”

  John had emptied his glass some time ago, and now the final ounce of Suzy’s share was perched in his hand. “Have you ever lived alone before?” he asked.

  “No. I couldn’t afford it before, and even now it’s overrated. If Meyer wasn’t over five, six nights a week, I’d probably be pretty miserable.”

  John drained her glass and leaned over to set it beside his on the bedside table. He sat up very straight, clasping his hands, studying them. “May I be overly, slightly drunkenly honest with you?” he asked, eyes moving to Suzy’s, and narrowing to something approaching slyness. Then he winced, smiling. “Christ, that was a lot of adverbs.”

  “I won’t tell your editor. And yes, absolutely, be honest. Be nothing but.”

  “I’m not saying I’m actually asking for this, but . . . I sort of want to see you and Mr.— Sorry, Meyer. I sort of want to watch the two of you have sex, in whatever way you would if nobody was watching.”

  “Tuesday nights are still open.”

  He smiled, shook his head. “I don’t really mean it, but I feel so naive, I’m kind of curious—and also a bit terrified—to see what the baseline looks like.”

  “Well, remember how I said I’m sort of a chameleon? And he’s sort of ADD? You could see what we look like just being ourselves in any one of the sample videos on the Web site. Any night of the week, back when we were dating for real, it could’ve looked like any one of those scenarios. We wanted to attract clients who wanted us in the sorts of ways we wanted to be, ourselves, so we went with stuff we genuinely enjoy.”

  “Even the ‘passionate lovemaking’ sample?” he asked with a smirk.

  “Yup, even that one.” She eyed him, and the wine nudged her, told her to go ahead and get nosy. “Now, can I ask you something overly personal?”

  “Please do.”

  “You didn’t . . . While you were watching us, on Tuesdays, you said you didn’t . . . you know.” How absurd that she couldn’t seem to say “masturbate” when this man had paid to watch her have sex.

  He shook his head. “Not during, no. Even after I didn’t feel like I needed to take many notes anymore, I didn’t. I’m not sure why. Maybe partly because it seemed more polite—”

  She snorted, not meaning to. “Sorry, sorry. But you have to know how funny that sounds.”

  “Saying it now, yes, it sounds ridiculous.” He smiled in a goofy way, like he was just registering what he’d said. “Or, if not because of politeness . . . I don’t know. I think maybe I didn’t want to make it into that sort of a thing. Even if you two assumed that was what I’d be doing, I didn’t want it to start feeling like that. As I said, it was never like pornography to me, as silly or prudish as that sounds. It was instructional. It was research. It was almost art, in its way.”

  She made a face, surprised and touched by that.

  “If I’d . . . you know,” he said, echoing her coy wording, “it would have felt wrong. Sad or lonely or simply predictable. I hope that’s not insulting at all. It wasn’t as though I wasn’t turned on.” His expression suggested he hadn’t expected to hear himself utter that final thought, a flush creeping up his neck.

  “It really doesn’t matter to me why you didn’t,” she said. “What I wanted to ask was about what came after. When we talked last week you implied that later, after the hour was over, you . . . you know.” She rolled her eyes, feeling resigned to the silly euphemism now.

  He nodded, his smile tight and nervous. “Yes
. I did. You two loom rather large in my erotic imagination now, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  She smiled back. “I’d be disappointed if we didn’t. But the thing I was wondering is, when you do . . . what do you think about? I mean, is it just the things we showed you, or is it you and me, or you and Meyer, or all three of us? You don’t have to answer, by the way. I’m just being a nosy perv.”

  He was definitely blushing now, and avoiding her eyes, though more bashful than uncomfortable, she sensed.

  “You can ask me anything,” he said quietly. “And it’s the former. I imagine the two of you, doing the things you’ve showed me. I, um . . . I have such a disconnected relationship with sex, I have a hard time drawing myself into the action, as it were. Even in my imagination. I can’t think of many worse mood-killers than my own involvement.”

  She frowned and patted his arm. “That is the saddest thing ever.”

  “There are sadder things, I promise,” he said, and his lips quirked faintly. “Genocide, for one.”

  She gave his arm a limp little chiding punch. “Smartass.”

  “I don’t want you to pity me,” he said softly, gaze dropping to the covers. “I know my sexuality’s a little broken, or at least a little stunted.” His blue eyes jumped back up, silencing any reply before it could leave her lips. “But in a way,” he went on, “I’m thankful for it. Most people my age either take sex for granted, or they’re jaded about it, or plain over it. Me, I’m just now discovering who I am, sexually. I’m seventeen, in some ways. It’s all new, and it’s just starting to feel possible. Desirable. Maybe even attainable. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I’m awakening. And you have no small part in that.”

  “Wow.”

  He nodded, then moved, stretching out across the covers, head on a pillow. “Wow indeed. And truly, you have no idea how much it’s meant, what you offer. You and he.”

  “It means a lot to hear that. I’d been doing it for the fun of it, and the money as well. Not because I thought I was offering much aside from fantasy fulfillment. So thank you. I’ll look back on this period even more fondly than I was expecting to.” And as she said it . . . shit. It was going to end soon. Sooner than she’d planned. She knew in that very instant, as soon as John ceased patronizing them, some of the light would go out of their camming gigs. He was the peak, for her, the pinnacle, the crescendo where thrill met satisfaction, the height of this enterprise’s intrigue. Nothing after him would shine quite so brightly. It was all downhill from here.