Just About Sex Read Free Page A

looking him up and down as she went. “What are you, the butler?” she snapped, her sleek salt-and-pepper bob swinging around her unlined light brown face. “I’m quite sure Simone can see that I’m here.”
    Freddie sniffed and looked away.
    In her omnipresent shapeless dark suits with alternating white or cream tailored shirts, Pat looked like a consummate professional, but Simone had always secretly thought the spirit of some dead but confused New York cabbie had possessed her body. If she had to pick a motto for Pat, it would be something like, “My opinions: always available. No need to ask.” Pat and Freddie, alas, got along like gasoline and a lit match.
    She hurried forward to kiss and hug Pat. “I’m so sorry!”
    Pat frowned at her. “What happened to you? I’ve been waiting down at the café for twenty minutes! What? Have I got all day?”
    “Well, I—”
    “Wait, don’t tell me.” Pat waved a hand and perched on the edge of the desk. “Freddie, here, said some maniac barged in and bragged about his penis. Was it really that big? Never mind. What happened?”
    Simone scowled at Freddie before answering. “I’m not sure what Freddie told you, but we did not have a penis viewing here in my office this morning.”
    “A shame,” Freddie muttered, flopping on the sofa and throwing his arm over the back.
    “As I was saying,” Simone said, shooting Freddie a death glare, “this man was upset about a letter he claims his angry ex wrote for revenge. I think he wanted me to print a retraction or apology or something. We argued, I pointed out doing something like that would probably draw more attention to the whole issue than he really wanted, and he left. Well, actually, he made a veiled threat, and then he left.”
    Pat clutched her arm. “Why didn’t you say something? What kind of threat? Did he have a gun? Do we need to get a restraining order?”
    “No. Nothing like that. He’s a lawyer. I don’t think he’s a wacko.”
    Pat snorted. “I hate to burst your bubble, Snow White, but lawyers are the biggest wackos out there.”
    “Amen,” Freddie said from the sofa.
    They both ignored him. “It wasn’t a violent threat,” Simone said. “He was just kind of wondering aloud how I’d feel if someone told stories about my sex life, or something like that. I’m not going to worry about it.”
    She meant it. Now that a few minutes had passed and she’d repeated his veiled threat aloud, it all seemed so silly. The man was a lawyer. A professional, just like her. What was he going to do? Hire Sammy “the Bull” Gravano to carry out a hit on her? Of course not. So she’d just forget about the whole ridiculous incident. Greene couldn’t do anything to her.
    “I don’t know. I don’t like it.” Pat whipped her PalmPilot out of her jacket pocket. “Gimme his name. I’ll check him out a little.”
    Simone told her, then moved on to what was to have been the topic of their lunch meeting. “Soooo? How was the conference call? What’d they say?”
    “Well, I’ve got the good news and the not-so-good news. I’ll give you the good news. The good news is, National Press is definitely ready to add a sex columnist to its daily papers. They think the time is now, people are ready, yadda, yadda yadda. They like you, they think you have enormous appeal, they think they can work with you and they’re excited about your book coming out. This would be tremendous exposure, of course. With USA Every Day, you could be huge. Huge . And I think the deal would be worth about ten percent more than I quoted you.”
    For the second time that day, Simone’s professionalism left her and she giggled and clapped her hands. Finally! After a million years of graduate school and dissertations and research and building her practice and working her behind off, now— finally —real financial security, for herself and her mother, was within reach. She could buy a house, travel and put more money away for