The Perfect Score

“You want to say that a little louder? I’m not sure they heard you by the pool.” I poked my head out the open laundry-room door, scanning for eavesdroppers. Katy Simmons, the retired actress who lived below me, was sunning on a lounge chair. The new tenant—Mike Something-or-other—was a bit closer. A genuinely nice guy, he was also the apartment complex’s resident nerd, complete with wire-framed glasses and a job that had something to do with computers.

As I watched, I could see him settle himself in one of the incredibly uncomfortable metal chairs, kick his feet up onto a tabletop, and take a swig of beer. I took a breath, surprised that my nerdish neighbor had a mighty fine body, lean and firm like a swimmer.

“Mike!” Carla half yelled. “Oh, Mikey! Mattie needs a boyfriend!”

“Carla!” I grabbed the knob and slammed the door shut. “Are you insane? What if he heard?”

“So what if he did? He’s cute.”

I scowled, because he was cute. He was nice, too. I’d helped him carry boxes up from his U-Haul, and he’d happily shared his pizza with me a week ago. But Dex had been cute and nice, too. Cute and nice didn’t cut it anymore. Cute and nice conjured the dreaded R word, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready to get back on that relationship hamster wheel. “I’m not looking for cute. Cute is for bunny rabbits. Not boy toys.”

Another lift of that eyebrow of hers.

I sighed and tried to look put-upon. “You just don’t understand. You’re getting laid on a regular basis.”

“So were you until you dumped Dex.”

I shook my head vehemently, my ponytail whipping around to slap me in the face. “Oh, no, no, no my friend. I was only having sorta-sex.”

She flashed me a skeptical look as she shook the wrinkles out of a pair of greyish-pink sweatpants. “I’m going to regret asking, but what is sorta-sex?”

“You know. Fridays only. Me on my back. After Law & Order, but before Biography. Routine all the way. Nothing spontaneous. Nothing romantic. I could put Tollhouse cookies in before we went at it and not have to worry that they’d burn.”

“Oh. Well.” She busied herself with neatly folding her now-ruined laundry, while I silently cheered myself for having a sex life so truly pathetic that I’d rendered Carla speechless. Scary, I know, but I take my victories where I find them.

“Well,” she said again, and I felt my victory slipping away. True, I wanted her help. I just couldn’t handle her pity. “That’s not so bad,” she finally said, in a you’re-bankrupt-and-your-dog-died-but-it’ll-be-okay kind of voice. “I mean, it was still sex, right?”

This from the woman whose boyfriend just might be a superhero named Erection-Man. Mitch would come over after work, see her puttering in her kitchen wearing a ratty T-shirt and gym socks, and get so turned-on he’d bend her over the table and have his way with her. “We live in different universes, Carla,” I said.

To her credit, she looked a little sheepish. It wasn’t as though she didn’t realize how fabulous her sex life was. But then, Carla’s one of those beautiful people. Perfect face, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect job. No lumps, no bumps, not even a tiny acne scar. Smart, too. The kind of woman you’d want to kill if she weren’t so darn nice.

“Have you put any thought into when you’re going to do the legwork necessary to reach this nirvana of sexual prowess?”

I made a face. Mostly because Carla was being typically Carla and reverting to what I call her adult-speak voice—which is what she does whenever she thinks anyone is acting like an idiot. But also because, frankly, I hadn’t put any thought into my newly announced resolution.

“That’s what I thought,” Carla said, making me scowl even more. “I mean, come on, Mattie. You’ve been working like a fiend for months. This is your first weekend off in forever.”

That was true enough. I work at John Layman Productions, and if the company sounds familiar, then you’re probably one of those people who watches really bad reality programming about celebrities that no one cares about anymore. Not that I’m criticizing my boss’s chosen field or anything (ahem). I mean, it pays the bills. But, honestly, does anyone really care about kids who were celebrities when they were six, then fell off the map during the last two decades? And if somebody does care enough to tune in every night at eleven, then, you know, maybe that person just needs to get a life.

All JLP programs have excellent ratings, though. So either I’m wrong, or there are a whole lot of people out there with no life whatsoever.

In fact, there are so many people out there tuning in that JLP is adding five new shows to our already overstuffed production schedule. And that, as Carla pointed out, is keeping me tethered to the office and, late in the evening, to my home computer. In fact, the only reason I have this weekend off is because the company’s computer network crashed. Since John’s currently following some stick-thin, party girl celebrity around Rio, he actually shut work down for a long weekend while the computer gurus do their thing. Amazing, but true. (Although he did instruct our furniture supplier to deliver a bookshelf and lateral filing cabinet to my apartment so that I can, in the words of my boss, “work even more efficiently on evenings and weekends.” Yeah, love you too, John. At the moment, four very large, very heavy boxes are sitting in my living room, waiting for me to suck it up and begin assembling my home office suite.

Carla also works in television. Her boss, however, is Timothy Pierpont, the Emmy- and Oscar-winning producer who’s giving Bruckheimer and Bochco a run for their money with his original, provocative programming. What did I tell you? Carla, perfect. Me, perfectly wretched.

As I pondered my wretchedness, I noticed that Carla was tapping her chin with her index finger, a sure sign that she was deep in thought.

“What?” I demanded.

“I’m just thinking that maybe your schedule can work to your benefit,” she said.

“Explain, please.”

“If you have no free time, then no one will get the impression it’s about commitment. It must be a fling, because who has time for anything else?”

“Right,” I said, drawing out the word as I tried to anticipate where she was going.

Carla, however, sped up, her voice channeling my earlier enthusiasm. “You should go for it. Definitely. Get out there and have a wild time.” She leaned back, her arms crossed over her chest and a smug smile brightening her face. “And I know just how you should start.”

I narrowed my eyes, smelling a trick. “How?”

“Cullen Slater.” She spoke the name like an incantation, then waited for me to react. She didn’t have long to wait.

“Have you gone mental?” Dark and dangerous, Slater was a very gainfully employed male model who alternated between a Ferrari and a Harley, sported a perfect five o’clock shadow no matter the time of day, and tended to date women whose clothes consisted of colorful adhesive strips. Well, date may give the wrong impression since I never saw any of his women more than once. But our apartments shared a common wall, and I can say with absolute certainty that none of his women left Slater’s apartment unsatisfied. Or well rested.

Cullen Slater is the reason I started sleeping with earplugs. Considering my newly announced resolution, I should probably trash the earplugs and buy a vibrator.

Carla’s coral-pink lips curved in smug satisfaction. “You’ve seen the kind of girls he’s always dragging up the stairs at three in the morning.”

“Slater is a god among men,” I said. “And I have seen those women. There’s no way he’d be interested in me.”

Carla lifted one shoulder in a dainty gesture. “Don’t sell yourself short, Mat. He’s gorgeous, yes, but you’re not too shabby. And you’re brilliant and articulate and what guy wouldn’t want you?”

I let that one hang, because in my experience with guys like Cullen—as in, guys whose talents run more toward the camera than the cognitive—brilliant and articulate weren’t that much of an asset. Come to think of it, those two traits weren’t exactly a selling point to any man, IQ notwithstanding. Breasts, I think, were the common denominator among men. And on that score, I was definitely only average.

Carla, however, was on a roll. “And he always asks you to bring in his mail when he’s out of town,” she pointed out, “so we already know that he trusts you. He must like you, too. And if you can get Slater in your bed, you’ll know you’ve reached some sort of slut nirvana.”

My stomach did one of those dropping-off-a-cliff numbers.

Slater.

I took a deep breath, felt beads of sweat form on my forehead, and silently agreed that Cullen Slater was an idea worth pondering. Not to mention a goal worth reaching.

Cullen Slater. The consummate bad boy.

Slater. And me. Me and Slater.

In bed.

In me.

Oh my.

MIKE PETERSON COULDN’T concentrate on his book, even though he usually glommed on to anything and everything by Stephen King. Today, even a reread of the horrors that plagued poor Derry, Maine, couldn’t compare to what he’d just heard as he’d been walking past the laundry room toward the pool.

Mattie Brown was looking to ratchet up her sex life.

He gripped the book a little bit tighter as an image of Mattie slipped into his mind. Her quick smile. The friendly waves as they passed on the stairs. The way she tossed her hair when she scanned her mail.