More Naughty Than Nice

“So you don’t think it’s demeaning for women to sleep around without being in love?”

“Demeaning? Who are you trying to kid?” She shrugged. “Men do it all the time. C’mon. Sex should be for fun. That’s all she’s trying to say. It’s only when you try to pretend that love is involved that things get screwed up. So don’t pretend. Let it be what it is and nobody gets hurt. Right?”

“That’s the theory, anyway.”

A phone rang from over in Sports, and she took off to answer. Backpedaling, she called out, “You need anything, you let me know, okay, Dasher? I’d love to work for you.”

“Sure, sure.” As he watched her pick up her phone across the wide newsroom, typing quickly onto her computer, he mused on her reaction. It seemed reasonable, after all, when she framed it like that. Sex is for fun. It’s only when you try to pretend that love is involved that things get screwed up.

But could people—male or female—live that way? Could they really go around, taking whoever caught their fancy, without wanting something more?

It was a puzzle. And so was Stevie Bliss.

His mind replayed their encounter, including the little moan, without even bothering to listen to the tape. Amazing. And it wasn’t just the question of how someone that bold could seem surprised or caught unawares by her own physical response. No, it was more about how she’d gotten to be Stevie Bliss.

Who was she, under all the prepackaged wrappings? Where had this Blissfully Single idea come from? Beautiful women didn’t just wake up one day and decide they were never going to fall in love, never going to get married, without some kind of provocation. What happened to Stevie Bliss?

He certainly didn’t have any answers from their short interview. It rankled that he was really a very good reporter and interviewer, and yet this time, he had done such a lousy job. What, had he asked a total of three questions? And all three were annoyance questions more than anything useful. Never married, never left at the altar. If she was telling the truth, that was the sum total of what he’d found out that he didn’t already know from reading the book. Not a terribly complete personal profile.