The Better to Hold You

Praise for Alisa Sheckley

writing as Alisa Kwitney

“If Milan Kundera, Tama Janowitz and Dr. Joyce Brothers had collaborated on a book, they might have come up with this imaginative and quirky first novel.”

—MAXINE CHERNOFF,

The New York Times Book Review

“A lively novel and a compulsive read, which is saying a lot—and it taught me a thing or two, which is saying even more.”

“Subversive, revolutionary … It’s great!”

—CAROLYN SEE, Los Angeles Times

“A delicious confection, as tart and spikey as a lemon meringue pie.”

—LAURIE MUCHNIK, Newsday

“Bright and funny and remarkably poised.”

—The Boston Globe

“A cool, funny, stylish, and very original look at life and love in Manhattan, by a remarkable new writer.”

“Hip, contemporary, Alisa Kwitney is also a stylist: funny and wonderful, witty and philosophical.”

“Till the Fat Lady Sings is an engrossing satire of the New York female intelligentsia.”

“An immensely poised and well-crafted performance, which kept me smiling to myself throughout.”

“This exciting tease of a novel will set your heart pounding like the best love affair. Smart, funny, sexy—I loved it!”

—PAMELA REDMOND SATRAN,

author of The Man I Should Have Married and Suburbanistas

“Flirting in Cars is a modern-day fairy tale about finding happily-ever-after where you least expect it. I couldn’t put it down.”

—KAREN QUINN,

author of The Ivy Chronicles and Wife in the Fast Lane

“Alisa Kwitney’s cross-cultural love story is intelligent, funny, and sexy.”

—THELMA ADAMS, US Weekly

“The romance between Kat and Magnus is, except for the CIA part, true-to-life and achingly bittersweet. Kwitney even gives them one of the sexiest scenes involving two forty-somethings since The Thomas Crown Affair.”

—DEBRA PICKETT of the Chicago Sun-Times

“An engaging and intelligently written comedy—with a few genuinely titillating sex scenes.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Sex as a Second Language, Alisa Kwitney’s smart, sassy, sexy tale of the single mom who brings in a spy from the cold and warms him up, is funny and emotionally true, a great read!”

—JENNIFER CRUSIE, bestselling author of Bet Me

“Less concerned with embarrassing pratfalls for her neurotic heroines than many of her chick-lit sisters, Kwitney still wants them to find love, and not a little bit of sex. The single girl here is Marlowe, a Manhattan psychologist with divorced parents providing her with distant affection and a trust fund. Joe is the NYPD detective with more crime smarts than tact…. The relationship is fitful, playful and exciting, then cold and hostile, swinging wildly about as each tries to figure out what game the other is playing, all the while trying to find the killer to boot. Kwitney deserves credit for not throwing out illogical roadblocks, and there’s a refreshing absence of stock best-friend characters.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A teasingly good read. Sexy, sassy and a little kinky. A different take on Manhattan life—more handcuffs than cocktails.”

—CAROLE MATTHEWS, USA Today bestselling author

DOES SHE OR DOESN’T SHE?

“Alisa Kwitney is my guilty plea sure.”

—NEIL GAIMAN,

Hugo Award-winning author of American Gods and

New York Times bestselling author of Coraline

“Witty, charming, funny and real, Alisa Kwitney brings a fresh voice to Chick-Lit and Romance!”

—JENNIFER CRUSIE, New York Times bestselling author

“Sharp, sassy, and sexy.”

—CARLY PHILLIPS, New York Times bestselling author

“Her search for the perfect boyfriend and the perfect hair-color is delightful. It belongs right up there with all the legally and naturally blonde bombshells of our time.”

—LIZ SMITH, nationally syndicated columnist

BY ALISA SHECKLEY WRITING AS ALISA KWITNEY

Flirting in Cars

Sex as a Second Language

On the Couch

Does She or Doesn’t She?

The Dominant Blonde

Till the Fat Lady Sings

Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold

Vertigo Visions: Art from the Cutting Edge of Comics

Sandman: King of Dreams

Token

This one’s for Mark,

who feeds me,

keeps me sane,

and reminds me that I say

there’s no way I can make

my deadline every year.

I wrote this book five long years ago and was helped in my research by a lovely young veterinary intern at a large teaching hospital of veterinary medicine in Manhattan. I’ve lost the intern’s name, and the hospital asked me to lose theirs when I mentioned werewolves and mad scientists. But thank you both all the same. More recently, one of my local vets at the Pine Plains Veterinary Practice, Dorraine Waldow, helped me sort out my (fictional) sedatives.

This is the first novel I’ve written using the name on my birth certificate; I’d like to thank my father, the late, great science fiction writer and grand master of irony Robert Sheckley, for all the writing advice he gave me over the years.

My mother, Ziva, believed in this book from the first, but I might never have taken it out of its drawer if Neil Gaiman hadn’t prodded me by asking what had become of it, and if my marvelous and motivational agent, Meg Ruley, hadn’t believed in it and helped find it a home. Liz Scheier, my editor, inspired me to go back into this world and helped me to realize how much larger and more complex it really was, and Holly Harrison kept me from getting lost, freaking out, and forgetting how everything tied together.

Kim Canez and my son, Matthew, have braved snow, rain, ticks, mud, snakes, and a very aggressive fawn to go dog walking with me in the woods, which is vital when writing a wolfish book; Liz Maverick and the rest of my bat guano posse helped keep me a prisoner of Starbuck’s until it was written. Last but not least, a special mention for my wolf-loving daughter, Elinor, who slammed her pinky finger in the car door just as my agent was telling me about Ballantine’s offer, thereby sealing my fate in blood.

There are many different Manhattans. Which one you happen to live in depends partly on geography and partly on perception. I live on the Upper West Side, in the midst of an eccentric animal kingdom.

In my Manhattan, people like their animals big: aristocratic hunting dogs with wide, soft mouths, overfed guard dogs and pit bull mixes, sled dogs that have kept the look of a wolf about them. These are large animals for large apartments: six-room prewars, with a couple of children and possibly a weekend home in the Hamptons. Nobody has time to go jogging with the dog anymore, and the nanny refuses to pick up feces from the sidewalk, so a walker is hired.

Elsewhere, on the East Side, are toy breeds with their adorably hydrocephalic heads. The owners are older; the children have grown up and been replaced by skittish canine midgets with the appeal of perpetual infancy. Downtown are the elaborately designed fashion victims, entrancingly ugly breeds with faces wreathed in wrinkles, their noses squashed up between their eyes. They are dragged behind their fit and fabulous owners, panting from their deformed jaws.

And then there are the exotics: lizards, parrots, rabbits, the odd squirrel monkey or de-glanded skunk. I don’t usually see these outside of work, but then, they’re not my specialty: They belong to someone else’s Manhattan. So I suppose I was a little startled to see the man with the baby barn owl on his shoulder, although not as surprised as the other subway riders.

The man had a quality of alertness about him that didn’t quite seem to match his appearance. He had that look you get from sleeping rough: T-shirt not quite clean, the worn cotton molded to his wiry chest. I noticed that the man’s eyes were a pale hazel, almost yellow, as he kept moving his gaze around the subway car, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. I wondered where he had found the little gray bird, which had sunk into itself, but stopped myself from asking him. Most people think they’re rescuing owlets when all they’re really doing is stealing the baby on its first day out of the nest. My friend Lilliana can explain this to people and they’ll frown and say they had no idea, but when I open my mouth, people tend to get red in the face and become defensive.

The little owl huddled closer to the man’s neck and he reached back and patted it, shifting his other hand from strap to pole. A blond businesswoman sidled away and I saw the man notice.

Then, for a moment, the man met my eyes, a half-smile on his lips, as if he had something amusing to impart. I turned away from him, because I don’t approve of people wearing animals as accessories. Particularly wild creatures, which are far more delicate than you might think.

I knew this because we get the odd raptor at the Animal Medical Institute. We’re the only veterinary ser vice in the New York area that caters to exotics, so we’re pretty much the only game in town if your anaconda loses its appetite or your parrot breaks its foot. We ‘ r e also the only place in the tristate area that can do dialysis on cats and the best place to give your dog chemo. But somehow I didn’t think the raggedy man was taking his little pal in for a checkup. I was wondering if I owed it to the owl to intervene when the subway screeched to a stop and the doors opened. There was a reshuffling of bodies and I realized that the person pressing against my back had gotten off, giving me room to breathe again. Reflexively, I lifted my hand to adjust my pocketbook strap, only to find that there was no pocketbook there.

I felt a moment of disorientation. Was it possible that I’d left home without it? Had it fallen to the floor? And then, on the heels of these thoughts, the realization: Someone had stolen my bag. I said it out loud, half in disbelief, just as the subway gave a hiss and a jolt, the doors closed, and the train began to move again.

I looked around, wildly, as if I expected the thief to still be there. But of course, whoever it was would have gotten off the train. Around me, people were watching with various degrees of sympathy, alarm, and disinterest. I met the raggedy man’s eyes and he gave a little shrug as if to say, Sorry, but it wasn’t me.

A heavyset woman with a vast ledge of a bosom patted my shoulder, and there were murmurs from the other women and some of the men. “What happened?” “Somebody stole her bag.” “Didn’t you feel anything?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t feel a thing.” I felt a rising panic as my fellow passengers checked their own bags and briefcases and wallets. But they were fine, while I was suddenly stranded without money, credit cards, cell phone, and keys. I tried to remember how much cash I’d been carrying. Crap. I’d just gone to the bank yesterday after work.

“They carry knives,” said a thin teenage boy, his oversized jeans hanging off his hips and revealing white boxers. “They just cut right through the strap, and bam—emergency surgery on your finances.” He looked at me with mock concern, aglow with his own cleverness. For a moment, I suspected the cocky boy of being the pickpocket, and then I turned, feeling the owl man regarding me with heavily lidded eyes and a cynical half-smile. He knew what I was thinking, and I could hear his judgment of me as if he’d said it out loud: racist. As if the color of the boy’s skin had anything to do with my momentary suspicion.

Flushed and embarrassed, I turned away. I realized with a clench of anger that the man had been observing me for a while—he might even have witnessed my being robbed without bothering to warn me. My heart pounding, I felt a wild urge to accuse him. He met my eyes as if he could read this thought as well, and then the subway lurched to a stop. Without actually making a decision, I found myself pushing through the crowd to get off.

On the subway platform, I tried to think things through. I was already going to be late for rounds, but I couldn’t wait till lunchtime to cancel all my credit cards. And whoever had taken my bag had my house keys along with my address. I had to tell my husband to change our locks.

Reflexively, I reached for my cell phone before remembering that of course, I’d lost that, too. I made my way back to the station agent, who was hiding behind the Plexiglas, pretending to be deaf.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep the note of hysteria out of my voice, “but my purse was just stolen. Do you think I could borrow your phone to make a local call?”

“I’ll make the call for you,” said the woman, apparently thinking this was some elaborate ruse to bilk the MTA. Maybe I should have gone for more hysteria. I told her my number and waited as she lethargically dialed my home.

“Nobody’s home.” She regarded me with blank indifference.

“He is home, he’s just sleeping the sleep of the seriously jet-lagged. Can you please try again?” My husband had just come back from Romania last night looking ill from fatigue, a good fifteen pounds thinner than I’d ever seen him before.