The Last Manly Man (35 page)

“You don't understand. We must get married.”

“Why? You're not pregnant, right? You said you haven't had sex yet …”

“Swear you won't tell anyone this,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“My people come from a country where marriages are arranged. My parents wanted me to marry someone I do not love. So I had to run away.”

“Oh. Okay, but why do you also have to get married to another man? Marriage is a big step …”

“Why? Don't be an idiot. Because I'm in love,” she said.

“Where are your people from?” I asked her.

“Plotzonia,” she said.

“Plotzonia?”

“That's what I call it,” she said.

“What's it really called?”

“It's better if you don't know,” she said.

I pressed her, but she wouldn't tell me the real name of the place. She said her family had moved back there from America a year or so before. It was apparently a pretty backward place with arranged marriages, lots of hostage-taking, no decent malls, bagels, or discos, and the whole country smelled as if dirty socks were burning all the time. Her parents were very controlling, and while in Plotzonia she spent most of her time in her room watching satellite TV with her cousins and chatting on the Internet. She'd met Tamayo on the Net.

Then, six months earlier, while on a shopping trip to New York with her “family chaperone,” she'd ditched the chaperone and come to stay here at the Chelsea with Tamayo for a week. It was after that escapade, she said, that her family decided to marry her off sooner rather than later.

“You understand now?” she said.

“I understand the part about choosing your own life. Getting married, though … You seem awfully young to be getting married, if you don't mind me saying so.”

“I do mind. What difference does age make, when you've met your soul mate?” she said.

“Oh yeah, soul mates. I've had a couple dozen of those.”

“If you knew him as I do …,” she said, and went into a paean to her man.

You'd think this guy was God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost rolled up with Leonardo DiCaprio and Alan Greenspan from the way she talked, the way her eyelashes fluttered, her face glowed, and her breath kept catching in her throat. Clearly, this girl was in the grip of The Madness, that biologically induced hallucination designed to make young people mate, breed, and buy a lot of consumer goods to salve the misery of an early marriage. It was probably no good pointing this out to her. People in the grip of that madness can't see reason.

“He's The One,” she said, in summation, sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Does he have a job? How will you live? Where will you live?”

“Why do you need to know so much?” she snapped, and grew suspicious again.

“I don't. Whatever. It's your life. Blessings, et cetera. I'm going to take a shower now and then crash if you don't mind.”

While I was showering, the phone rang. Nadia must have jumped on it because it only rang once. She hollered something, but I couldn't make it out over the sound of the water. The next thing I heard was the door slamming, and when I came out, she was gone.

A book she'd been reading,
Man Trap
, was on the table. I took it to bed with me, figuring it would either be good for a few laughs or put me to sleep. It was frankly hard to resist the testimonials on the back from women who had almost lost hope, then found the men of their dreams thanks to the
Man Trap
Way. It wasn't Nadia's book. According to the note inside, it had been loaned to her by someone named Maggie M., who wrote, “When your man is starting to drift away, use this book to bring him back.”

Louise Bryant jumped up and parked her carcass next to mine on the loft bed as I opened
Man Trap.
A matchbook Nadia had used as a bookmark fell out. Thinking it might provide a clue about where she was from, I picked it up and looked at it. But it was local, from a place called Bus Stop Bar & Grill, and it showed a black silhouette of a building on a red background. The match-book was either really outdated or really retro and cool. I couldn't decide.

Inside, in Tamayo's handwriting, were the words, “Say hey to Stinky for me. T.” I had to laugh. It was just like Tamayo to know a guy named Stinky.

Man Trap
was a very Machiavellian program of tyranny tempered with indulgence, with chapter headings like “Choosing Your Prey,” “The Right Bait,” “Setting the Man Trap,” “It's Kind to Be Cruel,” “Pulling the Strings,” “When to Use Tears” (and other weapons God gave us), and “Playing Hard to Get.” This book was the latest in a whole industry of books telling women how to plot against men to get commitment without sex, and books telling men how to plot against women to get sex without commitment.

Two pages into chapter two, as I was learning how to feign a combination of simmering sexuality, sexual innocence, and moral superiority (because men are supposed to find this irresistible), my eyelids grew heavy. I was almost asleep when I thought I heard the front door slam.

“Hello?” I called out.

There was no answer.

“Hello?” I said again, then got up, grabbed my rifle, and went to the door. I couldn't see through the peephole and figured some jokester had his or her finger over it. Very quietly, I slipped the chain off, planning to open the door really fast so whoever it was would lose their balance and stumble into the apartment.

But when I jerked the door open, a body fell forward onto me, landing on me with such force that I almost lost my footing and fell flat on my ass. I was face-to-face with Gerald, the man who kind of looked like Gregory Peck. I pushed him off me, and he fell backward, onto the hallway floor.

He was bleeding. He opened his mouth and said something that sounded like, “Bye,” and then he died.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

They say it takes a thousand old books to make one new book, or something like that, but in my case, it takes about a thousand people. After all these folks have done to feed, inspire, cajole, protect me, make me laugh, or whatever, it's the least, the very least, I can do, to thank them.

Information on the bonobo chimps was obtained via the An-thro-L listserv;
Bonobo—The Forgotten Ape
, by Frans de Waal; a Natalie Angier article that appeared in the
New York Times
; and the Save the Bonobos Foundation. I am also indebted to the folks on the Utopia-L, Forteana-L, and Dorothy-L listservs for their advice and other contributions.

Thank you, Russ Galen, my agent, who really worked his ass off and got me through some crazy times; Danny Baror, my foreign rights agent, who brings his Israeli tank commander experience to his battles on behalf of me and his other writers; Claire Wachtel, my editor at Morrow, and a long-suffering angel; Paul Fedorko of Morrow, for his enormous faith and encouragement; Susan Isaacs for all her good advice, encouragement, and for being such a good sport when I got us kicked out of the University Club; Paul Mougey, who came up with the name “Sad Marquis”; David Bernknopf, who coined the term “squirrel on waterskis”; Simon Brett, for turning me on to humorous mysteries and going out of his way to meet with me in London; Gerrit Kuilder at the American Book Center in Amsterdam; Ion Mills and Pam Smith of No Exit Press in the U.K., even though they are terrible slave drivers and, frankly, insane; Adrian Muller at Crime in Store, London; Geoff Mulligan, for taking me to No Exit; Otto Penzler of Mysterious Book Shop; Scott Sellars at Penguin Canada; and Charlie Gillett of Oval in London for providing a soundtrack for the last revisions!

At the Chelsea Hotel, Scott Griffin, John Wells, Arnold Weinstein, and Nile Cmylo made inestimable contributions to the writing of this book, and, as always, the staff and management's faith sustained me.

Also, thanks to Jed Sutton—everyone needs a friend who will hold their hair when they throw up; Eddie Dixon; Bill the IMC handyman; Stu who became Blue; and X, the handsome young man who unwittingly gives me a recharge every time he walks below my balcony.

About the Author

Sparkle Hayter has been a journalist for CNN and other news organizations, a stringer in Afghanistan, a producer in Bollywood, a stand-up comic in New York, a caretaker for an elderly parent in Canada, and a novelist ofseven books. And some other things that are kind of a blur now. Her articles have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the
New York Times
, the
Nation
, and
New Woman
. She currently lives in Canada with her rescued Nepali street dog, Alice, and is working on a new book.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1998 by Sparkle Hayter

Cover design by Jesse Hayes

ISBN: 978-1-4976-7834-7

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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