"If Alicia Bright had learned one lesson in life it was that the more settled things seemed to be, the more likely they were to get messed up."

— Sex, Drugs, and Murder

The downside of writing sex scenes is that my mother reads my books.

Until I die I will be haunted by the memory of my mother confronting me after reading my first novel. She stood in the living room of my San Francisco apartment with one slightly arthritic hand resting on her robust hip and the other waving my book in front of my face. "I ask you," she said, "how can a nice Jewish girl write such a thing? It's not bad enough you should give me ulcers with all this talk of killing, but now you have to write about naked people too? I thought only shiksas wrote such things."

I somehow resisted the impulse to run and made the stupid mistake of trying to reason with her. "No, Mama," I said, "smut is nondenominational." But my mother wasn't satisfied with that, so she highlighted the scenes, took the book to her rabbi and asked him for his opinion of her daughter, the sex fiend. The rabbi, who in all likelihood was just slightly less mortified than I was, assured her that writing about sex between two consenting adults within a loving, albeit edgy relationship was in no way a violation of the Torah. After that my mother approached almost every member of the congregation, proudly showed them my book and said things like, "Can you believe this? My daughter the author. And you should read the sex scenes. Now if she would just do some of the things she writes about, I could be a grandmother already."

I don't go to that synagogue anymore.

Finding a new congregation was really the only way to avoid embarrassment, since blending into the background was not an option for me. With the exception of my father, I am the only black temple member that Sinai has ever had, which makes me pretty easy to spot. My nationality is an endless source of entertainment for the public. My skin is the color of a well-brewed latte (double shot), and while the mass of textured hair that hangs to my shoulders is frizzy, it's not exactly 'fro material, so people are constantly mistaking me for Brazilian, Hispanic, Puerto Rican, Egyptian, Israeli — you name it. I am spokeswoman for all people. Or at least all people with a slutty imagination.

I finished typing the details of my hero's and heroine's erogenous zones and switched scenes to the apartment of the gourmet chef who was about to be bludgeoned to death with a large toaster oven. How long would it take him to die? Ten minutes, fifteen...

I started at the sound of my buzzer going off and checked the time on the bottom right of my computer screen. Shit.

My hands balled up into two tight fists. There's nothing worse than walking away from a keyboard while on a roll. I tapped ctrl S and walked to the entryway to buzz in my guests. I listened as the sound of heavy heels trailed by rubber soles pounded up three stories' worth of stairs.

"How are you holding up?" Dena gave my arm a quick squeeze before peeling off her leather blazer and draping it over a dining chair.

Mary Ann followed her into the apartment and threw her arms around my neck before I had a chance to respond. "Oh my God, Sophie, I'm so sorry! I've never known anyone who's done anything like that. I think I would just be a wreck if I were in your shoes."

I pulled away from the stranglehold and searched Mary Ann's blue eyes for some clue as to what she was talking about. "Okay, I give. Were you speaking in code or am I just so sleep deprived that the English language no longer makes sense to me?"

Dena raised a thick Sicilian eyebrow and seated herself on the armrest of my sofa. "You haven't turned on the TV news today, have you?"

"Well, I read the morning paper, but no, I didn't see the news shows. You know me, when I'm writing I sometimes tune out —"

"Tolsky killed himself, Sophie. They found him last night."

Okay, I was definitely sleep deprived, because there was no way that Dena had just said what I thought she said. "I can't imagine how this could possibly be funny, but I'm waiting for the punch line."

Mary Ann was on her feet. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I just thought you knew!"

I could hear the distant sounds of a siren screeching its warning. This was wrong. It was a misunderstanding of some kind. "I just talked to Tolsky two weeks ago." I enunciated the words carefully as if by doing so I could help Dena and Mary Ann realize their mistake. "He said he couldn't wait to see my screenplay. He told me where he was going to film the movie. He told me where he was going to be next week. He told me which actors he was going to approach. Do you see where I'm heading with this? Tolsky was going to do a lot of stuff. He had plans. I may only have spoken to him a few times, but I know this was not a man who was planning on taking his own life."

"Well, he may not have been planning it two weeks ago, but he sure as hell did it last night." Dena nodded to Mary Ann, and continued, "I saw an Examiner downstairs in the lobby, it's probably in there."

Mary Ann tugged nervously on a chestnut-brown curl before hurrying out to retrieve the afternoon publication.

"You weren't close to him, right?" Dena asked. "You just met him that one time?"

"Yeah, just the one time he came up to talk to me about the possibility of turning Sex,Drugs and Murder into a movie. We talked about it on the phone a few times afterward. He seemed like a nice enough guy, maybe a little larger than life, but nothing that you wouldn't expect from a Hollywood producer.... Dena are you sure about this?"

"Oh, I'm sure, and if you thought he was larger than life, then wait until you hear how he chose to orchestrate his exit."

Mary Ann breezed in with the paper in hand. I'm in pretty good shape but it seems to me that after climbing three f lights of stairs two times over she should be sweating, not glowing. I took the Examiner from her and read the headline, "Michael Tolsky Commits Suicide, Death Imitates Art." I placed the paper against the unfinished wood of the dining table and sat down to read.

"Right out of a movie...literally." Dena ruff led her own short dark hair and relaxed back into the cushions.

"I don't mean to be disrespectful, but what a frigging drama queen."

I reread the description of his death. Tolsky had slit his wrists in a bathtub. The scene was right out of his film Silent Killer. He had even taken care to put vanilla- scented candles around the room, just as his character had done before his premature end. I tried to picture Tolsky lying naked in a pool of his own blood, his round rosy face devoid of animation. At our lunch meeting his presence had been so large that I had worried there wouldn't be enough room in the restaurant for the other patrons. How could things have changed that quickly?

"Of all his films, why recreate that scene?" I used my finger to trace a circle around the paragraph describing the incident. "I don't get it. In Silent Killer, it wasn't even a real suicide. It was a murder made to look like a suicide. Have the police considered that this might not be what it seems?"

"Read the whole article," Dena said. "There was a note." Mary Ann nodded vigorously. "Mmm-hmm, a suicide note."

"Oh, good thing you clarified that one — I'm sure Sophie thought I was talking about a piece of music."

Mary Ann ignored Dena and continued to recite the information she had gathered. "He gave all the servants the day off — the maid, the chauffeur, everybody. I guess he was really upset over his wife leaving him. His blood alcohol level was like double the legal limit. I just feel so sad for him."

I focused on the headshot of Tolsky on the front page. So maybe he had planned it. Just woke up one morning and decided to check out. I probably should have felt sad for him too. Maybe I'd have felt more sympathetic if I had liked him more, or if I hadn't always considered suicide a cruel copout, or if I wasn't such a coldhearted capitalist bitch. What about my screenplay!

"You know, if he was so depressed about his marriage, why the hell didn't he try to win her back? She only left him a week ago. I mean, did he try f lowers? Diamonds? Marriage counseling? Anything?"

"Would that have worked for Scott after you filed?" Mary Ann asked.

"No, but Scott was a freeloading, adulterous loser, that's why our marriage lasted less than two years. The Tolskys were married for twenty-five years, so obviously he had something going for him. You don't invest that kind of time and energy into a relationship, and then just roll over and play dead the minute things start to go sour." I winced at my own choice of words. "What I meant was...or what I didn't mean...you know what? This really sucks." I dropped my head onto the table and tried to suppress the frustrated scream burning my throat.

"Face it." Dena stretched her short muscular legs out in front of her. "He was a man of extremes, and when he got depressed, he did it in a big way. The whole way he recreated his movie scene was a pathetic but successful attempt to get everybody to sit up and take notice." She used her foot to gently steer my feline, Mr. Katz, away from her black pants. "This screws you up big-time, huh?"

"Damn right it does!" The chair screeched against the hardwood f loor as I pushed myself back from the table. "He was just Mr. Enthusiastic about that project. Why did he even approach me about adapting my manuscript for him if he didn't plan on hanging around long enough to see a first draft?"

"And you know that people are lining up at the video stores to rent his films," Dena added. "If he could have just held off for a little longer, your little movie could have benefited from this postmortem media blitz."

"Gee, thanks for making me feel better about this." I squeezed my eyes closed and took a steadying breath. Let it go...there'd be other chances. They may not materialize for another ten years but that only brought me to forty. I might still be able to wear a size-six gown while collecting my Academy Award at that age. Sarah Jessica Parker was forty and she looked pretty good. I opened my eyes again and stared up at the halogen lighting above me. "Maybe I should put a rumor out that I'm terminally ill. Do you think I'd get another offer to turn my books into screenplays if I were facing imminent death?"

"Terminally ill doesn't count," Dena said. "Either you stop breathing or you'll just have to trudge along with the rest of us."

"Maybe I could do a Van Gogh thing and cut off my ear or something. That might get people's attention."

"Didn't do a lot for Van Gogh." Dena brought her hands to the back of her head in order to administer a self- indulgent massage. "From what I understand, it didn't even get him laid. Didn't his girlfriend break up with him after he gave it to her as a gift? She probably sent him a note in reply reading, "I said earring, you idiot!"

I couldn't help but laugh at that.

Mary Ann went to the kitchen and pulled a bag of microwave popcorn out of the cupboard. "Well, if all he wanted was to keep his name in the papers a little longer, wouldn't it have been easier to just make another movie?" she asked. Her eyes widened and she dropped the popcorn bag on the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room. "Oh my God, maybe it was an accident. Maybe he was shaving and he cut himself by mistake!"

If anyone else had said it I would have immediately assumed they were joking, but I knew Mary Ann well enough to be sure that the poor thing was totally serious. I bit down hard on my lip and tried to think about starving people in Africa, or the destruction of the rain forest, or anything to keep me from laughing.

Dena was not so kind. "I cannot believe we share the same gene pool. If anyone asks, please point out that you're my second cousin, and if you can fit in the 'once removed' part, I'd appreciate it."