Fools for Lust by Maxim Jakubowski

would. I could sense it in the air, Callie was in Manhattan. Probably no more than a mile or two away. I had to find her. I would find her.
    29 September, 1999
Finally managed a meeting with her agent, a perky preppy twerp with regulation red braces and an insincere smile. No, Miss Blackheath is quite adamant that she wishes to retain her privacy. Did you know we’ve a Hollywood option for the book? Gwyneth Paltrow is being lined up. Personally I’d have gone for Anne Heche, you know, but she’s a hard sell for romantic stories now, of course. If it were up to me I’d love her to consent to an interview. Would help sales. The absent author lark has its drawbacks, you see. He relented slightly, assuring me he would contact her and strongly recommend she agree to seeing me. Absolutely loved the magazine I was pretending to write for. Really. But that’s all he could do. He did have this other client, an ex-stripper and dominatrix who lived in Alphabet City and now penned very erotic books. Great angle. Wouldn’t a feature on her be great? She wouldn’t mind being photographed in the nude, you see. He would get in touch, one way or the other when Katherine Blackheath responded to my request. No, he didn’t know how long it would take.
    I tried to squeeze some more information out of him. Background stuff for my piece. How had he come to represent her? In fact it was another agent who had since departed from the agency and he had only just taken over her affairs. Had never actually met her. Loved the book. So funny. I noted the previous agent’s name. He’d moved to Los Angeles as a reader for a film company.
    In her novel, Callie’s character had decamped to California and become involved in the making of hardcore porno films. Jotting things down on automatic pilot, in the agent’s office with its panoramic views of downtown Manhattan, I recalled the feel of her lips, in London rooms, caressing the dangling sac of my balls, teasing my rigid stem, before tenderly devouring me whole.
    I don’t think I can really tell you more, the agent said, rising from his padded chair. On the way out, I smiled broadly at one of the young women at a nearby desk. Asked if she was his assistant. No, just an intern. I smiled again. English accents are popular here. A possible future contact?
    12 October, 1999
I know it’s you, the letter said. Do not try and find me, I implore you, if you have any decency left in your body. Let me be.
    Who cares about decency? What the fuck does it have to do with us? I must see you, Callie, or whatever your name really is or was, or is now, Katherine. Please, I answered, sending the letter care of the agency.
    At night in my hotel room, I read her few lines a thousand times over. Smelt the paper, desperately attempting to retrieve even a trace of her scent. Two years ago, I had mentally catalogued every one of her fragrances, from the bitter sweet smell of her breath on awakening in strange, sordid hotel rooms, which she always tried to obliterate with mints, to the pungent aroma of her under-arm perspiration following our exaggerated sexual exertions, to the unique perfumes of her inner secretions which I would greedily suck from her as she spread herself open for me.
    I still love you madly, I wrote her with a distinct lack of originality. And whatever I have done wrong, I beg for your forgiveness. I must see you. At least, let’s talk. It kills me that I don’t know the answers.
    24 October, 1999
No. I swore it was over, Joe, and nothing you could say or write could make me change my mind now
    Stop stalking me. It doesn’t suit you. At all.
    It will soon be the year 2000. Can’t you understand once and for all that I have rejected you and call an end to this sorry episode?
    Do not write again. I will not answer any more.
    She signed the letter Katherine Blackheath. It was just addressed to Joe. Not even Dear Joe.
    How definitive she could