Night Work

Chapter One

Three Times as Many Doors

In New York City there are at least three times as many doors as people. Front doors to homes and apartments. Back doors to alleys and driveways. Doors to restaurants. Doors to clubs and bars. Doors to brownstones and tenements, to sitting rooms and dayrooms and night rooms (also known as bedrooms). And there are doors inside doors -- doors to other doors and other realities, doors to the rooms where you expose yourself, where you embrace the things you love so dearly you share them with only a well-chosen few. I work behind those closed doors, places where what happens is just between the people there and no one else has to know. I work in darkness even when the light is on. You see, my name is Night and I do night work.

Like Curtis Mayfield sang, "Dark as the night with the moon shining bright." I'm as dark as Michael Jordan or Tyson Beckford. Smooth and black and glowing. Sometimes I look at myself naked in the mirror above my bed and watch how the light bounces off my skin, how it reflects the curves and muscles God gave me, and I smile at my ebony beauty.

I didn't always apprecia ... read full excerpt from Night Work: A Novel ebook