“Ooh, Gianni, you are soooo wonderful.... Oh, baby, yes, yes, yes!”

“Hey, baby, I can say the same for you. You have the most delicious body. I want to kiss, and then lick, every bit of flesh.”

“Ooh, ah, oooh, Gianni darling! Put that big boy inside of me! Do it, do it, do it now!”

Rachel Elena Lael closed her book, leaned back against the headboard, and checked the clock on her nightstand. Oh, yes. Just like clockwork. At least her upstairs neighbor kept on schedule. The women in his bed might change, but the time and the pillow talk remained constant.

It was not that Rachel could complain. After all, the upstairs condo owner had a right to entertain. He never played loud music or raised his voice enough to consider it shouting. He didn’t stomp his feet or move heavy furniture. The problem lay in the vent for the centralized heating system. The duct ran from Rachel’s bedroom wall and up and over to Mr. Gianni Sloan’s master boudoir, and she really couldn’t hear much at all unless she really concentrated on listening. With the stereo or the television on in the bedroom, she heard nothing at all. So why did it annoy her so much?

Rachel did not consider herself a snoop, a voyeur, or a busy body. Far from it. She had far too much on her personal plate to worry about other people’s lives, or love lives as the case may be. So, she didn’t have a steady man in her life right now. She had Tepeyol, her temperamental but loving black and white cat who enjoyed sitting on the foot of her bed as he did at present. As far as dating anyone... Well, Rachel had decided to give up the dating scene for the moment. Despite what those matchmaking sites claimed as success rates, she had two very disappointing blind dates before she decided to call it quits with trying to find Mr. Right over the Internet.

Perhaps, Mr. Gianni Sloan from No. 5C irritated Rachel so much because he seemed the ultimate poster boy for the playboy types out in singles land who thought their come-on lines were so suave that women ate up every word they uttered. Obviously, many did, if the changing female voices upstairs proved indicative of his conquests.

Not that Rachel kept a tally, but so far she’d counted twenty-five different feminine voice tones in the past two months. Always good in math, she figured Mr. Gianni Sloan copulated with three-point-one females every week. That is different women. As far as Rachel could distinguish, each one was a newbie, who would come around again in the next cycle. Thus, in four months time, Mr. Sloan managed to score or recycle fifty women.

Tuning her stereo to a jazz station, Rachel turned it up just enough to cover the kissy-coo noises. Thankfully, her upstairs lady killer had wall-to-wall carpeting, or Rachel might have born witness to a whole lot of shaking and quaking going on once Mr. Stud really got started under or over the sheets. In the six months since Gianni Sloan had moved in, Rachel had yet to meet this God’s Gift to Women face-to-face. Not that she wanted to go looking for this lounge lizard, but he did have her imagining what he looked like, even what kind of sheets he preferred—one hundred percent cotton or maybe black satin?

Sometimes, while in the elevator or even in the laundry room, she wondered if the man in the suit standing next to her, or the one doing his tighty whities two washers down, could actually be him. Rachel knew his name from the elegant script across his post office box in the lobby, and though she sometimes lingered as she fetched her own mail, she had yet to catch a glimpse. Of course, the way his female conquests took his name in vain as they screamed in bloody passion only reinforced Gianni Sloan’s nomenclature. Now if she wanted to do a bit of digging, Rachel would probably come up with a tenant who knew something about this enigmatic Lothario. That was if she really wanted to find out more.

A firm Eoyow! came from the foot of her bed, and Rachel offered her apologies to Tepe as she stretched and reached for her book and for him.

“You poor baby.” She stroked his soft fur. “I know I had you fixed, but you don’t want to go around boinking all the girl kitties every night like that tomcat upstairs, do you?” Tepe answered with a nuzzle and a firm purr before jumping out of her arms. Rachel took up her book.

Another Wednesday night, another journey into the romantic sexcapades of a Clarise Lamour novel. At least the cries of ecstasy from Gianni and his love interest had wafted away with the strains of a jazz quartet. Now, all she had to do was read about a magical night in the embrace of a fabulous, mythical hunk. Glancing at her nightstand, Rachel sighed. She always had her trusty vibrator.

* * * * *

“You know, I think we should go with the textured fabric for the walls in the den. Preferably in a buff, or maybe a desert taupe with sage accents. What do you think?” Sacha Kahlo, the other creative genius at Prestige by Design, cleared his throat. “Hello—Hola! You in there, Rachel?”

Rachel, who had been sitting at her drawing board, looked up from the container of untouched latte still grasped in her hands. She noticed Sacha Kahlo, the other creative genius at Prestige by Design, as well as the piercing look he gave her. “Oh, oh, yeah, sure. I think it’s a great idea.”

With a huff, Sacha clasped fists to each narrow hip. Not only did he have a flair for colors, but often for dramatics as well. “All right, then what did I just say?”

“Sandy...something.” Sighing, Rachel stretched and set her cup aside. “Sorry. I guess I’m off in lala land.”

Sacha’s tweezed and pampered brows rose. “Oh? What’s his name? Anyone I know?”

Rachel smiled. “No, I don’t think so. It’s nothing really.”

“Well, it has to be, girlfriend, to have you off in the clouds like that. If anyone knows romance it is moi!” Taking up a colored pencil, Sacha leaned his slender body over the work table and pointed it in Rachel’s direction. “You’re going to have to spill all over lunch. I insist, because I’m going to pay. But until then, can we get back to Mrs. Weissman’s multi-million dollar hacienda? She’s not paying us for a pink flamingo motif. She wants Southwest in the middle of Miami.”

With a slap on her swatches book, Rachel came back to the present. “All right, then, let’s give her Hopi pottery, yucca stalks and adobe.”

* * * * *

The beautiful day called for them to eat al fresco on the patio, beneath a fawning umbrella. As Rachel dug into her shrimp and spinach linguine, she related her tale between polite mouthfuls. As a firm believer in any story involving love and sex, Sacha ate up every word between bites of his pita sandwich. When she finished with her story, Rachel sat back and played with the ice in her peach tea. Splaying fingers on the tablecloth, her friend gave Rachel a no-nonsense look with his chocolate eyes.

“You must find out,” he pronounced as his final verdict. “This is just too juicy a predicament to ignore. Of course, I have the perfect solution!”

Crossing her legs, Rachel smiled thoughtfully. “Somehow I knew you would, dearest.”

“How are you fixed on housekeepers?”

She gave a small frown. “Housekeepers? If you mean, do I have one, no, I don’t.”

“Well, I’ll lend you mine.” Sacha’s eyes grew as wide as his excitement. “Her name is Rosina, and she’s an angel. She can wring wine out of a coconut and pry information from sources better than one of those FBI G strings.”

“You mean G-man.”

“No, darling, I mean a G string! I always picture those guys wearing red spangle thongs beneath their de rigueur black suits.”

Rachel chuckled. Dear, sweet Sacha lived and breathed the lively and entertaining. As one of the South Beach crowd, he trod the boardwalks with flamboyant zeal. “So, you think your Rosina will be able to ferret out everything there is to know about my mysterious neighbor in 5C?”

Sacha’s slim hands rose in the air. “Darling, she’ll not only get the scoop, but tell you his blood type and the regularity of his poo-poos! Just give her a week and you’ll see results.”

“I don’t think I’ll need all of that, but if she’s willing to do some housekeeping in between, then she’s hired. Those results I can live with.”

“Good. I’ll have her to you the morning after next. This will give Rosie time to adjust her schedule. Now, she’ll do everything you ask except walk your dog, but since you have Fufu, that’s a moot point.”

“I prefer to do my own laundry, but if she’s willing to iron, all the better.”

“Girlfriend, ironing, scrubbing, dusting, and vacuuming are her middle names. She works from eight till three, with a half hour for lunch. Oh, she gets eight-fifty an hour.”

Rachel threw him a perceptive look. “So, when will she have time to scope out my neighbors? Of course, you do know I’m willing to pay her for her work as a housekeeper and not as a private detective.”

“Don’t worry, darling, she’ll deliver!” After adjusting his salmon-hued ascot, Sacha took up their check. “You know,” he ruminated as he perused the bill, “I love the way they used to call those guys private dicks.” His eyes took on a mischievous glint. “Exactly what I would call one if he wanted to investigate me! His privates are my privates, and vice versa. If he carries a big, loaded midnight special down his waistband, all the better!”

Rachel couldn’t help but laugh. Sacha came up with zingers just about every day. Like herself, he was in between significant others. The only time Rachel found her friend down in the dumps had been when Sacha’s last live-in lover unceremoniously dumped him for a female impersonator and entertainer at one of the nightclubs on the strip. It took all of two weeks before he snapped out of his sorrow and got back on the horse so to speak, in his case a particularly feisty Italian stallion.

After reaching for her pocketbook, Rachel shelled out enough for a generous tip. As a working girl herself and a daughter of hard-working immigrants, she knew every little bit counted.

“Well then!” she declared. “Shall we return to Mrs. Weissman and her desert casita?”

Of course, in this case, the lady’s little cottage happened to contain seven bedrooms, five baths, and a home spa and gym to rival the best commercial establishments. Oh, well, Rachel sighed agreeably, if you got it, flaunt it!