I was a huge fan of trashy detective novels, and erotic noir was right up my alley. Richard Kasak at Masquerade Books bought the anthology, and I sent out a call for submissions.

I thought I knew what I wanted my contribution to be about, but as it turned out, I was wrong. I knew I didn’t want it to be about detectives. I get more pleasure out of the doomed, sometimes unsympathetic losers in James M. Cain than in the snide moralists of Chandler or John D. MacDonald.

I wrote the 7,700 words of “Up for a Nickel” in one sitting.

The transgender element in the story represents two things I was aiming for: the idea of transformation, and the idea that the crime format transcended gender conventions—which I see in the popularity of female detectives, especially with female readers.

The sexual action in the story is as much about the demands of the characters—because sex can mean something when very little else does. The idea of hopeless love and vigilante justice are very compelling to me. Add a setting that’s the mystical crossbreeding of Tampa and New Orleans with San Francisco, and that’s “Up for a Nickel.”

The Manicure

Martha Garvey

Last week, when I had some time to kill, I noticed that my nails were in sad, sad shape. I felt gray and washed out, invisible in the big, loud city. But as I wandered through Greenwich Village at sunset, the air was bright, like someone had opened a bottle of champagne and let it spray. So I found a little nail parlor on one of those streets that run at cross angles to everything else. The manicure shop was painted pink and red, like the inside of a womb.

Within the pulsing room, there was only a single manicurist, a small Asian woman with gorgeous brown eyes.

“I was going to close up,” she said. She glanced at my hands. “But I can help you.”

She wore a long, pink cotton smock, and her ID badge read KAREN.

I asked her what her real name was, and she looked annoyed.

“That is my real name.”

I was embarrassed. What I’d meant was that somebody so beautiful should have a beautiful name. But the damage was done. I told her my name was Nell.

She locked the door, and turned out all of the lights except the one over her manicurist’s table. She practically pushed me into a chair and began to file at my ragged hands.

“Shouldn’t I pay you first?” I said.