Sheer Pressure

Alex Halaby, a 30-year-old Princeton grad who labors at his father's pantyhose company (and who feels like his life has been preprogrammed by his domineering parents), quits and roars into the Manhattan night on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, his sole signifier of his independent manhood. In his friend's nightclub he meets Emily Lukes, the equally dissatisfied young wife of billion-heir layabout Charles Lukes, who is dismissive of her ambition to be a painter and unforgivably bad at sex. Alex is great at sex, intimate conversations about their yearning souls, and singing satirical Tom Lehrer songs while accompanying himself on the piano. Emily can't resist, and in short order is pregnant with his baby (unbeknownst to him). Guilt-stricken over the infidelity and aware that Alex is virtually flat broke, Emily cold-shoulders Alex, who suddenly has his hands full when his father, Harry, suffers a heart attack, requiring Alex to step in, way over his head, and save the one-customer business from going under. The author's soap opera is a glittering sendup of Manhattan high society in the early 2000s, an upper-crust in which the men are either hard-boiled moguls or fatuous stuffed shirts, and the woman either frivolous fashionistas or silly socialites. However, the story takes its protagonists' longings seriously, and as Alex matures, he begins to appreciate Harry's business as a meaningful outlet for his talents, assuming he can save it. While desperately and drunkenly roaming the city streets at 3:00am, when all seems lost, Alex has an epiphany that leads him into the office of Frank Shea, CEO of Cresslon, the world's largest cosmetics company. Just as he's about to be arrested, Alex convinces Shea that pantyhose are "cosmetics for the legs," leading to drinks at the Four Seasons that night to discuss the idea. Just as Alex sells Shea on the idea, Charles and Emily enter and Alex learns that Shea is Emily's father and that Emily is pregnant. The high drama and high, all-or-nothing stakes that ensue keep the reader/viewer in breathless suspense until the dramatic conclusion. The sequel to Sheer Pressure, Sheer Madness, will be coming out in novel form this summer. Sheer Madness picks up where Sheer Pressure leaves off, and takes the reader/viewer into unforeseen territory.