A wry, winning tale of love and real estate

Alternatives to Sex
By Stephen McCauley
Simon & Schuster, 289 pp., $24

I read Stephen McCauley's affable new novel, ``Alternatives to Sex," in a galley with a plain yellow cover that displayed the title prominently across the front. Nowhere, alas, did the cover note that the book was fiction. I only mention this because I read the novel while traveling and on two occasions fellow airline passengers were so struck by the title that they breached the wall that usually exists between strangers in steerage at 37,000 feet and commented on it. One thought it was a self-improvement manual; the other had missed that key middle preposition and presumed it was a how-to book. Both, much to my surprise, wanted to talk about it.

I was happy to oblige, in part because I was relieved I could disabuse them of the notion that I needed a book to help me find either alternatives to sex or alternative sex. (Isn't that what the Internet is for?) But I was also pleased to be an apostle for McCauley's fiction. McCauley is one of the most companionable novelists I read: His characters are complex and charismatic, his dialogue is winning, and consistently he plumbs the intersection of love and desire -- always with brio and good cheer. He is reminiscent in that regard of Elinor Lipman and Nick Hornby.

McCauley's new book is narrated by William Collins, a 40-something gay Boston real estate agent with serious intimacy issues and what has to be the cleanest home in Somerville. As the novel opens, he is worried that his two obsessions -- ironing and anonymous trysts with lovers he meets online -- are getting seriously out of hand. Consequently, he vows that he must find alternatives to sex, and preferably ones that don't involve doing the laundry for the passive-aggressive painter who is his tenant on the first floor of his home -- a tenant who is also seriously behind in her rent, but so intimidating to Collins that he can barely bring himself to remind her how far in arrears she is, much less hint at eviction. And while books (libido-killing ``serious" literature, to be precise) are one option, real estate proves to be a more entertaining substitute for Collins.

This is especially the case when he meets Samuel Thompson and Charlotte O'Malley, well-heeled empty-nesters in search of a Boston residence. Sensing their marriage is shaky, Collins sets out to find them the pied-à- terre of their dreams and thus solve all their problems. Collins understands, of course, that nothing is ever that simple. Still, his quest sets in motion a chain of possible sales that directly and indirectly involve his new friend, Charlotte; his old friend Edward, a flight attendant; Edward's pal, Marty, a female ex-Marine with a Rottweiler and a business as an in-your-face motivational speaker; Sylvia, his oversexed university professor client who has written a bestseller about her sexual escapades; and a variety of the eccentric sales agents at his Cambridge firm.

The tension in the novel springs largely from the friendship that Collins shares with Edward. Is it possible these two were meant for each other, but Collins lacks the emotional earnestness to actually reach out to someone he cares for? Or is Collins' s soul mate Didier, the bad-boy European who appears in his life at the most inopportune (and irresistible) moments?

There are smaller plots that are interesting, too, such as the chasm that has grown between Samuel and Charlotte: Is it now too wide to be spanned, or can their marriage be saved by something as simple as a new address?

Collins's voice is light hearted and wry, such as when he rhapsodizes about his new vacuum: ``Vacuum cleaners are like bread: the less gimmickry, the better the product. This model was a sleek silver canister that was a shining example of simplicity and efficiency, the vacuum equivalent of a simple, crusty baguette." But he is also capable of facing the ironies in his life, such as his choice of profession: ``Real estate was, in my case, less lucrative than advertising, but it was also less soul-numbing because you're at least selling people something they need -- shelter -- even if at vastly inflated prices."

Occasionally McCauley attempts to add gravitas to the tale by linking the characters' behavior to the tragedy of Sept. 11. The novel is set in the autumn of 2002, and in Collins's opinion, ``everyone . . . was trying to choose between combating the collective evil of mankind by putting selfishness aside and doing good, and abandoning altruism altogether and doing whatever it took to feel good. Right now."

Sometimes the connection adds poignancy to the story, such as the manner in which airline passengers now regard Edward: ``After years of condescension and derision, being thought of as an unwholesome cross between a cocktail waitress and an airborne geisha, Edward was now treated with the hushed reverence generally reserved for military personnel, Nobel Prize winners, and really good dermatologists." Other times, however, the link seems gratuitous: it wasn't 9/11 that gave us a compulsive attraction to Internet porn or real estate. Besides, McCauley's characters are so wondrously idiosyncratic and such consistently pleasurable company that it doesn't take a calamity to justify their actions. A room with a view is more than enough.

Chris Bohjalian is the author of nine novels, including ``Midwives," ``Trans-Sister Radio," and ``Before You Know Kindness."