When I rose at noon I expected to see the lovers slumbering in each other's arms, but they weren't there. They never were. They seemed to inhabit an intense, passionate, private little world, existing for each other and only between the hours of midnight and five a.m. Who were they? What did they do with the rest of their lives when they weren't making love in this sleazy little room?

That day I wrote thousands of words. It was some of the best work I've ever produced. I'd been struggling with a couple of characters in my novel, but after last night's private floorshow and the long, satisfying sleep that followed, they came to life and the words flowed out. The story was becoming a little more highly sexed than my usual stuff, the result, no doubt of my being inspired by my midnight lovers. I pounded my laptop late into the night, leaving my studio only for steak and red wine at a little bistro around eleven p.m. When I crept back in, I saw that the light under their door was on.

By then just the smell of those cigarettes was enough to get me horny. At the first wisp of smoke, I was in my usual position. This time the couple lay on their backs with their hands between each other's legs. She had his dick in her fist and was jerking him off fast and furious while he stroked her clit and pussy slowly and tenderly. It was as if they were putting on a performance just for me, but how could they know that they had an audience? My pubic bone was still bruised from grinding against the floor the night before, so this time I put my pillow between my legs and rocked myself to a slow, tender orgasm. The irony was that these nighttime neighbors were providing me with orgasms that were far more intense and frequent than any of those my lovers or attentive ex-boyfriends ever had. I was having my best sexual relationship to date with a pair of perfect strangers who were unaware of the fact. It was working for me, at least.