Mack laughed. “Of course. We say goose. Hen, goose, whatever—it’s universal.”
“Universal. Also ironic: in one more month our problem is solved. Because my landlord is throwing me out. In one month I will be gone from L.A., and she could tell people anything she likes. Relationship will be—I mean would have been—how do you say?—moot.”
Suddenly Mack whiffed an opportunity. “And what do you plan to do then?”
Zoltan was at a loss for plans. He picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.
“Let me ask another way,” said Mack. “What would you like to do?”
“Get away from this city of angels who are devils in disguise. Go someplace calm where I can write. Perhaps I can find some artists’ colony where I can think and work. You know there are these marvelous places in woods where writers are fed and revered?”
“Really? How do you get invited?”
“No. To give readings, to write reviews you are invited. For colonies you must apply, obtain recommendations, humble yourself. Fortunately, a kind poet at UCLA with whom I once shared a podium helped me apply to MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where I spent two excellent months three years ago.”
Excellent and also useful, he might have added. At MacDowell, where most of the artists were still “emerging,” Zoltan was delighted to find himself again at the apex of the literary hierarchy. Courted and adulated, he felt his confidence soar. In his cabin in the woods, where his lunch was daily delivered to his door in a picnic basket, he completed a draft of an entire chapter of his novel. Even better, a monthlong affair with the critic Rebecca Shaffer and a useful friendship with the left-wing novelist Abel Krankowitz opened doors for him: after Rebecca wrote an admiring essay that garnered him a flurry of new attention, his satire was reissued to renewed acclaim. Abel Krankowitz, who was planning to take a semester’s leave to complete his own new novel, proposed that Zoltan teach his creative writing class at the New School, in New York City, and threw in his Greenwich Village studio apartment gratis. During that semester in New York, in the company of an expanding circle of literary friends, Zoltan felt almost as appreciated as he had in Paris—until the semester ended, the novelist reclaimed his apartment, and Zoltan returned to California.
“I am probably too late to apply for this year. Maybe instead I can find some quiet family with room to let. Is it perverse to believe that somewhere are people leading normal, honest lives according to old virtues—you know, kindness, mutual aid, loyalty? Instead of complicated Hollywood plots.”
Above them a meteor shot across the sky, fizzled, and fell into the sea; beneath, moonlit waves hurled themselves onto the shore and immediately backed away. The world was in ceaseless motion, teeming with possibilities. For a moment Mack forgot that he had been gaining weight alarmingly and that his feet hurt him, especially the left, despite the custom orthotics in his handmade shoes. He felt the pocket where he kept his wallet with the pictures of his house and family. “Come on, let’s go back to the car. I want to show you something.”
“YOU LIVE HERE?” ASKED Zoltan, peering at the picture under the map light. “You built this house?”
“Yup,” said Mack proudly. “Think you could get some real writing done in a place like this?”
Zoltan drew back his head and searched Mack’s face in the thin yellow light. Could he trust his ears, or was his shaky English betraying him? Could this rich stranger actually be offering to rescue him? “Let me get this straight, McKay. You are inviting me to stay with you?”
“At least to consider it. As you can see, we have plenty of space. We have guest rooms galore, and if it’s woods you want, we have enough woods to hide an army of guerrillas.”
Where, Zoltan wondered, was the flaw? “For how long?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to see if we’re the family you’re looking for.”
“Well, my man, this is confoundedly generous of you. But, if I may ask, why do you invite me?”
“There’s something you offered to show me a while ago that I’d very much like to see.”
“Ahhh!” said Zoltan softly, drawing out the syllable in a knowing sigh. “You mean how to live honestly?”
“You could call it that.”
Zoltan sensed that a bargain was being struck, but he couldn’t make out the terms. “I’m flattered. But won’t your wife have something to say about that?”
“Heather?” A glow of pride lit Mack’s face as he took from his wallet a color photo of a tall, freckled young woman in a white tennis dress, head tilted, arm shading her eyes from the sun, smiling at the camera. “Well, of course I’ll discuss it with Heather first, naturally she’d have to agree. But I already know what she’ll say.”
“Which is?”
“She’ll be tickled.”
“Why?”
Mack couldn’t tell him that his wife was a sucker for writers and that bringing one home to her would be a major coup. Instead he slapped Zoltan on the back and pronounced with a dash of irony, “Maybe she’d like to know how to live, too.”
They studied the picture, Mack’s favorite, a reminder of the time he first saw her in the physics lab in his senior year at Yale. She looked like a pre-Raphaelite painting—bright, gauzy hair haloing her face in little waves like ripples in a lily pond. Slim and rosy, with pale freckled skin, high cheekbones, oval, green-flecked eyes set wide apart, full hips, long fingers, narrow feet. He had been unable to stop staring at her, a perfect pearl on that beach of men. That scrubbed, privileged Middle American look. (Her family had made a killing in plumbing supplies in the post–World War II boom, gaining them admission to everything Topeka society offered, including the possibility of moving out and up.) How intimidated he’d felt by her, even though she was a freshman and he a senior. That she had trusted him enough to marry him he’d counted as proof of his potential. She was still his amulet against the philistine—though a less potent one since they’d left the city.
In fact, Heather had lately grown so suspicious and restive that sometimes Mack dreaded returning home at night. And the less he went home the more resentful she grew and the less he went home. The children, born yesterday, were now in preschool and growing older every week. Soon they’d both be gone all day. When he bought the Piper he had hoped it would restore adventure to their lives. But instead of accepting it as a magical gift, Heather refused to fly in it or even let him take the children up. She accused him of giving her presents only of things that he wanted for himself. (With the Piper she might have had a point, but surely not with the art, the jewelry, the wine, the Prius.) What would she have to say if he could deliver her Zoltan Barbu, to help along her career and maybe spice up their marriage?
“Heather’s a little older now, but she’s still the prettiest, smartest woman I know. I bet she’s read more books than you have. In college she won prizes for her stories. Maybe if you ask her she’ll show them to you.”
A warning flare, like the beginning flash of a migraine, streaked through Zoltan’s brain. Was this then the catch? “Oh? Your wife writes?”
“She writes a column for EarthBell—the online journal? Her real writing’s on hold till the kids are in school all day. She says getting out the columns is all she can do. But she has plans. And talent. You’ll see. I’m hoping you’ll inspire her. I’m sure you’ll like her.”
In his time, Zoltan had liked several of his friends’ wives a little too well, though he liked to think he’d learned a few things from experience, among them the price of disloyalty. In the thin light he studied the smile on the fresh North American face. If the arrangement were to work, he’d have to win her over. Otherwise a wife could make more trouble than a husband could guess.
Mack showed him another photo. “And here are our kids, Chloe and Jamie.”
But Zoltan needed to see no more. “Very tempting offer, Mack, if sincere. Soon I hope to get a book contract, but until then, if I become desperate, I may accept.”
Mack recogniz
ed the look. “You don’t have to be desperate. Just come.”
For a moment, something made Zoltan hesitate. He didn’t understand Mack’s purpose. Marriage mystified him. But after another look at the spectacular house, he decided that it was not his problem.
Hearing no objection, Mack reached into his briefcase for Fire Watch. “One more thing, if you don’t mind. I wonder if you would sign this book for me.” He handed it to Zoltan.
Zoltan was deeply pleased. “You are full of surprises, Mack. Where did you get that book?”
“You can inscribe it to Heather too. To both of us.”
Zoltan took a pen from his pocket, put it to his teeth, and thought. He had inscribed many books, but it was never easy in English to achieve the right tone between close and distant, hot and cool. He turned to the title page and wrote in his upright European script, “For Mack and Heather, May this opportunity enrich us all.”
But perhaps that was too blunt, too direct? He frowned and began a new line, softening the message with “Toward friendship.” Then, with an extravagant flourish that rendered all letters but the first illegible, he signed his full authorial name.
8 FROM THE MOMENT MACK carried his suitcase through the door and kissed her, Heather knew something was up. It seemed that no sooner had she managed to adjust to his absence than she had to make room for his return. Each time he flew off on a business trip she felt danger lurking, but usually when he returned he fell into bed exhausted, and she felt safe again. This time he arrived still flying.
“I’m starving!” said Mack, dropping his suitcase and handing her a shopping bag.
She took the bag warily. Mack often brought her double-edged gifts: useless electronic gadgets, equipment she would never use, delicacies she didn’t know how to serve, exotic plants destined to die. And even when he bought her things she would never have bought herself but which delighted her—Victorian jewelry, designer clothes, and for her last birthday an energy-efficient hybrid Toyota Prius, there was often an ulterior motive—some expiation or bribe—and a hidden price to pay.
She peered into the bag. “Artichokes? There must be a dozen!” Mack was incapable of moderation.
“They were picked yesterday, the biggest, freshest chokes I have ever seen, so I loaded up. What do you think, babe?”
“They are gorgeous, Mack, but my god, so many!”
“That’s okay. We can polish off a few right now.”
“A few? At this hour?”
“I’m still on California time. And don’t you know artichoke prickles are aphrodisiacs, also reputed to cure jet lag? Come here, you.”
The kiss was passionate, maybe too passionate, as if they had not been long married or knocked all the way to New Jersey by having children.
He slapped her bottom affectionately. “Why don’t you get the water boiling while I hang up my suits.” He started toward the stairs down to their bedroom (he had designed the house for maximum energy efficiency by tucking it snugly into the hillside, with bedrooms below, under a sod roof, and living rooms above, where skylights urged the eye upward, like the trompe l’oeil ceilings of Renaissance palazzi), and promptly slipped on a Roller-blade. Tina the cat tore up the stairs and streaked out of sight.
“Shit! Chloe!” cried Mack, breaking his fall with his suitcase and miraculously recovering his balance. Smitten, his voice turned husky with tenderness. “How’s Chloe? Wait till you see the tiny things I got in Chinatown for her dollhouse. And the video games I brought Jamie.”
Presents: Mack’s specialty. Substitutes for Mack. Once, when Mack had telephoned home from far away, Jamie had failed to recognize his own father’s voice. Heather tried to force down the bitterness that returned like acid reflux, but up it came: “How nice of you, Mack, they’ll have something to remember you by.”
“Want to hear what I have for you?”
“Something besides artichokes?”
“Not something. Someone.”
With his eyes twinkling so roguishly, he couldn’t be planning to spring Maja on her. She was confused. He was always hyper when he returned from L.A. His friend Terry had introduced him to a Hollywood crowd before moving to Australia; since then, Mack usually came back spilling stories of starlets, producers, nude parties in hot tubs, and ready to proselytize for the latest fads: solar saunas, tantric cults, body modification.
“Someone? Tell me who.”
“Patience, babe—at least till I change my clothes. I’ve been traveling for hours. I want to put on something comfortable. Anyway, it’s a surprise.” He proceeded down the stairs while Heather picked up the bag of chokes and headed toward the kitchen.
DRESSED IN JEANS AND a polo shirt that revealed the beginning of a paunch, Mack rolled a sip of coffee over his tongue as if it were fine wine; satisfied, he filled two cups with his special brew (a mixture of organic espresso and French roast from Peru) and a small pitcher with half-and-half and carried them on a tray to the study.
When they were settled at the window, with Tina curled at their feet, Heather said, “Okay—the surprise.”
How to begin? “This was some trip.”
Heather put down her cup. “You’re teasing me. Please stop stalling. It’s about Maja, isn’t it?”
“How do you always manage to know these things before I tell you?”
She didn’t know how she knew. But if she did know how, she wouldn’t tell him. He was an innocent when it came to women; Maja’s confiding in him all the details of her love life was a transparent come-on that he was too naive to recognize, but it wasn’t her job to wise him up. Until this moment she’d been uncertain whether Maja had already hooked him or not yet. Now, seeing him hesitate and carefully choose his words, she was convinced they were lovers.
“Brace yourself, Heather. Maja is dead.”
First doubt, then relief, like that first hit of caffeine, surged through Heather, followed quickly by something ominous. He’s killed her, she thought. The nervous click-click-click of his spoon against his cup was the tip-off. She imagined the two of them driving up the coast in a rental car, his losing control, a crash—. Fear gripped her. Steadying her own hand, she reached for his and softened her voice as she did for the children when they needed her. “Tell me what happened, Mack.” He was her children’s father, after all; they were all implicated.
He laughed with relief at her show of sympathy. “Seems she took sleeping pills, lots of them, according to the recipe in Final Exit. Everyone out there has a different theory why. The point is, though, at the funeral—”
“You went to the funeral?” Heather abruptly withdrew her hand. What could be more intimate than her funeral? Even dead (if she really was dead), Maja aroused her jealousy, made her feel excluded. “You didn’t mention a funeral.”
“I wanted to tell you in person. It was at the funeral that I met Zoltan Barbu, the writer.” On the last two words Mack’s voice executed a proprietary grace note, and he bowed his head respectfully.
“Right. Your dinner date. You must have been out all night. Because your phone was off and you weren’t in your room.”
“I turned it off for the funeral and then forgot it. Anyway, after dinner we went to the beach to talk. A most amazing conversation, Heather, I wish you’d been there, you would have loved it. I brought back one of his books for you.”
“Oh, is that the surprise?”
“Not exactly. Wait. Zoltan is taking Maja’s death sort of hard. He thinks her suicide was his fault, or at least that he’s being blamed for it. He can’t work.”
“How was it his fault?”
“They’d been more or less living together until a few weeks ago, when he kicked her out.”
“Living together!” Heather’s wheels whirred. Then had she been wrong about Mack and Maja? Or had the two men been rivals for her, or caught up in some complicated threesome? What charms had Maja had that she could snag two such accomplished men? Now questions spilled out in rapid succession: “Why did you never mention Zol
tan before? Or didn’t you know about them? How did you find out? How come they broke up?”
“Whoa! Slow down. I’m going to tell you everything in due time.” He took a long swig of coffee.
“Come on, Mack!”
“The way Zoltan tells it, he needs to be alone to write. But she wouldn’t let him. He had no privacy. So he kicked her out. But when he’s alone too long he gets depressed and anxious and can’t write either. So now he’s in a crisis. He’s being evicted from his apartment, he’s broke, and he’s being blamed for Maja’s suicide.”
“Yeah? Well?”
“He thinks if he comes to the East Coast he may be able to get a book advance from a publisher. He claims what he needs in order to write is a quote normal family life unquote.” Mack took back Heather’s hand before breaking the news. “So I’ve invited him to come live with us for a while. If it’s okay with you.”
Heather was speechless. Though she might justifiably feel outrage that Mack would invite a stranger to live with them without so much as consulting her, taking her assent for granted, in fact she was already tingling with anticipation at the prospect. Count on Mack to come up with some intriguing scheme like this just when they were slipping into a rut. Such bold unpredictable gestures were typical of him, part of what had attracted her in the first place. The audacious way he’d courted her: taking her to meet his parents on their third date, whisking her off to Puerto Rico for a weekend, obtaining magic mushrooms for her birthday. No chat chat chat like everyone else: Mack acted.
“What do you think, babe? Wouldn’t hurt to have a writer around for you to talk to, would it? Besides, he seems to really need us.”
Talk of extravagant gifts! Who else would take such a gutsy risk to revitalize a marriage? Unless Mack was merely making another power play, or indulging his own desire to boast a private writer in residence. Either way, to be captivated by a stranger and invite him to share your house and family—how impulsive, how foolhardy, how Mack!
He watched her thinking with that air of self-containment that had so entranced him when they met. Back then, some Yale coeds cracked under the pressure of condescending professors and male competition, but Heather had ignored the petty politics and kept her own counsel. When their physics professor had humiliated her for arriving late to class by questioning the seriousness of her entire sex, Mack waited for her afterward in order to apologize on behalf of his entire sex. Her expression of incredulity combined with appreciation was not unlike the one she wore now.
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