Menage

by Alix Kates Shulman

  After their big Kansas wedding, the McKays had returned to Manhattan, where Heather worked in a midtown office a few blocks from Mack’s, two subway stops from their new apartment. Full of plans, they had set out to create for themselves a certain kind of ideal urban marriage modeled on images of New York life they’d read about or viewed, they couldn’t have said exactly where. Each week they scanned the reviews in the Times and the cultural listings in the New Yorker and New York Magazine before buying tickets to enticing events; sometimes they invited along another couple—the Rabins, or people they had known at school or met through work, people who had similar tastes or whom they told each other they wanted to know better—going out afterward to a restaurant for a late supper or down to a club in the East Village. They had taken buses and taxis, learning the differences between Szechuan, Shanghai, and Hong Kong cuisine, Northern and provincial Italian cooking, going with the crowds to the special exhibitions at the big museums and with the strays to cult movies, and to Central Park on weekends, until Mack began his rise and Heather became pregnant with Chloe. Then they had moved.

  Although several times a year they were still invited to a party of some old friend from their city days or for drinks with one or another of Mack’s business acquaintances who lived in Manhattan, or, now that Mack’s name was getting known, to various testimonial dinners, literary parties like Rebecca Shaffer’s were out of their reach. “You see?” said Mack, squeezing Heather’s arm as they headed downstairs to bed. “He’s opening up to us. I knew he would. It’s just taken him a while to get going.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Heather. “We’ll soon see.”

  She couldn’t tell anymore whose side Mack was on. He claimed to be her ally and champion, but when it came to Zoltan, there was some inscrutable connection between them that made ally sometimes feel more like adversary. Had it been forged over Maja’s body or was it a fallback to primitive male bonding? Whatever it was, she sometimes felt trapped in a buddy movie.

  While she changed for bed in her dressing room, Mack, who was leaving for Chicago in the morning, began to pack.

  “Have you seen my good cufflinks? I can’t find them,” he called from the closet.

  “Did you look in your top drawer?”

  “They’re not there.”

  Heather slipped into her nightgown and went to the closet to search. “Maybe you left them in one of your shirts,” she suggested.

  “Diamond cufflinks? I don’t think so.”

  She began systematically employing the technique she’d developed for helping the children find lost things. “Okay, then, when did you last see them?”

  “You don’t suppose Carmela—”

  “How can you even think that!” Heather broke in. She couldn’t bear to mistrust Carmela, whose affection and skill with the children were indispensable, now that Françoise was gone. She didn’t want to suspect Zoltan either, or it would all be over. “Françoise is a likelier candidate, she had nothing to lose when she left the country.”

  “No, I wore them to a benefit two weeks ago, long after Françoise left.”

  “What shirt were you wearing? Maybe they’re still in your cuffs.”

  “How can I possibly remember that?” he snapped. He picked out a pair of opal links to take instead, and after locking the jewelry drawer, added the key to his key ring rather than hanging it back on the door. He then locked Heather’s drawer and handed her the key to hide.

  “I’m sure they’ll turn up,” Heather consoled him, concealing her key among her bras. “And if not, we’re insured.”

  It was after one when they got into bed. Seeing Mack’s long-lashed eyes unfocused without their contacts and his solid neck naked on the pillow, Heather thought how vulnerable he was under his powerful facade. Touching, sometimes surprisingly tender, and vulnerable. With the edge of the top sheet she carefully wiped a trace of toothpaste from his lips before kissing him good night and extinguishing the light. “Love you, babe,” he mumbled, snuggling against her. Large wet flakes of snow, like rolled oats, floated past the window in a slow-motion free fall. She was glad to be warmed by Mack’s thick, comforting body, so unconcerned about what was coming that it was already heavy with sleep. She herself was madly curious. She wanted to peer ahead, as she often did in a book, to see what was going to happen. But it was the wrong metaphor for her life. In real life, there was no way to preview what was in store. Supposing you could somehow steal a peek, it still wouldn’t help you, because event followed event with such galloping speed and necessity that until it was over, you could barely reflect upon it, much less alter it. No accidents.

  19 THE ELEVATOR OPENED DIRECTLY into the small entrance area of a huge, high-ceilinged loft. A plump woman held out both dimpled hands to the McKays and both rouged cheeks to Zoltan, then pulled them all into the main room. She smelled of jasmine, and throughout Zoltan’s introductions of the McKays to their hostess she flashed perfect white teeth.

  “So you’re the lucky people Zoltan has settled in with,” said Rebecca Shaffer, flushed with the reflected glow of purple silk and polished hardwood floors. “I’m so glad to meet you, finally. Put your coats back there in the bedroom. Zoltan can introduce you around.”

  Her age was indecipherable, but Heather guessed she was probably in her mid-forties. She had the unlined luminous skin that often served as consolation to the fat; her delicate mouth and nose were diminutive and shapely amid the rounded cheeks and chins. Nevertheless, Heather was astonished that a woman of such girth, despite the power that came from writing reviews for the Times and New Republic, had attracted literary lovers of the stature Zoltan had intimated.

  “Intimated? Are you kidding?” said Mack. “She probably broadcasts it.”

  “Do you think that Zoltan—?”

  “How would I know. Maybe.” Then the lovely Maja crossed his mind, and he revised his judgment. “No, I wouldn’t think so. Highly unlikely.”

  Fluted cast-iron columns painted mauve held up a stamped tin ceiling crossed with sprinklers and pipes; not even the crush of cruising bodies obscured the spectacular wall of windows facing south toward all the lit-up towers of Lower Manhattan and the harbor. To Heather, this loft defined a life, one she had let slip away with hardly a fight, like so many others: the small studio with fireplace and Murphy bed and dainty furniture somewhere in the West Village where she would live alone; the rollicking punk pad (her hair spiked and wild); a summer cottage by a lake, half of it a kitchen, with fishing for the children; this loft. On their way to the bar she whispered to Mack, “Wouldn’t you love to live here?”

  He stopped short. “Are you kidding? Trade what we’ve got for bare pipes and sprinklers? With exposures like these, this place is a furnace in the summer, unless you seal all the windows and air-condition every last cubic inch. Count ’em. Then imagine the bill, with these high ceilings. Plus, nowhere for the kids to play, no windows in the bedroom, city noise and fumes—you’d hate it here, believe me. You’ve got such romantic ideas, Heather.”

  Other people, she brooded, did it and loved it and went on excursions to the mountains or the beach in the hot summer. But she supposed he was right; this was what he knew best. Still, if Mack died, she would sell the house and live off the proceeds—buy herself a loft, eat brunches at Balthazar, shop at the Farmers’ Market, cruise the Chelsea galleries.

  “Besides,” continued Mack, stomping her dream, “this would cost us twice as much for a fraction of the space we’ve got now. Real estate markets all over the country are tanking, but Manhattan prices stay astronomical. And what have you got when you’re through? Essentially one big room. For singles, maybe; for a family, forget it.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Heather spotted Zoltan near the bar talking to two attractive people: a man whose bald (or shaved?) head was firmly set atop a youthful body sheathed in jeans, Western boots, and a dark, well-tailored jacket; and a young moonfaced woman painted with a slightly garish shade of blush and styl
e of eye treatment. She was wearing one of the two uniforms of the season—cashmere-and-silk top with dark, skinny pants, or else a short black sheath. Suddenly, scanning the room, Heather feared she herself might be the only woman in the entire place wearing a party dress. She blushed.

  Zoltan waved the McKays over. He’d been told to take care of them, introduce them around. “Come. Heather, Mack. I want you to meet Wayne Auerbach and …?”

  “Ericka Esposito,” said Wayne. “Zoltan Barbu.”

  “Oh,” said Ericka, catching her breath, “I’ve heard of you.”

  “These are the McKays, Heather and Mack,” continued Zoltan. “My benefactors.”

  Heather took Zoltan’s arm in one of hers, Mack’s in the other, and announced they had just come from the opera, hoping to explain her dress. When she looked down she saw Mack’s missing cufflinks in Zoltan’s cuffs.

  Barely glancing at the McKays, Ericka focused her blue gaze on Zoltan. A string of round blue beads around her neck matched her large, almond-shaped eyes. She wore her beige cashmere top tucked into a strikingly slender waistband, with a silk scarf tied in an artful French knot at her throat. In an excited voice she exclaimed like a child, “You’re famous, aren’t you?”

  Wayne coughed; Zoltan puckered his lips into the smirk he wore to denote modesty (what was he to say? Thank you very much? No I’m not? It means nothing? You may be too, someday?) and proceeded with the introductions. “Wayne here, famous New York editor. Mack, famous builder. You should see the Eden we live in that he built.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “In Wildbloom, New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey!” said Ericka, shocked.

  “There, there, my dear,” said Wayne, patting her hand, “contrary to recent studies, there is still life beyond Manhattan and Brooklyn.”

  “We are exactly seventy minutes from Lincoln Center,” defended Heather.

  “And we have a forest in front yard,” added Zoltan, rewarding the McKays with the unexpected “we.”

  “And a river,” added Mack.

  “And books. Walls and walls of books. Heather has amazing library,” said Zoltan.

  Heather beamed for her books.

  “Really? Then as soon as you get home you should look up Chekhov’s The Seagull,” said Wayne. “Or perhaps you remember? Act II opens with Irina and the doctor reading Maupassant. Now pay attention to this, Ericka. ‘It’s as inadvisable for people in society to fawn over writers and invite them into their houses as for a corn chandler to raise rats in his granary.’ Who should know better than Maupassant or Chekhov?” He grinned like such a rat. “Consider yourself warned.”

  Chagrined by Wayne’s patronizing remark, Ericka turned to Heather for relief. “Are you a writer too?” she began. During the introductions, the women’s occupations, unlike the men’s, had not been specified.

  “No. Well, yes, if journalism counts. I write a column for EarthBell, the online journal? And you? Are you a writer?”

  “I wish! I’m a reader, though,” said Ericka, bobbing her head, as the three men drifted off with their drinks. “I haven’t read anything he’s written, but now that I’ve met him I’m going straight out and get his books.”

  She paused to pluck a piece of tekka maki from a platter held by a passing blonde in a black tux, and for the first time Ericka’s initial registered on Heather. Could she be the E-person Zoltan had met for lunch? Could they be deceiving her with this sham of being strangers? For all his penetrating glances and intimations of intimacy, Zoltan was as secretive about his life as a spy, rendering every woman here a potential rival.

  “What’s it like living with him?”

  Heather laughed a proprietary laugh. “Sometimes it’s like having an extra child in the family—although we do have some very unchildlike conversations.”

  “Does he show you what he’s working on?”

  “Not exactly. But sometimes he talks about his writing.”

  “If he was living with me, I’d read his manuscripts when he went out. But you won’t tell him I said so, will you?” She giggled, crinkling her blue eyes and covering her mouth.

  Near a corner table Mack popped raw cashews one at a time into his open mouth and watched the guests circulate among the writers positioned like pillars around the room. He watched and popped until the bowl was empty. “Here, let me fill that up,” said Rebecca, the hostess, sidling up from behind, reaching for the empty bowl.

  “Not for me,” said Mack, “I’ve had enough.”

  “Don’t be silly, There’s no such thing as enough,” she said, followed by a brazen pause. “So, I hear you’ve built yourself quite a dream palace. Zoltan says it’s a writer’s paradise. Makes me wonder if we shouldn’t have been less rigid about leaving the city.”

  “You’ve got a great place here. Must be a hundred people, and it doesn’t even feel crowded.”

  “Yes, it’s a lot of space for the city, but I’ll bet this whole loft would fit into a little corner of your flower garden. Am I right?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You can’t really compare a loft like this with a house in the country. Most of our garden, as you call it, is Ha-Ha Land.”

  “Ha-Ha Land?”

  “Wilderness owned by the state.”

  “All the better. Taxes will pay the gardener. I guess everything is a trade-off. We’ve got twenty-four-hour delis in every direction, while you’ve got nature. And Zoltan.”

  Mack laughed. “You think Zoltan wouldn’t prefer to live in the city if someone offered him a place?”

  “Oh, I know he wouldn’t. All the frenetic fuss of city life is just what he doesn’t want right now. He’s desperate to write, and he says your place is ideal, a private artists’ colony. He told me that if he can’t write there he’ll give up trying.”

  Mack wondered why, in that case, he was so seldom home nowadays.

  “We can’t get over how nice you were to take him in, flat broke, practically a stranger,” continued Rebecca. “For someone with his talent for getting into impossible situations, he finally seems to be doing something right. Personally, I think you’re probably the best thing that could have happened to him—a stable family situation. I want you to know I am personally very grateful to you.”

  Mack thought it odd that Zoltan had hardly ever mentioned this woman who spoke as if she owned him. She began to seem less fat and more voluptuous; he would have to read her stuff.

  “I was thinking of giving a party in honor of Zoltan’s return to New York, but since he’s described your estate, some of us were hoping that maybe you’d want to have the party instead. Do you think I’m naughty to suggest it?”

  Something in the way she said the word “naughty” gave Mack the distinct impression that she was suggesting more than he could make out. Heather called him naive about women, “a pushover.” He remembered other parties where women had asked him things he didn’t know how to answer, and Heather, ever alert, had had to interpret for him afterward. “No harm in suggesting,” said Mack. He thought he was saying it noncommittally, but the particular laugh Rebecca tossed at him, her head cocked coquettishly, her lips parted to reveal the iridescent teeth, told him he might have conveyed something more. She took his arm. “Come. We’re both empty. Let’s fill up together.”

  Over Ericka’s shoulder Heather watched plump Rebecca pirouette before Mack, then steer him to the bar. Women liked her husband—friendly, generous. He was the man who remembered your birthday, your drink, your favorite song, your best color, the man who offered to take you up in a plane or help you with onerous tasks like packing and moving, who had things shipped for you and got things wholesale, who picked up the check, who drove home anyone who asked, the farther out of his way, the better. Heather knew these qualities were simply pufferies of ego and said nothing, but she took note, kept track. If Ericka had to be watched, then so did Rebecca.

  Orville Lask, the guest of honor, clasped both of Zoltan’s hands. They had first met at a writer’s
conference in Santa Fe and then wound up sharing an office at the New School. He was small and sickly, with a perpetual sniffle, a high voice, flat feet, and rimless glasses, whose career had been devoted to developing in print an image of himself as big and tough, as his enemies were quick to point out. He did not resemble the picture on his book jackets. Before he and Zoltan had become office mates, he had twice written pointed criticisms of Zoltan: once for his long silence and once for his “sententious” style; but today he could afford to be chummy, not only because he had excluded those particular essays from his new collection, but also because this was his book party and, unlike Zoltan and all the other writers present who weren’t publishing anything this season, he was relieved of writing worries while he was occupied promoting his new book and a few grace months more.

  “Rebecca tells me,” said Orville to Zoltan, “you’ve got yourself another setup. Rich patron, dream house in the country. Son of a bitch, you always did know how to pull off deals, didn’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t be coy. You know what I mean. Hollywood contracts, free pad in the Village, now this. Bet you’re banging the wife, too?”

  “Be careful,” said Zoltan, “she’s standing right there. And, no.”

  “Where?”

  “There. In the green dress.”

  “Damn! Is there some foundation to apply to?”

  Zoltan smiled.

  “When you get tired of country living, man, introduce me, okay?”

  A waiter carrying a platter of puff pastries topped with crabmeat caught Zoltan’s attention. He bowed slightly before following the waiter, who was now a few steps away. He snatched up a canapé and slipped it whole into his mouth. He was just settling in to chew it when a stranger pronounced his name.

  “Zoltan Barbu?”

  Annoyed to be interrupted before having a chance to fully savor the canapé, Zoltan examined the person’s face: stuck-out ears, moist, bulbous eyes, a high forehead that would have excited a phrenologist, a stringy neck circled by a bow tie.