Menage by Alix Kates Shulman Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t mention a funeral.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œRight. Your dinner date. You must have been out all night. Because your phone was off and you weren’t in your room.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œOh, is that the surprise?”
    â€œNot 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.”
    â€œHow was it his fault?”
    â€œThey’d been more or less living together until a few weeks ago, when he kicked her out.”
    â€œLiving 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 Zoltan before? Or didn’t you know about them? How did you find out? How come they broke up?”
    â€œWhoa! Slow down. I’m going to tell you everything in due time.” He took a long swig of coffee.
    â€œCome
on
, Mack!”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œYeah? Well?”
    â€œHe 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’shand 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.
    â€œWhat 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 strangerand 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