Menage (12 page)

She took his return to bed for an invitation—what else could it mean? Hadn't he flirted with her shamelessly from the day he arrived, calling her
my dearest
and
my darling
, kissing her hands and cheeks at every opportunity, ravishing her with his eyes?

“I'm freezing,” she said, sidling toward the bed. “May I?”

Before he could answer, she slipped in beside him and nestled her cheek against his naked chest.

Zoltan tensed. What was he to do? Here in his room that was really hers, she had every advantage.

She could hardly believe what she was doing. She was not herself. Or she was two selves at once. One of her, the cautious, cunning one, was appalled by the risk she was taking—to her dignity, her pride, her marriage—while the impetuous, infatuated one grabbed the opportunity and charged recklessly ahead. “Hold me,” she whispered.

On his back, trapped, he lay awkwardly with one arm at his side squeezed between her thigh and his; when he finally extricated it, there was no place to put it but behind her neck, which forced him to turn toward her and accept her kiss. And how could he not return her kisses, stroke her perfumed hair, take her nipples between his lips when she opened her blouse? How could he not oblige?

She heaved and sighed. The long angular body of this mysterious man, with its black fur even on his thighs, was the antithesis of Mack's, a contrast that only intensified her desire. Whereas Mack's penis fit comfortably against her pelvis when they kissed, Zotan was so tall that his pressed exotically into her thigh. She wriggled down the length of him to take it into her mouth and possess him. Like his
body, it was longer and thinner than Mack's. And shockingly uncircumsized.

He abandoned all resistance. Though this pleasure was surely forbidden, he remembered the loophole whereby in North America fellatio was not universally considered having sex. Yet when he closed his eyes in sweet submission, Mack's enormous leering face suddenly loomed overhead, like a Woody Allen mother, until Zoltan abandoned the distinction and went limp.

Heather redoubled her efforts, using advanced techniques, but to no avail.

He pushed her away and left the bed. “I'm afraid I can't.”

She abruptly became herself again—the sensible one who could calculate consequences, make titillating small talk, maintain some self-control, for god's sake. She buttoned her blouse. However awkward or tense the situation, they were back to handling it with words. “Don't worry about it,” she said encouragingly. “These things happen.”

“Ah, my dearest Heather,” he said, as he pulled on his kimono and sat down beside her. “You do not know me. I tried to make you understand, now I will try again.” He took her hand in his and stroked it gently. “I went through very much
turmoil in L.A., as Mack knows. It's why I left. If I am better now, it is because I am a monk.”

There it was again. Monk. She thought of Thomas Merton, Savonarola. Neither image fit. What monk flirts so blatantly, or drives a woman to suicide? From the first moment he'd bent to kiss her hand and each time he'd fixed her in his powerful gaze it had been clear that he was no monk. Often she had seen his skin flush when she approached him, had felt him bristle when they touched, had recognized in him the same desire for her that she felt for him. Now too—his hand generated electricity. It couldn't be all pose.

“Are you saying,” she ventured, “that you don't want me?”

He nodded.

What did he want, then? A woman like Maja? How had she behaved with him? Too bad she couldn't consult Mack. Of course, she and Maja were incommensurable, incomparable, every person was unique, just as Zoltan was nothing like any other man she'd ever encountered: he didn't sound like the others, with his strange accent and stilted speech; he didn't look like them, with his scarecrow frame on which absurd costumes hung awkwardly; and, helpless as a child in the face of necessities, least
of all did he act like them. She couldn't imagine him wrestling with food or laundry, technology or taxes, though he was already middle-aged. What did he do when he had to find a doctor, buy a ticket, sew a button, play a video? He needed the help of someone like her. As he walked away from her toward the window fussing with his sash, pulling it ever tighter, she searched for a reason he would refuse her offer of so much that he needed. “Is it that you don't find me attractive?” she forced herself to ask.

He tossed his black lock off his forehead and scanned her with glittering eyes. “Certainly not! You are a devilishly attractive woman. It is not you, I assure you. It is I. I am … unable.” He spread his hands imploringly. “You understand?”

Heather wondered if Zoltan's inability was a matter of will, like a monk's, or some problem beyond his control. “Do you mean it's something physical?”

He wished he could tell her exactly how physical his problem was: as physical as room and board. “Let us say … psychological. Where there is woman there is also conflict.”

“But you were able with Maja, right?”

He raised a hand. “Please do not bring up Maja. You cannot understand. That relationship was very complicated.”

“But that's just it,” said Heather, assuming the voice of reason. “With us, it wouldn't be complicated at all. It would be simple. We're alone together here every day and we find each other ‘devilishly attractive.' What could be simpler than that?”

“Your husband,” he chided her. “It is he who invited me here.”

“Let's leave Mack out of it, too, then,” she returned. She wondered why, if the two men had no problem sharing Maja, Zoltan was making such a fuss about sharing her. “He doesn't have to know anything about it.”

Zoltan looked out the window to conceal his dismay. A wind was whipping the trees, sending leaves whirling into the air. Heather was like a high wind, a tornado, blowing in to make him homeless. He stopped to compose himself. “Now, let me try to understand. You propose that we, that I, that you and I—” He shook his head. The situation was completely untenable. Not that he cared that much about violating the so-called sacred bonds of matrimony, but hospitality and loyalty among comrades were, if not sacred, at least deserving of respect. He cleared his throat and started over. “Let me understand. You are proposing we have an adulterous affair right under your husband's roof?”

“Actually,” she said, smiling wryly, “it's my roof, if you want to get technical. The house is in my name.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me, I had an impression that you and Mack were happily married.” Even as he said it he knew how fatuous it sounded. The myth of the happily married. But then, how should he, happily single, be expected to know about married life?

“If we were, do you think Mack would have invited you to live with us?”

“Perhaps I am … naive. Mack did say … He gave me an impression this marriage was … well … different.”

Heather bit back Maja's name. Did Zoltan believe that a happily married man would take, to use his word, a mistress? Everyone thought their own marriage was different. She'd thought so too. Now she wondered how to overcome the handicap of
difference
.

“Why
did
he invite me?”

Heather smiled. “Maybe he invited you for me.”

Zoltan shook his head in disbelief. “For you?”

“Well, for himself, then. In case you haven't noticed, Mack likes power. Having you here gives him a chance to parade as a powerful, generous man.
He
is
a powerful, generous man. And he likes to make me happy.”

Zoltan could not decide which Mack deserved more: pity or contempt. “Then your wanting someone to talk to was only—”

“No. It's absolutely true. Until you arrived I'd practically forgotten what it was like to have a genuinely interesting conversation. I treasure our talks. They're so stimulating that they've stimulated me to want more.”

“More than this?” he asked, sweeping the room with his arm.

She followed his glance to the beams, the hillside, the woods. “Oh, yes, it is beautiful here, and much more peaceful than in the city, plus all the advantages for the children. But it doesn't talk.”

Everything Heather said plunged Zoltan deeper into confusion. He feared that her eyes, bright with passion, would fill up and overflow again. The tears he had found charming his first night in this house now seemed as dangerous as Maja's. Were all women the same? What he needed was solitude; what she needed was company: irreconcilable differences. She was daily becoming less fascinating and more terrifying, like a North American Madame Bovary: self-destructive, incapable of foresight, in
love with danger, willing, like their legislators, governors, and presidents, their Kennedys, Spitzers, and Clintons, to spoil everything for a foolish affair. “What exactly is it you want?” he asked gloomily.

It was the other Heather, the impulsive, besotted one, who met his eyes. Exhilarated by her own daring she answered recklessly, “I want you.”

16
       
JAMIE WAS ON HIS
way to the bathroom from the playroom, where he and his sister had been cutting construction paper into scary shapes while Carmela cleaned around them, when he heard the hall phone ring. As instructed, he waited till the third ring before picking up. “McKay residence. Who's this?” he said.

“Hi Jamie. It's Daddy.”

“Hi Daddy! It's Jamie! Where are you, anyway?”

“Right now I'm in the middle of Manhattan driving in vicious traffic. What are you doing?”

“I'm talking on the cordless phone.”

“You certainly are, James my boy,” said Mack, charmed. “Is Mommy there?”

“I think so.”

“Could you give her the phone please?”

“I'll try—but I can't if she's with Zoltan.”

Mack's curiosity stirred. “Why not? Is she in his room?” When Jamie didn't answer, he said, “Do me a favor, buddy, okay? Go see if she's in his room. Could you please do that for me? I'll wait.”

Jamie bounded up the stairs toward the study carrying the phone, then tiptoed to the door of Zoltan's room. Unable to knock for fear of Zoltan's stern staring eyes and incomprehensible speech, he stood there bravely for a while listening at the door. No sound emerged. “Daddy?” he whispered into the phone. “I don't think anybody's in there.”

“Did you knock?”

“No.”

“Try.”

After a silence, he said, close to tears, “I can't, Daddy.”

“Okay, never mind. Try Mommy's office. Or the kitchen. I'll wait.”

Released from his burden, Jamie tore down the stairs, calling “Mommy! Mommy!” When he reached the room that now served as her office the door was closed, and again he hesitated to knock, not because he was afraid of his mother as he was of Zoltan but because he wasn't supposed to interrupt her when she was working unless it was important.
He considered. What could be more important than his father's command? Nothing, he decided, and knocked.

Dressed in turquoise sweats and a matching fleece jacket, Heather sat on the outside deck of the room she had taken as her office, leaning against the house, with laptop in lap, while Tina watched her regally from atop the railing, tracking her every movement with her unblinking eyes. Since Zoltan's arrival, Heather's fantasies had so pressed against reality, and the days had tumbled by so quickly, that without her noticing, the deadline for her column was looming, and she had barely begun it. Now she was furiously trying to catch up.

Startled by the knock, thinking it Zoltan, she called, “Come on in. I'm out here.” When the door opened a crack, it was Jamie's small head peeking through.

“Daddy! I found her!” he said triumphantly into the phone. “She's on the deck.”

“Good work, James.” Mack was relieved that she was not upstairs bothering Zoltan, whose comfort he considered his responsibility.

Jamie went through the room and tugged open the sliding door to the deck where his mother, smiling, beckoned to him. “Here. It's Daddy,” he said
proudly, handing her the phone. Mission accomplished. Tina took the opportunity to slip through the open door into the house.

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Heather tousled his curly hair. “Hello? Mack?”

“I'm so glad you're there, babe. I was starting to worry.”

“But why? I'm always here, you know that. I'm not the one who disappears.”

A mistake; an opening he should not have given her. “I only meant I didn't know where you were, since you didn't answer the phone.”

“I've been working on the deck since lunch, so I didn't hear it ring. I find I suddenly have a deadline. What's up?”

“I'm afraid I'm running late again, babe. I'm stuck here in traffic, so I don't know when I'll get home. I'll try to make it to dinner, but don't count on me.”

There they were again, those familiar stomach-churning words that she could never get used to no matter how often she heard them. But though she felt the usual sinking disappointment, this time it was balanced by the equally elevating prospect of an intimate dinner with Zoltan. Which of the feelings was stronger she could no more say than
she could tell which image, a pair of profiles or a vase, the famous optical puzzle depicted. Each depended on the other, and no sooner did she focus on one than the other snapped unbidden into view.

“Oops, another call coming in,” said Mack. “Love you, babe.”

She pressed
OFF
and handed Jamie the phone. “Will you be my big helper-man and hang this up for me? I'm going to finish this one paragraph and then I'll come up. If you like, you and Chloe can play in the kitchen garden, where I can see you while I get your dinner.” Before she could manage to kiss him he was running down the stairs off the deck. “The phone!” she called after him. “Don't forget to hang up the phone.”