Menage by Alix Kates Shulman

Author:Alix Kates Shulman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 159051520X
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2012-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

15 HEATHER HAD JUST RETURNED home after dropping the children at school when she was confronted by the ring of the phone. She flung her coat on the hall bench and dashed to get it.

A woman! A self-assured, husky-voiced woman asking for Zoltan.

Heather stiffened. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Just say a friend.”

She had a strong urge to tell that woman that Zoltan was writing now and could not be disturbed, but she didn’t dare. She knocked on Zoltan’s door and opened it. “Sorry to interrupt you, but you’ve got a phone call.” Seeing him seated at the desk in his kimono, with the mussed, open bed behind him, she wondered if he had been in bed until hearing her drive up and only then, in order to deceive her, had rushed to the desk.

Zoltan followed Heather to the hall telephone. While he held the receiver to his ear, she busied herself straightening up in the vicinity. Ashamed to be hovering but too curious not to.

With his back to her he conducted the conversation in a low voice, then bent to write something on the blue notepad kept there for the purpose. As he tore off the note and thrust it into his pocket, she realized that in all the weeks she’d had him to herself, she had done little to secure her position. She had failed to see that it was only a matter of time until rivals would begin turning up. Without warning, time had turned against her. She imagined her advantage dissolving in a stream of phone calls from hopeful women: the artists and writers he’d known at the colony; aspiring students from the New School; editors, critics, literary groupies. Why hadn’t she thought of them? One phone call and he was already acting like a cheating husband; if she didn’t do something, he could start disappearing, like Mack.

“You’re rather popular for a monk, aren’t you?” she tossed at him.

“One phone call hardly makes one popular. Anyway, my darling, you are already taken.”

“Be careful. I can be very jealous,” she teased, pretending to be merely playing at jealousy. She offered to take messages for him instead of calling him to the phone, but he declined.

As she watched his tall frame recede toward his room she felt her hold on him—and on herself—slipping away with each step. If she didn’t act quickly he would be lost to her.

Impulsively, with the nerve that had once prompted her, alone of all the girls in her entire high school class, to apply to Yale, coupled with the decisiveness Mack had modeled as a man of action, she stripped the band from her ponytail, shook out her hair, stepped out of her shoes, and followed him to his room.

When her knock drew no response, she turned the knob and opened the door.

Back in bed, a startled Zoltan clutched at the covers.

She took his return to bed for an invitation—what else could it mean? Hadn’t he flirted with her shamelessly from the day

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