Free Menage by Alix Kates Shulman

after Mack silenced Jamie with a poke and scowl did Zoltan notice the plate resting on two small hands near his elbow, awaiting his attention. Finally relieved of his burden, Jamie, thrilled and terrified to have been caught for a second in the gleaming foreign eye, raced back to his mother for another, safer plate. “No running!” admonished Chloe enviously. Heather gave them each a warning look, but fortunately the men had buried themselves in talk and did not notice the small conspiracies at the lower end of the table.
    THE CROSS-CONTINENTAL FLIGHT in the 747, the fast drive, the wooded heights, the splendid house, and the extraordinarily attentive McKays gave Zoltan a heroic hope, as if the degradations of his past were about to be cleansed in the clear mountain air, as if some unimagined American miracle were about to unfold under the eye of this beneficent family. What might not be possible?
    While his hostess put her children to bed and his host loaded the dishwasher, Zoltan, sated and satisfied, clasped his hands behind his back and paced slowly before the books. A surprisingly interestingcollection—more literary, less technical than he’d have expected, with an entire shelf of old, leather-bound editions, and no trash. He sidled up the alphabet alongside the shelves until he found himself staring at his own name on the spines of two familiar volumes nestled side by side at eye level with the likes of Beckett, Bolaño, and Blake. He pulled out a volume of Walter Benjamin, blew dust from the top, and flipped slowly through the pages. Thoroughly read, with neat but illegible scratchings in the margins. Dare he hope, then, that these people had perhaps some intimation of who he actually was? Pleasure flushed through him until the shelves of books abruptly recalled him to his duty—to work!—which, in rapid succession, increased his resolve, doubled his doubts, aggravated his anxieties and ambitions.
    He was exchanging the Benjamin for one of his own books when the sound of footsteps sent him sliding into a seat in time to avoid being caught. Only to be caught several moments later examining Heather’s flushed beaming face as Mack came in.
    MACK SAID, “IT’S SETTLED , then? We’ll keep him?”
    â€œSounds good to me,” said Heather.
    The coffee table in the living room was mussed like a bed after love. A nearly empty cigarette pack, butts of half-smoked cigarettes cold in the ashtrays, coffee slopped into saucers, tangerine peels and grape seeds, crumpled foil from chocolate truffles, assorted glasses and their rings, an almost empty brandy bottle.
    Zoltan rested his elbow on the mantel of the tall Rumford fireplace like a large bird of prey perched on a low branch. “For how long?” he asked, dangling a cigarette.
    â€œIf this works out,” said Mack, “then I hope you stay at least till you finish your book.”
    â€œHeather?” said Zoltan in a low murmur, catching her in the dark gleam of his eye.
    From the sofa where she slouched, Heather, who had given up smoking with her first pregnancy, lit her second cigarette of the night and blew a ring. “I say he stays as long as he’s this charming.”
    Two small flames still flickered tenuously in the grate over a mounting hill of ash. Mack had lifted himself from the sofa and bent over the neat stack of logs to select another when he caught sight of his watch. “My god! Do you people realize it’s two-thirty? I don’t know about you, but I have to be up before seven.”
    â€œTwo-thirty!” said Heather. “I don’t feel the least bit tired though, do you? The night flew!Doesn’t it feel like we just finished dinner?” Her face was flushed, her voice euphoric.
    â€œIt’s Zoltan’s doing,” said Mack. “Kept me up till dawn in L.A. and now half the night here. Have to do something about this.”
    Zoltan demurred. “I’m still