Menage by Alix Kates Shulman

sex. Her expression of incredulity combined with appreciation was not unlike the one she wore now.
    â€œTake your time thinking it over. Zoltan has lots of loose ends to tie up in L.A., and he can’t come till I send him a plane ticket. Meanwhile, you might want to read this.” He handed her the book.
    Heather turned the volume over slowly. Mack knew how to get her attention. On the back jacket she saw a picture of an intense, foreign-looking man, dark and brooding, staring straight into her eyes. Impressive blurbs, including one by Susan Sontag, compared his work to Orwell, Kosinski. On the title page was an inscription to both her and Mack that might or might not contain a cryptic message,one she couldn’t yet decipher. She blushed at the strangely stirring prospect of waking each morning to find such a person captive in her house, ready to talk to her at breakfast—a prospect that fed every romantic fantasy she had dutifully abandoned on her wedding day.
    â€œI don’t get it,” she said. “What makes him think he can live with us when he couldn’t live with Maja?”
    â€œThat was different. Maja was always distracting him and making impossible demands. But we won’t demand anything.”
    Heather knew Mack was not one to give away something for nothing. The situation was loaded; she wondered if he wasn’t perhaps setting her up for some devious test. Whatever he had in mind, she was up for it. “How long would he expect to stay?”
    Mack shrugged. “Everything’s open. We’ll see how it goes. Naturally, if it doesn’t work out, he leaves.”
    Suddenly Heather smelled something more demanding than opportunity. “The artichokes!” She leaped up and ran to the kitchen, with Mack close behind her.
    Despite the burned pot and acrid smell, Heather and Mack sat at the kitchen table stripping awaythe blackened outer leaves and letting melted butter disguise the faint smoky taste that had penetrated clear to the hearts. As the leaves piled up on their plates they began to explore possibilities, debating what to tell the children and where to put Zoltan. Mack assumed they’d settle him downstairs in one of the guest rooms, but Heather wondered if he wouldn’t be more comfortable upstairs in her study, with more privacy and the better view. That intimate hour making plans, with the children asleep and morning still hours away, reminded Heather of the times they’d once had sitting at the kitchen table in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment on East Ninety-second Street night after night (Mack had just begun his first ambitious complex and she was still working as an editorial assistant at a self-help magazine), planning the house they would one day build. Everything they fancied Mack drew into the plans—dream kitchen for her, workshop for him, music room, playroom for the children they would have (why not?), maybe wooded acres, spa and hot tub, solar panels, and a view. Somewhere they knew it was dangerous to pluck dreams from the air and build them of lumber and glass, like the poor fairy-tale woodsmen and fishwives who stole magic and thoughtlessly wished forwhat they couldn’t afford. But dreams seemed innocent when they were only dreams.
    Though it was after two when they finally descended the stairs to bed, they celebrated their new hopes by an intense interlude—rare since the children came—of making love.

 
    9         ON THE SUNDAY ZOLTAN was to arrive, Heather and Mack were up at dawn, like irrepressible children in the hours preceding a birthday party. Before breakfast, Mack drove down to the hangar and took his plane up for a quick turn to dissipate some of his excess excitement. The sky was cloudless, the air bright with the crisp edge of autumn. Mack felt buoyant and powerful, as he always felt in the cockpit. His plane was too light for a long journey, but he had plans to upgrade to a