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“You have so many friends, Zoltan,” interrupted Heather. “Some of them must be dying to put you up. What about Elaine here? Why don't you move in with her?”

Zoltan looked triumphant. Heather had sprung the trap. With his eyes he signaled to Elaine.

“Excuse me. He can't possibly move in with me,” said Elaine.

“Why not? He's there most nights anyway,” said Heather, focusing on the oddly crooked mouth.

“For one thing,” said Zoltan, “she has not invited me.”

“My place is much too small for two. It's just a studio, really, and it's also where I practice.”

“Not too tiny for two at night, though, is it?”

Elaine rolled her eyes at Zoltan, as if Heather's outrageous behavior confirmed everything he had said about her, while Mack could barely suppress a laugh over Heather's chutzpah. He had to admit his wife was one cool brazen bitch.

“You're welcome to come and see it, if you don't believe me,” offered Elaine.

“Really, this is preposterous,” exploded Zoltan. He turned to Elaine and clasped her hands. “You
don't have to do this. You don't have to defend your choice to live alone.”

“What about Rebecca Shaffer, then?” said Heather. “She has a huge loft. Right in the middle of Soho, very convenient.”

“That is the problem,” said Zoltan, finally looking at Heather. “It is also only one room, though very big one. But this is moot. No one invites me there.”

“She would in a minute if she knew you were interested.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It is also her husband's place. In any case,” he continued, “I could not work there, in same house with another writer. She would eat me up alive.”

“Well, you don't seem to be able to work here either,” mumbled Mack.

Heather was too proud to point out that in this house, too, another writer lived, since Zoltan had never acknowledged it.

“Fact is, my man,” said Zoltan, “you are the only person who invites me to stay. No one else has offered.”

“Well, now we're withdrawing our offer,” said Heather.

“Does she speak for you?” Zoltan asked Mack.

“I'm speaking for myself,” said Heather.

“Why, may I ask?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you withdrawing invitation?”

“I told you why this morning.”

“And did you tell also your husband?”

“Yes, more or less.”

“More or less.” He spat it out with his familiar sneer. “Will you tell him now please exactly what you told me this morning, exactly why you ask me to leave? Would you repeat in front of your husband?”

“Sure.”

Barbara Rabin sat entranced at the edge of her seat trying to follow the words slamming back and forth like Ping-Pong balls, while her husband jiggled the cubes in his glass with an expression of amused distaste.

“I'm asking you to leave,” said Heather, determination in her raised chin, “because in your three months with us in this house you haven't come through for me.”

“And how is that, please? What do I withhold?”

“Everything.”

“Meaning?”

“Didn't you come here promising to teach us something important, the secret of happiness or
something like that? But you can't teach us anything when you're gone all night and you sleep all day. Why should we keep you here when there's nothing in it for us anymore? Why? What claim do you have on us? That's what I'd like to know.”

Zoltan shook his head and sent a long eloquent look to Elaine. Then he took a sip of Scotch and taunted Heather with “Pardon me, I fail to see how my sleeping arrangements concern you.”

“After you move out they won't. Which is why I want you to leave.”

Zoltan turned to Mack with an exasperated shrug. “Can't you do something about this, my good man? You invited me here, not she. You have not said for me to go. It means you are unconvinced. At least ambivalent.”

It was this Mack would miss—how easily Zoltan saw through him. Now, with Zoltan backed into a corner, Mack couldn't help feeling sorry for the guy. Talk about ambivalence! Even if he did pocket the donation, which wasn't all that much, the fellow had to live somehow. Whatever he did or didn't do, he was still the author of “one of the landmark works of the twentieth century,” according to the
New Republic
, still a scintillating presence, and admired for that prison time—if it was true. And if not, one had to admire a guy who could put it over on the world.

All the same, it was Mack's duty to back up Heather. “I'm afraid you're wrong there, Z. I happen to agree with her.”

“I see. You fall back on marriage and let your wife decide for you. You give up responsibility. I thought you were more man than that. I see I am wrong.”

“Responsibility?” Heather blurted out. “You want to talk responsibility?”

“Certainly. Who is responsible should take consequences. Mack cannot leave me stranded, he must make good on his promise. If not, he is a weak wretch, cowardly fool like Samson—”

“Come, now,” interrupted Mack. “There's no point getting personal. Fact is I promised you a place to write, but you aren't writing, are you?”

“Yes I am.”

“Oh? Then where's the book?”

“Book is not finished. But I have many pages of notes and drafts. Probably too many. That is my problem. Writing is harder than you imagine.”

While Mack sipped his drink and the Rabins sat in their front-row seats in riveted silence watching the drama unfold, the room's only sound was the crackle of logs reducing to embers.

“Anyway,” said Mack, “it's really not a question
of who's responsible. Let's just say we all gave it a decent trial, and it's nobody's fault if things aren't working out anymore, that's all.”

“Things not working out. What you mean is, certain people do not allow things to work out. Matter of fact,” said Zoltan, “it is very personal. Matter of fact, your wife wants me to go because you are not enough man for her. Not man enough to control her.”

“Slow down, Z,” said Mack. “You're starting to get out of line here.”

Heather's heart was thumping. Zoltan was coming dangerously close to the edge. She saw the vein pulsing in his neck, as it always did when he was seriously worked up. Still, whatever he said, it was her house, and she had the final say. Let him insult Mack and threaten her all he liked, nothing would change her mind. If he shut up right now, she'd give him as much time as he needed; if he stepped one more inch over the line, she'd kick him out tonight.

As moments passed in portentous silence, the kind Zoltan could orchestrate to perfection, Abe Rabin wondered if he as resident psychiatrist shouldn't be doing something to defuse the tension. Barbara and Elaine watched Zoltan and
Heather, arms crossed over their chests, glaring ferociously at each other. Mack leaned his head back waiting to see which one would back down first.

Zoltan suddenly stood up, raised his glass high, and with flaming eyes vaulted across the hearth toward Heather.

Mack sprang to his feet. “Whoa!” he cried, as Rabin leaped in front of Heather and grabbed Zoltan's arm. The two stood clinched for a moment, pumping arms, like fake TV wrestlers, until Zoltan's Scotch began to spill on the rug and Rabin stepped back. In that instant Zoltan hurled his glass into the flames, where it shattered, the remnants of liquid fizzling into steam.

Elaine cowered. Mack downed his drink. Barbara rushed to embrace Heather. But Heather, having seen this shattered-glass melodrama one too many times, knew that the curtain had been pulled aside to reveal the wizard's sham. Out of danger, she laughed with relief.

“Come, then,” said Zoltan softly to Elaine, regaining enough dignity to offer her his hand. Anything more he might say would be anticlimactic. He pulled her to her feet, all courtesy and calm. “Come. We will get our coats and I will take you home.”

As they left the room Rabin whispered to Barbara, “What he means is, is she'll take him home.”

“I APOLOGIZE TO YOU
,
my dear, for subjecting you to this ugliness,” said Zoltan, as he and Elaine loaded his bags into the trunk of her car.

“Forget it.”

Snow quickly powdered their hats and boots. When they were done, she cleared off the windshield while he returned to the house, where his hosts and their guests sat gossiping.

Wordlessly he walked up to Mack, who was just then poking the fire. Slivers of broken glass sparkled on the hearth. Suddenly alert, Mack turned around, clutching the poker in both hands. Zoltan stood before him wearing a twisted, superior smile. With an exaggerated flourish he handed Mack the house keys, then bowed deeply, Karamazov style, his long forelock sweeping the floor and his boots leaving little puddles on the hearth. The flames shot up; except for the fire, the room was again silent. Then without so much as a glance at Heather or the Rabins, Zoltan raised himself to his full height, elevated his nose, turned, and left. Silence reigned until the outer door slammed closed. Still
no one spoke as the car motor started, died, started again, warmed up, and finally receded as the car drove away. Then a collective sigh relieved the tension, and Mack traded the poker for the hearth broom and began sweeping up glass.

“Here, let me do that,” said Barbara, taking the broom from Mack while he got the dustpan. When all the broken glass had been swept up Mack carried the dustpan to the kitchen.

“So what did you think of him?” asked Heather.

“A narcissistic, self-dramatizing sociopath. I can't imagine what you see in him, Heather,” said Rabin.

“Saw,” corrected Heather.

“No, Abe,” said Barbara, “he's much too large a personality to just write off like that. He may be a sociopath, but sociopaths can be very attractive. I can see what they saw in him, even in that getup. You've got to admit you've never met anyone like him. He's a throwback to some other age. Further back than a hippie … maybe some nineteenth-century bohemian type, part ascetic, part dandy, part I don't know what. Someone out of
La Bohème
or
The Count of Monte Cristo
. The goatee, that capey thing, tossing a glass into the fire!”

“Dracula maybe?” drawled Rabin. “Fin de siècle but of the wrong siècle.”

“Not that he wouldn't be totally impossible to live with,” Barbara conceded with a nod to Heather, “I can see that he's somewhat unhinged. But still, most charlatans are charismatic—that's how come they can pull it off. I half expected him to challenge Mack to a duel, or pull a rapier out from under his cloak.”

“Or a horsewhip,” said Heather.

“Or sink his fangs into Heather,” said Rabin.

“If Heather didn't sink her fangs into him first,” said Mack, who had just returned from the kitchen carrying a tray with a bottle of vintage port and four fresh glasses. He winked affectionately at Heather.

“Barbara's got the charlatan part right,” said Rabin, “but I'd say he's more the vitamin salesman type of charlatan.”

“You've got it,” said Mack, putting his arm around his wife. “A vitamin salesman! Offering the secret elixir of life.”

“And a ladies' man,” added Barbara.

“A scoundrel and a cad,” said Rabin.

Heather said wistfully, “All of the above.”

“I SHOULD WARN YOU,”
said Mack when the Rabins were ready to leave, “there may be a dead animal
about five miles down the road. I think I hit something on my way home tonight. I skidded trying to avoid it and ran into a tree. Smashed a fender. Lucky I got back here in one piece.”

“Which car were you driving?” asked Rabin.

“Unfortunately, the Porsche.”

“What kind of animal was it? I'll keep an eye out.”

“Can't really say. All I know is I caught the eyes in my headlights, swerved to avoid killing it, and went into a skid. Poor bastard probably didn't know what hit him.”

“Just like Zoltan,” quipped Barbara, grinning.

Mack gave her a look and continued, “
If
I hit him. I don't remember a thud, and there was no body I could see, so there's a chance I only grazed him and he got away. Which might be even worse for the poor bastard. I feel really bad about it.”

Heather, who loved animals, was willing to sacrifice this one in exchange for Mack. “Not your fault, Mack. It was an accident,” she said, reaching a hand out to comfort him.

“That's pretty generous coming from you, babe,” said Mack, “since you always say you don't believe in accidents.”

24
       
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING
,
while Heather was carrying an armful of files upstairs to her reclaimed study, she noticed that the table where the de Kooning belonged was naked, with a faint ring of dust around the spot where the sculpture usually sat. She looked on the floor, then around the hall. Nothing. It must have been stolen.

Her heart started to pound. She knew she ought to report the theft to Mack immediately but was reluctant because she knew he'd suspect Carmela. He'd be wrong: Carmela would never have left a dust ring. That meant it had to be Zoltan. He must have slipped it under his cloak on the way out, to make fools of them and have the last laugh.

If he expected her to sit by and let him, he was wrong. Such ingratitude! Feeling violated and duped,
she had half a mind to call 911 and send the police straight down to Elaine's, where they could arrest him for grand larceny. Then nothing could save him from prison or deportation except her mercy. Let him beg her for it. Only if he immediately returned the sculpture would she even consider withholding charges.

She ran to the great room to check on the rest of the art: the Hockney, the Motherwell, the Wesley, the Salle—each piece irreplaceable, however well insured. They were all there on the walls where they belonged, encircling the room, like gems on a necklace—