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Every time she sat down to work Heather exulted in the ironic triumph that Zoltan had imparted the promised secret after all. His negative example and the paltry contents of his trash had exploded the mystique of the writer's life that had once both daunted and seduced her, freeing her to settle down to work (as he, despite his fame, had not managed to do, she reflected snarkily). The very discipline and determination that had eluded him now fortified her. No matter that he was a thief, his vaunted knowledge a sham, or that a month after his departure neither Chloe nor Jamie had a single memory of the man pictured in the photo over Heather's desk, as if he had not existed. When opportunity knocks, you seize it, even if it means sucking blood from a vampire. Gurdjieff, too, she remembered—and Rasputin, for that matter—was widely regarded as a charlatan, his powers as fugitive as mist, as subtle as air, though that did not prevent Katherine Mansfield, Margaret Anderson, and other literary notables from giving absolute devotion to their master in exchange for some elusive but precious value. Whenever her writing bogged down, she was able to give it a jump start by summoning Zoltan's astonished face on the day, fast approaching, when
he would hold in his hands her book of stories, dedicated to him. (How they would reach him she hadn't yet figured out.) Ah, then wouldn't he regret having dismissed her work and turned her down!

Mack found a different consolation. The insult of Zoltan's bilking his own benefactors enabled Mack to write him off as a bad investment—a lesson he'd early mastered at the Business School. The next time he felt charitable toward the arts, he decided, he'd fund a fellowship or endow a prize. Now that his biggest gamble, the L.A. deal, had succeeded, and his tax abatement had been granted in full, he was able to laugh off the insult, like Liberace on the way to the bank. Already, long before completion, the project was almost fully rented, with a small apartment reserved for himself and Vicky D., his new girlfriend (or, as Zoltan would say, “mistress”), who happened to look remarkably like Maja Stern. Sometimes, sitting opposite Vicky at La Mer, peering down at her plump Hollywood breasts, Mack imagined she was Maja reincarnated. But the resemblance ended with the physical, for she wanted much more of him than to be a mere dinner companion. With one successful boutique and plans to expand
(with a little venture capital from him), she was not the type to threaten scandal or suicide; and though, as he sometimes thought, she might harbor a secret wish to capture him, she knew better than to bug him as Maja had bugged Zoltan or to even think of asking him to leave his wife.

ALIX KATES SHULMAN
is the author of the feminist classic
Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen
and three other novels; three memoirs, including the award-winning
Drinking the Rain
; two books on the anarchist Emma Goldman; and
A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays
. Her work has been translated into twelve languages, her essays have appeared in the
New York Times
,
Salon
,
The Nation
, and
The Guardian
. She lives in New York City.
www.alixkshulman.com