A Dangerous Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page B

does the canning?” I asked.
    â€œElves. You didn’t think Barry would stain his lily-whites, did you?”
    Barry Roth was an entertainment lawyer and Max’s husband. Molly took credit for the match, having sent Max to Barry when the movie rights to his first book sold. Within a month they were living together; and days after gay marriage was briefly legalized in California, Molly and I flew to L.A. for their wedding. At the dinner we sat next to Max’s mother, Estelle, a plump little widow from Queens, who danced the hora with gusto and confided, after a few White Russians, “I always hoped he’d marry a nice Jewish girl. But two out of three ain’t bad.”
    Of course, by then Max was out of the FBI. They’d known he was gay—Max was too big to fit in any closet—but marriage might have strained his colleagues’ grudging acceptance to the breaking point. Or so I imagined, for while Max made prodigious use of his years in the bureau for his thrillers, he rarely talked about his own time there. Couldn’t have been easy, I imagined, being gay and Jewish to boot. But writers do tend to be outsiders, and whatever else he was, Max was a writer to the bone.
    Over our drinks we discussed his new publisher. I had moved him over to Random for a three-book deal with a 50 percent bump in his advances and a fresh marketing plan to back up their investment. The first book was due out in a few weeks and Random had already gone back for a second printing. There was a twelve-city tour in the works, along with a national radio campaign. Max should have been over the moon, and a part of him was, but another part of him worried. “What if they don’t earn out? What if I don’t make the list?”
    Writers
. Every one I’d ever met was bipolar, the poles being arrogance and insecurity. Even my Hugo had had his moments of doubt. I never knew what would trigger them. A clueless review, the success of a lesser writer (not even great writers, I’d learned, were immune to jealousy), a significant birthday. It was better in Paris, where we spent six months of every year, but the troughs between books were always fraught with danger. I’d come home from shopping on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, carrying our daily baguette, fruit, and cheese, to find him sprawled across our brass bed, wiry gray hair furrowed with tugging, surrounded by balled-up sheets of loose-leaf paper.
    â€œI’m done,” he’d say. “I’m finished. I’m out of words.”
    â€œThey’ll come back,” I’d promise. And they always did.
    Max had opened a menu and was studying it closely. “I’m starving. Eating for two now, you know.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    He gave me a sly grin. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re pregnant.”
    â€œHighly unlikely.”
    â€œAnd yet true, thanks to an egg donor and a lovely surrogate named Pamela.”
    I was speechless, but Max, secure in my delight, rattled on without noticing. He’d always wanted kids, he said. Barry was the hold-out, but when he hit forty, something changed. “We don’t know which of us is the biological father. Better that way, don’t you think?”
    â€œMuch better.” I managed a smile. It’s not that I wasn’t happy for them. He’d taken me by surprise was all.
    â€œIf it’s a girl, we’re naming her Molly.”
    Something cold and hard throbbed in me, like the beating of a dead heart.
    â€œYou don’t think she’ll be offended?” he asked. “Technically Jews aren’t supposed to name children after the living.”
    â€œShe’ll be thrilled and honored. It’s a lovely name. If I’d had a daughter, I’d have called her Molly.” I don’t know why I said that. It felt like sticking a fork in my hand. There was a time when I thought Hugo and I would have a child. It didn’t happen. Since