The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (15 page)

After the mussels I tucked away steak frites and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône, and finished off with mousse au chocolat and an espresso. By the time I got over to the Martin Beck, the doors were opening and
The Petrified Forest
audience was starting to spill out. I stationed myself across the street a couple of buildings down and waited like I’d been waiting every night. Several dozen fans crowded around the stage door, along with the autograph hounds and the paparazzi, all of them hoping to catch a glimpse of Sean. And maybe an incident.

The bit players and character actors filtered out first, unrecognized. Then Jeremy Irons, who smiled and signed some autographs before he headed on down the block with his hands in his pockets, alone. Then no one came out for a while. Then Sean did, behind aviator sunglasses. A large male companion was alongside him to ward off the autograph hounds, many of whom yelled and screamed and pushed toward the young star. Sean and friend didn’t stop to exchange pleasantries. They hurried off down the block. Flashbulbs popped as the photographers pursued him — taunting him, shouting obscene things about Madonna after him, hoping to get a rise out of him. And a photo they could sell. They were out of luck that night.

The sidewalk got quiet after that, except for the dozen or so faithfuls waiting for Merilee. Her fans are always polite, for some reason. My eyes scanned them. None looked menacing. Or familiar. No prominent New York literary figures, for instance. No one was lurking in the shadows or in a parked car. No one was watching for her. Just me. I waited.

The old guy who worked the stage door hailed a cab for her, as he did every night. When it pulled up, she came striding out, her big Il Bisonte bag slung over one shoulder. Lulu moaned softly. I shushed her. She was casually dressed — sweatshirt, shorts, and moccasins. Of course, this being Merilee, the sweatshirt was cashmere, the shorts pleated lamb suede, and the moccasins alligator. She stopped to sign autographs and exchange gracious pleasantries. Then she climbed in the cab and it started its way down the block in the slow crosstown traffic, Merilee chatting away with the driver. She loves cabbies, provided they don’t ride the horn or spit out the window.

I hailed one and hopped in. Mine was a Russian immigrant who spoke just enough English to understand I wanted him to follow her. He did.

We stayed right on her tail until she pulled up in front of our old place on Central Park West. I had my driver wait a few car lengths back as she paid and crossed the street and went inside. She and her doorman had a brief chat, then she gathered up some packages waiting there for her and headed for the elevator. We waited. As soon as I saw the lights go on in the windows overlooking the park, I had him take me home.

Another notice from the Racquet Club was waiting for me in my mailbox. This was a discreet, handwritten one from the club secretary, who wondered if perhaps I was intending to relocate abroad and wished to let my membership lapse. If not, might he bring the matter of my dues balance to my attention?

Why was it I hadn’t paid them yet? Or felt like going near there lately? A “gentleman’s dinosaur pit,” Cam had called it. He had told me how much he wanted my respect. Did I want his, too?

Had he killed Skitsy? Where was he?

My phone started ringing as soon as I opened the door. Vic with some answers, I hoped. I lunged for it.

“It h-hurts, Mr. Hoagy … Oh, God … !”

“Merilee!”

“I need you, Hoagy,” she cried, voice choking with sobs. “I n-need you. Oh, God, it hurts … ”

“Don’t move, Merilee! I’ll be right there!”

“Hurry, darling. Hurry … ”

I hung up and dashed out the door, Lulu scampering on my heel.

L
ULU STARTED WHOOPING IN
the elevator. As soon as the doors slid open, she went skittering down the tile corridor and hurled her body, paws first, at her mommy’s door. The thud brought Merilee.

“Merilee, what — ?”

Sobbing, she threw herself in my arms before I could say another word. I held on to her and smelled her smell, which is Crabtree & Evelyn avocado-oil soap.

“What did they do?” I demanded. “Tell me!”

She wiped her eyes and her nose with my linen handkerchief. They were going fast that day. “They … they … ”

“They
what?
”

“N-Nominated me,” she finally got out. “Today, for
Petrified Forest
. For a Tony. Oh, the
pain
.”

I breathed for the first time since I’d answered my phone. “Jesus Christ, Merilee … ”

Lulu was circling around her and moaning for some attention. Merilee knelt and stroked her and cooed at her. Then she stood and we gazed at each other, and I got lost in her green eyes. Merilee Nash isn’t conventionally pretty. Her nose and chin are too patrician, her forehead is too high. Plus she’s no delicate flower. She has broad, sloping shoulders, a muscular back, and powerful legs. Standing there in her size-10 bare feet, she was just under six feet. Right now her eyes were all puffy from crying and her cheeks flushed. Her waist-length golden hair was tied into a loose bun atop her head. She had on a silk target-dot dressing gown that was identical to my own. In fact, it was my own until she stole it and I had to buy another one. Holding on to my clothes had been tough for me when we were together — she always looked better in them than I did. Under the gown she wore a pair of Brooks Brothers white pima-cotton pj’s. Men’s pj’s, because she insists they’re better made. She sews the fly shut.

“Merilee, how could you do this to me?”

She bit her lower lip. “You said to call if I needed you, darling. I did. Need you. And you
came
. It means so much to me that you —”

“Merilee, there’ve been two threats on your life. My apartment has been attacked by a sledgehammer. My celebrity’s onetime editor has jumped off the terrace of her penthouse, or been pushed — that’s presently up in the air, so to speak. I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but getting nominated for your second Tony Award simply does not qualify as —”

She put a finger over my lips. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

She dragged me inside and closed the door behind us. “I’m sorry, darling. Truly. I simply didn’t … Merciful heavens, you must have thought I got … that I was … ”

“Yes, I did.”

“Poor Hoagy. I feel dreadful now. How can I make it up to you?”

“Depends on how far you’re willing to go,” I replied, grinning.

“How would a swift kick in the tush be?” she wondered sweetly.

“More action than I’ve had in over a year.”

“That,” she declared, “makes two of us.”

She had redone the place in mission oak, but not just any mission oak — signed Gustav Stickley Craftsman originals, each piece spare and elegant and flawlessly proportioned. There was an umbrella stand and mouth-watering tall-case clock in the marble-floored entry hall. In the dining room she had a hexagonal dining table with six matching V-backed chairs around it and a massive sideboard with exposed tenons and pins. The living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park, was most impressive of all. Here she had made a seating area out of two Morris armchairs and a matching settee of oak and leather. A copy of the poetry of François Villon lay open on the settee. The coffee table was heaped with fat mailing pouches full of new plays and film scripts that producers and agents wanted her to read. Part of the game. If she showed any interest, the money people would.

I sat in one of the Morris chairs, which was as comfortable as it was beautiful. Merilee curled up on the settee, where Lulu promptly joined her, head in her lap, tail thumping. Me she had forgotten about.

“Congratulations, Merilee. About the nomination. It’s wonderful news.”

“Thank you, darling,” she said softly. “But it’s not wonderful. It’s dreadful. It means I have to go through the uncertainty and self-doubt all over again, just like when I got nominated before.”

“But Merilee, you
won
before.”

“That didn’t make the waiting any easier.” She sighed. “I know I should feel happy, but I don’t. I feel empty. I feel as if I have nothing meaningful to show for all the work I’ve done. I feel as if I don’t have a life.” She gazed across the coffee table at me. “Do you ever feel that way?”

“Only most of the time. I take it you’re not seeing anyone these days.”

She stiffened. “I hate that,” she snapped. “Why is it if a man is depressed, it’s a weighty existential crisis, and if a woman is, she’s just not getting serviced regularly enough?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I’ve missed your quaint little expressions.”

“Hmpht.” She leaned over to pat Lulu, and frowned when she heard her wheezing. Concerned, she felt her nose. “It’s warm and dry. Is she getting sick again?”

“I hope not.”

“Did you give her a decongestant?”

“I did not.”

Merilee shook her head. “And you call yourself a parent.” She got up and hurried off to the kitchen. Lulu watched her.

“Just for that,” I advised Lulu, “you get steak for dinner tomorrow.”

I reached for the phone on the plant stand next to me and called Vic. There was still no sign of Cam. Damn.

When Merilee came back, she had half of a Sudafed buried in a blob of cream cheese on her fingertip. She’d also brought a chilled bottle of Dom Pérignon and two glasses. “I don’t know — maybe we should celebrate the cursed thing,” she said grumpily.

“What an excellent idea.”

I popped the cork and poured while Lulu daintily licked the cream cheese off Merilee’s finger. When she found the pill, she resisted, until Merilee massaged her throat and spoke a lot of baby talk to her. She likes it when Merilee talks that way to her. Me it makes fwow up.

“To you,” I toasted, holding my glass up. “And to Gabby Maple.”

“To us, and to long ago.” She drained half of her glass and made a discreet hiccuping noise. Among her many gifts Merilee owns the world’s most elegant belch. “Are
you
, darling? Seeing anyone, I mean.”

“I think I could fall into Charlie Chu pretty easily if I wanted to.”

Up went one eyebrow. “And do you?”

“She’s an interesting woman.”

“She’s not a woman. She’s a girl.” Merilee emptied her glass and held it out for me. I refilled it. “As for me, they’ll never, ever be suspending me from any canvas — not unless it’s fortified with steel mesh and anchor-bolted to the wall. Gracious, look at the roles they’re offering me … ” She snatched a pile of manuscripts off the coffee table and opened one. “ ‘Approaching middle age.’ ” She dropped it unceremoniously on the wood floor with a
thwack
, opened another. “ ‘A handsome, sturdily built,
mature
woman.’ ”
Thwack
. “ ‘Spinster.’ ”
Thwack
. She slumped back against the sofa. “Lord, I’m turning into Betty Bacall!”

“You’ve never looked lovelier, Merilee,” I assured her, sipping my bubbly. “And you know it.”

“A gal only knows it if her guy tells her.” She sighed. “And I haven’t got one. I’ve been trying the substantial, noncreative type lately. A banker. A dermatologist. Both of them hearty, well-adjusted, content … ”

“And?”

“They just don’t seem to understand me.” She gazed at me over her glass. “You look tired, darling.”

“Shoulder is bothering me.”

“Old javelin injury?”

“New bathroom-door injury.”

“Shall I rub it for you?”

“No, that won’t be … would you?”

She knelt next to me on the floor and began to work her strong fingers into my shoulder. It made me think of when she was in the Sondheim musical. Her legs would cramp up on her in the night, twitch and thump in the bed. I’d rub them for her, then rub the rest of her, then …

“Feel good?” she asked softly.

“Better than good.”

From the settee, Lulu watched us drowsily. The decongestant was taking effect.

“And how is Cam?”

“Among the missing right now. In more ways than one. I wish I could figure him out.”

“He’s gotten under your skin, hasn’t he?”

“What makes you say that?”

“It has been known to happen.”

“Any hint of trouble at this end?” I asked her.

“None,” she assured me. “I told you — there’s nothing to worry about.” She wrapped her arms around my calves and rested her chin on my knee. “Will you take me, darling? To the Tony Awards, I mean.”

“Be glad to. Does this mean you’ve decided to forgive me?”

She gave me her up-from-under look, the one that drove Bill Hurt to madness in the Cain remake. She surprised a lot of people in that movie. She didn’t surprise me. “It means I can never pass up a chance to see you in black.”

We got lost in each other’s eyes for a second.

Abruptly, she went back to work on my shoulder. “I have no idea what I’ll wear.”

“Talk it over with Cher — I’m sure she’ll have some excellent ideas.” I cleared my throat. “Perhaps I don’t need to say this, Merilee … ”

“Perhaps you do,” she said coolly.

“I never wanted any of this to happen. This rift between us.”

“I think … I think what hurt me the most was the way you characterized me. Indecisive. Flighty.”

“I didn’t.”

“You
did
.”

“Well, you’re not.”

“I keep wondering what you’ll write about me next. Gracious, this very conversation we’re having fight now could end up in some book of yours someday.”

I tugged at my ear. “It could.”

Lulu was asleep now on the settee.

“Know what I was thinking about tonight, darling, when I was sitting here all alone? How much I feel like retiring from the business. Getting a country place, raising some … now this will surprise you … ”

“Midget human life-forms?”

“Herbs. I’d give anything to just play in the mud all day and never do another sit-up. If someone wants me to come back in a cameo role as, say, the aircraft carrier USS
Chester Nimitz
, fine. Otherwise, I’m perfectly content to hang it up. Buy every spade and cultivator in the Smith and Hawken catalog. Plant bulbs from White Flower Farm, and feed the birds and watch
The Victory Garden
and wear flannel-lined jeans and rubber boots.”