West of Sunset (16 page)

Crossing Sunset in the middle of the block, he had to wait for a car. As it approached, the racket of the engine growing, its headlights threw shadows across the palms. As if he'd conjured it from his imagination, it was the Daimler from
Three Comrades
—a black phaeton gleaming under the streetlamps. He wouldn't have been surprised to find Reinecke behind the wheel, a Luger in his gloved fist. That was the problem with Hollywood: everything turned into a plot. He could picture the car swerving, and a flash of his own last-minute reaction. Dottie and Alan and Ernest would band together to avenge him.

The car roared past, racing to make the light at the corner, sped through the wash of red neon that marked Schwab's and down the long straightway to LaBrea, growing fainter and fainter in the mist till there was only the buzzing of the sign. Empty, the road was wide as a river. He crossed at an angle, trying to save time. Before he reached the far curb, the neon blinked off.

His instinct was to run, but after sitting all day the best he could muster was a hobbling trot. Once again, the world had conspired to remind him of his age. He was almost angrier at his own debility than the store closing early.

Inside, the lights were still on. A counterman he knew from too many chili dinners and late night forays was emptying the register. The clock behind the soda fountain said he had three minutes left.

He tried the door, expecting it to be locked. It swung open, but only halfway. He had to give it an extra tug, grunting with the effort, and felt a twinge in the shoulder he'd broken a few years ago showing off his diving skills. He gritted his teeth, afraid he'd torn something, when the lights around him dimmed. He recognized the feeling as the one he'd desired, only he was alone. Even now, as the aisles of Schwab's turned purple, part of him thought he must be wrong, his body confused. How was it possible, all this time, that he'd mistaken oblivion for joy? He opened his mouth to call for help, but his breath left him, and before he could grab the magazine rack along the wall, he was gone.

T
he doctor wouldn't call it a heart attack. His diagnosis was angina, for which he prescribed Scott injections of calcium and iron and a vial of tiny nitroglycerin pills he was supposed to carry everywhere. He needed to rest and cut back on the cigarettes. No running, no stairs, and for the next few weeks at least, no sex, rules Sheilah enforced with a nun's humorless efficiency.

She installed herself at the Garden, limiting his visitors, not letting him out of bed. Stromberg was fine with him turning in the script late, which gave Scott the opportunity to catch up. He fashioned a lapdesk out of a tea tray and wrote like Flaubert, propped on his pillows. At five she stopped him, taking away his yellow pad, gathering the draft pages strewn about the floor to type up later. He could read or listen to the news from Europe while she made dinner, when all he wanted was to go join Bogie and Mayo for a stiff gin. As much as he enjoyed being pampered, he resented being treated like an invalid, and by the third day he was planning his escape.

They were skirmishing over his trip East. She was afraid it would be too strenuous, despite the doctor giving Scott his express permission. She petitioned him daily, saying Scottie would understand. She was coming out later this summer anyway. Bedridden, he couldn't evade the question, and fielding each new argument wearied him. He could only hold to what he'd told her in the first place: he'd promised Scottie, plus he'd already made the arrangements.

“It's only a week.”

“And then a month to recover. It's not good for you, especially now.”

“I have to go. You know that.”

“I wish you didn't.”

“I wish I didn't either.” He could give her that, though it wasn't nearly enough. Nothing would be, short of renunciation, a complete break. He could see why lovers sometimes turned to murder.

Their last night, she changed the sheets and they slept together in his narrow bed, overly conscious of the doctor's orders. She hadn't relented. She needed to remind him of all that he was leaving behind. Even in his baggy pajamas, with her bra on, she incited him. She rolled over and he pressed against her soft bottom.

“Sorry,” she said. “You have to wait.”

“It's not going to kill me.”

“You're right, it's not.”

“I'm willing to chance it.”

“That's very generous, but you're not the one who'd have to tell the doctor what happened.”

“What would you tell him?”

“I'd tell him I tried to help you but you wouldn't listen to me.”

“That's a bit cold, isn't it, considering I just died.”

“It's true,” she said. “You don't listen. You do what you want to do and then expect me to take care of you when you fall apart.”

He wanted to deny it for the gross oversimplification it was, but couldn't.

“It's my fault,” she said.

“It's not.”

“Listen, I'm trying to tell you. I used to do for my mum the same way. She'd get on a kick and I'd have to make supper and put the boys to bed. I was ten or eleven then. Nothing's changed.”

He wanted to say he'd been better lately, but knew not to contradict her.

“I understand,” she said. “People are the way they are. Will you do me a favor this time and try not to hurt yourself? I can't bear to see you like that.”

Why should he feel cornered by the one person who cared for him? To anyone else he could have lied.

“I'll try,” he said, and then regretted it.

In the morning her request had the weight of prophecy, lingering as he kissed her good-bye and boarded the plane, though gradually, as they cleared the Sierras and cruised over the trackless stretches of desert, it lifted, and he fixed on what lay ahead, as if in these long hours aloft he might come up with some ingenious plan—impossible, not knowing how Zelda was. Scottie would be cool to her regardless, setting herself apart, leaving him, as always, to draw them together. He'd brought along his script, hoping, before Easter, to cable Stromberg that it was finished, but instead canvassed the cabin, taking notes on his fellow passengers. Salt Lake City, Denver, Omaha. They tacked across the continent, the stewardess loading on sandwiches and fresh newspapers at each stop, helping them make up their sleeping berths. Rather than risk spilling it, he drank his two tablespoons of chloral straight from the bottle and was under in minutes. When she woke him, they were almost to Baltimore, dawn streaming in the windows. He sipped his coffee and thought of Sheilah, still asleep in the hills, and wished the trip were over.

Scottie was waiting for him at the train station in a smart navy outfit he'd never seen before, doubtless the work of Anne Ober. Jesus, what he owed them.

“Don't you look swellegant,” he said, holding her by the shoulders. “Remind me to thank her. How's the Latin?”

“Bonum.”

“Ah,
bene factum
. I'm telling you, it'll come in handy this summer.”

“In case I meet a nice cardinal.”

“By the way, not a word to your mother. I haven't told her. Did you write her like I asked you?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she said glumly.

“Don't act like it's such a burden. One letter a month isn't asking too much.”

“I don't mind writing, it's what she writes back. Did she tell you she's bicycling through Provence?”

“No.” He looked at her as if it might be a joke.

“According to her, she's going there this fall with some woman from the hospital. They're going to stay at a chateau.”

“She's confused.”

“I figured.”

“What it actually is is the doctor doesn't want her to take any more vacations without supervision. I guess they've had problems.”

“I can imagine,” she said. “So she's not going to Provence.”

“No, but she is going to have a nurse with her.”

“Goody.”

“I think it might help.” He understood her worry. A stranger was one more complication, one more witness to their embarrassment. He didn't tell her how much he was paying for it.

When the train came, though he knew he shouldn't, he took her bag and lugged it up the steps with his. The line ran along the shore, and he found two seats on the left side of the car so they could watch the inlets and marshes scroll by. The tide was out, gulls stalking the mudflats. A fishing shack he remembered from the last time had burned down. She was quiet, copying a list of verb declensions while he leafed through
Collier's
. As father and daughter they'd reached the stage where the only time they saw each other was on holiday, their real lives rarely intersecting. She was a dependable traveling companion, sharp-eyed and quick-witted, but often he felt a distance engendered by the time they'd spent apart, as if she wasn't interested in him. It would only get worse. In the fall she was off to college.

“Want to read something?” he asked, pulling out his script. “You have to promise to be merciless.”

“I promise. Has anyone else read it?”

“You're the first.”

She stashed her Latin and dug in with a pencil, bent over the pages like a copy editor, occasionally releasing a chuckle or thoughtful murmur. When she sat up straight, the pencil scratched. Like any child, she couldn't resist correcting a parent. He was content to hide behind his magazine, skimming yet another dissection of the crisis in Europe, peeking from time to time to see how far she'd gotten. If only she concentrated as hard on her studies, though at that age he'd been the same way—worse, to be honest. At Princeton he'd lost the better part of his sophomore year to the late-night ecstasies of theater life. Impossibly, he wanted to save her from his mistakes.

When she turned the last page, he pretended not to notice.

She slapped at his leg, a playful backhand. “So, what happens?”

“What do you think should happen?”

“There are only two things that can happen in a love story,” she began, quoting his own advice.

“Only two?”

“Happiness or heartbreak.”

“So which is it?”

If he'd instilled anything in her, it was a love of storytelling. They were batting around the possibilities when the conductor passed through the car. “Norfolk, Norfolk is next.”

He thought: if they could just stay on, keep rolling down the coast till they hit Florida.

He expected the nurse to be in uniform like at the hospital, a matron ushering her charge through the chaos of the waiting room, but the blonde with Zelda was stooped and wore a brown sweater and skirt ensemble like a schoolteacher. With their matching bobs and skimpy figures they might have been spinster twins, except up close the woman was rucked and crepey beneath her makeup and had a tragically upturned nub of a nose that made her appear perpetually stunned, as if she'd just run into a glass door.

Zelda looked the same as she had at Christmas till she smiled. Somehow she'd chipped her new tooth and the canine beside it, a jagged break. As always, seeing her, he realized how little he knew of her life at Highland. He held her a moment before giving way to Scottie.

“This is my friend Miss Phillips. By coincidence she's from Philadelphia, which is an easy way to remember her name.”

“Actually I'm from Pottstown,” the woman said, shaking hands with them.

“Miss Phillips is here to make sure I don't tear my clothes off and run wild through the streets.”

“Have you been up to that again?” he asked.

“It's been too cold. How about you?”

“Too busy.”

“Be careful what you say in front of her. She likes writing people up even more than you do.”

“I thought you said she was your friend.”

“She is, but she's very scrupulous.”

“That's good,” he said. “We all need someone like that. Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Miss Phillips said.

The trolley out to the beach was a screechy old interurban that stank of graphite dust and ozone. There was nowhere to pull her aside and ask what Dr. Carroll expected of them. The whole undertaking had the feel of an experiment without parameters. As they rode along in silence, he sensed her observing, noting how he sat like a buffer between Zelda and Scottie. In his family's defense, he wanted to say their problems, like Zelda's, were no more solvable for being obvious.

The Cavalier Hotel, like the Beachcomber, was a relic, tiered like a wedding cake, a swaybacked casino and dance pavilion jutting out over the breakers on weedy pilings, just waiting for the next hurricane. Before he was born, his Grandfather Fitzgerald's store had furnished its three hundred rooms with white wicker chairs and sofas and headboards, and as a child—until his father lost the business—he spent one week a summer here, exploring the labyrinthine stairwells and lounges and galleries, so that returning was a kind of bittersweet homecoming. The last time he'd visited, two years ago, Zelda and Scottie had fought, and though their positions were entrenched and he was weaker now, he was hoping Miss Phillips would act as a neutral second, helping defuse the tension.

Her inclusion also changed the sleeping arrangements. Instead of the close quarters of a suite, the three of them each had their own room, a grave expense but essential, and which for himself and Zelda conveniently eliminated the most treacherous aspect of being together. He expected her to protest, but she followed Miss Phillips to their door like the ward she was and went in to get settled.

Dinner was at six in the Neptune Room, the carpet and drapes and walls all varying shades of aqua, even the crystal chandeliers, as if they were guests of an undersea kingdom ruled by middle-aged waiters. There, wearing the same brown outfit, Miss Phillips shared Dr. Carroll's schedule with them. Breakfast at eight, a stroll on the boardwalk, tennis, a light lunch and a half-hour for digestion, then golf—the idea being the days would take on the same rhythm as the hospital.

“Eight's a little early for vacation,” Scottie said.

“I'm up at six every day,” Zelda said. “Rain or shine.”

“If it rains do we still play tennis?”

“If it rains we stay in and play mah-jongg,” Scott said. “What if we all meet on the boardwalk around nine, how's that?”

Scottie also wanted to appeal the prescribed bedtime of nine o'clock till he gave her a single shake of his head to show it wasn't for their benefit, a fact he made plain after Zelda and Miss Phillips turned in. He appreciated that it was her spring break. They needed to be patient. It was just a week.

“I hate playing games with her,” she said. “She always ends up pitching a fit.”

He looked around as if Zelda might hear, though there was a whole room separating them. “She can't help it.”

“She shouldn't play them then.”

“It's supposed to be good for her.”

“How?”

“Pie,” he said. “Be sweet.”

“I'll try.”

“Thank you.”

In the past his strategy had been to keep them apart, which sometimes meant stepping between them and taking blows from both sides. He could show up for breakfast and be pleasant and stroll the boardwalk, but his own doctor's orders forbid him from playing tennis. He was hoping to use that time to write, but when it came to it he couldn't leave Scottie on her own, and sat courtside with Miss Phillips, watching them volley with the club pro.

Of the two, Zelda was by far the stronger player, aggressive to a fault, chasing shots she had no hope of returning, while Scottie held her ground behind the baseline, content to hit the ball on the second bounce, an offense Zelda pointed out as if she didn't know the rules. Her backhand was weak, and as the pro tried to correct her swing, Scott could see her losing patience.

“There you go!” he called when she sent one over the net, and she gave him a face.

After they'd warmed up, they played Canadian doubles, Zelda and Scottie against the pro, who fed their forehands effortlessly, letting their better shots drop in for winners.