West of Sunset (17 page)

On a ball down the middle, Zelda stopped and called “Yours,” but Scottie wasn't ready. They stood there looking at each other as it split them and hit the fence.

“Rule of thumb,” the pro coached. “Don't say, ‘Yours.' Say, ‘Mine.'”

“Not if it's on her side,” Zelda said.

Scottie didn't argue.

“You have to talk to each other. If it's close enough to call and you don't hear your partner, it's fair game.”

“Even if it's on her side.”

“Even if it's on her side.”

From then on, as if to prove her point, Zelda called everything down the middle, stepping in front of Scottie until the pro had to ask her to let Scottie handle a few, the first of which she foul-tipped over the fence, making Scott walk around and search for the ball in a tangle of beach plum.

“Thank you,” he told her afterward.

“Why can't she just play by herself?”

“That's not what she wants. She wants to play with you.”

“I wish you were coming golfing with us.”

“Miss Phillips will be there.”

The idea provided little comfort, and though he wrote well that afternoon, the image of them adrift like three white dots on the great greensward of the course intruded. As if gifted with foresight, he anticipated Scottie's report, the blunt criticisms and the inevitable run-in with the instructor, a repeat of the morning. In her latent phase Zelda was predictable. Miss Phillips helped, taking her aside and apologizing to the man, but the whole episode was unpleasant, and tomorrow they had the same tee time.

“I told you,” Scottie said.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

At dinner, when he asked Zelda how the golf went, she said she'd driven the ball well but her short game was a mess. “It's hard when you don't play regularly. How'd you write?”

“What you said.”

“At least you didn't have someone standing behind you the whole time telling you how to hold your pencil.”

“He thought he was being helpful,” Miss Phillips said.

“He wasn't,” Zelda said, smiling, and stabbed her salad.

With their various dietary restrictions, only Scottie was permitted dessert. Over the years her figure had been a flashpoint between her and Zelda, and rather than rekindle the subject, she declined, settling for coffee. They retired to a salon to play euchre, another torture for her. When the chimes struck eight, he asked how her Latin was coming, giving her an out she happily seized, pecking his cheek.

“What, no kiss for your mother?” Zelda asked, and dutifully Scottie bent to her.

“Have you noticed,” Zelda said when she was gone, “she's hardly said a word to me.”

“She probably doesn't know what to say.”

“I'd love to hear about her classes and her friends and her writing. You get to hear all of that. I don't.”

He relayed the complaint to Scottie, as if giving her notes. “It doesn't have to be anything important, just small talk.”

“That's the problem with her. You say something and she gets stuck on it, then all of a sudden she's biking through France. She only hears what she wants to hear.”

“I understand. Just try to be nice to her.”

“I
am
nice to her. She's the one who says awful things and then pretends she's innocent.”

He held up a hand. “I know how she can be. Try. Please.”

“I wish I'd stayed at school.”

“No you don't.”

“Yes I do.”

“Pie.”

“Don't ‘Pie' me.”

“Pie, Pie, Pie,” he said.

“That's not fair.”

“Nothing's fair,” he said. “We just have to do our best.”

Later, in his room, by the hot light of the desk lamp, he picked at the script, aware of them sleeping on either side of him, and the shuttling of the elevators. He was smoking too much and needed a Coke to cool his throat, but room service was expensive and he didn't want to disturb them. After midnight, when he'd finished the scene and gotten a start on the next one, he grabbed his jacket and rode up to the Crow's Nest for a nightcap, watching the fishing boats twinkling offshore, letting the cold gin settle his nerves. One was just enough to ease him into sleep without the knocked-out grogginess of the chloral.

It became his reward for making it through the days. With them every vacation was the same. He was a fool thinking it might be different. Zelda cursed the golf instructor and was banned from the course, meaning their afternoons were free. Instead of writing, Scott joined her and Miss Phillips for long, therapeutic rambles down the beach, while Scottie chose to sunbathe and read in peace, a decision he considered politic but which Zelda saw as an insult, privately calling her lazy and spiteful. He lobbied them separately, a feckless appeasement that left them equally aggrieved and gave him a headache. They stopped short of fighting outright, but meals were dicey, and by the time he'd gotten them to bed and finally sat down to write, he was already looking forward to that chilled first sip.

Maundy Thursday he wrote poorly. He wasn't going to finish by Easter and consoled himself with a second double, and then a third, imbuing the full moon and its silver slick on the water with a doleful sympathy. Gazing through his own dark reflection, he thought of the good places—Annecy and Lake Como, their first summer at White Bear Lake, their first visit to Bermuda. So many hotel balconies, so many warm nights, the doors flung open to the stars. In Monte Carlo for carnival, she wore nothing to dinner but her jade kimono, undoing the sash in the palace gardens and taking him like a geisha while in the narrow streets below the masquers danced. He was young and trusted they would always be that way.

Though there was no one else in the Crow's Nest, the barman rang a ship's bell for last call. “Something else for you, sir?”

“I'm fine, thanks,” Scott said, and, feeling virtuous, signed the bill to the room.

The hallway rolled beneath him as if he were belowdecks on some great, oceangoing liner, making him grin and shake his head. In the elevator he stabbed at the button but missed, hitting the rigid panel. He got it on a second try with his thumb, and still the doors didn't close.

“I did,” he argued, jabbing it harder.

As he descended, he rested against the wall as if he might sleep there. The car slowed, stopped; the doors rolled open. Their rooms were to the left, but he checked the signs to be sure, his mind fumbling with the numbers. He turned, following the arrow, looping wide on the busily patterned carpet and then correcting, aiming for the middle, and, looking up, realized he wasn't alone.

Far down the long hall, like a wraith in the dim halo of a sconce, stood a woman, facing him. She was small and blonde, in what appeared to be a nightgown. For a panicked instant he imagined it was Miss Phillips, come to check on him, and then, as if she were lost or had forgotten something, she wheeled and started back the other way. He was relieved, and let his face go slack, plodding after the white smudge of her retreating figure. She floated out ahead of him like an apparition. Around them the vast hotel slept, and with the muddled logic of the drunk he imagined she was a spirit come to show him some unpleasant vision of himself.

Ahead the hall jogged left, passing through an airy solarium before entering their wing. He wouldn't have been surprised if she continued through the wall. She flitted around the corner, drawing him on. When he reached the end, she was running away, racing down the moon-drenched gallery with a familiar, girlish stride, the soles of her feet flashing white, and he understood, dully, that it was no ghost fleeing him but Zelda.

His instinct, like a dog's, was to chase after her. He had no idea what she was doing roaming the halls, he only knew she was supposed to be in her room and that Miss Phillips was useless.

He shambled on, unsteady, his feet wandering. She was faster than he was, and he'd been drinking, except it wasn't a race, it was a game of hide and seek. She'd already lost.

He knew exactly where she was going, and let up, expecting she'd duck back into the room and pretend she was sleeping—or, as someone who wanted to resolve this quietly, that was his hope.

He lumbered around the last corner, panting, and pulled up short. She was stopped in the middle of the hall, waiting for him. She held a heavy glass vase full of lilies before her like a shield.

“Get away from me!”

“Shhh,” he said, holding up both hands. “It's all right.”

“Get away!”

“It's okay. We're just going to go to the room now.”

“Help!” she yelled, “Help!” and raised the vase over her head, spilling water on herself, wetting the front of her gown. For a moment it distracted her, and he crept closer. She backed away, brandishing the vase as if she might throw it at him. Instead she spun and flung it against a door.

The glass smashed, loud as a gunshot, spraying shards, the flowers falling to the carpet.

“Help!” she shouted, banging the door with her fists, “Somebody help me!” and before he could close the distance, she whirled and ran screaming down the hall.

He bolted after her, forgetting everything his doctor had told him.

“Help! He's trying to kill me!”

Though it made no sense now, she was trying to get to her room. She ran like a child, tireless, easily pulling away. At Shepherd, once, a slow freight approached as they were strolling the far edge of the grounds, and she shed his hand and dashed for the tracks. He was younger, his lungs clear, but even then she'd nearly made it up the right-of-way before he tackled her.

The hall stretched on and on, an endless succession of doors and mirrors and tables with vases. He trailed her, fading badly, keeping her in sight. He wished she would stop screaming. He barely had the air to breathe.

She was fighting with the knob when he finally caught her. She'd probably forgotten the key. He closed on her slowly, trying not to spook her. “Okay,” he said, “enough,” because she was tugging at the door as if he were a murderer. He took her arm and she twisted away and struck him across the face. He grabbed at her wrists, catching one, but she kept slapping at him with her free hand, making him bob and weave, and as they grappled, he was yanked backwards and thrown against the wall.

He fell at the feet of her rescuers, two hairy-legged men in matching hotel bathrobes. He'd hit his head; there was a heat that might be blood. He touched his skull to assess the damage, and they jerked him upright and slammed him against the wall, shaking him when he tried to break free.

“Let me go!”

Up and down the hall, other guests had come out to investigate. They stood by their doors, staring at him as if he were a criminal while Zelda cowered. In her nightgown, with her broken teeth and her hair in her eyes, she was the picture of a madwoman.

“He's crazy,” she told them. “He escaped from a mental hospital.”

“I did not.”

“Shut up,” one of the men said, pinning an arm across his windpipe.

“He's tried to kill me before, that's why they put him away.”

“That's not true.”

“He's crazy when he drinks. He beats me.”

“That's a lie.”

The man pressed harder on his throat. “I told you to be quiet.”

“I called the police,” an older woman said.

Scottie came out. “That's my father,” she told the man holding him. “What's happening?”

“He's drunk,” the man said.

“I am not. She was out running around in the middle of the night.”

Miss Phillips opened the door, squinting in the light. Zelda ducked behind her as if she might save her.

“Ask her,” Scott said.

“He tried to kill me,” Zelda said.

“I found her roaming around like that.” He pointed over the crowd, back toward the elevators.

“Zelda, is that true?”

Like a scolded dog, she shied away.

“You were supposed to be watching her,” Scott said.

“Sorry to disturb you all,” Miss Phillips said, one hand raised like a teacher. “I don't know what happened. This woman is my patient. I take full responsibility for her. It won't happen again.” With that, she guided Zelda inside and shut the door.

“I told you,” Scott said, shrugging off his captors.

Neither offered an apology. When he insisted, one of the men said he was lucky they'd gone easy on him. Without Zelda to gawk at, the crowd focused on this new drama.

“Daddy, stop,” Scottie begged, and before anything developed, pulled him into her room.

“Thank you,” he said, penitent. He sat at the desk, testing the tender egg already rising on the back of his head. Now that the excitement was over, he was tired, as if he'd lost a fight. He sighed at how easily preventable the whole thing was, the stupidity of it. “Sorry for all that.”

“I guess by now I shouldn't be surprised.”

“She wasn't like this at Christmas. We're lucky I was the one that found her. Who knows what she thought she was doing.”

“What were
you
doing?” she asked.

The question wounded him. When he hesitated, she crossed her arms like a prosecutor.

“I had a little nightcap at the bar upstairs. I didn't think it would turn into a big production.”

She nodded at his admission as if he'd broken a promise. Guilty or innocent, he had no defense against her disappointment.

“I should see how they're doing.” He stood and put his ear to the door, hoping by now the rubberneckers had dispersed. Through a susurrus like the ocean trapped in a shell, he could make out the cushioned footfalls of someone approaching, and then, next door, three brisk knocks.

“Hello?” a man asked officiously. “Mr. Fitzgerald?”

“Stay here,” he told her, straightening his jacket and smoothing his hair.

It wasn't the police but the house detective, a plump Brit with a pencil mustache and cheap dentures. There'd been a complaint, several actually.