West of Sunset (7 page)

“She's taller than him,” Scottie said, amused.

“Is he the one you like, or is that Fitch?”

“I don't like either of them that way, they're just fun. I can see you like her.”

The accusation was delivered so casually that he was almost proud.

“Miss Graham is very likeable.”

“Apparently.”

“What I like most about her is that her real talents aren't the apparent ones. She's worked very hard to become a success in a tough business, and she's done it on her own.”

“I think I've heard this speech before.”

“Then you understand why I admire her.”

“An admirer,” she noted.

“I admire ambition in any young person.”

“Plus she has an accent.”

“A very charming one, it's true.”

“I wish she wasn't so pretty. Is that awful of me?”

“Pie,” he sympathized, patting her back. It was as much of an answer as he could offer her, and as much as she wanted, because they left that topic as if they were finished with it, moving on to the awkward murals of Parisian landmarks that marred the walls. In wildly varying scales, the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame were crammed onto panels that ran unbroken around the room, unsubtle as a folder of postcards. Scottie was properly horrified. Having been to the real Trocadero made the place seem what it was—an overpriced supper club with starlets for hatcheck girls.

“Remember the first time you ate escargots?”

“You told me they caught them right there in the Tuileries.”

“From then on you always looked for them in the flower beds.”

The song ended and another began.
Why should I suffer? Why should I care?
Fitch cut in on Neddy, who gallantly circled back for Scottie. Their ungainly number guaranteed an odd man out, a role Scott hated playing, but as host he had no choice. Alone at the table with his Coke, he soaked in the long view across Hollywood and the darkened city, the dwindling rows of streetlights like the runways of an endless airport, then the black mass of the sea. Somewhere out there was the
Rex
, and the past, the night steadily moving west, dragging the stars and tomorrow along behind it. In the hospital it was midnight, Zelda asleep, if there was any mercy. He imagined his producer, insomniac, coming in on a night flight from back East, floating over the vast emptiness of the desert, clearing the last treacherous crown of mountains and seeing Glendale and all the carnival of lights, bright and lively as a marquee, knowing that somewhere below, the girl who might save him waited. Here was life again, after the loneliness of airports, the untethered hours aloft fixing others' scripts, parsing the meaningless dreams it was his genius to sell the sleeping country.

The band took five and the dancers returned.

“Are you taking notes?” Sheilah joked, sitting down beside him.

“Always,” Scottie said. “Be careful what you say around him.”

“I'll forget it if I don't write it down. Blast, now I've lost it.”

“I'm sorry,” Sheilah said.

“The other day you were telling me about a hermit who lives in the hills.”

“He has a lean-to behind the sign. They say he did lights for Griffith.”

“And went mad,” Scottie guessed.

“That I don't know. I suppose.”

“He lives there year round?” Scott asked.

“He's not much of a hermit. Everybody knows him. We could go see him if you like.”

“No,” he said, because the actuality was suddenly unappealing, the scene in which his producer visits him cheap, flatly emblematic. He wasn't writing the life of a saint.

Dinner wore on, each course followed by a turn about the floor. Scottie and the boys ordered dessert and coffee, adding another five dollars and twenty minutes to the evening. For no reason he was ill-humored, and then felt stingy when they thanked him for paying.

“It was all just lovely,” Sheilah seconded, and what could he do but agree? After so long alone, he'd forgotten how it felt to be the man of the family.

The boys could have taken the streetcar but he gave them a ride, dropping them at Marina del Rey with a handshake and a promise to take them up on their offer of a cruise. When they were gone, from the backseat, Scottie said, “Thank you, Daddy.”

“You're welcome, Miss Pie.”

“Thank you, Sheilah.”

“Please, there's no need to thank me, dear.”

“I told Daddy I wished you weren't so pretty. Now I wish you weren't so nice.”

“I think that's a compliment,” Sheilah said.

“It is,” Scott said, though, knowing Scottie, he could feel the needle of honesty in it.

The Stutz was still sitting outside the Beverly Hills, yet instead of a welcome fixture it now seemed a moribund ornament. He excused himself to Sheilah and escorted Scottie across the sands and through the jungle. Tomorrow she was going with Helen to the studio, where, as a surprise, they'd arranged for her to meet her idol, Fred Astaire—an elaborate gesture meant to impress her, he supposed, with the reach of his old fame. Why was he so prideful with her, when, more than anyone, she knew the depth of his failings? Or was that it, every overdone production designed to redeem him in her eyes? If so, tonight didn't fit.

Why do you confuse me?
Sheilah had asked.

Because I'm confused myself
, he could have answered.
Because I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

He knocked on the door. “Did you have fun?”

“I did, thank you.”

“Your friends seem like nice boys.”

“They are.”

“Sheilah likes you very much.”

“I like her too,” Scottie said, noncommittal, as Helen opened the door for them, and he felt let down, as if he had more to say to her, as if he might explain. At the same time, he wasn't sure he wanted to hear what she honestly thought of him running around with a woman closer to her age than his.

Charlie was there, looking hale. He was a drinker but had recently been through the cure, and greeted him with the exuberance of the newly rescued. He was over at Universal, adapting his last play, a task Scott imagined was like slowly poisoning your own child. He and Helen had been reading, their separate books set aside and waiting on matching armchairs flanking a cathedral Philco leaking Brahms. If Scott had to leave Scottie with anyone, they were a commendable choice, yet their restored happiness only cast his situation in starker relief, and though he would see her tomorrow and every day for the next month, leaving her recalled all the other times he'd abandoned her to the world, and walking back through the jungle and the pool and the lobby he brooded on this, so that when he returned to Sheilah he was subdued, and rotten company, and aware of it.

“Thank you,” he said. “You were wonderful with them.”

“It was easy. She's very mature.”

“She can be.”

“I'll confess I was a little intimidated when she ordered.”

“Her French is actually better than mine because she's had to keep it up. She needs it if she wants to get into Vassar.”

“You must be very proud of her.”

He was, and soberly. For all their skirmishing over grades and smoking and pocket money, he'd come to admire her character. With Zelda gone, the two of them relied on each other that much more, especially living at a distance, and if her absence had forced Scottie to grow up prematurely, it also gave her a sense of responsibility and a grasp of the world he wished he'd had at her age.

“Why,” Sheilah asked, “what were you like at her age?”

“A fool. Still am.”

“I bet the girls all went for you.”

“Which only made me act a bigger fool. I was a very selfish child, though I suppose all children are. I haven't changed much, really.”

“That's not true. I think you're the most considerate man I've ever met.”

“Don't say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I'll have to live up to it. I'm married and I drink, and when I drink I have a terrible temper.”

“Then you shouldn't drink.”

“I agree, but I do, and I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.”

“See?” she said. “You're being considerate by telling me. You didn't have to.”

“Stick around and you'll find out soon enough.”

“I just might.”

“What about the marquis?”

“His mother doesn't like me.”

“Who is she, Lady Somebody?”

“Lady Donegall. She thinks I'm a climber of the worst sort. That's why he went back to England, to convince her I'm worthy of the title.”

“Without you?”

“She won't speak to me.”

“That's awful,” he said, inwardly exulting.

When they'd first made the date, he pictured asking her back to the Garden, maybe dancing with her in the living room of his bungalow. Now, buoyed by this news, he slowed for her street and turned up into the dark hills. This time she didn't have to tell him which light was hers.

Walking her to her door, he thought the night had not been the ordeal he dreaded, just awkward. All in all, besides a few cross moments, they'd acquitted themselves well. She was fearless, a natural diplomat. He was glad she'd asked to come. Tomorrow Scottie would have a good day at the studio, he'd get back to work, and everything would settle again.

They stopped before the stoop. A moth orbited the light, its wings beating madly.

“It's Tuesday,” she said.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn't know what she meant, and was overwhelmed when she leaned in close and kissed him.

The heat of her mouth surprised him, as if it were a trick. She tasted of coffee and peppermint from the restaurant. He hesitated slightly, and she pulled back, laughing. He thought she might be making fun of him, but she opened the door, took his hand and led him inside, where it was dark. She dropped her keys on a table and kissed him again, pushing her full front against his, and then she was pulling him up a narrow flight of stairs and into her bedroom, the made bed lit by the glow of the city below, and she was relieving him of his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt, and though he wanted to stop her and ask whether this wasn't too sudden, too serious to blunder into, he tugged at the zipper of her dress and watched as she let it drop and stepped out of it, her body backlit, eclipsed.

“No,” she said when he reached to undo her brassiere.

It was her one withholding. She kept it on while they made love, the stiff, padded fabric spectral against her skin, so that even as she was giving herself to him, he felt she was hiding something even dearer. As much as he wanted her, he didn't know her at all. He'd told her his secrets, which she absorbed like a spy, without relinquishing any of her own. He thought it should bother him more, but she was young and warm and lovely, and he was grateful and patient enough, rocking in the dark, to abide this mystery. To Zelda, the girlish Zelda he'd left behind, all he could say was
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

A
s he feared, he didn't get a screen credit for
A Yank at Oxford.
After a month of story conferences, with no warning, Eddie called him into his office and took him off the picture. The studio wasn't unhappy with his work, Eddie said, they just decided to give another writer a stab at it.
Who?
he wanted to ask, but there was no sense protesting. They were paying him, and, honestly, he'd done everything he could. He took down the head shot of Vivien Leigh, slipped it between the pages of his last draft and filed the script in his bottom drawer.

There was no privacy in the Iron Lung. By lunchtime everyone knew he'd been reassigned, the writers' table needling him with the brusque camaraderie of the locker room. His replacement was Julian Layton, a Brit whose farce
Quicker, Vicar!
had been the rage of the West End ten years ago. The consensus was that
Three Comrades
was a better set-up anyway.

“So,” Alan said, “you've gone from writing for Robert Taylor as a wisecracking vet to Robert Taylor as a wisecracking vet.”

“And
Spen-cer Tra-cy
,” Benchley projected like a ring announcer, saluting Tracy at the next table.

“He's just showing off his range,” Dottie said.

“It doesn't matter what you write for Mankiewicz,” Oppy said. “He'll make it about the girl.”

“And slap a happy ending on it,” Dottie said.

“Leave 'em laughing about Hitler,” Benchley said.

“Mank's like Jane Austen,” Alan said. “It could be Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. By the end they're all getting married.”

“He's a sucker for the old slow build to a kiss,” Oppy said.

“You would know,” Alan said.

“And a third act reversal,” Dottie said. “I guarantee he'll ask for one in rewrites. He thinks he invented it.”

“That and the close-up on the phone,” Benchley said. “It can't just ring, we have to see it physically exists.”

“Better'n Selznick with his memos,” Oppy said.

“God yes,” Dottie said. “Imagine being his secretary.”

“Imagine being his wife,” Benchley said. “‘It has come to my attention that we are spending far too much on wardrobe.'”

Scott laughed along with them, but still, he was disappointed. He wasn't used to having his work dismissed, the long days and weeks of fretful effort he'd devoted to it wasted, fruitless. He'd come west not just for the money but to redeem his previous failures here, the scripts he'd believed in rewritten by hacks or ditched entirely. After the last few years he knew he was lucky to have the chance, and to immediately fall short was disheartening. That the project wasn't his to begin with mitigated it somewhat, or so he told himself. What puzzled him most was that, until this morning, he thought he'd done a decent job.

His goal with
Three Comrades
was to keep it his and his alone. Ideally he'd dash off a draft, then build it up before turning it in to Mankiewicz, except he didn't have time. In two weeks he had to take Scottie back East.

Between her and Sheilah, he was scattered. He kept them separate, mostly. Every night he showed Scottie the town, taking her to the Brown Derby and Horseshoe Pier, dropping her at the Beverly Hills and going directly to Sheilah's, coming home late, only to wake to the birds chirping. This sweet espionage was exhausting, and made him feel craven and old. At his kitchen table, slugging back coffee, he blocked out his master scenes. On the lot he punched in early and had lunch delivered. Rather than leave behind something rough that Mankiewicz could hand off to another writer, he polished the first two acts, hoping their promise would be enough, and then, at the very last, submitted them with misgivings.

That night he said good-bye to Sheilah. Her balcony jutted above the treetops, giving on a starry vista. The two of them sat watching the lights and listening to the industrial thrum of the city. They were subdued, as if they'd been fighting, or were anticipating it. She knew the reason he and Scottie were going was to see Zelda, and that they would spend part of their time at Myrtle Beach as a family. To quell any speculation, he let her know he and Zelda would have separate beds, though just saying it felt like a betrayal, and he wished he were already gone.

“It's none of my business,” she said.

“Of course it is.”

“I told you I didn't want to do this.”

“What?”

“This. I'm such an idiot. I told you you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. Now I'm in it.”

What could he do but apologize.

Hours later, after they'd patched things up, as he was driving Sunset back to the Garden, he thought of the correct response.
I know,
he should have said.
I know, and I don't care.

It was three when he got home, and he hadn't packed yet. He dozed, rolling and mumbling, then rose at six to pick up Scottie, skipping his usual pill. He figured he could sleep on the train.

Though he'd been there barely two months, leaving the city felt like a defeat. They were taking the Sunset Limited to El Paso, first class. As he'd hoped, the stateroom with its cleverly hidden amenities delighted Scottie, yet even as they lay across from each other on the drop-down bunks, comparing them to the army cots on the Argonaut, he dwelled on all he'd left undone. Outside, the orange groves and motor courts slid by, hot and sharp in the thin morning light. They climbed the pass at San Dimas, rushed down the other side, and were in the desert. “Next stop, Palm Springs. Palm Springs next.” All he wanted was to drift off to the clicking of the trucks, but he thought Scottie should have some breakfast. They staggered to the diner where they were served Rocky Mountain trout and scrambled eggs by a porter with a walleye, staggered back, mildly seasick, pulled the shades and slept.

When he woke, it was still day. They were still rolling over the desert. In the shimmering distance a line of snow-capped peaks rose like an island. For miles there was nothing, cracked hardpan and washboard roads angling off into mesquite. As with the sea or sky, the vastness compelled him. He imagined being stranded out there, the train breaking down, a plane crashing in the mountains. His producer, returning from an important meeting in New York. It would be weeks before anyone would find the wreckage. Who, and what would they find? Money, obviously. A gun. His hero's talisman, a monogrammed pen—no, a briefcase. Across from him Scottie moaned in her sleep, and before he could stop himself he pictured her coming upon the debris field. Not just one girl, but a group of children from a nearby town, out exploring on horseback. Four of them, all very different. Because of the money, they wouldn't tell. How would their secret change them? That was his ending, the new future's loss of innocence. It fit with the producer abandoning his dream, and with Hollywood overall, maybe too neatly. How his man came to that low state was another question.

He had to raise the shade an inch to take notes. He was working on his fifth page when Scottie sat up, shielding her eyes.

“Where are we?”

“I have no idea.”

“It's hot in here. Aren't you hot?”

He held up one hand and kept writing.

“Daddy.”

“Yes, Pie, it's hot in here.”

They stayed overnight in El Paso, then flew east the next day, stopping to refuel at Kansas City and Memphis before the final leg to Spartanburg. As they came in, he marked the great swaths of piney woods that hid black ponds and swamps. A plane could go down in a remote lake and never be found, though dramatically that might be unsatisfying. Someone had to find it. As with
Gatsby
, there had to be a witness the reader could believe.

Because it was supposed to be a vacation, he hired a roadster in Spartanburg much like the one he'd sold. They grabbed a quick dinner at a barbecue pit on the way to Tryon. Dusk was falling by the time they pulled up to the hotel. He wasn't surprised to find his old rooms were available, though at a higher price. He saw no improvements, but it was only for the night, and the shredded rattan bedroom set was somehow comforting. He and Scottie rocked on the verandah, watching the fireflies. He tried not to think of Sheilah.

“She won the tennis tournament,” he offered.

“That's good, after what happened last time.”

“You have to forget that. It's always like starting new with her.”

“That's what makes it so hard.”

“You never know, she might be delightful. It's only three days.”

“Three days is a long time.”

“We won't see her again until Christmas, so let's try to make it nice for her.”

“I always try to be nice.”

“I know you do, and I'm sorry she's not always nice back. You know she loves you.”

“I know.”

“The doctor says she's been doing well with the new treatment, so we'll see.”

“We will,” she said.

The next morning, after winding their way up the mountain, the change was clear from their very first glimpse of her. He didn't recognize the stout woman the nurse escorted toward them—her hair was darker, longer, her bangs bowl-straight—until he saw the gap left by her cracked tooth.

She was fat. When he'd left two months ago she'd been a scarecrow. Now she was doughy and bloated, double-chinned and thick-waisted, her face strikingly different, as if her role had been taken over by a pudgy understudy. He'd never seen her so big, even when she was pregnant. He smiled to cover his alarm, asking how she was as they embraced.

“I look awful, don't I?” she said, taking Scottie in her arms.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I feel fine, I just look like a pig. My eczema's better.” She pulled down the collar of her blouse to show them the smooth skin of her chest.

“It's gone,” he said. “That's wonderful.”

“I've got tits again. That should make you happy.”

It was the kind of scandalizing thing she used to say in mixed company, but with Scottie right there it seemed off. Worse, the breasts he pictured weren't hers.

“I'm happy you feel better,” he said.

“My deepest apologies,” she said to Scottie. “Apparently I'm not supposed to say ‘tits.' Yours look nice, by the way.”

“That's enough.”

“Thank you,” Scottie said.

“Everyone has them, you know,” she told him. “It's not a secret.”

“It's not news either.”

“This is going to be fun,” she said, linking arms with them like a chorus girl and pulling them toward the door. “
Allons-y!
”

“First I need to sign you out.”

“I forget, I'm a prisoner of love.”

He registered the insinuation, but let it pass, saving it for Dr. Carroll.

“What happened to your car?” she said in the lot.

“I told you, I sold it.”

“Dodo.” She pouted. “I liked that car.”

“I know you did. That's why I hired this one.”

“What a gentleman, always thinking of me. Remember the Delage whose roof wouldn't go up?”

“I do.”

Scottie ceded the front seat, and they were off, cruising down the swooping drive, through the gates and out into the world, the three of them reunited. In town, he turned right at the stoplight, heading south over the mountains for the coast. He'd never taken this route before, and drove even more slowly, as if undecided. The gray haze lingering in the hills reminded him of their forays into the French countryside, the jaunts to the Bois, the day trips to Lyon for dejeuner at the Institute Gastronome. Zelda noted each passing attraction as if they might miss something, making Scottie continually look up from her book. A new foal, a trash fire, a garden lined with whirligigs. It was just past nine. By his calculations they'd make Myrtle Beach around five. He didn't think she could keep up the bubbling stream of discoveries. He feared that, following her usual pattern, after this initial outburst she'd run down and eventually shut off, withdrawing to her inner world from which there was no extracting her, but for now she was keenly interested in everything, including him.

“Are you eating? You look like you've lost weight.”

“I'm actually gaining. I eat out too much, and I drive everywhere.”

“You look tired.”

“I've been working.”

“I wish I could come out there and look after you.”

Just the thought stopped him.

“I know you do,” he said.

“I'll bake you pies and iron your handkerchiefs.”

“I wasn't aware you ironed.”

“I'm working in the laundry. I can do all kinds of useful things.”

He couldn't imagine it, though he knew she was telling the truth. Her life now took place beyond him, among people he'd never meet—as did his. He was proud of her accomplishments, but to pretend they still knew each other was a fiction.

It was what they were there to do: pretend everything could be the way it was. They'd stayed at the hotel before, years ago, when Scottie was five or six. In their albums were snapshots of her, freckled and chubby, tin bucket and shovel in hand, standing beside a sandcastle with an architect's pride. Zelda had been well then, one of her last good summers, back when they still made plans.

Hours in the mountains, then down through Columbia and the low country with its paddies and long tobacco barns. He'd wanted to stop just the once, for lunch and gas both, but as they approached Charleston, the women needed a restroom, prompting a visit to a second filling station. On they pressed, through the humid city and north along the shore, where there was more for Zelda to point out. Scottie had taken off her shoes and curled up on the seat, though whether she was truly asleep was guesswork.

“Smell the sea air,” Zelda said, sniffing, and he did.

At Georgetown a new steel bridge crossed the sound, the open deck making their tires whine. The tide must have been going out, because the near rail was lined with negroes fishing off the side.