West of Sunset (4 page)

Ernest, sans Dietrich, was slicked-up in a buttercream linen suit that might have come from Metro's wardrobe department. He limped over to the mantel and held forth on Franco and Catalonia and the defense of Madrid while a projectionist erected a screen. To his credit, he told the party the same tale of his war wound he'd told Scott and Benchley, including bumping his head.

“I think we're ready,” he said, and signaled someone in back to kill the lights.

The film, as Dottie prophesized, was stultifying, all long shots and portentous voiceover. Ernest had written the script, and the repetition of key words, instead of being powerful, was lulling. Via an insistent montage, the Republic's hopes were linked to the farmers' harvest, so that in the end the rain darkening the dry soil and rushing muddy through the ditches was accompanied by heroic and, to his ears, vaguely Soviet crescendos. It was ridiculously simple, and even more frustrating after what Ernest had told them at lunch. Was the cause somehow nobler, being lost? Emotionally, yes, conceded the southerner in him; practically, reminded the northern boy, no. He hoped this wasn't what Ernest expected him to do with
Three Comrades
, because he was incapable of it.

“Wasn't that something?” Dottie asked the gathering as the lights came up, and they applauded once more. As president of the Anti-Nazi League, it was her job to pitch them, and she did, nakedly, calling on them to do what was right. “I don't have to tell you what's at stake.”

When it came time to pledge, he wrote a check for a hundred dollars—a pittance compared to what others were giving, but more than he could afford, so that he felt at once righteous and extravagant and doubly guilty. It was a great weakness of his, being unable to resist even the least gesture.

The evening was wrapping up, the waiters collecting the empty glasses. Already there were cars idling out front. He made to congratulate Ernest, but he was mobbed by admirers. Dottie and Alan were throwing a party for him back at the Garden. Scott figured he'd see him there.

As a matter of courtesy, he sought out Fredric March to thank him.

“Thank
you
, sir,” March said heartily, clearly unaware of who he was, a fact Scott dwelt upon, cruising the neon gauntlet of Sunset. L.A. had never been his city, and as the glowing late-night coffee shops and drive-ins slid by on both sides, he thought he understood why. For all its tropical beauty there was something charmless and hard about it, a vulgarity as decidedly American as the picture industry which thrived on the constant waves of transplants eager for work, offering them nothing more substantial than sunshine. It was a city of strangers, but, unlike New York, the dream L.A. sold, like any Shangri-La, was one not of surpassing achievement but unlimited ease, a state attainable by only the very rich and the dead. Half beach, half desert, the place was never meant to be habitable. The heat was unrelenting. On the streets there was a weariness that seemed even more pronounced at night, visible through the yellow windows of burger joints and drugstores about to close, leaving their few customers nowhere to go. Inconceivably, he was one of that rootless tribe now, doomed to wander the boulevards, and again he marveled at his own fall, and at his capacity for appreciating it.

After dark, the Garden of Allah was the oasis it claimed to be, alive with racketing jazz and flickering with torchlight. A console radio blared from a balcony, and the patio had become a manic dance floor, the chaises tossed in a pile. Bogart and Mayo were in the shallow end of the Black Sea, sitting on carved armchairs that obviously belonged to someone's villa.

Bogart saluted Scott. “Jump in, old sport.”

“We're playing boozical chairs,” Mayo said.

He was tempted, but just returned the salute and went to find Dottie.

Instead, Sid Perelman, who he knew from Westport, found him. Sid was at Metro too, writing gags for the Marx Brothers.

“I'm telling you, it's a nightmare. The funny one doesn't talk and the others won't shut up.”

“What about Zeppo?”

“He's the funny one.”

Don Stewart, from St. Paul, called his name as he wobbled past on a bicycle with a blonde in a sarong and a sombrero on the handlebars. Behind him came Benchley with a sloshing punchbowl loaded with sangria and quartered oranges, a ladle jutting obscenely from his pocket.

“How was the picture?” Sid asked.

“In focus, sadly,” Benchley said, not stopping.

“Have you seen it?” Scott asked Sid.

“I've had the pleasure not to. Do the Spanish win?”

“I don't think there is a winner.”

“Not my kind of picture. I like a winner. That's why I'm so depressed when I go to the track.”

“Leave 'em laughing,” Scott said.

“And if you can't, just leave them. That's very important. You don't want them following you home.”

Dottie caught Sid by the elbow. “Your wife is looking for you.”

“What's the good news?”

“She's either very drunk or very pregnant.”

“Either way,” he said, “save me some punch.”

“I see you found your way,” Dottie said.

“I've been here before. Were you here when Tallulah Bankhead was here?”

“That Tallulah Bankhead?” She pointed to the woman herself, preening by a tile fountain with a highball as a pack of ingenues paid court. “She's actually at the Chateau Marmont. The walls are thicker there. She's like the clap—you think you've gotten rid of her but she keeps coming back.”

“Like me,” Scott said.

“I was trying to be polite.” The orchestra on the radio struck up a slow tango. She took his hand. “Dance with me.”

As one of two boys at Miss Van Arnum's School of Dance, he'd been taught to never refuse a lady. She was small, and light in his arms. They'd danced before, in New York, at all-night parties that topped the next morning's gossip columns. They'd been young then, trouble. He remembered her upturned face, her chin tipped slightly away to reveal a fetching length of neck. Despite her solidarity with the peasants, she was wearing diamond studs, and, as if she'd been hiding them, he was surprised to find she had tiny, perfect ears. He flung her out and reeled her back in. She spurned him, averting her face, making him circle her, strutting like a bullfighter. They moved well together, graduates of the same classes meant to raise their station. It had worked, partly. So many of his fondest moments had taken place on a crowded floor. Around them, the flames and other couples whirled, the palms and lit windows, Bogart and Mayo thrashing in the pool, trying to splash them. She pressed herself against his chest, lingered a beat, then retreated, only to return again in a swoon of clarinets, the tortured lover. She wasn't Ginevra or Zelda but any girl on any starry night in thrall to the music, and he wanted the song to go on and on. In the end, she went to her knees, clutching his leg in devotion. He helped her to her feet as the announcer broke in with a plug for Lux soap, drawing taunts from the crowd.

“Another?” he asked. “If Alan doesn't mind.”

“Alan doesn't mind.”

“I'm next,” Mayo called from the edge of the pool.

“Trying to steal my gal, eh?” Bogart said, grabbing her and waltzing her toward the deep end.

The pianist struck a sentimental chord, the horns swelled, and, as if directed, he and Dottie faced each other like partners. This tune was slower, a torch song. He bent his head to hers and she sang in his ear.
Mean to me, why must you be mean to me?

Not halfway through, Alan cut in on him with news. Ernest wasn't feeling up to snuff and had begged off.

“That damn Lenny,” Dottie said.

“He's probably tired,” Alan offered.

“He wasn't in the best shape when I saw him,” Scott seconded, but she wouldn't be placated. She stormed off, only to reappear on the near balcony. She turned the radio down and called for quiet.

“I'm afraid our guest of honor can't make it.”

Booo
, the crowd let out.

“He's too busy having his cock sucked.”

They laughed and cheered.

“By definition, a party is stronger than any one member. Don't let one cocksucker ruin it for everybody.” She raised a glass. “Viva la Republica!”

“Viva la Republica!” Bogart crowed.

“Viva la Republica!” they bayed, and the music leapt, louder now.

He danced with Dottie again, and Mayo, getting his front wet, and a skinny blonde with an overbite named Anne from Dayton, Ohio, and a willowy, high-cheeked Tatyana who watched her husband dancing with another woman the entire time. When the broadcast was over and the station signed off, Don Stewart dragged his massive Capehart to the door of his villa and they danced to records. Several couples stripped to their underwear and joined Bogart and Mayo in the pool, precipitating a round of chicken fights. To cool off, he had a single gimlet, on ice, with lime, and lay on a chaise, gazing up through the palms at the stars. The moon was a thin white sickle, and he thought of that last summer in Antibes, before the Crash, when Zelda was still his and everything was possible.

As he was slipping into his usual reverie, he noticed a dark figure standing on the balcony of the main house, watching them, her pale face flickering in the torchlight—Alla, the Garden's namesake, her black mane and widow's weeds lending her an operatic madness. She seemed to be looking directly at him, and, emboldened by the gin, he gave a little wave.

She raised an open hand, like the pope, then lowered it again. When he tapped Don Stewart to look, she was gone.

“It was probably her housekeeper, not Alla. I've lived here three years and I've never seen her.”

“I met her once,” Alan said, “at Jean Harlow's funeral. Even then she had a veil on so you couldn't really see her. She's more of an indoor person.” He mimed sliding a needle into the crook of his arm.

Driving out the foggy boulevard to Santa Monica, Scott took his seeing her as a sign, as if she recognized he belonged there. The Miramar was spectral, a ghost ship, the hallways desolate, his room humid. He emptied his jacket, setting his checkbook on the desk, and the lost hundred dollars stung him like an ulcer. The day was gone and he'd gotten nothing done. But Ernest had been warm, and Dottie and Alan, Bogart and Mayo, Don Stewart, Sid. After so long alone, it would be a relief to live with people who knew him.

There were actually four villas available. Saturday he toured them all, choosing the least expensive, the top half of a duplex with a view of the main house and the pool. He signed the lease and received his keys.

“Welcome to the Garden of Alan,” Dottie said.

Later he would see it as fate. If he'd stayed at the Miramar he wouldn't have been sitting in Benchley's living room the night of Bastille Day when the English girl walked in. At first he thought it was an awful joke. While she was a lighter blonde, and her hair was waved, she might have been Zelda's twin.

For twenty years, all around the world, in triumph and sorrow, he had sought and found those same eyes, kissed those lips. He knew her face better than his own, had recalled that younger, fresher version of her so many times that he almost laughed at the uncanniness of the impression. Now he understood why a changeling was so frightening. It was like running into someone raised from the dead. She even scratched absently behind one ear like her, peering around the crowded room. She glanced his way, plainly saw him yet pretended not to take him in, betraying an indulgent slip of a smile, and continued to survey the party, deadpan—another reason he suspected it was a trick. She had to be an actress, made up to play a part.

Recovered, he saw that her imitation wasn't perfect. Turning to her escort, an older continental type with a ridiculous frigate bird of a Windsor, she was clearly taller, and full-figured, not girlish at all but plush, womanly. As he marveled at the resemblance, she was eclipsed by his downstairs neighbor, fat Eddie Mayer, steering her and her friend outside, where Bogart was preparing to set off fireworks to “La Marseillaise.” Scott hesitated, afraid the punch line would be laying for him on the patio. There were no limits to Benchley's humor, or Sid's, or Dottie's for that matter. The crueler the gag, the bigger the laugh, and so he waited, listening to the whistling shrieks, the echoing booms and appreciative
ooos
, letting the delay deflate whatever humiliation they'd arranged for him. He expected an audience, but when the music switched back to jazz and he strolled outside, the air stank of sulfur, everyone was dancing again, and she was gone.

S
he was no Cinderella. Everyone in town knew exactly who she was. Her name was Sheilah Graham, and she wasn't an actress but, of all things, a gossip columnist—reason enough to steer clear. She was also, Eddie Mayer reported, engaged to the old gent who'd accompanied her, the Marquis of Donegall.

The news was a blow yet also a relief, since Scott wasn't supposed to be thinking of her. It was his first full week on the job. As promised, the new pages for
A Yank at Oxford
were in, and awful, and he spent his days casting her as the female lead. At lunch he dropped by the newsstand on the lot and stood there reading her column—absolute trash, except for her picture, which he resisted tearing out and slipping in his pocket. He was a fool. She was too young for him anyway.

He remembered her trying to ignore him, and her slip of a smile. She had miraculous teeth for a Brit, and he wondered if she'd come from money.

He thought he was being discreet, casually asking after her around the Garden, gathering tidbits. No one commented on the resemblance—not Don or Dottie, both of whom knew Zelda well—until he understood that only he could see it.

“You mean the gold digger with the bazongas?” Mayo said.

“Give a fella a break,” Bogie said. “Can't you see he's gaga for her?”

“Married men. Pff.”

“You like 'em well enough.”

“They're good for two things.”

“What's that?” Bogie asked.

“I'll tell you when I remember.”

Zelda's birthday was coming up, a helpful distraction. Saturday he was getting paid. He wanted to bring Scottie out for a visit before she headed off to school in the fall. Now he saw a chance to fly back with her in September and visit Zelda. He busied himself making arrangements, filling in his calendar, as if that might settle his future, but late at night, lying awake in his bungalow while the music rioted outside, he whispered her name like a magic word.

He'd always been given to fascinations. Even before Ginevra, back in Buffalo, he'd made himself a slave to half the class at Miss Van Arnum's. They'd moved again, and, being new, he found everything new himself. At balls and parties, because he was fair and practiced at flattery, his dance card was always full. With his brilliantined hair and courtly manners, he was seen by the more athletic boys as prissy and standoffish, hardly a threat. On the gridiron they'd ride him down hard and dig a knee in as they stood up. His revenge was getting the top girl. A breathless exchange of letters, a fleeting kiss—for him that was the extent of romance. At that age any attempt to become a public couple crumbled under the pressure of rumors and friends, the sexes being kingdoms unto themselves, rife with intrigue, and a week later he discovered a new Juliet. When they moved back to St. Paul he was in eighth grade and the girls were bursting, and the same torturous whirl obtained, only sweeter and more painful. Nothing changed until he met Ginevra, and then he realized that all that time he'd been a child. He thought he'd known what it meant to be lonely.

Like those old crushes, Sheilah Graham was a phantom. He tried to empty his mind of her, but
A Yank at Oxford
was a romance between an American soldier and an English girl, and all day he was writing love scenes. He'd seen her face for only a moment, yet already she occupied vast tracts of his imagination. He had plans for them, landscapes and sunsets and declarations. Standing at his office window, watching the browned yards for Mr. Ito Hirohito, he scourged himself for building this dreamy kingdom. But wasn't she, being a palimpsest, a measure of how much he missed Zelda?

Like all men preoccupied with the truth, he was a wretched liar, his smallest evasion nagging at him. This one was great, and complicated. Though he knew it, because he loved her, because he hated what had happened to them, he couldn't admit Zelda wasn't coming back, so at the same time he held her return as a matter of faith, the fatalist in him understood that any protestations concerning the girl were empty, a traitorous balm. He was as callow now as the boy he'd been, stranded in a new place and trying to find some comfort.

At least he was at the Garden. His friends didn't let him wallow in solitude. Bogart and Mayo knocked on his door like neighbors checking up on a shut-in, coaxing him out into the torchlight to swim and play ping-pong. The game that summer was charades, which Benchley hated, but which Scott took to like the drama club impresario he'd been. He and Dottie shared a stunning clairvoyance and weren't allowed to be on the same team. Loosened by a gimlet or two, laughing at Sid's Delancey Street impersonation of Lon Chaney, he tipped back his chair and gazed up at the stars and was glad he was there.

Dottie spent more time organizing for her various causes than writing, and after his hundred dollars to save Spain, made sure to invite him to every fund-raiser. The Screenwriters' Guild was one he supported out of self-interest if not always principle. They were having their annual dinner dance at the Ambassador, she said, in the Cocoanut Grove. All the best people, et cetera. Did he have a tux?

It was old, the lapels cut wide in the style of 1925, and barely fit. At one point he might have worn it to the Cocoanut Grove, maybe when he'd split Bogie's lip.

“I don't recall what you were wearing,” Bogie said. “Just that you were a mean son of a bitch.”

“Now look at me.”

“Now look at you. You're a mean,
old
son of a bitch.”

He drove, and so was late. Making for the front doors, he heard his car stall out on the valet and kept going.

Walking into the Cocoanut Grove with the orchestra trilling a swoony ballad was like traveling back in time. The lights were low, and above the dance floor massed with shuffling couples, the same fake palm trees salvaged from Valentino's
The Sheik
rose storklike, here and there a papier mâché monkey clinging to a trunk. On the backdrop behind the band the full moon illuminated a white plume of a waterfall, and from the dusk-blue vault of the ceiling the stars shone down. Here, beneath this same make-believe sky, he'd swayed with Joan Crawford before she'd ever heard the name Joan Crawford. His fascination then had been Lois Moran, already a star at seventeen, a sweet, clever kid whose mother wisely traveled everywhere with her. The fascination was mutual, and Zelda had been jealous, flinging the platinum Cartier watch he'd bought her out of the train window as they left for New York, reclaiming him the only way she knew how. Now, stag, in his dusty old tux, he missed those strange, confusing days.

The dinner was formal, with a numbered seating chart laid out like a blueprint for the new arrivals. Dottie had bought a table for ten. Beside theirs was one sponsored by Gabe Brenner—a union boss Scott had met his last time out, working for Thalberg, and whose agitating on and off the lot had probably shortened his patron's life. The one on the other side was bankrolled by an old Gonk Round Table pal of Dottie's, Marc Connelly, who'd won a Pulitzer for a mawkish all-Negro musical based on the New Testament that might as well have been played in blackface. Scott stood at the top of the broad, carpeted ramp that led to the dance floor. Waltzing by, cheek to cheek in a dizzying clockwork like a Metro production number, spun a dozen writers making a hundred grand a year, celebrating their ascension to the proletariat.

When he found their table, it was empty. Everyone was off dancing, so he took a seat facing the action. He dearly wanted a drink, but knew people would be watching, and when the waiter swung by, asked for a Coke.

“There you are.” Dottie was cutting through on some vital clerical mission with a sheaf of papers. “Can a lady ask a gentleman to dance?”

“Are there ladies here? I'm afraid I was misinformed.”

“Don't go anywhere, mister.”

She stalked off purposefully, leaving him to watch the other couples. He wondered where Alan was. The waltz ended, to a ripple of applause, and a bumpy rhumba started. The waiter came with his Coke. Scott tipped him, sipped and set the glass down again, swizzled the ice. He didn't like sitting by himself, and was scanning the crowd for Sid or Bench or Don when he saw her.

She was just leaving the floor, sweeping gaily along the fringe of the parquet in an ash-gray evening dress with a red velvet sash that accentuated her neck and the rosy glow in her cheeks. Perhaps it was her hair, pulled back tight as a cap, or her vermillion lipstick, but the resemblance had mostly faded, only her eyes still reminding him. She was alone, no crusty marquis in tow, and headed straight toward him. She was no phantom. For all his daydreaming, he'd forgotten how tall she was, how strong. He had to suppress an urge to rise and bow to her. She saw him but didn't look away this time, making him aware of his wedding band. Her engagement ring didn't look real, the stone was so big. She slowed just before she reached him. He was afraid, ridiculously, that she might turn and flee, or, worse, come up to him and ask him to please stop staring. Instead, as if she remembered their first meeting, she gave him that slip of a smile and turned in to sit at Marc Connelly's table, also empty, in his exact same attitude. For a long moment they sat side by side, two wallflowers watching the party.

When he turned to her, she turned to him in pantomime. It was an old Marx Brothers bit, an imaginary mirror between them.

She smiled, making him smile.

“I like you,” he said, testing.

“I like
you
,” she said, her accent making her sound slightly surprised.

With that settled, she turned back to the dance floor. He did too.

“Why don't we dance?” she asked, almost formally, like a scientist proposing an experiment.

“I'd love to, but I'm afraid I've promised the next one to a friend.”

“She must be a very good friend.”

“A promise is a promise.”

“That's honorable.”

“Or foolish,” he said, “depending.”

Dottie reappeared, empty-handed, and he excused himself and rose to intercept her. He took her hand and joined the other couples, set a course for the middle of the floor.

“I see you found a friend,” Dottie said.

“Everyone's my friend tonight.”

“There are friends and there are friends. Which is she?”

“A new friend.”

“Don't forget your old ones,” she said, holding him closer. “You know what they say: a friend in need . . .”

He'd known Dottie long enough to know when she wasn't joking, and felt sorry for her. Why was he surprised when other people were desperate?

“Alan needs you.”

“Once a month, whether he needs it or not—like a cat getting a bath. He shuts his eyes and makes faces.”

“We all do that.”

“He makes me feel old and fat.”

He shook his head. “It was a long time ago.”

“Don't say that.”

“It was.”

“She's too young for you.”

“You're probably right.”

“She just wants your money.”

“I don't have any money. I don't have much of anything right now.”

“Okay,” she said, “be a dope.”

“I will,” he said.

“You've always been a sucker for a pretty face—your own.”

“Don't be jealous.”

“I was born jealous, I can't help it.”

“It's not like I've been lucky in love,” he scoffed.

“You were lucky with me.”

“I was,” he said, since there was no graceful way to say it had been a mistake, though even now he thought of her tenderly. It was the past he was trying to leave behind.

The song wound down until they were barely swaying, then ended with a mournful flourish. The lights came up.

“Go ahead,” she said, except as they were leaving the floor, the band set aside their instruments and filed offstage, and the president of the Guild stepped to the microphone.

“Please take your seats. We'll be starting the program momentarily.”

“‘Momentarily'?” Scott asked.

“He's a lawyer,” Dottie said.

There was confusion as the dance floor cleared and the room settled. Waiters shouldering trays hustled about the periphery. He was afraid the girl would be gone when he and Dottie reached their table, but she was waiting in the same seat, head bent, engaged in conversation with the elfin Anita Loos, who'd written for Griffith. On her far side sat Connelly himself, discussing something with his old pal John O'Hara and Sid's crazy brother-in-law Pep West, and Scott realized that for her this wasn't a night out. She was working.

He took his seat again. The way they were situated he had to lean back to see her. He waited, pointedly ignoring his neighbors, willing her to look up. When she did, he tried to apologize with a helpless shrug.

She shook her head pityingly as if he'd missed his chance.

He clasped his hands together in supplication, and she laughed, showing her perfect teeth, and he was hers. Her smile and how coyly she tucked her chin into her bare shoulder told him he could relax now. Just sitting there, trading glances during the president's prefatory remarks, they were different, separate, as if together they were keeping a secret from the rest of the world.

The speeches were interminable, futile. They all turned on management acknowledging the means of production, labor standing in solidarity and the workers demanding a fair wage. Spain and Germany were cited freely, as if their enemy wasn't Louie B. Mayer but Hitler, which made sense, since they were the same crowd that had written checks at Freddie March's. His neighbors ate their salads and sand dabs and consulted their programs hopefully.

He contented himself with glimpses of her, watching with curiosity as she gradually made her way around the table like a hostess. She focused her full attention on each guest, including the wives, listening intently, prompting them with a question, all the while playing with her silver bracelet, turning it about her wrist, flirting. She didn't take notes, though she had ample chances. What was she hoping to get out of them? He thought she was at a disadvantage, a spy with no cover, but she laughed and patted Belle O'Hara's arm and moved on. He was oddly proud of her, gracefully infiltrating a hostile camp. The wit it took—the nerve and patience. She was so new to him, he was moved to see in her every marvelous quality. He wouldn't have been surprised if she produced a bouquet of roses from her sleeve, or a trio of linked rings. And then, as the treasurer finished his report to grateful applause, she caught his eye and tapped a nail to her wristwatch. She gave him a little wave and stood with her silver clutch purse, and without a glance in his direction, made her way past him and through the tables to the rear of the club, leaving a wake of turned heads.