Villa America (36 page)

And with that, he’d turned and left, and he hadn’t looked back.

“Scott.” Zelda’s voice brought Gerald back to the automobile. “Scott. Do you know what we have to do now?”

Gerald looked at Scott, sitting across from him.

“Scott.” Zelda said it again. Gerald could tell by her tone it wasn’t a question; it was payback.

Scott lifted his head and looked at his wife. “What do we have to do?”

“Don’t you think, Goofo, it’s the perfect night to jump off Eden Roc?”

They were standing, all four of them, on the highest rock, looking down towards the sea hidden in the darkness. A thirty-five-foot drop. Gerald knew this from Archie, who took pride in his swan dives off here, thrilling the children. That was when the sun was up.

Zelda stripped down to her underpants—ruffly, he could tell from the outline against the night sky—her dress a pool at her feet. Then her shoes went, cast behind her.

Gerald stood next to Scott, who even in the very dim light looked whiter than usual. He could feel Scott shaking. Gerald thought of being in the ring with the young bull in Pamplona and wanted to tell him
You do not have to do this.
But he felt he couldn’t interfere with what was going on between the two of them. It was beyond him, or he was beside the point.

Sara didn’t say anything either; she must have felt the same way.

“Goofo,” Zelda said.

Scott sat down and took off his shoes. Then he removed his socks and carefully placed them inside. Slowly, a little unsteadily, he stood back up, took off his dinner jacket, and handed it to Gerald, like something you’d do before a fistfight.

He looked at Zelda. “You first,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Scott, my nerves never fail,” Zelda said.

She walked towards the edge.

“Wait,” Sara said suddenly. “No, this is mad. You could kill yourselves.”

Zelda turned to her and said: “Oh, but, Say-ra. Didn’t you know? We’re not conservationists.” And then she jumped.

They heard a splash.

Scott looked at them with the saddest eyes that Gerald had ever seen. He glanced down at his bare feet, and then, without a word, he followed her off the cliff.

He and Sara stood in the lobby of the Hôtel du Cap. Scott and Zelda, soaking wet, had made their way up to their rooms.

“Well, it seems she can dance after all,” Gerald said.

“Don’t,” Sara said, shaking her head. “That was…awful. They’re becoming unbearable. I can’t watch.”

He pulled her into his arms and she kissed his neck.

“Let’s go home,” she said into his collar.

Gerald moved back. “You take the car. I still have Scott’s jacket. And I think I should talk to him,” he said. “I’ll get the hotel car to drive me home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

He watched her walk out and then handed Scott’s dinner jacket to the bellhop. “Make sure Monsieur Fitzgerald gets this,” he said. “And I need a car.”

When the car stopped at the end of the allée des Cigales, Gerald turned to the driver and said: “Please wait. I’ll be only a few minutes.”

He walked to the tree on the edge of the field and stood under it. Between the leaves he could see the stars in the sky, like jewelry on a woman’s neck. Then he made his way to the barn.

Inside, it was dark, but he knew by memory where the cot was. He went over and knelt down, put his hand on Owen’s shoulder, and gently shook him.

Owen sat up.

“I’m sorry,” Gerald said.

Owen was silent.

“I can’t stay. But I wanted you to know: you do have a family.”

He couldn’t see Owen’s eyes, but Gerald could feel his gaze.

“Will you come with me tomorrow?” Gerald asked. “Out on the boat? I want to be in the middle of the ocean with you. I want to be in the middle of somewhere with you.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and stood. He started to leave and then turned back and said: “I love you.”

Vladimir toweled off and sat down on the hatch, leaning his back against the
Picaflor
’s mast. Gerald lay naked on deck in front of him, as was his way, while Owen, still in his swim trunks, lay on the starboard side, drying off in the midday sun. They’d dropped anchor near a small peninsula so that they could swim in the open sea before heading back to Antibes.

They’d eaten their lunch early—cold roast chicken, its skin encrusted with salt, slices of preserved lemon and plums for dessert, all packed up by Sara, who’d waved them off from the harbor in the old town.

Gerald turned his head to the side and opened one eye. “Tell us a story, Vladimir.”

He had a story for them, but he wondered if he should tell it. It was one that he had been saving for Owen alone. He couldn’t deny that he questioned the wisdom of what his two friends had embarked upon. Changing the alchemy of one’s life was a dangerous thing to do, something he didn’t believe should be undertaken unless absolutely necessary. But some tales were predestined, their endings already written. And if he’d been asked now to tell a story, perhaps there was a reason.

“I heard a story,” he said. “About your land, Owen. About when it was a flying school.”

Owen lifted his head. “The Garbero brothers,” he said.

“Yes, when they owned it, but it’s not about them,” Vladimir said. “It’s a love story. It is Proust’s love story.”

“Is this going to be a tragedy?” Gerald groaned and Vladimir heard Owen laugh.

“Who can tell?” Vladimir said. “What is tragedy and what is destiny?”

“Christ, Vladimir,” Owen said.

“All right, just tell it,” Gerald said. “And we’ll vote on it afterward.”

Vladimir nodded. “I will tell it. It begins like this: Marcel Proust, he was in love with his chauffeur, a man from Monaco whose name was Alfred Agostinelli. He had met him first when Agostinelli was just a boy. But fate, being what it is, had them cross paths again when the boy had blossomed into a young man in his prime. Proust’s desire for him was then ignited, and he became convinced that he adored him and he could not live without him.

“He hired him as his driver and even allowed Agostinelli’s pear-shaped woman to move in with them. Little by little, Proust ended up paying for not only Agostinelli and his lover, but the chauffeur’s whole family, such was his desire to keep the young man near him.

“One day, however, Proust awoke to find the house in Versailles empty; no Agostinelli, no woman, money missing. Proust was heartbroken. Driven by desperation, he hired a private detective to find his amour. After some time, he was discovered in Antibes, enrolled in the Garbero brothers’ flying school under the name Marcel Swann.

“Why, thought Proust after this was related to him, would Agostinelli choose a name that conjured the very essence of Proust himself—his first name and the last name of his most famous character—if the young man did not love him? So, believing Agostinelli still cared for him, he sent his secretary down to Antibes to beg him to return.

“But alas, Agostinelli would not. The young man, it seems, had decided that his destiny was to become a great pilot. So Proust offered to buy him an airplane of his own and even a Rolls-Royce, anything he wanted, if only he would return. The answer was still no. Distraught, Proust finally sent his secretary down to Monaco to offer Agostinelli’s father whatever sum he desired if he would force his son to go back to him. A third time, he was refused.

“The day of his first solo flight—embarking from your land, my friend—Agostinelli flew out over the bay and immediately dropped like a stone into the water. Those that saw him say the plane floated for a few seconds while Agostinelli stood on the wing screaming before being sucked into the water below.

“Now it was Agostinelli’s family who came to beg Proust; they needed cash to pay to have him pulled out of the sea. Proust agreed. And when they lifted his body, rotting, from the water, they found that his pockets were stuffed with the money he’d stolen from Proust. Why had he called himself Marcel Swann? What had happened to the plane? These things were never known. All that was known was that the young man had refused love and fallen into the sea.”

Gerald sat up as Vladimir finished the story and clapped. “I don’t care if that was a tragedy. Bravo.”

But Owen, Vladimir noticed, said nothing. His friend’s eyes were still closed, his face expressionless, but the silence was enough to tell him that he hadn’t liked it.

Owen stood up. “I’m going for a swim,” he said and dove into the water.

On the way back to Antibes, Owen sat next to Vladimir at the tiller. “Where did you hear that? All that about Proust?”

“From a man in town,” Vladimir said.

Owen shook his head, his expression hard. “Some people talk too much.”

Owen had run into Sara in town and she’d asked him up to the villa for a drink.

“We’re feeling rather bereft,” she’d said. “Archie and Ada are ensconced in their own house. And Bob Benchley and Dottie Parker aren’t arriving for two weeks. And the Hemingways—well, they’re coming in a few days. But it does seem awfully empty. Come keep us company.”

He pulled his car into the driveway and looked at the house a moment. From the front, it always seemed uninhabited, except for the row of bicycles leaning against the wall. Life happened on the other side.

He got out, went to the door, opened it without knocking, and then wondered when he’d started doing that. Tintine came scuttling out of the dining room. Seeing who it was, she smiled.
“Ils sont dehors,”
she said.

Owen walked down the hall and out the French doors to find Sara and Gerald sitting at the table under the linden tree.

“Oh, good, you came,” she said.

Gerald rose, put a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Whiskey sour?”

“Thanks,” Owen said, kissing Sara on the cheek and sitting down at the table as Gerald went to get his drink.

In the center of the table was a light blue bowl filled with white eggs. Sara was turning one over in her hand. The china was so thin it was partially translucent, and in the late sun, the shells of the eggs were too.

“Pretty big omelet,” he said, smiling.

“No,” she said. “We’re not…no, they’re for decoration. I just thought they belonged together, the bowl and the eggs.”

He nodded.

“You must find us awfully silly sometimes,” she said.

“No, I don’t find you silly at all.”

“I think some of the most beautiful things are things that aren’t used in the way they were intended,” she said, continuing to turn the egg in the cradle of her hand. “It doesn’t matter what it was supposed to be, what it was born as. It’s what you make of it.”

Owen put out his own hand and she passed the egg to him. He looked at it, felt its weight. “This taught men how to build airplanes,” he said. “How to make them efficient. A plane’s skin, not an internal structure, supports the load, the same way an eggshell bears the weight of the egg.”

“Is that true?”

“It is. You’re right, it depends what you use it for.” He looked up at her, and their eyes locked.

“Fascinating,” she said.

Gerald came back through the doors carrying a frosted glass on a silver tray. He placed the whiskey in front of Owen.

“I heard Vladimir had quite a story for you on your boat trip,” Sara said when Gerald had sat down.

“He did,” Owen said. He wondered why Gerald had told her that story, that secret love story. Not for the first time, he wondered what went on behind these closed doors.

“It made me anxious,” she said. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to fall out of the sky.”

“Don’t even say that,” she said, twisting her hands together.

“This is what I do for a living,” he said. “It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Something can always happen,” Sara said. “Especially when you think you’re safe.”

“Oh, that was just Vladimir,” Gerald said. “You know how he is about stories.”

Sara didn’t answer, just kept her eyes on Owen.

“We went up the other night to tuck the children in,” Gerald continued. “And there was Vladimir recounting a story in French about a boy named Mowgli who was raised by wolves and a bear named Baloo. They thought he’d made it up, and there he was, telling them the whole of Kipling’s damn
Jungle Book
.” He laughed.

“Yes,” Sara said, smiling now too. “It was funny. They think he’s some magical genius. I didn’t tell you this”—she turned to Gerald—“but last week, he was telling them the story of how the Cossacks shot his father. Can you imagine? Of course, it was a sanitized version, but still.”

“I suppose they loved it, though,” Gerald said.

“They adored it,” Sara said, taking a sip of her drink. “I didn’t have the heart to scold him.”

Gerald laughed out loud as if tickled by the whole idea and by Sara’s softheartedness.

Owen looked at his drink. He didn’t think he could take it, this “lighthearted banter,” the double meanings. All this.

“Dow-Dow?”

Honoria was standing in the doorway holding Patrick’s hand, a record under her arm.

“Speak of the devil,” Gerald said.

“We heard voices,” the child said.

“Little busybodies,” Sara said. “Isn’t it bath time?”

“We’ve been practicing something for you,” she said shyly, shuffling her feet a little.

“Well, show us,” Sara said. “I’m sure Owen would like to see too.”

“Dow-Dow has to put this record on,” Honoria said.

“Your wish is my command,” Gerald said, rising and taking it from his daughter.

He placed the record on the gramophone and called out: “Ready?”

“Wait,” Honoria said, and she pushed Patrick over a bit, whispering something in his ear.

“Now?”

“Yes, Dow-Dow,” she said.

The needle hit the record and a hoppy tune filled the air.

The little girl and her brother began to dance, their arms circling furiously, passing one foot in front of the other. Every now and then, they would slap their hands on their behinds. Honoria was a little more adept than Patrick; his lack of balance meant his was mostly an arm dance, and his sister kept eyeing him and mouthing
No.
After a while, though, she seemed to stop caring and she just looked at the adults, her face shining, manic, joyful.