West of Sunset (10 page)

She came out in a towel, routing his thoughts, and dressed behind her screen. “Hurry up and take yours. I'm famished.”

“Where are we going?”

“I was thinking Tom Breneman's. I have a craving for ham and eggs.”

“Doesn't it have to be four in the morning for Breneman's?”

“Bogie?” she guessed.

“It was Mayo's idea.”

“I didn't know she had ideas.”

“She has about Bogie.”

“I wouldn't call that an idea, really.”

The day was theirs. The city was sleeping off the feast. After breakfast they drove up to Malibu and walked barefoot on the beach, deserted now that the weather had cooled. She wore a baggy oatmeal sweater and had her hair pulled back in a black elastic band, her face rosy without makeup. As the casting directors said, she could play younger. Every so often she knelt to inspect a shell or stone, holding out her palm like Scottie to show him her treasure. The strand and sky made him think of Long Island, those years when the world was full of promise. Was that still true? It was only Friday. He was tired, despite taking his wake-up pills, and thought of Prufrock.

Ahead curved the arm of the movie colony, the cottages of the stars ranked side-by-side like miners' shacks boarded up for the season, the patio furniture shrouded. In its exquisite emptiness, it might have been a ghost town.

“I'm surprised,” he said.

“It's always like this. I know someone who owns one. He only comes out for the Fourth of July.”

“Producer?”

“Don't. He's a proper gentleman, and old enough to be my father.”

“I didn't say anything.” But thought: like Donegall. Like me.

She ignored him, walking on, then stopped, making him turn to her. “Isn't it enough that I gave him up?”

“I'm sorry.”

“I haven't asked a thing of you.”

“And you have every right to.”

“I shouldn't have to ask. Anyway, it wouldn't do anything but make us unhappy.”

“I wish I could promise you more.”

“You can't, so why ruin a perfectly beautiful day?”

It was too late. Nothing was resolved, and even after she took his hand and they kissed and walked on, he was afraid of saying the wrong thing. The breaking waves filled the silence. The shingle was flat and wide here, the surf foaming cold over their toes. There were supposed to be seals and dolphins, but all they saw were gulls.

“That's the one,” she said, pointing to a clapboard cottage topped with a tarnished weathervane shaped like a whale. It was closed like the others, the windows shuttered, but they left the sea and trudged up the beach for it as if they lived there. A low wall fronted a brick patio drifted with sand. She sat and patted the wall for him to join her. The stone was cold. Far out, a great motor yacht inched along, probably headed for Catalina, its engines rumbling like an airplane's.

They shared a cigarette, the wind taking the smoke away.

“Do you know who Frank Case is?” she asked.

“Of course.” He owned Dottie's old haunt, the Algonquin, among other holdings.

“When I first came out here, it was like starting over. I had nothing. No family, no friends. My editor arranged with Frank Case for me to stay here till I could find a place of my own. I'd never even met him, and he let me stay here—alone. For that I'll always be grateful to him.”

“He sounds very generous.”

“He is.”

“I was once thrown out of the Gonk, though I suppose that's not exactly a singular distinction.”

“You needn't be jealous of everyone I've ever met, is what I'm saying.”

“I am. I can't help it, I'm selfish that way. I want to go back and get to know you as a schoolgirl.”

“You wouldn't like me as a schoolgirl. I was tubby—and mean.”

“I can't picture you as either.”

“Oh, I was vicious.” She seemed to take pleasure in confessing this. “I treated people horridly because I was unhappy. I'm much nicer now.”

“Why were you unhappy?”

“Why is anyone unhappy?” She squinted out at the dwindling motor yacht, a blip on the horizon, and he thought she would let the question stand. “I suppose I felt cheated. When I was little we hadn't any money. I was too young to understand, and any time I wanted something we couldn't afford, my mother would call me ungrateful.”

“‘How much sharper than a serpent's tongue . . .'”

“She did worse than her tongue. She was a believer in not sparing the rod. I was lucky. She was harder on my stepbrothers.”

“That's awful. I didn't know you had stepbrothers.”

“I didn't have them for long. They left with my stepfather and I never saw them again.”

“So it was just you and Alicia.”

“This was before Alicia.”

“Hadn't your father already passed then?”

“She was my stepfather's, actually.”

“I didn't know.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. You just never told me before.”

“Probably because of what you'd think. It's all very complicated and sad, and all a long time ago. That's why I don't like to talk about it. I don't have a family in the sense that other people have family.”

“You have your Aunt Mary.”

“Please can we talk about something else? I don't know why you brought it up in the first place.”

“Because I wanted to know you then.”

“You know me now. Trust me, you're getting the better part of the bargain. Here, finish it.” She handed him the cigarette and stood, took a few steps back the way they came. He could tell he'd offended her by prying. To apologize again would only prolong the awkwardness, so he rose and followed her, rueing yet another lost opportunity.

He was being greedy, wanting all of her, when she'd given him so much. He knew how she took her tea and where she had her hair done. He could confidently order for her at a hot dog stand or a French restaurant. Her favorite star was Janet Gaynor, who'd granted her her very first interview. She hated Constance Bennett and couldn't bear Charles Boyer, who'd made a lazy pass at her on the set. She walked briskly, as if she were late, and drove like a maniac. She was organized and clean, meaning he had to pick up his place when he knew she was coming over. She was vigilant about brushing her teeth, and loved going to the dentist. She was a better speller than he was, but knew fewer words. When she was typing a column, she scratched the side of her head with the eraser end of her pencil and stuck out her bottom lip like a bulldog. She liked it when he kissed her neck but not her ears. She thought her nose was crooked and that her eyes were too far apart, neither of which was true. More than anything, she loved to sleep. Wasn't that enough?

After opening boldly, he'd become tentative. If, like his producer, he was replacing his long-lost love with this newfound one, he needed to be sure of her—impossible, and yet, indisputably, she was perfect. Perhaps that was what frightened him most.

Saturday they piled into the Coliseum with a hundred thousand other Angelenos for the traditional city game. For three quarters they waited for Kenny Washington to break loose. When he finally did, Sheilah jumped up and cheered with everyone else. Typically, Scott thought of Zelda, missing it, and afterward, filing down the long concrete ramps with the drained and giddy Bruins fans, he felt strangely dislocated. The feeling only deepened when they walked the few blocks up Vermont to where they'd parked and discovered his car was gone.

Sheilah comforted him, knowing he'd grown fond of the old jalopy.

“Probably just college kids,” he said, feigning equanimity, and held to that bland assumption even after, a week later, the police found it in Tijuana, missing its tires.

He'd gotten the call just before lunch, and because it was Friday and the impound lot closed at five, he had to either leave now or wait till Monday. He had to grab his passport, and money to pay the Tijuana PD for storing it—
la mordida
. On the phone Sheilah dithered, asking if Bogie couldn't drive him, but Bogie was away on location.

If she was busy, he could just take the bus down. It might take a little longer with all the stops.

“It will,” she said vaguely, as if she were still debating, then relented.

She picked him up at the front gate, waited in the car while he ran into the Garden and the bank. She'd had to cancel an interview. To make up for inconveniencing her, he treated their race for the border as a mad adventure rather than the unhappy errand it was.

“I haven't been down Meh-hee-co way in ten years, I bet.” He flipped through his passport. He'd forgotten their last trip to Bermuda, mercifully. Otherwise the stamps ended six years ago, when he'd given up on the clinic in Zurich and brought Zelda and Scottie back on the
Aquitania
. The pages before that testified to the restlessness of a generation, cataloging their jaunts to Nice and Capri and Biskra. It seemed impossible that he hadn't been abroad since then, yet here was proof. Ernest was right: he'd wasted so much time.

“Well?”

“It doesn't go back that far.”

In his picture he was thinner, light-haired and high-cheeked with a wolfish smile, radiating the confidence of the lucky. He didn't recall for which trip it had been taken, but from the watery shine in his eyes he appeared to be tight. He was torn between feeling embarrassed but also sorry for this vain, unserious man, ill-prepared for what awaited him.

“It's true what the natives say. Every time someone takes your picture, the camera steals a little bit of your soul.”

“That explains Bette Davis.”

“What's yours look like?” he asked, wondering what story the stamps on hers told.

“My soul?”

“I'm sure you look stunning.”

“It doesn't even look like me.”

“Let me see.”

“No.”

“Come on, don't be shy now.”

“Stop, I'm trying to drive.”

It took him a minute to understand why she was so adamant. She was afraid he'd see her real age. There was no way to tell her he already suspected, or that it wasn't uncommon, so he let it go, tuning in a Mexican station and swaying to a swoony accordion.

At the border he wasn't surprised when she received her passport back from the clerk and, covering half of it with a hand, held it out to show him her picture. He didn't try to take it, just complimented the younger, unsmiling version of her and let her slip it into her purse.

After a frustrating half-hour circling the dusty town, they found the lot, paid the clerk a storage fee and bought a used set of tires the yard mechanic offered to mount for another five dollars while they ate dinner at a cantina across the street.

“Think they do this to all the gringos?”

“It
was
rather convenient, having them right there.”

“They're probably mine. It's the perfect set-up. Who are you going to complain to?”

It was dark by the time they finally got going. He gassed up and followed her back through the neon carnival of Tijuana, the sidewalks alive with zoot-suited touts trying to entice sailors into the clip joints. The mechanic had mounted the tires but not balanced them, and the car fought him like a stubborn horse, pulling to the right. After they made the border she drove fast, as if trying to lose him, her disembodied taillights floating out ahead of him, smaller and smaller, the black void of the ocean dropping off to the left. The carne asada had been too spicy; a hot bubble lodged in his chest, threatening, any minute, to burst. He pictured the highway patrol finding the car off the road, overturned, his body flopped out one window in the glare of a spotlight.

He tuned the radio to San Diego and, as if summoned, it appeared, its wide streets bright as a stage. His stomach settled, and his thoughts. He was turning melodramatic in middle age, like his mother, seeing death and disaster everywhere, when he should have been grateful. Even more important than getting his car back was the fact that Sheilah had begged off an assignment and spent half the day helping him without the slightest complaint. It had been so long since he'd had someone he could rely on that her generosity—her friendship—seemed a lavish gift, one he'd done little to deserve, and which, in the dark warmth of the Ford burrowing through the night, banished any lingering hesitancy. He wanted to catch her and declare himself right there by the roadside, to thank her, in the soberest way possible, for saving him.

This was the glowing coal he tended as they rolled up the coast and through the low beach towns and working suburbs and into the city itself, and by the time they reached Sunset and climbed the snaking road to her place, he'd convinced himself that the trip had brought them together in a way no evening of dinner and dancing could. So he was surprised to find, when he stepped inside, that her eyes were swollen from crying.

“What's wrong?” he asked, baffled, the eternal male.

“I can't do this anymore.”

His first thought, as always, was Zelda. He was ready to plead for time and understanding, but Sheilah spun away from him and dug through her purse.

“Whatever it is . . .”

He didn't finish because she was holding out her passport to him as if it were a gun.

“You wanted to look at it, so look.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It does,” she said, pushing it at him. He fended her off but she was grimly insistent, and rather than let it drop to the floor, he took it.

The cover was bible black, with the rampant lion and unicorn in gilt.

“Whatever it is, it doesn't matter.”

“Open it.”

“Sheilah—”

“Please, Scott,” she stopped him. “Just open it. After that, if you still want to speak to me, we can talk.”

“If I still want to speak to you.”

“I won't blame you if you don't.”