West of Sunset (18 page)

Scott apologized. His wife suffered from a nervous condition. It wouldn't happen again. It
shan't
.

There was also the matter of some property damage. He'd have to speak with the manager about that.

“Of course,” Scott said, “I'll take care of everything. Thank you.”

He thought it had gone well—the man seemed decent enough—but in the morning the manager called Scott down after breakfast and presented him with a finalized bill, including twenty-five dollars for the vase. The Cavalier was a family hotel, the manager lectured, pious as a banker. He was afraid he couldn't tolerate that kind of behavior. They gave him no choice. Politely yet firmly he explained that they were being asked to leave.

Instead of spending Easter supper with Zelda's cousins in Norfolk, they became their houseguests for the weekend, doubling up in the children's old bedrooms, an arrangement which mortified Scottie. Zelda was back on her tranquilizers, sleepwalking through the days. He wrote nothing, and didn't touch a drop till he'd gotten Zelda and Miss Phillips off and put Scottie on the train to New York. He flew back on the sleeper, tippling from a pint, imagining what Miss Phillips would put in her report. He bought a second at breakfast in Kansas City, and by the time they landed in Albuquerque he decided he would marry Sheilah. He called from a payphone to inform her.

“Did you ask her for a divorce?”

“Yes,” he said, but when she came to pick him up, she saw he was drunk and he admitted he hadn't. She dropped him at the Garden, telling him not to call her.

“To our next ex-wives,” Bogie said, toasting Mayo, and Scott raised his glass.

Alone again, housebound in his robe and slippers, he was determined to finish the script. He abstained during the day, but the weather was perfect for stargazing, and some mornings he slept through his alarm and then couldn't concentrate. Joan Crawford wanted her freedom more than revenge, the difficulty was showing that dramatically. After a dozen false starts he came up with a scene in which the husband returned to the mansion to plead his case, only to find her leaving for Europe, this time for good. The servants were busy covering the furniture, the Rolls laden and waiting.

“Why don't you write me a letter,” she said, brushing past him.

“Where shall I send it?”

“London, Paris,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “I don't care.”

He was still trying to get the scene right when Stromberg called. The studio had killed the picture. Mayer didn't like it on principle, and they were never going to sneak it by the censors anyway. Scott would continue to be paid, Stromberg would find him another project to work on, but for now he should take the week off and rest.

“You haven't seen the new pages yet.”

“I'm sure they're wonderful. I'm disappointed too. It happens. For what it's worth, Miss Crawford likes you. Right now the thing is to clear your head. Go to Palm Springs for a couple of days and come back fresh.”

Scott didn't say he'd just been on vacation, or that he had no one to go with. He hung up and sat down at the kitchen table again, and as if he hadn't heard Stromberg—as if the news were mere rumor—kept kneading the scene, questioning the logic behind every phrase until, little by little, it yielded.

Over the next few days, knowing he'd never get another chance to fix the script, he bent to the final corrections as if he were racing a deadline. After he submitted his finished pages to Stromberg's confused secretary, his mind was still plucking at loose threads, and to quiet whatever professional conscience he had left, he tried reading Keats. When that failed, he knocked on Bogie and Mayo's door. It was three in the afternoon on a Thursday, and they were out, as were Dottie and Alan, and Don Stewart, and Benchley—all working, while he was being paid to do nothing.

He began with the gin in the Quaker Oats tin in the depths of the kitchen cupboard, savoring it cold and breathtaking over ice. He turned the radio up so he could hear the music outside and sat on his steps, closing his eyes and tipping his face to the sun.
Fascinatin' rhythm, got me on the go. Fascinatin' rhythm, the neighbors want to know.
Stromberg had told him to clear his head. It couldn't get much emptier, he thought, and then remembered Zelda yelling in the hall and Scottie wanting to protect him, Sheilah telling him not to call unless he was willing to quit. He tipped his glass and the mass of ice sloshed against his upper lip.

Bogie and Mayo were the first to come home, followed by Don Stewart and his Japanese girlfriend, Sid and Laura Perelman, Pep West and his wife, Dottie and Alan, Ogden Nash, the party growing incrementally until Benchley arrived with a flock of starlets, one of whom sat on Scott's lap, poking him in the face with her stiff brassiere and making fun of the way people danced. The torches were lit, the Capehart blaring from the balcony. He danced several fast numbers with the starlet and lost his glass. The gin was gone—they'd switched to whiskey and soda, Mayo blasting the unsuspecting with a seltzer bottle. He remembered going inside at some point and playing darts blindfolded, one of Alan's throws sticking in a painting before Dottie took the rest away, and later, tearing at a charred steak he held in his hand like a sandwich.

He woke alone on his kitchen floor, sunlight flooding the window above the sink, spangling the dirty dishes. His bad shoulder hurt, the muscles throbbing and weak, and he feared that while he was asleep he'd had an attack of angina. His pills were in his pants. He took two, but as he undressed to shower he could barely lift his arm to get his shirt off, and he realized he'd done something to himself.

Bogie and Mayo weren't home, or weren't answering. He could drive one-handed, except he didn't know where to go. Sheilah might think he was looking for sympathy, and maybe he was, but she was the only person he knew in the city and he was too tired and in too much pain to care, and rather than play the stoic hero, he gave in and called her.

“Are you sober?” she asked.

It was all she wanted to know.

“Yes,” he said, and buried the empty bottle deeper in the garbage.

Seeing her again, he understood he was a fool. She knew everything, and still she'd come.

She drove him to the emergency room where they took x-rays and a nurse bound his arm in a sling. It was just a sprain. They gave him painkillers and released him to Sheilah.

In the car, in a swoon of gratitude, he apologized. He didn't know why he did these things. Maybe he should stop going East. One thing was clear—he needed her.

Like any victor, she had conditions. It was simple. He would take the cure and move out of the Garden, as if his friends were a bad influence. While he knew that wasn't the case, he wanted a fresh start as much as she did, and the next Monday, after Bogie and Mayo threw him a raucous going-away party, a private nurse arrived with a black bag full of syringes and sat by his bedside, swabbing his brow with cold compresses and catching his vomit in an enamel basin until he was empty. As he slept, cleansed and wretched, Sheilah folded his clothes and boxed his books and moved them to Malibu. Thursday, when she drove him out to the cottage, his room was made up and waiting for him.

H
ere at the end of the continent the days were the same, the sea and sky elemental, endless, interrupted only by a ship, a plane, a wayward blimp. To pay his bills he was restaging the French Revolution as a tragic love story for Garbo. He sat at a child's desk tucked into a drafty dormer, wandering the gardens of Versailles. The waves broke and foamed, slid back and gathered again. The neighbors' flagpole was a sundial, its shadow angling across the patio, ticking off the afternoon. On his dresser stood a picture of himself in a sombrero and Sheilah astride a donkey in Tijuana, a birthday present. It was May, a month for picnics in the Bois. He thought they would see more of each other, like at Christmas, the two of them hiding from the world, but she was busy with her column and her radio show, her opening night galas. What was love compared to the ruthless ambition of youth? From the widow's walk he could see the peak of Catalina, and in his weaker moments, squinting out over the water at the last of sunset, breasting a westerly breeze, he felt the chill of exile.

He wasn't entirely alone. She'd hired a cook named Flora who took the bus from San Pedro five days a week, arriving on foot, waving to the guard at the gatehouse and tramping the sandy lane normally reserved for Barbara Stanwyck's or Dolores Del Rio's Rolls, singing and talking to herself out loud as if she were in a musical. She was from Louisiana and called him Mister Scott, prodding him to eat with the teasing familiarity of a nurse or nanny. “I never met a grown man so scared of a little okra.” She reminded him of Ettie, their housekeeper at Ellerslie, who poured any booze she found down the sink and hid his guns when he was drunk. Like Ettie, Flora treated him like a willful child, a role, in his brittle state, he was comfortable playing. They ate lunch together, listening to the news from Europe on Frank Case's Philco before he headed back to his desk. At six she served him dinner and waddled off to the bus bench in front of the Malibu Inn, a walk he might take later for a Hershey bar or a pack of cigarettes.

The grocery there sold liquor, the bottles ranked with military precision, including his Gordon's. No doubt he would break down eventually, but so far he'd resisted, buying only a few harmless beers he quaffed like water.

At night the isolation was complete. Most of his neighbors' places were still closed for the season. Besides the light at the gatehouse, the Colony was dark, and on foot it was hard to see. The drive was littered with fallen fronds dried like husks. Ahead, with every step, lizards fled, rustling the leaves. On his left, running unbroken to the highway, stretched an open wedge of field—alfalfa and wild mustard. Deer came down from the hills to feed on the new shoots, coyotes trailing them, baying at all hours. Once, one loped across the road with a rabbit in its jaws, still kicking, stopped, golden-eyed, to fix on him as if he were a threat, then slipped under the split-rail fence. He was too used to the city, the comfort of other pedestrians, illusory as it might be. He welcomed the watchman with his wobbling flashlight and the lone fisherman surfcasting by the glow of a railroad lantern as if they were old friends.

Despite the shuttling of the waves, he didn't sleep. There was no heat upstairs and the bed was cold without her. He banked the fire and lay down on the couch beneath a heap of musty blankets, wondering how she'd convinced him to leave the Garden. Some nights, under the chloral's spell, he swore he could make out voices in the breakers, tootled bars of music, the call of a party right outside his door—a siren song that fooled him each time. In the morning he blew on the embers, set a fresh log on the grate and lugged the blankets upstairs again so Flora wouldn't know.

Sheilah visited weekends and evenings when she could get away. They strolled the beach at sunset, roasted wienies and played ping pong under the stars, but her schedule was unsettled, subject to last-minute changes, and when she had to cancel, he sulked, roaming window to window, the empty hours spread before him gray and featureless as the sea—how Zelda must have felt when he reneged on his promises.

Dearest Heart,
he wrote.
I'm sorry it all went so badly. I should have known you were struggling, only I was struggling myself. I hadn't felt well for some time and was hoping to use the week to recover, a plan which in retrospect sounds wildly hopeful. I suppose I assumed your nurse would look after you, since she had no other reason to be there. Obviously she doesn't know you well enough to see trouble coming. I take part of the blame for asking Dr. Carroll to change your medication after how dulled you were at Christmas. There must be a middle course that lets you be the bright, lively person you are.

As for my own role in that opera
buffa
, I can honestly say that since I've been out here I've had only two brief bats, both of which I paid for dearly with my health. Having recently taken the cure, I remain vigilant, afraid this old heart won't bear the strain again. The reprobate carries an unfair burden of expectation, as you know. I go so far as to steer clear of office parties and bars lest the studio get wind of rumors.

You don't give Scottie nearly enough credit. She's thrilled that you and Rosalind are coming up for graduation. I expect pictures of her with all of her firsts.

To Scottie he wrote:
You know I'd be there if I could, but this isn't your real graduation anyway. That would be Vassar (God and Louie Mayer willing). Be patient with your mother. This is her first trip to Simsbury, and she's anxious to make a good impression on the horsey set. I expect she'll do well, since in essence those are her people. It's more a matter of confidence, which was once her long suit. If there are any problems, Aunt Rosalind has all the information.

He'd never planned on going. After spending both Christmas and Easter back East he didn't have any vacation left, but as the day neared, he resented the situation more and more, the idea of not being there after slaving to pay for it, as if he were being deprived of his one reward.

He detested Marie Antoinette. To make her sympathetic he had to cheat, showing her as a newcomer trying to navigate the warring factions of the court—as if Garbo could still play the ingenue. Saturday was payday, and after driving over to the studio to turn in his pages, he and Sheilah were having dinner at the Vine Street Derby when the maitre d' came to their booth with a phone. Scott thought it must be for her, but the man stopped beside him and proffered it like a gift.

“We need to talk,” Stromberg said. “You know my place?”

He didn't, nor did he know why they had to talk now, or how Stromberg had found him. Typically he hadn't seen him since being assigned the script, though a rumor circulating the Iron Lung blamed his absence not on his normal indifference but the resurgence of a nagging opium habit. Having often been the subject of gossip, if not, like Thalberg, outright legend, Scott tended to discount it.

“I suppose that means no dessert,” Sheilah said.

“I'm sorry.”

“Please, of all people, I understand. You've been summoned.”

“You can stay.”

“Don't be silly.”

The directions Stromberg gave him took them up Beverly Glen through Holmby Hills into the older part of Bel Air where the roads meandered and mansions bulked darkly behind wrought-iron fences. It was dusk, the trees like cutouts against the deepening sky. Somewhere around here, years ago, before Gable got ahold of her, he'd danced with Carole Lombard at a party, her hand warm in his, her smile inviting. Now, in his rattletrap Ford, he poked from driveway to driveway, reading the street numbers like a tourist.

Sheilah's eyes were better than his. She found it first, a rambling Spanish Revival with Moorish arches and neatly spaced poplars. “This used to be Warner Baxter's place.”

“Yes,” he said, because this was it. “I've been here.”

“Of course you have.”

Before he could pull up to the buzzer, the gates yawned open and he eased the car through. Sheilah twisted in her seat to watch them close behind them again. “Trapped like rats.”

“You could have stayed and had your grapefruit cake.”

“And sit there all by myself? No thank you.”

A valet was waiting for them in the portico, and came to her side of the car first, a small, balding man in white gloves and tails. She waved him away.

“I'm sure you'd be welcome,” Scott said.

“I'm sure I wouldn't.”

“I'll try to be quick.”

“Mester Fetzgerald,” the valet said in a rich Scottish burr. “Mester Stromberg's expecting you.” He had a few greased strings of auburn hair combed across his dome and his pants were as baggy as Chaplin's. Silently he led Scott up the stairs, through a paneled and parquet-floored anteroom and down a long, ceremonial hallway ranked with niches housing grim marble busts, giving the place the air of a museum or a gallery of severed heads.

He'd been summoned before, to the dean's office at Newman and then Princeton. Whatever news Stromberg had to break to him in person couldn't be good, yet at the same time he had the feeling of being chosen, admitted to an inner sanctum. He didn't know the man at all beyond his reputation, his youthful success, already fading. He imagined the valet taking him upstairs to a tower room where Stromberg, dope-ravaged and half out of his mind, would pontificate on the temptations of Hollywood from his four-poster sickbed. Instead the valet turned left at the end of the hall, knocked on an open door, announced him, and with a nod, stepped aside.

Like a miser hunched over his ledger, Stromberg was working in a small circle of lamplight, the corners of the room dark. As in the Iron Lung, he captained a desk piled with scripts, the walls a library, only here rather than tweeds he wore a sport shirt and his jaw betrayed a faint smudge of stubble. He rose to shake Scott's hand and apologized for interrupting his dinner. There was no other chair, so Scott stood, a sophomore called on the carpet. He was prepared to hear that his pages were uninspired and he was being replaced.

“We lost Garbo,” Stromberg said. “L.B.'s letting us have Norma.”

Meaning they were screwed. As Thalberg's widow, Norma Shearer was a reminder of his genius. Since his death, Mayer had actively miscast her, trying to drive her from the studio. He wondered if Stromberg was in L.B.'s doghouse.

“What happened?”

“That's just how it is. I've got something else if you're interested. The last thing I want to do is waste your time.” He held out a script.

Like a volunteer, Scott stepped forward to accept it:
The Women
, by Claire Booth Luce. It was a gossipy farce enjoying a long run on Broadway, utter fluff. He smiled to hide a grimace. “I've heard of it.”

“Take a look and get back to me. Miss Crawford asked for you specifically.”

“That was kind of her.”

“I'm pretty sure we can get Greer Garson and Claire Trevor. It's not Garbo, but I think it'll make a nice picture. We shelled out enough for it.”

Scott played along, trying to be gracious. Only in the hall, on the way out, following the little Scotsman, did he let his face drop. There was no reason he should feel insulted. It was just the business. As a professional, he needed to be grateful for another chance.

“That was fast,” Sheilah said.

He tossed the script in her lap. “I've got a new job.”

“What happened to
Marie Antoinette
?”

He gave her a double take. “You didn't hear?”

It became a favorite saying, referenced when anyone asked an obvious question, but also shorthand for the vicissitudes of life at the studio, where so many hopes met abrupt, unhappy ends. He'd been there almost a year now, working steadily, and all he had to show for his efforts were a couple dozen pay stubs. Of the scripts he'd written, only
Three Comrades
had made it into production, after the most savage battles. Its fate was still in doubt. Though Dottie and Ernest had warned him, he couldn't stop it from being sabotaged. Between Paramore, Mank and Reinecke, he feared there was nothing left of his script, and as the premiere neared, he steeled himself.

By chance the picture was opening the same weekend as Scottie's graduation, casting his bifurcated life in even greater relief. As he was fixing his cuff links and zipping Sheilah's dress, Zelda and Rosalind were taking the night train up the coast to New York. The route ran through Baltimore, hard by their old house, La Paix, their very last home, the three of them together, before she set fire to it—accidentally, or so he'd told the police, when honestly he couldn't be certain. Would she recognize the old place in the dark? And what would she think? At Pratt she begged him to take her home. He would when she was better, he said, a promise which, while true, proved empty. He didn't expect they would ever live under the same roof again. He wasn't sure why the idea surprised him, but caught himself making a sour face in the mirror as he tied his tie, and clenched his jaw to erase it before Sheilah walked in on him.

The premiere was at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, a grand, pillared temple among the luncheonettes and pawnshops of Hollywood Boulevard. Crossing Wilshire, they could see searchlights sweeping the sky, as if anticipating an air raid. The mob was already there, the uninvited penned behind police barricades, shaking 8 x 10 glossies and autograph books at the chosen. He'd insisted on taking his car as a joke, and inched along as limousines dropped off the stars, each new arrival sparking a volley of flashbulbs.

When it was their turn, he gave the car to the valet and hurried around to offer Sheilah his arm. Her dress drew wolf whistles and catcalls she acknowledged with a wave, sending up a roar.

“They love you.”

“They think I'm somebody,” she said, and he wondered if that was what she wanted. He was aware that the last time she was here she'd been with Leslie Howard.