“Excuse me, excuse me.” It was Scott. “Excuse me, Owen. I saw you two talking and I thought…”
“Hello, Scott,” Owen said, moving closer to the table, hoping to brace himself a bit.
“I saw you two talking…” Scott looked like he could use a table also.
“This is Whit Clay,” Owen said.
“I thought, I just had to ask this young man…Whit Clay, is it?” Scott peered rudely into Whit’s face.
“Yes,” the young man said.
Scott nodded, looking very satisfied for some reason Owen couldn’t fathom. “So, my question is this: Are you or are you not a homosexual?”
There was a brief moment where Owen felt it hadn’t happened. It couldn’t have happened. He looked at the two men staring at each other and there was only the sound of the wind coming over the hill, loudly, it seemed to him.
But then Whit said in a calm, friendly tone: “Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald, I am.”
Scott’s face seemed to shrink back into itself.
Then Dos Passos and Don Stewart were there and Dos put himself between Scott and Whit, blocking Scott, and said to Owen: “I just remembered a few people here I forgot to mention…”
Over Dos’s shoulder, Scott looked strange, miserable, embarrassed. Sick. Owen thought he might be about to vomit, but Scott just mumbled something unintelligible and scuttled away.
“The comte and comtesse de Beaumont,” Dos Passos continued affably. “I think I saw her smoking opium in the hedgerow. And those are the houseguests…”
Owen looked at Whit, who smiled at him.
“What are their names again, Don?” Dos asked.
“I only remember the lady.” Don put his hand on Whit’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about that. That was ugly.”
“Right.” Dos Passos snapped his fingers. “Flora Glass. Some kind of American heiress.”
Something surfaced slowly from the drink-soaked recesses of Owen’s mind, like a fishing cork bobbing up in a lake. Owen turned to Dos Passos and asked: “What did you say?”
“An American heiress,” he said.
“Where?” Owen turned around, scanned the people now dimly lit in the flickering light of the hurricane lamps.
“Over there, by the gramophone,” Dos said, pointing to a group of people above them. “The thin one. Well, the young one. Not the other one, that’s the comtesse.”
Sara was standing with Zelda and Gerald, the comtesse de Beaumont, and one of the comtesse’s houseguests when she saw Scott stumbling up a flight of steps towards them.
She leaned her head in and whispered to Gerald: “Is this party getting quite bad?”
“It might be,” he conceded. “Or it might just be Scott.”
“This wind,” the comtesse was saying. “They said in town that a mistral is coming through.”
“We’re protected here, on this side of the hill,” Gerald said.
“Yes,” the comtesse said, “maybe from head-on, but not from above.”
She was a striking woman, the comtesse, thin and elegant, but she had a way of always being right that irritated Sara at times.
“They say the mistral makes people go mad,” Zelda said dreamily.
“No,” the comtesse said. “It does not. That’s only what mad people say to excuse themselves.”
Zelda’s expression darkened slightly, but she stayed silent.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sara could see that Scott was almost upon them. Gerald saw it too, because he nudged her and whispered: “Incoming.”
Scott walked up and stood at the edge of the circle. He fixed his gaze on the comtesse’s houseguest, a pretty, drunk girl who had been swaying silently in their company.
“Who are you?” he asked, staring.
“This is Flora Glass,” the comtesse said. “She is visiting from London. She’s engaged to Etienne’s cousin Lord Darnby.”
The girl nodded. Despite her youth, Sara noticed, there was a hardness to her face, a sculpted quality that was generally the result of age or rough living.
Scott, who seemed to have lost interest in the girl, turned to Sara and said: “I have to talk to you.”
“You are talking to me, Scott.” She had no desire to get into it with him, and she hoped that if she didn’t let him get her alone, he would drop whatever it was. “A wedding.” She turned back to the young woman. “How marvelous. When are you to be married?”
“Soon enough,” the woman said.
Sara laughed. “I see.”
“Sara,” Scott said, but she ignored him.
“They are to be married in September,” the comtesse said.
The young woman looked up at the sky.
“Where is your fiancé now?” Sara asked, if only to keep Scott at bay.
The girl shrugged but didn’t move her eyes.
“He’s in London. Looking after his affairs,” the comtesse said, shaking her head at Flora.
“Sara, why won’t you look at me?” Scott grabbed her arm.
“Now, Scott—” Gerald began.
“No, it’s all right,” Sara said. “What is it?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Fine,” she said. “Come with me to the car. You can help carry some champagne back.”
He trailed her as she marched down the path that led to the driveway in front of Villa America. When they reached the car, Scott stopped her and fell to his knees.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter about Zelda,” he said, clutching her legs. “Because I love you. You are my perfect woman.”
“Get up,” she said sternly.
“I won’t,” he said. “Oh, beautiful Sara. In your beautiful silver dress. ‘Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths / Enwrought with golden and silver light…I would spread the cloths under your feet…Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Sara said. “Pull yourself together.”
He stood. “Kiss me.”
“Scott…” But before she could say anything else, he planted his lips against hers.
Sara pushed him away. “Now that we’ve settled that,” she said briskly, “take that champagne out of the car. I’m going back to the party.”
Owen walked up to the part of the garden where Flora stood, then stopped a moment, watching her. She seemed to hold herself at a distance from the other guests. He’d heard Sara ask her questions and seen her glance away.
She looked older. Of course, it’d been ten years, but it was more than that. She was wearing a blue beaded dress and she was still as slight as she’d always been, yet it wasn’t the same childish slightness he remembered. It was more a fashionable thinness.
He didn’t know what he should say or if he should say anything at all. But he had to know, he decided, briefly wondering if he’d regret it in the morning.
He watched as Sara and Scott walked off together. Flora moved away from the circle and looked at some of the records by the gramophone. He wished he had another anisette for courage.
He covered the distance between them and stood at her side. She didn’t look up. “Hello, Flora,” he said.
“Hello,” she said, turning the record over in her hand. “I saw you were here.”
This was not what he was expecting.
“I was wondering if you were going to say something,” she said.
“I didn’t know if I should,” he said finally.
“Probably not,” she said, lifting her face to his. “But then, people often do things they shouldn’t. Don’t you find?”
He felt his face go hot. “You wrote me that day.”
“I suppose I did. It doesn’t matter now.” She shrugged. “I guess you want to know what’s become of Charlie.”
Up close, he noticed that her lipstick was a startling shade of red, like a gash across her face.
“Well, he’s dead,” she said, picking up another record. “God, don’t they have anything a
little more peppy?”
“Charlie’s dead?” His voice sounded far away, as if it weren’t really coming from him. He wondered if it was the liquor or what she had said.
“Yes, fool got himself killed at the front. That, among other things,” she said, “did Daddy in. And now”—she put the record on the gramophone—“I’m an heiress, fit for a lord. Lucky me.”
“Charlie’s dead?” He didn’t know why he’d said it again. Maybe he didn’t believe her.
“Yes, Owen,” she said, her voice like granite. “He’s dead. So no more kisses in the barn with my brother, no more love affairs, if that’s what you were hoping for after all these years. Look at you.” She shook her head. “Sidling up here, pretending we’re friends.”
He stared at her. He hated her. He wondered if he’d ever really hated anyone before. He couldn’t remember having this feeling, not even for the Germans who’d killed Quentin. “I don’t think we’re friends,” he said between gritted teeth. “And I wasn’t hoping for that. I would never hope for that.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” she conceded. “You paid for it too, in your own way, I guess.”
“I’m the only one who paid.” He stared at her.
She laughed. “Oh, is that what you think? You think it was all just hunky-dory between Charlie and Daddy afterward?”
He thought about everything he’d lost, about his mother, the loneliness, all the hiding and the shame. And here she was with her snappy talk and her hard face and her self-pity. “Hunky-dory? Hunky-dory? Fuck you, Flora.” And it felt like opium in his blood to say it, a euphoric high.
“Oh, that’s charming,” she said. “Well, as enlightening as this little reunion has been, I think we should keep it short and sweet, don’t you?” But despite her sharp words, there was something in her expression, too fleeting for him to place. If he’d had to name it, he might have said sorrow.
He watched her walk back to the comtesse, touch her hostess on the arm, and incline her head towards the house before moving up the path and out of his sight.
The wind had really picked up, and pine needles were whipping through the air, stinging Gerald’s face a bit. Above them, the hills had turned bright orange with fire, and the smell of burning eucalyptus that had been perfuming the air for a few weeks now was suddenly overwhelming.
“I think you were right, Comtesse,” he said. “About the mistral.”
“Of course I was,” she said. “We should be heading back, anyway. I think our young friend has had enough.”
He chuckled. “She seemed like she’d had enough a while ago.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with young women today,” the comtesse said. “No fortitude. Oh, well. Bonne nuit, mon ami. Will you give our thanks to your charming wife?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Where has Etienne disappeared to?” She looked around and then, spotting her husband by the table with Dos and Don Stewart, walked down in his direction, raising her hand over her shoulder.
“Good night,” Gerald said.
He turned to Zelda to offer to refresh her drink, but she was staring, transfixed, at the path leading from the side of house. Sara was walking down it, and behind her, Scott was carrying several bottles of champagne.
“There they are,” Gerald said.
“Yes,” Zelda said. “Why is it so windy?”
“Mistral is apparently coming through. Won’t be good for those fires,” Gerald said, looking up into the hills.
“Will they come down here and burn us?”
“I hope not,” he said. “No, of course not,” he added. It was Zelda he was talking to, after all.
“Well, we have to drench ourselves in champagne, then. Stay wet,” she said.
Sara passed to their left. She gave Gerald a look, a slight eye roll as she went by. Scott followed, doggedly.
“Why did she do that?” Zelda asked. “Why did she roll her eyes?”
“I don’t know,” Gerald said.
“She mustn’t get sick of Scott,” Zelda said. “He needs her.”
“Of course she’s not sick of Scott,” Gerald said soothingly.
“I’m sick of Scott.” Zelda sighed. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe we’ll all die in a fire.”
“Zelda…” he began, but she just walked down the steps towards her husband.
Sara was right. This party was getting quite bad. It was time to wrap it up, he decided. Re-serve and release, that was the way to do it. He saw that Owen had sequestered himself by the gramophone. He’d intended to speak with him all evening but had found excuses not to. It seemed, though, that it might be now or never. He picked up the bottle of champagne on the table beside him and walked over.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” Owen said.
“Look,” Gerald said. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you. Perhaps I should have written. I’m sorry for the way I went on. You know, after you took me up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Owen said.
“It does matter. To me.” Gerald wondered if Owen had decided he wasn’t worth it. “I’m not very good at expressing myself sometimes. It was such a…I was very moved by the experience. That’s all.”
“I’m sorry?” Owen looked at him as if he’d only just realized Gerald was standing there.
“I was just saying…are you all right?”
“Yes,” Owen said. “No. I’m drunk, I think.”
But Gerald thought he looked more stricken than drunk. He put his hand on Owen’s arm. He could feel its shape beneath the shirtsleeve.
“Do you ever wonder,” Owen said, “if everything you’ve believed has been the wrong thing? The wrong way around?”
“I…” He must be drunk, Gerald thought, to be talking this way. “Everyone makes choices, I think. You can’t know if they’re right or wrong. All you can do is stick by them.”
“No, see, that’s the point. We do have choices; it doesn’t matter if they’re right or wrong, that doesn’t matter. It’s not just luck. Things…they don’t just happen to us. I used to believe that. Or something like that. But now I see: I was just a coward.” He grasped Gerald’s hand.
Gerald didn’t know if it was the crazy wind or his mind playing tricks on him, but the expression in Owen’s eyes reminded him of something. San Antonio. Training camp. The look in Tom Wilson’s eyes before the gun went off.
“I don’t want to be a coward anymore.”
Owen was holding his hand too hard, crushing it, and Gerald yanked it away as if he’d been burned. Whatever Owen was trying to communicate, he didn’t want to understand.
He was startled when he felt a nudge and turned to see Zelda standing there.
“Will you hold this, Dow-Dow,” she said, passing him her champagne coupe, seemingly oblivious to what was going on between the two men.
He took it without thinking, and they both watched as she walked over to one of the smaller tables nearby, kicked off her shoes, gathered her skirts around her, and climbed up on it.
Then, standing on her tiptoes, she began to twirl. Her pink tulip skirt flew out with the motion, round and round, lifting higher and higher. She was gazing into the distance with enormous concentration, looking at neither them nor the others below her, who were now turning to watch.
As she gained speed, the pink petals of fabric came above her waist, and the lamplight revealed first her bare legs and then the shock of black satin panties, like the dark disk at the center of a flower.
The group below had started to move up the stairs, gathering round, as if hypnotized by the spectacle. What struck Gerald at that moment was the dignity with which she performed this scene. She wasn’t doing it for Scott or anyone else. She was doing it for herself and there was a supreme nobility to it.
Her spinning slowed, her skirt lowered, until she finally came to rest. She stood still for a moment. Then Sara offered Zelda her hand, helped her down.
Without a backward look,
Gerald left Owen, walked over to Zelda, and handed her her glass.
“Thank you, Dow-Dow,” she said. She put her shoes on in silence.
No one had to be told that it was time to go home. The wind and Zelda had made that clear. Owen wanted another swig of something, though, before he left, to blot it all out completely. He was about to pour himself a glass of champagne from the bottle Gerald had brought over when Whit Clay walked up.
“I think you’ve had enough,” the young man said.
Owen looked at him.
“Come on,” Whit said softly. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Owen asked.
“Your place.” He smiled.
“It’s not near.”
“That’s all right, I’ll drive. Give me your keys.”
Owen reached into his pocket, took out his keys, and placed them gently in the man’s open palm.
It was late and Sara didn’t know how long they’d been asleep when there was a knock at the door. She wondered if she’d imagined it until she heard it again, more violent this time.
Leaving Gerald sleeping, Sara rose and walked through the sitting room, switching on a lamp as she went.
It was Scott, still dressed, shaking. “You have to come quickly,” he said. “It’s Zelda. She didn’t mean to do it.”
Sara nodded, still not fully awake but with that instinct for night emergencies she’d developed since having children. “I’ll be right there.”
She went back into the bedroom and found her dressing gown.
“What is it?” Gerald was half sitting up.
“Something’s wrong with Zelda,” she said.
“Wait. I’ll come too.”
She waited as he rose and searched for his own bathrobe. Then they made their way down the hall.
When the party had ended, Sara had managed to convince Scott and Zelda to stay over instead of driving home, and the couple had been relatively quiet on the car trip back to the Hôtel du Cap.
They hadn’t even waited with Sara and Gerald on the terrace to take a nightcap with Dos and Don Stewart, who were walking back from Villa America. It had surprised her a little at the time—she’d never known the Fitzgeralds to leave when some amusement might still be had—but she’d also been relieved. She wondered now if that hadn’t been a portent of some kind.
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