West of Sunset

by Stewart O'Nan

  “You ever done this before?” he asked the driver.

  “Two, three times a week. People always think they have more time than they do.”

  Scott made sure Budd was writing it down. If Wanger caught them, they could say they were doing research.

  In Northampton the platform swarmed with the Smith and Mount Holyoke contingents. Scott tipped the driver for getting them there on time and followed Budd through the slush. He’d thought to bring gloves but not galoshes, and his socks were soaked. While there was a men’s room in the station where he might dry them, he couldn’t risk missing the train. Once they were onboard, he stopped at a lavatory and wrung them into the sink. His toenails were blue as those of a corpse.

  The camera crew was still playing cards, but Wanger’s compartment was dark. Budd gently closed their door and pulled the shade, and they turned in, Scott once again taking the lower berth. He knew he should be tired, yet instead of sleeping he kept replaying their escapade in the wrecker. Without writing a line they’d nailed down a dozen scenes. Deepening this feeling of bounty was the knowledge that in his briefcase his pint of gin waited, safe as a bank deposit. Warm under the covers, swaying with the rhythm of the train, he thought it had been a good night.

  As they sped north the snow fell steadily, hour upon hour, so that the next morning, when they reached Hanover, the world was drifted, blinding white, reminding him of St. Paul. The entire student body greeted them at the station, along with the marching band, as if the train were carrying their mail-order brides. The scene was staged; Wanger had arranged everything. Before the porters would let anyone off, the camera crew scrambled into position, high-stepping through the knee-deep snow for the ideal vantage. Only when the one named Robinson chopped his arm like a clapper were the girls allowed out. Scott and Budd hung back, not wanting to ruin the shot.

  A bus dropped them at the Hanover Inn, where their reservation had been lost. Wanger and the camera crew all had rooms. Theirs alone was missing. Since the Inn was sold out for the weekend, the best the manager could do was offer them the lumber room in the attic and a pair of cots.

  The room was beneath the eaves, and unheated. Their breath hung in the air.

  “This is a joke,” Scott said.

  “More like an initiation,” Budd said, and he got it. A king’s son, he had to constantly prove himself to his future subjects. Scott’s shoes were still damp, and he felt a cough coming on, but if Budd was game, so was he.

  After a meeting with Wanger and the camera crew, they tramped the campus, the blocky, red brick Federal halls nowhere near as interesting as Princeton’s. Scott really should have thought to bring boots. The paths that crisscrossed the quad had been plowed but were still slippery in spots, and twice Budd had to catch his arm. The sun was out, dazzling, and from the glistening snow, like totems, rose a giant penguin and rampant polar bear and pie-eyed owl, the Thinker and the Sphinx and the fierce, bearded head of Old Man Winter, a hipped pagoda worthy of Grauman’s Chinese, a castle complete with a working drawbridge, a sleigh the size of a locomotive, and a half-dozen other whimsical marvels of engineering Budd dutifully logged in his notebook. At the very center, jacketless and ruddy in the cold, a brigade of students was building the bonfire, heaping the logs up in a huge pyre, and again Scott envied their animal vigor. A proud alum, Budd showed him the skating pond and the ski jump and the toboggan chute, all of which figured in key scenes and none of which was inspiring. He didn’t want to sound like a slacker, but hadn’t they walked enough? His shoulder hurt from the berth, and he wanted to go back to the Inn and warm himself by the fire. With the overnights he’d lost hold of what day it was and had to remind himself: Friday, it’s only Friday.

  If the ride up was a party, the carnival was a debauch. Once the sun went down and the torches were lit, the quad filled with dark mobs of revelers, the sculptures casting quavering shadows across the halls. On all sides the classroom windows gave back flames, as if the campus were under attack. A swing band commanded the steps of the library, and above the tribal drumming and the wailing of a sax came cries of aggression and ecstasy. To fortify himself against the cold, Scott nipped at his pint, lending the clear night air and firelight an inscrutable beauty. Years ago, right after they were married, he’d taken Zelda to Winter Carnival in St. Paul. She’d hated it, her Southern blood too thin. He hadn’t been back since. Now he felt an atavistic kinship with the tradition, as if he were meant to be here. Atop Old Man Winter, riding his stormy forehead like an elephant, sat two dateless girls, drinking and watching the fray. He raised his bottle and they returned the salute.

  At eleven, when the band finished, the dancers headed for fraternity row. Budd had been treasurer of Pi Lambda Phi, and they walked straight past the waiting line and inside. The brothers drew them tankards of grog, a brew whose ingredients Scott didn’t recognize. The president offered a long, ceremonial toast. Budd thanked him and allowed that, being a Princeton man, Scott didn’t have to chug his.

  “Like fun,” he said, and beat them all to the bottom. “Who won? Prince-ton!” he cheered, his chin dripping, and was shouted down.

  In the backyard they had their own fire going, singing bawdy songs to shock the girls, sparks corkscrewing up to the stars. The brothers waited on Budd like the emeritus he was, making sure their tankards were never empty. Some of the girls were roasting marshmallows, and Scott burned his tongue on one, and then was taken with a sneezing fit. Though his nose was running, he no longer felt the cold. The grog was filling. In the bathroom he braced a hand on the wall, impressed with the island of bubbles he was making. Outside again, he discovered his pint was killed. Frowning, he tossed it in the fire. The crowd had thinned to just a few brothers; the girls were gone. After the last two nights, he was ready for bed.

  “One more,” Budd said, holding up a finger.

  “Just one.”

  It became their watchword, both a joke and a goad. They stayed out too late, stumbling up the maid’s staircase, afraid Wanger would be laying for them in the lobby.

  The next morning they tried to placate him, giving the camera crew a new list of master shots they wanted, which seemed to displease him.

  “That’s why I’ve got a director. What I need from you is scenes—action, words. What have you been doing all this time?”

  The rest of the day they hibernated in the library, pacing and smoking as they hashed out the second act, which further worsened Scott’s cough. They were sober to meet the dean and some of the English faculty for dinner, including Budd’s old professor who assigned his classes Gatsby. Once it broke up, they bolted for the carnival like children let out for recess.

  Tomorrow was the pageant, and the torchlight procession of skiers down the mountain. Tonight was just a warm-up, and accordingly they treated it like an evening off, hitting the frat for some grog and then the skating party, not bothering to take notes. They passed from fire to fire like beggars, trading industry gossip for whatever the students would share with them, becoming connoisseurs of mulled wine and hot toddies and schnapps. It never failed. Everyone wanted to know what Hollywood was like.

  By now Scott’s throat was raw. His breathing was raspy and with every swallow his tonsils stung, yet he kept drinking, fueled by the camaraderie and the promise of adventure. There was a sleigh ride, and a party in a barn decorated with crepe paper streamers, and a snowball fight during which he caught one flush in the face, bloodying his nose. He was sitting on a log with his head tipped back, trying to stanch the flow, when in town a bell rang the hour: one, two. He waited for three, and was disappointed.

  Later, somehow, they ended up at the toboggan chute. There were no lights, and as they were climbing the stairs, he slipped and fell, banging his hip, and stayed down.

  “You alive?” Budd asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m not going without you.”

  “I’m gonna res
t here.”

  “It’s not that far.”

  “Go.”

  “Come on,” Budd said, hauling him to his feet and taking his weight as if he were an injured comrade. “One more.”

  “One more.”

  There were several dozen more steps, and then at the top, through the trees, a view of the moon and the whole campus below that made him clutch the railing with both hands. The chute fell away into darkness. On Summit Avenue the sledding hill was in the cemetery. At the bottom a stone bridge crossed a stream, and when he was a toddler a neighbor girl had been killed there, prompting the caretaker to erect a wall of hay bales every winter.

  “Sit here,” Budd said, guiding him down behind a husky boy and then fitting himself against his back. “All right, on three. One. Two.”

  The others joined in and the toboggan slid forward, hung, stuck on the edge a second, before it tipped into the chute. They plunged, shuddering down the rutted ice, the snow rushing up his cuffs. The wind siphoned tears from his eyes. He couldn’t see a thing and huddled against the boy’s broad back, using him as a shield. As they gathered speed, hurtling headlong for the trees, the toboggan caught a bump and they were airborne, floating weightless and unmoored, at the mercy of gravity. He didn’t know what he was doing here, away from everyone he loved. If he should die of a broken neck, he’d have no explanation. He could hear Budd and the others screaming with glee, and then the toboggan yawed and bit as it landed, tipping sideways, spilling them like a handful of dice across the hill before continuing down backwards, trailing its rope.

  They were young, and laughed at disaster. Except for Scott, they all wanted to go again.

  “One more,” Budd said.

  “I’ll see you at the Inn.”

  “You know where it is from here?”

  Scott waved toward campus.

  “Okay, pal,” Budd said. “Let’s go.”

  They didn’t take the road Scott would have followed. As they crossed the quad, the sculptures loomed like the ruins of forgotten idols. It was colder now, the walks were glazed. Budd supported him by a forearm to keep him upright, and still Scott lost his footing, dropping to one knee again and again like a skater with weak ankles. “Here we go,” Budd said. “Upsy-daisy.” It would have been comic if it weren’t so exhausting. He fell a last time, spectacularly, on his back, in the middle of the street before the Inn. As Budd picked him up beneath the arms, a car turned the corner and blinded them with its headlights. Though it was impossible, Scott thought of Reinecke returned from the grave to take his revenge.

  “I’m sorry,” Scott mumbled as Budd dragged him to the curb. The porch light was on, and as they stumbled up the stairs, closing on their goal, the door opened, and there, glaring like a worried father, was Wanger.

  “Hey, boss,” Scott said before Budd could shush him.

  “What in the hell do you two think you’re doing?”

  “We were j-j-just heading to b-bed.”

  “You can pack your bags, both of you. I meant what I said. I don’t care who you are, I’ll be damned if I’ll let a pair of drunks ruin my picture. I don’t know when the next train is, but you boys are going to be on it.”

  “Drunks?” Scott started.

  “Yes, sir,” Budd said, cutting him off.

  “I’ll show you who’s drunk,” Scott said, fumbling with his gloves, as if challenging him to a duel. One fell to the porch floor.

  Wanger didn’t wait for him to retrieve it. He slammed the door and stalked across the lobby, leaving them standing in the cold.

  “What kind of name is Wanger anyway?” Scott asked.

  Upstairs, on his cot, he bet Wanger would change his mind in the morning.

  “No,” Budd said, “he’s not like L.B. We should have gone in the back. I’m sorry, I should have thought.”

  “The hell with him then.”

  “At least we don’t have to spend another night in this goddamned icebox.”

  “Amen,” Scott said.

  It was too late, the damage was done. In the morning his lungs were tight and he was running a high fever. On the train he came down with the sweats, shivering in his overcoat. Outside, the Hudson swam by, gray and dizzying. It wasn’t just the booze, it was everything together. From Grand Central, Budd phoned Sheilah at her hotel.

  She met them at the hospital. When she saw Scott propped on a gurney in the emergency room, she shook her head as if she should have known better, and still she came to his side.

  “What have you done to yourself now?”

  LA VIA BLANCA

  Like a weakness for underage flesh or declaring oneself a Bolshevik, drinking was a pardonable offense in Hollywood, but not indefinitely. Owing to his youth and bloodline, Budd was immediately hired back on returning, while Scott, the old reprobate, was blackballed. He’d betrayed Wanger’s faith, and Selznick’s word, and by extension Mayer, who had no use for him anyway. His sentence was house arrest while Swanie beat the bushes, though as the weeks passed and Scott regained his strength, the prospect seemed hopeless. He woke early and wrote stories in his robe and slippers, sipping coffee, the house deathly still around him, and found he enjoyed it. The simplicity of pencil and paper was refreshing. Somewhere in this latest humiliation there was a lesson in self-reliance. He’d failed so completely that he’d become his own man again.

  Sheilah was cool to him, breaking dates and using the drive as an excuse not to visit. She was justified, he supposed, yet the longer she held on to her anger, the less it felt directed at his lapse than at him. He knew her frustration from years of trying to help Zelda. In Sheilah’s eyes he was old and weak and unreliable. She was tired of playing nursemaid, and he couldn’t blame her. In his lower moments he thought she would be better off rid of him, and then when she told him she had to go to the Clover Club with Young Doug, he accused her of planning exactly that.

  He understood why she didn’t want to be seen with him; he was a disgrace. He barely rated a mention in the Reporter anymore.

  Why, she asked, did he have to be such a damned ass?

  They fought with a despair that came from having waived all expectations. He was sure she hated him for wasting her time. He did.

  UA had paid him for only the one week, and most of that had gone to the hospital. The remainder had to last the month, unless he could sell a story. He put off Magda and made his car payment. The rest of the bills he collected in a drawer as if he might forget them.

  He went door to door, calling everyone at Metro and his friends at the Garden, bugging Bogie to put in a word at Warner’s, asking Sid if Pep could get him in at Republic. He wasn’t above a B picture or even a short subject. Don Stewart took him at his word and recruited him for a dog at Paramount called Air Raid. Six weeks at three-fifty. He wondered if Budd had a hand in it. He really was a decent kid, even if the money was rotten.

  It seems unfair that my stock has fallen so precipitously, he wrote Ober. The Dartmouth trip was a folly from the start. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by my going East. I was in no shape to undertake a goose chase on a producer’s whim, but felt I had no choice. I’m entirely recovered save my pride and my pocketbook, and have managed to get back to my desk, where I belonged all along. Here’s “Strange Sanctuary,” as discussed. I’m happy with how it turned out after much tinkering with the ending. You might try Collier’s if it’s too short for the Post, though I do think it’s right up their alley.

  He was careful at Paramount. Air Raid was dreck, but like Oppy, he’d come to appreciate his lot privileges, and vowed to stick there. Chastened, as always, by his last disaster, he was determined to stay sober and show them he could outwork anyone. Every morning he rose before the sun and drove over the pass, his briefcase clinking with Cokes. The credit was his and Don’s to split. There was no jockeying or backstabbing in meetings, no other team waiting in the wings. Wh
en the producer—aptly named Lazarus—wanted a bigger scene or a beauty shot of the star, they went back to their shared office and churned one out. It was like cooking eggs to order. He deposited his paycheck and admired the growing balance in his bankbook as if it were proof of his virtue. He could pay his bills. Soon he could start his novel. It was all he wanted.

  For her Easter break Scottie visited Zelda, taking the train down by herself. After missing Christmas once again, he wished he were there, inimical to his own health as it might be. He hadn’t seen Zelda since the debacle in Virginia Beach, and Saturday as he ran his errands he was tempted to cable Dr. Carroll and see how they were faring. If she was able, maybe this summer they could take that trip to Cuba she’d missed, just the two of them. He had some money now but no time. He held off making any promises, pending Scottie’s report.

  Later that week, as he was working on a story, he got stuck and stood up to pace the floor. He was dressed for the studio, including his good shoes, the same slick-soled Oxfords that had failed him in the snow, now shined to ebon perfection, as if he were back at Newman or in the army again, subject to the morning line-up. His usual route, as he roamed his mind, was through the living room, skirting the coffee table, into the kitchen for an unseeing look out the window at the blond hills, then back behind the sofa to the dining room table, where his pad waited. He stood, lips pinched, still mulling his last sentence, and stepped clear of his chair. He had a habit, like Pierrot, of tipping his head back as he walked and questioning the blank page of the ceiling, as if the answer might be written there. Nothing—just a water stain, a few loose flakes of paint held in place by spiderwebs Luz was too short to reach. He turned for the living room, bridging with one stride the perilous canal of bare wood between the two ugly rag rugs, and as his right foot lighted, the boards beneath it gave like the spongy floor of a funhouse, then recoiled, knocking him off balance. To avoid falling over the coffee table, he dove for the sofa as if it were the goal line, just as, in the kitchen, a pewter plate commemorating the Golden Spike leapt from its nail, struck the counter on the way down and clattered to the linoleum.