Another Side of Paradise Read online

  Dorothy recognizes some faces across the room, and with an evangelist’s zeal, bounds in their direction. This allows me to find my place at one of the large, round tables. My host is Marc Connelly, a leprechaun notable for his hairless head and the Pulitzer won for a play that retold the Old Testament with an all-Negro cast. I greet everyone at the table—like my mother never said, manners maketh the woman—and discreetly remove a pen and small pad from my brocade bag, hoping for an occasion to take a note.

  Dinner proceeds apace, with everyone making harmless conversation—which, for me, is unfortunate. Tonight they’re nattering about The Life of Émile Zola.

  “ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will be the one for posterity,” I protest, to which my tablemates laugh. A feature-length cartoon? Let the joke be on them. We sip our vichyssoise and move on to filet mignon. As tuxedoed waiters clear the plates, I look up, trying to find the right adjective to describe the rubies dangling from Ginger Rogers’s ears. That’s when I see him. At the adjoining table—Dorothy’s—is Mr. Fitzgerald. Tonight he wears a dinner jacket with the lapels of another era. His forehead is wide and attractive and he has the most perfect, sharply chiseled nose I have ever seen. Again, I am drawn to his smile, which, when he sees me eyeing him, he flashes. There is a familiarity in the exchange that I find both seductive and disquieting.

  This time he leans forward and says, “I like you.” His voice, soft and cultivated, drifts in my direction as if we are the only man and woman in this ballroom. His tone suggests warmth and darkness.

  “I like you,” I respond. In three short words, a ballad. The words hang between us as Scott Fitzgerald picks up a glass swizzle stick and absently stirs his Coca-Cola. His gold band catches the candlelight. Since Robert’s party it has taken scant detective work to learn that he is married. His beautiful wife, a madwoman, lives in a sanitarium on the other coast, somewhere down South. People say he still loves her and that she was his muse.

  “Shall we dance?” I ask, brazen, unaccustomed to being refused.

  He turns his head to the side and says, “Thank you, but I’ve promised the next number to a friend.” With that, Dorothy appears and the two of them walk to the dance floor. Mr. Fitzgerald dances well. As he and Dorothy fox-trot, he seems like a college boy. Her head moves close to his, and I watch them grin and banter as the twenty-piece band in their white jackets plays “It’s De-Lovely.”

  My tablemates are debating whether or not Shirley Temple is actually a brunette with pin-straight hair. There. My next column.

  I look Scott Fitzgerald’s way again, my flirting emboldened by the diamond on my finger. He has taken his seat and shrugs toward me as the first speaker goes to the podium and the evening’s tirades begin. Is Mr. Fitzgerald apologizing for the missed dance or the dullness of the rhetoric? The speeches are each as long as a lease and I soon think, oh do shut up. I feel sympathy for no one in this room except the waiters. Though my column for the North American Newspaper Alliance is syndicated in dozens of papers—not just the Los Angeles Times but also the Lincoln Evening Journal, the Times of Hammond, Indiana, the Winnipeg Tribune, and many more—on an extraordinary week, I earn all of two hundred dollars. I will wear this frock until it’s tattered or I am nobility.

  For a moment, it was the two of us—Mr. Fitzgerald and me, alone together—but I turn to look again and he is no longer at his seat. I am ready to escape this crowd as well and prepare for early studio calls. I didn’t cross the bridge to the exceedingly interesting Mr. Fitzgerald. I don’t imagine I ever will.

  Chapter 3

  1937

  I am wrong. Saturday, Eddie Mayer—everybody’s pudgy, pushy pal—is proposing dinner for that very evening, with Mr. Fitzgerald. Though my friend Jonah and I have plans, I am too curious to decline. Scott Fitzgerald strikes me as a rare osprey caught in a habitat even more unnatural for him than for the rest of us in Hollywood.

  When Eddie rings I am in my second-best cocktail dress—a bias cut, emerald, chosen to bring out my eyes. Earlier, I opened a bottle of Elsa Schiaparelli’s Shocking, a gift from Don along with the roses reaching full bloom on my cocktail table. I dab perfume in my décolletage . Is it shocking that I am dining out when I am engaged? I tell myself no, because tonight is not a date. I will be surrounded by a veritable Secret Service, not only Eddie but Jonah, a correspondent for London’s Daily Mail, and a well-known kleptomaniac. When he stops by, I hide the monogrammed tea towels and happily accept the material he feeds me. Fair trade.

  You are due for a diversion, I tell myself. Once Don and I wed our life will be as proper as porridge.

  “There’s been a change of plans,” I say when Jonah arrives.

  He’s troubled himself to get tickets to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. “Do you have any idea who I had to bribe to wrangle the seats?” He pretends annoyance. Men rarely get angry with me because our relationships swim in a haze of amity and coquetry. Even Johnny, my former husband, remains a close friend.

  “When you see who the other two are, I promise you won’t be sorry,” I say, grabbing my evening clutch.

  Jonah snaps to attention. “And that would be?”

  “Eddie Mayer and F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Ah, I heard he’d arrived to work on A Yank at Oxford, and you’re right.” My friend runs his hands through a mop of curls that cover his head like a lap dog. “It could be a real show. Isn’t he a world-class drunk?”

  “Good God, I hope not.” Alcoholics terrify me.

  The doorbell chimes and Eddie, a one-eyed mountain with a mustache copied from Clark Gable, fills my foyer. The two of us have silently agreed to overlook last year, when he tore at my clothes in a clumsy pass. His luck is better with scripts and poker, mine with gossip and English nobility.

  “Sheilah, may I present Scott Fitzgerald?” he says as though introducing the president.

  In defiance of both the climate and the decade, the great author is wearing a nubby salt and pepper suit, a paisley scarf, and a fedora that appears to have barely survived a fight. Los Angeles hasn’t seen rain all summer, yet he is carrying a trench coat.

  “Miss Graham,” he says. “What a pleasure.”

  I am no stranger to unexpected situations—stalking the vast Surrey estate of Lord Beaverbrook in order to land an interview comes to mind—but tonight seems odder than most. “An honor, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  As he takes my hand, Francis Scott Fitzgerald smiles warmly. His teeth are straight and white. “Scott, please.”

  “Sheilah,” I say, “and this is my friend Jonah Ruddy. Eddie, you and Jonah are acquainted, yes?”

  I don’t hear the answer because Scott, with his hand on my elbow, is escorting me to Eddie’s boat of a Buick. He opens its passenger door, settles me in the seat, and slips into the back with Jonah. We are headed a few blocks down the road to our local Sodom, a gangster-owned restaurant packed with luminaries, appreciated as much for its covert roulette tables as its molls and sole Véronique.

  The maître d’ oozes an oily greeting toward Eddie and me, the regulars—“Miss Graham! Mr. Mayer!” —and seats our party close to the band. Eddie and Jonah order whiskey, and I, a Dubonnet. Scott asks for Coca-Cola. We move on to a first course—I choose the langoustine with lemon—and Jonah attempts to pump Scott about his film project. Scott volunteers little and cedes the floor to Eddie, who rattles off more details than any of us care to know about The Wizard of Oz. “The budget is far beyond two million,” he says. “Might get to three. Write that down, Sheilah. They’ll never make a goddamn profit.”

  Scott raises an eyebrow. Whether he is reacting to Eddie’s coarse language or his declaration he doesn’t let on.

  The band begins a sassy cha-cha and Jonah escorts me to the dance floor. “He doesn’t talk much, does he, Mr. This Side of Paradise?” my friend asks.

  “This town doesn’t need another buffoon. I’d say his reticence is part of his charm.”

  “Charming is my mum’s tea cozy.” Jonah swi
ngs his arms, not quite on the beat. He is not the dancer he thinks he is.

  “You don’t read him like a woman does.” While we were at the table, I felt Scott’s eyes tornado through me in the flare of the candlelight. From time to time, he tilted his head to the side, as if he were memorizing my hair and my cheekbones. Only an equally practiced flirt might notice such a display.

  I am glad when the cha-cha ends. “You seemed a tad bored the other night at the Ambassador,” I say to Scott, back at the table. “Do you stand with the Screen Writers Guild?”

  “I do,” he answers, “but I see why the studio bosses aren’t rushing to make concessions. Writers may be the farmers excluded from the harvest feast, but a lot of them are lazy oafs who can’t keep their mind on their work.”

  “Would that be you?”

  “No. I’m a toiler,” he groans, “to a fault. When my mind’s on my work that’s all I think about. But that’s not what I’m thinking about now.” He stands, deferential and courtly, and extends his hand. “Care to dance?”

  Next to making love, dancing is my preferred physical activity. I adore the sensation of rhythm and music flowing from inside me, and watching Scott dance, I guess he feels that way, too. He is easy to follow, with relaxed but nearly linear posture and a light, firm touch. Straightaway, we synchronize. He is compactly built. In my heels I am nearly his height, which allows us to align in all the best places. Tall men? Overrated.

  “I hear you’re engaged to a duke,” he says, springing to life with an impish grin.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I tell him. “A marquess.”

  “Is a marquess higher than a duke?”

  “No, no, no.” Like the good English schoolgirl I once was, I recite the order of nobility. “First you have the king and queen. Their children are princes and princesses.”

  “Even we Americans know this much.” As he chuckles he looks like the naughty son of the ghostly guest I first noticed at Robert’s party.

  “Sometimes princes become dukes—but that’s beside the point. A marquess comes after a duke. Then it’s earls, baronets, honorables, children of lords, then knights.”

  “So if you and your fiancé have a son, he will be—”

  If. Don’s heavy solitaire feels grossly conspicuous. I wonder if Scott’s interest in me is an egotist’s reverse droit de seigneur. But I flatter myself and bring to heel my illusions. I may be conflating civility for something far more personal.

  “An earl,” I answer, as the band breaks into a rhumba. Scott keeps hold of my hand and we continue to dance.

  “How did you become a journalist?” he asks over the song’s Spanish lyrics.

  “You know, most people say it straight. I’m a scandalmonger, one rung down from a munchkin. You’re flattering me.” And I love it.

  “It can’t be easy, picking the grapevine and turning out columns day after day.” He, too, has done his homework. “I respect your discipline, because I’ve been morbidly late on every novel. Ask Max Perkins, my beleaguered editor back in New York. He’ll tell you I consider deadlines to be mere suggestions.” He pins me with his grey-blue eyes. “Please forgive the way I prattle on, but I do want to know. How did you get your start?”

  The band takes five. We stand on the dance floor as I gallop through a practiced résumé: my urbane but Bohemian parents, John Laurence and Veronica Roslyn Graham, deceased, followed by the foolishness of being a London society girl. Bored blind by a French finishing school. The lark of being presented to King George and Queen Mary, a train following me like a spaniel. I tell Scott how I tried acting, for which it was immediately clear I had no aptitude. From there I moved to dancing onstage. Another doomed effort. Then Fleet Street, where the mediocrity of my work was an excellent fit. That’s when I became curious about life across the pond. I feed Scott these tidbits as if I were the novelist. As with most fiction, my story has a patina of truth.

  “You look too young to have done all this. How old are you?”

  “Why Mr. Fitzgerald, aren’t you direct? How old are you?”

  “Forty,” he winces. “Just.”

  I wish you could have met me fifteen years ago is how I choose to read his tone. Would I have been as drawn to him then as I am this evening? Possibly not. One underdog to another, I prefer a hero who has lost a few brass buttons, as Hollywood tale-tellers say Scott has.

  “I’m twenty-seven,” I say, erasing five years.

  He’s too much the gentleman to roll his eyes. “And your father?” he asks. “What did he do?”

  “Must we speak of him now? You make me feel as if we’re sitting at a story conference. ‘Who is this character? She’s too opaque. ’”

  “Fair enough, Sheilah.”

  I love how my name sounds coming from his mouth, though I am grateful that the music starts up again and the next tune is swing, putting a stop to the turn our conversation has taken. One, two, three, rock step, rock step. As we smile, any nervousness slides away. From here the band switches to a tango and I hesitate. Scott is, as he says, forty . Don’s age. Though as he dances, Scott seems younger. The man arches his back comically, eggs me on with the crook of his finger, and begins to improvise steps that cover our corner of the dance floor in widening arcs. I follow his lead, laughing as other couples move aside to let us strut and sway. Perspiration beads on my face and I see the same on Scott’s. He deftly wipes his forehead with a white linen handkerchief. My partner looks devilish.

  We lock eyes until the band starts a languorous waltz. This allows us to embrace, cheek to cheek, his hand softly on my back. We melt into one another until the other dancers and diners become wallpaper. I close my eyes. I love the way Scott smells, of lime, almond soap, a touch of sweat, and possibility.

  “The best revenge is getting the best girl,” he whispers, conspiratorially.

  “Why Mr. Fitzgerald, are you quoting yourself?” I whisper back.

  “Almost, and why not?” He laughs. “Nobody else does.”

  A mournful trumpet player steps to the center of the stage, slowly performing “Stardust.” Scott’s breath, cool and clean, is on my neck. I am glad the melody is from a solo horn. Words would only interfere with my thoughts. When Scott Fitzgerald looks at me I feel as if I, Sheilah Graham, am a prize worthy of winning. Men might be stretched out the door, far along the Sunset Strip—all the way to Beverly Hills—for the chance to cut in, but he will battle every one of them. Let Elsa Schiaparelli try to bottle that feeling.

  “With you, I don’t breathe quite right, and I don’t know what to say.”

  “Your beauty speaks for itself.” If another man uttered this, I’d cringe. But isn’t the essence of attraction suspending doubt and allowing yourself to like whom you believe yourself to be, reflected in another’s eyes?

  A soloist in peach sequins takes the stage and warbles, “Why don’t we do this more often, just what we’re doing tonight?”

  “Why don’t we?” Scott says. “Dinner Tuesday, no chaperones?”

  I restrain the urge to outline his full lips with my finger, but imagine them on my own lips, soft, urgent.

  “I enjoy your company,” he adds.

  “I enjoy your company. I’d be happy to have dinner with you.”

  “The correct answer,” he says. “Are you always right?”

  “That you will have to discover, but I’ve monopolized you too long.” Off in the corner I see Jonah and Eddie, surely soused and as bored with one another as Scott and I are not.

  We return to the table. I notice that it is Scott who pays the bill, which, judging from the number of empty glasses and half-finished baked Alaskas, cannot be insignificant. When the valet delivers the car, Scott takes the wheel, since Eddie is in no shape to drive. Slowly—the man hugs the steering wheel and never breaks twenty miles per hour—he delivers me to North Kings Road.

  I thank Scott for a wonderful evening, nuzzle his cheek, and tell him how much I am looking forward to Tuesday. I walk inside, alone. Hand
s trembling, I place Don’s ring in its purple velvet box, and fall into bed.

  As I fade into sleep I think, did I pick Scott Fitzgerald or did Scott Fitzgerald pick me?

  Chapter 4

  1937

  I sit on my terrace and sip an iced tea garnished with mint from one of my pots. I have no green thumb, but California refuses to let a plant die. It is the end of a long day chasing a snip of intelligence about a former beau, King Vidor, which led nowhere. Despite my wasted time, I welcomed the distraction because—I finally admit to myself—I am in a pickle.

  I’ve played along with Don, but the very idea of our marriage is a fairyland of moonlight, mink, and martinis no more real than one of Mr. Disney’s animated features. I have never considered that the marchioness might actually acquiesce to my joining her ancient family, but Don wires word to the contrary: MUM IS BENDING SLIGHTLY LIKE A DEEPLY ROOTED BIRCH. Nor have I considered whether I possess the pluck and perseverance required to act the part of a wellborn wife for the rest of my life. I wasn’t, after all, the most convincing stage actress. A hundred different Brits could expose me as a woman who knows less about Hamlet than Hopalong Cassidy. If that were the case, my own folly—and let me say it, lying—would humiliate, hurt, and anger Don, a man who has been nothing but kind to me. I’d rather not think of how his mother would react.

  Yet, I can be tenacious. Perhaps I could bring it off. Don wants me. And to be a marchioness . . .

  On the other hand, the other night. With Scott Fitzgerald, something happened. I kick off my shoes, and close my eyes. I need to work out the next step.

  The doorbell interrupts my musings. I wonder if it might be another bouquet from Don. Or if flowers are arriving, could they be from Scott—a Victorian nosegay comes to mind. Too soon for roses.

  The delivery is from Scott—but he has not sent flowers. His wire explains that his daughter will arrive earlier than expected and he must cancel our date. There is no effusion in the message or suggestion of rescheduling. Scott is a man of letters who has told me that when he meets a woman he struggles to find the perfect adjective to describe her. Mine, apparently, is expendable. I crumple the telegram and toss it across the room.