11

We dined at the Cascades that night, on the Biltmore’s top floor. While it was too cool outside for the roof to be open, we agreed that the fact that it could be opened was a thrill. The building was a wonder. Everything in New York City was a wonder, including Scott, who was treating me like the princess I’d once imagined I was. Fruit and cream from room service in the morning. Shopping and hair salon during the day. Dinner—that was the word refined Northerners used for the evening meal, Scott told me—at the top of a grand hotel. Dancing later, to the music of a first-rate orchestra. And champagne. We were drinking rivers of it. I’d told Scott the night before, “I bet you we’ll be peeing bubbles before long!”

And we made love every chance we had. Quickly and vigorously in between activities; languorously when we had hours on our hands. We shared the bathroom sink when we brushed our teeth at night. We talked to each other from the toilet. Marriage suited us, there was no doubt about it.

As the waiter cleared our plates, Scott told me that the interview with Ellis had given him an idea, and he wanted to see what his publisher thought of it.

“I want to write a fictional interview that could then be placed with the Times or the Tribune. That way, we don’t have to wait for the papers to decide they want someone to do it.”

“A fictional interview? So, another bit of alter-egoism.”

“Sort of. I haven’t worked it out yet … but I have some ideas.”

I could almost see those ideas swimming around in his head and watched, amused, as he took out his notebook and jotted things down.

“I have some ideas, too,” I said suggestively, just before the waiter reappeared with our crème brûlée.

Scott glanced up at me, then caught my meaning and grinned. He asked the waiter, “Don’t we make a fine pair?”

“Absolutely, sir. In fact, a couple at a nearby table was just inquiring whether you weren’t famous, from the pictures or Broadway.”

“Is that so?” Scott said. “Which couple?”

“There, with the spectacles.” The waiter indicated a middle-aged man and woman several tables away.

Scott stood up then, and both the waiter and I watched him go straight over to the couple. He leaned down and spoke animatedly. They laughed, he laughed, then he took a pen from his breast pocket. He uncapped it and, as he did, must have said something that caused the couple to look over at me with appreciative smiles.

I waved graciously, as though this happened all the time.

Scott took the woman’s napkin right out of her lap and spread it on the table, then wrote something on it. When he was finished, he bowed to the man, kissed the woman’s hand, and returned to our table.

He said, “They’d hoped we were actors, but didn’t mind settling for the autograph of the dashing young author of that scandalous new novel everyone’s talking about.”

The waiter took a quick look around. “Would you mind…?” He laid Scott’s napkin on the tabletop. “And remind me, what’s the name of your book?”

*   *   *

The next morning, Scott arranged for a meeting at Scribner’s, where he’d see Maxwell Perkins, his editor, along with the fellow who was in charge of publicity there. Left with time to myself, I decided to catch up on my correspondence. I owed letters to the Saras and to Livye and to my parents, and I needed to see whether Tallu was back in New York or still working in London, where she’d been finding an easier path to fame.

Everybody in New York is famous, she’d written me a few weeks earlier. Everybody is beautiful. But England’s dying for attractive girls. Hope I’ll see you soon, but meanwhile, look up Gene. She’s easy enough to find—just follow the trail of men.

Scott returned with a spring in his step and a bag of sandwiches in his hands.

“It went well?”

“Oh, they think I have a screw loose, but they’ll indulge me, all right. What do you think of this?” He took a folded page from his pocket, then opened it. “My interviewer’s a guy I’ve named Carleton R. Davis. I’ve got him arriving as I’m here at loose ends. Things are in disarray—just like they are.” He looked around at the mess. Living out of trunks did not encourage tidiness. “And I’m looking for my hat, and this tie,” he said, patting the one he was wearing, blue with tiny white dots, “and my cigarettes, et cetera, but I encourage him to go ahead with his questions. We cover the usual ‘How long did it take to write the book?’ stuff, and I expound somewhat—”

“You, expound?”

He grinned. “Think you know me that well, do you?” He kissed me, then continued, reading from his notes, “He asks me what my plans are next.”

“What are your plans next?”

He gazed at me over the top of the page. “I guess you mean my literary plans.”

“No, Carleton R. Davis wants to know those.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right.” He looked at the page again. “And I shrug. ‘I’ll be darned if I know. The scope and depth and breadth of my writings lie in the laps of the gods.’”

“Who no doubt are reading This Side of Paradise as we speak—so’s to give you appropriate guidance for the future.”

“No doubt at all. And then I expound further, until I’ve impressed our Mr. Davis sufficiently for him to ask whether I intend to be a part of the great literary tradition.”

“Which you do.”

“No! No, that’s just it, that’s just what people would guess a fellow in my shoes would say! But I don’t. ‘There is no such thing,’ I say. ‘The only real tradition is the death of preceding ones.’”

A thought grabbed him and he paused and began to search his pockets, coming up with a pencil. “Hold on.” He laid the paper on the table and jotted something on it. Then he read, “‘The smart literary son kills his own father.’ What do you think?”

“Kinda Greek, isn’t it?”

“The cradle of literature, dearest girl. All writers draw from that well—and how’s that for mixing my metaphors?” He sat down next to me and said, “Give me a hero, and I will tell you a tragedy.”

I started to reply when Scott added, “Wait— Give me a hero … Give me a hero and I’ll tell you … no … I’ll show you…”

He reached for the pencil and wrote in the paper’s margin while I waited. It was so funny to see him transferring thoughts to words on paper as if he was taking dictation from those gods he mentioned.

“Here, I think I’ve got it: ‘Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.’ That’s good. Don’t know where I’ll use it, but it’s good.”

“Isn’t that Shakespeare?”

Scott thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Who can say?”