West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan Read Free Book Online Page B

the yellow windows of burger joints and drugstores about to close, leaving their few customers nowhere to go. Inconceivably, he was one of that rootless tribe now, doomed to wander the boulevards, and again he marveled at his own fall, and at his capacity for appreciating it.
    After dark, the Garden of Allah was the oasis it claimed to be, alive with racketing jazz and flickering with torchlight. A console radio blared from a balcony, and the patio had become a manic dance floor, the chaises tossed in a pile. Bogart and Mayo were in the shallow end of the Black Sea, sitting on carved armchairs that obviously belonged to someone’s villa.
    Bogart saluted Scott. “Jump in, old sport.”
    â€œWe’re playing boozical chairs,” Mayo said.
    He was tempted, but just returned the salute and went to find Dottie.
    Instead, Sid Perelman, who he knew from Westport, found him. Sid was at Metro too, writing gags for the Marx Brothers.
    â€œI’m telling you, it’s a nightmare. The funny one doesn’t talk and the others won’t shut up.”
    â€œWhat about Zeppo?”
    â€œHe’s the funny one.”
    Don Stewart, from St. Paul, called his name as he wobbled past on a bicycle with a blonde in a sarong and a sombrero on the handlebars. Behind him came Benchley with a sloshing punchbowl loaded with sangria and quartered oranges, a ladle jutting obscenely from his pocket.
    â€œHow was the picture?” Sid asked.
    â€œIn focus, sadly,” Benchley said, not stopping.
    â€œHave you seen it?” Scott asked Sid.
    â€œI’ve had the pleasure not to. Do the Spanish win?”
    â€œI don’t think there is a winner.”
    â€œNot my kind of picture. I like a winner. That’s why I’m so depressed when I go to the track.”
    â€œLeave ’em laughing,” Scott said.
    â€œAnd if you can’t, just leave them. That’s very important. You don’t want them following you home.”
    Dottie caught Sid by the elbow. “Your wife is looking for you.”
    â€œWhat’s the good news?”
    â€œShe’s either very drunk or very pregnant.”
    â€œEither way,” he said, “save me some punch.”
    â€œI see you found your way,” Dottie said.
    â€œI’ve been here before. Were you here when Tallulah Bankhead was here?”
    â€œThat Tallulah Bankhead?” She pointed to the woman herself, preening by a tile fountain with a highball as a pack of ingenues paid court. “She’s actually at the Chateau Marmont. The walls are thicker there. She’s like the clap—you think you’ve gotten rid of her but she keeps coming back.”
    â€œLike me,” Scott said.
    â€œI was trying to be polite.” The orchestra on the radio struck up a slow tango. She took his hand. “Dance with me.”
    As one of two boys at Miss Van Arnum’s School of Dance, he’d been taught to never refuse a lady. She was small, and light in his arms. They’d danced before, in New York, at all-night parties that topped the next morning’s gossip columns. They’d been young then, trouble. He remembered her upturned face, her chin tipped slightly away to reveal a fetching length of neck. Despite her solidarity with the peasants, she was wearing diamond studs, and, as if she’d been hiding them, he was surprised to find she had tiny, perfect ears. He flung her out and reeled her back in. She spurned him, averting her face, making him circle her, strutting like a bullfighter. They moved well together, graduates of the same classes meant to raise their station. It had worked, partly. So many of his fondest moments had taken place on a crowded floor. Around them, the flames and other couples whirled, the palms and lit windows, Bogart and Mayo thrashing in the pool, trying to splash them. She pressed herself against his chest, lingered a beat, then retreated, only to return again in a swoon of clarinets, the