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

at me.”
    â€œNow look at you. You’re a mean,
old
son of a bitch.”
    He drove, and so was late. Making for the front doors, he heard his car stall out on the valet and kept going.
    Walking into the Cocoanut Grove with the orchestra trilling a swoony ballad was like traveling back in time. The lights were low, and above the dance floor massed with shuffling couples, the same fake palm trees salvaged from Valentino’s
The Sheik
rose storklike, here and there a papier mâché monkey clinging to a trunk. On the backdrop behind the band the full moon illuminated a white plume of a waterfall, and from the dusk-blue vault of the ceiling the stars shone down. Here, beneath this same make-believe sky, he’d swayed with Joan Crawford before she’d ever heard the name Joan Crawford. His fascination then had been Lois Moran, already a star at seventeen, a sweet, clever kid whose mother wisely traveled everywhere with her. The fascination was mutual, and Zelda had been jealous, flinging the platinum Cartier watch he’d bought her out of the train window as they left for New York, reclaiming him the only way she knew how. Now, stag, in his dusty old tux, he missed those strange, confusing days.
    The dinner was formal, with a numbered seating chart laid out like a blueprint for the new arrivals. Dottie had bought a table for ten. Beside theirs was one sponsored by Gabe Brenner—a union boss Scott had met his last time out, working for Thalberg, and whose agitating on and off the lot had probably shortened his patron’s life. The one on the other side was bankrolled by an old Gonk Round Table pal of Dottie’s, Marc Connelly, who’d won a Pulitzer for a mawkish all-Negro musical based on the New Testament that might as well have been played in blackface. Scott stood at the top of the broad, carpeted ramp that led to the dance floor. Waltzing by, cheek to cheek in a dizzying clockwork like a Metro production number, spun a dozen writers making a hundred grand a year, celebrating their ascension to the proletariat.
    When he found their table, it was empty. Everyone was off dancing, so he took a seat facing the action. He dearly wanted a drink, but knew people would be watching, and when the waiter swung by, asked for a Coke.
    â€œThere you are.” Dottie was cutting through on some vital clerical mission with a sheaf of papers. “Can a lady ask a gentleman to dance?”
    â€œAre there ladies here? I’m afraid I was misinformed.”
    â€œDon’t go anywhere, mister.”
    She stalked off purposefully, leaving him to watch the other couples. He wondered where Alan was. The waltz ended, to a ripple of applause, and a bumpy rhumba started. The waiter came with his Coke. Scott tipped him, sipped and set the glass down again, swizzled the ice. He didn’t like sitting by himself, and was scanning the crowd for Sid or Bench or Don when he saw her.
    She was just leaving the floor, sweeping gaily along the fringe of the parquet in an ash-gray evening dress with a red velvet sash that accentuated her neck and the rosy glow in her cheeks. Perhaps it was her hair, pulled back tight as a cap, or her vermillion lipstick, but the resemblance had mostly faded, only her eyes still reminding him. She was alone, no crusty marquis in tow, and headed straight toward him. She was no phantom. For all his daydreaming, he’d forgotten how tall she was, how strong. He had to suppress an urge to rise and bow to her. She saw him but didn’t look away this time, making him aware of his wedding band. Her engagement ring didn’t look real, the stone was so big. She slowed just before she reached him. He was afraid, ridiculously, that she might turn and flee, or, worse, come up to him and ask him to please stop staring. Instead, as if she remembered their first meeting, she gave him that slip of a smile and turned in to sit at Marc Connelly’s table, also empty, in his exact same