Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck

magnificent,” I said.
    “You are very kind, Anna,” she said. “All of us were so young and alive, fragrant and intoxicating like thousands of red poppies. I should say intoxicated. Intoxicated.”
    “You said Scott had taken your diaries by then. What did he do with them?”
    “He kept them in his writing desk in whatever hotel we’d set up lodgings. One in particular he’d pull out late at night at parties and read passages from it. He’d say, ‘Isn’t she a genius? A beauty and a genius.’”
    “Then he was proud of your work,” I said.
    “Oh, yes. Too proud. He wanted to claim it. When Scott loves someone or something, he wants it to be him or part of him. If he could have eaten me, I think he would have.”
    “You would have tasted like lemonade and tomato sandwiches,” I said.
    We laughed at this. I loved the deep, raspy sound.
    “And squirrel,” she said.
    We laughed again, and I rinsed the shampoo from her hair with the warm, sudsy water. She handed me a cloth, and I started on her neck and shoulders.
    “I remember that he loaned my diary to a friend of his to read,” she said. “I was so angry at him. I told him that I might as well sleep with the man if he was going to pass me around like that.”
    “How did he respond?”
    “Weeping: vast drunken weeping, like the spray off a champagne fountain.”
    “Did you see the diary after that?”
    “Yes, miraculously the friend returned it. Scott was so sanctimonious. ‘See,’ he said. ‘See, I told you he’d return it.’ ‘Yes, but the rape is finished, so it does not matter now,’ I said.”
    Her flatness of voice chilled me. I dipped my arms in the warm water to smooth the goose bumps.
    “Where were you living at the time?” I asked. “Could he have left the diaries there?”
    She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No. We were at the Biltmore, then the Commodore. No, he had the diaries when we moved to Westport.”
    “Connecticut?”
    “Yes. We moved there the summer after we married. He needed quiet from the city so he could work.”
    “And did you achieve that quiet?”
    “Ha!” she said. “All the New York bastards just followed us there.”
    “Will you write it for me? A piece about Westport?”
    She did not answer, but started humming some nameless tune, and continued to play with the red rose in her hands. I didn’t want to push her, so I simply washed her arms and hands, then her legs and feet. The steam and my awkward angle as Ileaned over the bath were beginning to get to me, so I hurried to finish. When I looked up she was staring at me.
    “What is your hair color?” said Zelda, reaching out and running her hand through it. Her hands were wet from the bath, so they stuck a little, pulling at the strands, stinging my scalp as a few strands snapped away on her fingers.
    “It’s changed as I’ve aged,” I said.
    “Yes, but it’s no color, like your eyes. Not black, not brown, just dark.”
    Yes, just dark. Like a shadow. Perhaps my lack of color was why Zelda could open up to me. She felt no threat.
    I watched her break the thorns off the stem of the rose and drop them into the water. When she reached up and slid the rose behind my ear I could see that her fingers bled a little.
    “There,” she said.
    I looked at her for a moment before I turned to face the mirror.
    There, indeed.

TEN

    When I opened the door the next morning, I thought it would be Lincoln letting me know he’d arrived early to take us to my parents’ house. I couldn’t have been more surprised to find Sorin standing there, his hair wild from the rake of hands through it, dark circles under his eyes. It looked like he’d been on an all-night bender.
    “Are you well?” I asked, opening the door to him and motioning him inside.
    “Yes,” he said. “Very well, thank you.”
    On closer inspection I could see a gleam in his eyes and a certain excitement quivering from him, making the papers in his hands shake. He reminded me of