admired the elevator. After a light meal in the hotel’s lush dining room, I admired the three bottles of bootleg champagne awaiting us in our suite—sent over by Scott’s Princeton friends, who I’d be meeting Tuesday night.
Soon after admiring the champagne (and its bubbles, and its flavor), I praised the wide bed and the way it accommodated the two of us no matter which way we lay or shifted while we made love. All this was so much grander than the life Scott had led me to imagine, and while I’d foreseen good things, this was simply beyond .
“Are we rich?” I asked.
“We are unstoppable.”
We slept late on Sunday, lazed in bed with a room-service breakfast of fruit and cream and muffins, bathed together in the marble tub in the afternoon, then spent the evening in the Broadway district. Supper first, at a little diner on Forty-third Street, and then, as promised, a performance of Ziegfeld’s Follies at the New Amsterdam Theatre. By the time we took our seats and the curtain went up and the stage revealed its remarkable sets and even more remarkable performers and, most remarkable of all, the Follies Girls’ resplendent beaded, sequined, feathered, shimmering, sparkling costumes, I could only stare and grin and wonder at the crazy luck that had put Scott and me together and brought us to this place.
On Monday, we took a picnic lunch of cold fried chicken over to Central Park in the early afternoon. I hadn’t expected statues or artful bridges or colorfully tiled tunnels. “They even make their parks like this?” I said, repeatedly, turning it into a joking refrain as we walked along the paths and over the bridges and beside the lakes. We ate in a sunny spot on the steps of the Bethesda Terrace near the Angel of the Waters, a benevolent statue that rose from the center of a wide, shallow fountain-pool. At the angel’s feet were four cherubs that Scott said were meant to represent Health, Peace, Temperance, and Purity. I laughed at that. “The first two hardly matter if you have to mind the last two.”
“That’s my girl,” Scott said.
* * *
Tuesday, I got my first real taste of what it was going to be like to be married to F. Scott Fitzgerald .
We had only just finished getting dressed when a knock sounded on our hotel-room door. A one o’clock appointment time for Scott’s first magazine interview had sounded reasonable when Scott mentioned it on Saturday afternoon. That was before either of us realized we’d be staying up until near dawn every night. New York City’s diversions were irresistible; if we could have survived without sleeping at all, we’d have done it.
Scott said, “Am I presentable?” as the rap on the door sounded again. “Coming!” he yelled.
I straightened his tie and kissed him. “Don’t be nervous.”
“Not a bit. He’s a Princeton man.”
Scott opened the door to Jim Ellis, a balding man of about thirty who had a soft, round face and eyes like a spaniel’s. His brown suit jacket looked tight through the shoulders and at the waist, and its sleeves rode up over his fraying cuffs. The overall effect was that the suit had shrunk, or its owner had expanded, or possibly he’d borrowed it last minute from a roommate or coworker. Ellis was a features writer for a magazine I’d never heard of. Some little start-up tabloid, Scott said.
Ellis shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you for agreeing to talk with me. Our readers are eager to get to know the man behind the novel.”
“Glad to do it.”
Scott led him into the sitting room and indicated a chair to my left, where the man dutifully sat down. I smiled at him as though he was as important to Scott’s career as Mr. Charles Scribner himself.
“Jim Ellis, meet my lovely bride of three days, Zelda Fitzgerald.”
Zelda Fitzgerald . What a foreign sound to my ears!
I crossed my legs, letting my knee show, and leaned forward to offer my hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
Ellis’s face reddened and he took
Soon after admiring the champagne (and its bubbles, and its flavor), I praised the wide bed and the way it accommodated the two of us no matter which way we lay or shifted while we made love. All this was so much grander than the life Scott had led me to imagine, and while I’d foreseen good things, this was simply beyond .
“Are we rich?” I asked.
“We are unstoppable.”
We slept late on Sunday, lazed in bed with a room-service breakfast of fruit and cream and muffins, bathed together in the marble tub in the afternoon, then spent the evening in the Broadway district. Supper first, at a little diner on Forty-third Street, and then, as promised, a performance of Ziegfeld’s Follies at the New Amsterdam Theatre. By the time we took our seats and the curtain went up and the stage revealed its remarkable sets and even more remarkable performers and, most remarkable of all, the Follies Girls’ resplendent beaded, sequined, feathered, shimmering, sparkling costumes, I could only stare and grin and wonder at the crazy luck that had put Scott and me together and brought us to this place.
On Monday, we took a picnic lunch of cold fried chicken over to Central Park in the early afternoon. I hadn’t expected statues or artful bridges or colorfully tiled tunnels. “They even make their parks like this?” I said, repeatedly, turning it into a joking refrain as we walked along the paths and over the bridges and beside the lakes. We ate in a sunny spot on the steps of the Bethesda Terrace near the Angel of the Waters, a benevolent statue that rose from the center of a wide, shallow fountain-pool. At the angel’s feet were four cherubs that Scott said were meant to represent Health, Peace, Temperance, and Purity. I laughed at that. “The first two hardly matter if you have to mind the last two.”
“That’s my girl,” Scott said.
* * *
Tuesday, I got my first real taste of what it was going to be like to be married to F. Scott Fitzgerald .
We had only just finished getting dressed when a knock sounded on our hotel-room door. A one o’clock appointment time for Scott’s first magazine interview had sounded reasonable when Scott mentioned it on Saturday afternoon. That was before either of us realized we’d be staying up until near dawn every night. New York City’s diversions were irresistible; if we could have survived without sleeping at all, we’d have done it.
Scott said, “Am I presentable?” as the rap on the door sounded again. “Coming!” he yelled.
I straightened his tie and kissed him. “Don’t be nervous.”
“Not a bit. He’s a Princeton man.”
Scott opened the door to Jim Ellis, a balding man of about thirty who had a soft, round face and eyes like a spaniel’s. His brown suit jacket looked tight through the shoulders and at the waist, and its sleeves rode up over his fraying cuffs. The overall effect was that the suit had shrunk, or its owner had expanded, or possibly he’d borrowed it last minute from a roommate or coworker. Ellis was a features writer for a magazine I’d never heard of. Some little start-up tabloid, Scott said.
Ellis shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you for agreeing to talk with me. Our readers are eager to get to know the man behind the novel.”
“Glad to do it.”
Scott led him into the sitting room and indicated a chair to my left, where the man dutifully sat down. I smiled at him as though he was as important to Scott’s career as Mr. Charles Scribner himself.
“Jim Ellis, meet my lovely bride of three days, Zelda Fitzgerald.”
Zelda Fitzgerald . What a foreign sound to my ears!
I crossed my legs, letting my knee show, and leaned forward to offer my hand. “It’s a pleasure.”
Ellis’s face reddened and he took
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