Love of the Last Tycoon: The Authorized Text (No Series) by Fitzgerald F. Scott

Author:Fitzgerald, F. Scott [Fitzgerald, F. Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2003-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

They started back along the shore with the sun behind them. The house seemed kindlier when they left it, as if warmed by their visit—the hard glitter of the place was more endurable if they were not bound there like people on the shiny surface of a moon. Looking back from a curve of the shore, they saw the sky growing pink behind the indecisive structure, and the point of land seemed a friendly island, not without promise of fine hours on a further day.

Past Malibu with its gaudy shacks and fishing barges they came into the range of human kind again, the cars stacked and piled along the road, the beaches like ant hills without a pattern, save for the dark drowned heads that sprinkled the sea.

Goods from the city were increasing in sight—blankets, matting, umbrellas, cookstoves, reticules full of clothing—the prisoners had laid out their shackles beside them on this sand. It was Stahr’s sea if he wanted it, or knew what to do with it—only by sufferance did these others wet their feet and fingers in the wild cool reservoirs of man’s world.

Stahr turned off the road by the sea and up a canyon and along a hill road, and the people dropped away. The hill became the outskirts of the city. Stopping for gasoline, he stood beside the car.

“We could have dinner,” he said almost anxiously.

“You have work you could do.”

“No—I haven’t planned anything. Couldn’t we have dinner?”

He knew that she had nothing to do either—no planned evening or special place to go.

She compromised.

“Do you want to get something in that drug-store across the street?”

He looked at it tentatively.

“Is that really what you want?”

“I like to eat in American drug-stores. It seems so queer and strange.”

They sat on high stools and had tomato broth and hot sandwiches. It was more intimate than anything they had done, and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness, and felt it in each other. They shared in varied scents of the drug-store, bitter and sweet and sour, and the mystery of the waitress, with only the outer part of her hair dyed and black beneath, and, when it was over, the still life of their empty plates—a sliver of potato, a sliced pickle and an olive stone.

It was dusk in the street, it seemed nothing to smile at him now when they got into the car.

“Thank you so much. It’s been a nice afternoon.”

It was not far from her house. They felt the beginning of the hill, and the louder sound of the car in second was the beginning of the end. Lights were on in the climbing bungalows—he turned on the headlights of the car. Stahr felt heavy in the pit of his stomach.

“We’ll go out again.”

“No,” she said quickly, as if she had been expecting this. “I’ll write you a letter. I’m sorry I’ve been so mysterious—it was really a compliment because I like you so much. You should try not to work so hard. You ought to marry again.

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