Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (517 page)

NURSE: Mrs. Chilton is quite able to travel. She could stand it better than any police proceedings.

ALEX (still frowning): As you like.

NURSE: When I was taking care of Lady —

MRS. CHILTON (interrupting): Gracious! One would think that I attacked the man!

Long shot. A European train racing through the night.

The Wagon Restaurant (dining car) on train: Alex and Althea are at dinner.

Flash of Chianti on table.

ALTHEA: I don’t mind sailing a week early. (With feeling:) It’ll be grand to get home — but it’s the first time I ever ran away from anything in my life.

ALEX: Once you ran away from me.

ALTHEA: I didn’t — we wore out.

ALEX: Your feeling about me wore out.

ALTHEA (lowering eyes): Alex, I don’t like the past much. (He reacts and she sees she’s hurt him.) I’m sorry.

ALEX: I can understand that. But a part of me lives in the past, you see. I have no bitterness — you might have married me. It was luck. It’s an accident who you marry — even whom you fall in love with. An important accident — but an accident — or at least a sort of photographic finish.

ALTHEA: I don’t think so. I think I’d have found Nick — or I’d have spent the rest of my life vaguely looking for him.

ALEX: You think so? Think there’s just one man for every woman? (He shakes his head and draws a circle on the tablecloth with his fork handle.) Your heart is like this.

ALTHEA (pretending alarm): Gracious!

ALEX: Well, like this. (He connects the circle to a heart and takes out a big handful of coins.) These are the men she’s known. (Dropping coins of different sorts inside the heart:) Here’s the boy in dancing school; here’s the policeman she thought was so beautiful; here’s her first love; here’s her husband, her — (He lets an American fifty-cent piece drop.)

ALTHEA: I stop there. (She points to the fifty-cent piece.)

ALEX (smiling and dropping more coins): These are just for illustration. Now a girl never gets rid of any of them. All their voices are always arguing in her mind — a great psychologist said that. But a man can love one woman exclusively. His heart’s like this. (Beside the heart he piles other coins, one on top of another in a stack.) First, here’s his mother. Here’s his nurse. Here’s the pretty little girl across the street. Here’s the one he took to a college dance. Each one tops the other, see — obscures her completely — until he gets the one he loves  — (looks at Althea) — or loses her. Then the others after that don’t count. (He lets the last coins scatter loosely about the table.)

ALTHEA (defiantly touching the fifty-cent piece in the heart): 1 don’t believe it, Alex.

ALEX: It’s true — there’s a little part of you, no matter how small, how buried, that belongs to me.

Althea sweeps all the other coins out of the heart with her other hand.

Wharf in Genoa beside the Conte Biancamano: People embarking.

Group shot of Althea handing a coin to a newsboy. Alex is standing beside her. Mrs. Chilton and the nurse, in background, are watching porter pile baggage.

Alex and Althea look eagerly at the paper.

ALEX (pointing): There it is.

Insert of Italian paper (in Italian — don’t dissolve to English):
“AMERICANS IN FRACAS.
Florence, May 28th, 1931.
Two Americans engaged in a fracas in a restaurant this afternoon, and one of them, Signor S. Johnson, suffered a broken arm. His opponent in the trouble was not identified...”

Wharf.

ALEX: He only broke his arm. Good! We can go on our ways with nothing on our consciences. I was the only real victim.

The horn of the boat blows loudly and four sad little boys, two with guitars, rush into the scene and surround them.

AD LIB (in Italian): A parting song — We know American songs — A farewell for good luck — Happy marriage —

ALEX (to boys): We’re not married.

BOY (in Italian): A lover then.

ALEX: No — no.

BOY (shrugging his shoulders): Male fortuna.

The hoys play a few chords of Santa Lucia and then suddenly launch into The Music Goes ‘Round and Around.

ALTHEA (taking Alex’s arm; excitedly): Alex, that’s home — that’s home.

The First Act may be said to end her

A nightclub in New York, gay but not fashionable. Perhaps the Pennsy Wama Roof with only a few men in formal clothes.

Two-shot of Nicolas and Iris dancing. His expression is entertained, if not absorbed — hers is frank adoration.

The music stops and the camera follows them to a table close at hand beside the floor.

Two-shot of Nicolas and Iris at table.

IRIS (continuing a conversation): Oh, I used to cut pictures of you out of the paper Last summer you gave a party for a real queen in your house at Westbury.

NICOLAS: She was a very silly queen.

IRIS (nodding approvingly): But it suited you. You always said you’d be rich some day, and every time you made a step up I was glad. I wondered if you did all the things you wanted to do — have you got a room with stars on the ceiling?

NICOLAS (smiling): I think we did have once.

IRIS: Once they had your drawing room in Town and Country and Althea’s — Mrs. Gilbert’s — bedroom. I’ve been ah through it in my imagination — many times.

NICOLAS (impetuously): Come up and I see the apartment. What could be more harmless?

IRIS (quite honestly): Oh no — it would spoil me. If I get married, my sitting room, my bedroom have got to seem the best in the world.

NICOLAS (grown a little careless): You’re very welcome — the guest room is yours.

IRIS (dreaming of splendor): The guest room!

NICOLAS (loyally): You’re just the kind of guest I’d like to have. And Althea would, too, if she knew you. Come for the weekend.

IRIS (entranced): That would be-extraordinary.

NICOLAS (delighted at her facet): It’s a deal. Shall we dance?

Interior of a limousine: Afternoon. Rain outside. Nicolas is alone in the seat.

A VOICE: Mr. Gilbert.

NICOLAS (picking up earphone): Yes, Charles.

Shot showing chauffeur through the glass.

CHARLES’S VOICE: Your raincoat’s in the compartment.

NICOLAS: Oh, thanks.

Leaning forward, he opens the compartment, bringing to light also Althea’s rubbers and little umbrella. He reacts strongly to this — not very pleasantly — feeling that this is her domain, their world together and now someone else is coming into it.

The limousine stops in front of a big apartment. Nicolas gets out and the camera follows him in.

Apartment: Nicolas is coming into the drawing room, taking off his gloves. Starks meets him and hands him the evening paper.

STARKS: Good afternoon, sir. (he starts to turn away.)

NICOLAS (embarrassed): Starks, I want to speak to you a minute.

STARKS: Yes, sir.

NICOLAS: Starks, you can — you can go off this weekend. I’m going away.

STARKS: Oh, thank you, sir. We’ve had such an easy time since Madame left. We’ll be right here if you need us. (He starts off scene.)

NICOLAS (a little embarrassed): No, I mean you go off duty. Go away to Atlantic City for a change. You and your wife and the maid too. Get a change. Get a rest.

STARKS: Oh, no thank you, sir. My wife and I have plans right here in New York. Perhaps the maid wants to go. I’ll —

NICOLAS (interrupting): Starks!

STARKS (surprised): Yes, sir.

NICOLAS (stubbornly, defiantly, yet scarcely able to meet Starks’s eye): I told you what I wanted.

STARKS (amazed — drawing a long breath): Yes, sir.

NICOLAS: It’s perfectly all right.

STARKS: Oh, I don’t doubt it, sir.

Starks goes. Nicolas stares at the floor.

The same room: An agency butler — not impeccable like Starks — is going through to answer the doorbell. Camera follows him to the door where he admits Nicolas and Iris.

NICOLAS: Good morning. Did Miss Jones’s bags arrive?

BUTLER: Yes, sir, right after I did.

NICOLAS: In the guest room?

BUTLER: Yes, sir — is there anything else, Mr. Gilman — Gilbert?

Iris, who has been staring about wide-eyed, catches this and reacts in a close-up. First her eyes narrow with fright as she realizes this is a strange servant, then she looks from the butler to Nicolas.

IRIS: Oh.

Two-shot, favoring Nicolas. He looks imperturbable. He doesn’t want to discuss this.

Close-up of Iris: The first sense of guilt changes to a slight lift of the brows and shoulders — complete acceptance of the situation.

NICOLAS’VOICE (over this shot): Nothing else.

Group shot of the butler retiring. Iris is taking Nicolas’arm, confident again, determined to enjoy.

IRIS: This is how you live. (She stares again and speaks half seriously as Nicolas takes her coat.) What do you talk about, the furniture?

NICOLAS: Yeah — and the wallpaper and how stifled we are by it all.

IRIS (not smiling): Seriously — what do you talk about — art and music?

NICOLAS (joking): Constantly. Even in our sleep. (Looks at her): Are you serious?

IRIS: Perfectly.

NICOLAS (apologetic): Well, we talk about everything — politics, our friends, Althea has a weakness for string quartets  — and I collect pictures of dogs down at the country house.

IRIS: Are there any string quartets tonight?

NICOLAS (taken aback): Now? I suppose so — at Carnegie Hall.

He picks up the paper — glances at her quizzically — sits down and opens the paper.

Group shot of a block of seats at Carnegie Hall, favoring Nicolas and Iris, the latter in a new dazzling dress.

We hear the last notes of a concerto, the lights come up, there is clapping and a buzz of conversation.

NICOLAS: What do you say we trade the last number for a highball?

Iris nods, reaching back for her cape.

The Gilberts’apartment: The hall. Nicolas and Iris are coming in. He flips his silk hat on a table.

Medium shot of the drawing room: The camera picks them up coming in. Nicolas is just faintly flushed and rumpled. Iris, throwing aside her cape, goes to a pier glass and mounts a stool before it.

Nicolas and Iris flop down a few feet apart on a big overstaffed sofa.

NICOLAS: Cigarette?

IRIS: Thanks. (Her hands shake.)

NICOLAS: Sleepy?

IRIS: Not exactly. I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want it to be tomorrow.

NICOLAS: You never liked tomorrow. When I used to talk about getting married, you’d always stop me.

IRIS: I knew we never would.

NICOLAS: This reminds me of another night too. (Iris nods.) You know the one I’m thinking of.

IRIS: Don’t let’s talk about it.

NICOLAS: Have you got unpleasant memories of it?

IRIS: Oh no, no. You know I haven’t.

NICOLAS: It was in June — hurdy-gurdies in the street.

IRIS (pointing to an imaginary chair in front of her): You sat there (pointing to the couch) and I sat here. Only my furniture wasn’t much like this.

NICOLAS: I sat there because I was frightened.

IRIS: I wasn’t — I was never so sure in my life.

NICOLAS: I didn’t sit there long. 1 came over -

IRIS: No, you got up and first you turned off the electric fan.

NICOLAS: Yes. (A pause — a gust of music from somewhere far off.) Listen -

IRIS: What?

NICOLAS: I thought I heard something — hurdy-gurdies.

IRIS: They don’t have them anymore. (Pause.)

NICOLAS: Iris.

IRIS: What?

NICOLAS: I’m frightened now. (Pause.)

IRIS: I guess now I’m frightened too.

They turn toward each other.

IRIS: Old friends, Nick.

NICOLAS: Old friends. Both very frightened.

The music again — but this time it is a hurdy-gurdy, playing far away in the street but easily distinguishable in the silence.

IRIS (wonderingly): They do have them.

Their eyes meet — this time hopelessly melting, melting irresistibly toward each other.

The dining room of the apartment: Morning. Quiet except for a raucous whistle from the pantry. A Persian cat dozes on a chair in a beam of sunshine.

Iris, in street clothes, enters and makes a short tour of the room, examining the silver on the buffet.

Close-up of Iris bending forward, looking.

Close-up of a big tankard on which is engraved, “Althea from Dick and Marion.”

Medium shot of Iris seeing the cat.

IRIS: Hello, pussy, pussy.