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creation of the dream. The director was BEVINS, according to the slate, but exactly what production was a mystery, and though it was likely the shallowest of melodramas, starring actors he’d just witnessed chowing down meatloaf and chicken divan, he had to admit that from the outside the process still possessed a glamour and excitement he’d found nowhere else save Broadway. It was more than the simple collision of money and beauty, those commonest of ingredients. His late, lamented patron Thalberg knew what the robust L.B. Mayer never would. Gross as moving pictures were, in the best of them, as in the best writing, undeniably, there was life. Twice he’d journeyed west and failed to capture anything approaching that spirit. Now, standing outside the closed set, he resolved that instead of exile, he would accept his time here as a challenge.
    His car was waiting, stifling inside. When he turned the key, nothing happened. He had gas, that wasn’t the problem. He pulled out the choke, deliberately depressed the clutch to the floor. Nothing. He tried again, quickly this time, as if he might surprise the engine—in vain. He’d only owned the blasted thing a day. He thought of the salesman on Wilshire, saw him smile, sizing him up, an eastern rube in a wool suit. He rubbed his face with both hands as if he were washing, got out, slammed the door and, already sweating, started walking back to the main gate.

THE GARDEN OF ALLAH
    A s soon as he pulled in he realized he’d been there before, at a mad party, the last time he’d been out here. The place was a Moorish variation on an L.A. staple, the square block of courtyard apartments. The swimming pool behind the main house was shaped like the Black Sea, an homage to Yalta, birthplace of the former owner, a kohl-eyed co-star of Valentino, fallen now, reduced to playing a lodger in her own home. True to its name, the landscaping aspired to an oasis, with nodding date palms, spindly eucalyptus and rampant bougainvillea attracting hummingbirds and butterflies and hiding the Garden from the outside world. Grouped around the pool like tourist cabins were Mission-style villas, white stucco with terra-cotta roofs. He remembered Tallulah Bankhead standing naked and sleek as a hood ornament at the end of the diving board, finishing her martini and regally handing the glass to her second before executing a perfect gainer, so like Zelda that even as he clapped, he mourned her. He couldn’t recall if Benchley had been there, or Dottie. Possibly. There were years like phantoms, like fog. Often he wondered if certain memories of his had really taken place.
    Benchley, in a coat and tie, was lounging by the pool with Humphrey Bogart and a jet-haired woman in a white one-piece who turned out not to be his wife—Mayo Methot, an actress Scott had never heard of. In his swim trunks Bogart looked like a muscled puppet, his head too large for his body. He hopped up to shake Scott’s hand, taking it animatedly and turning his maniacal bad-guy smirk on him.
    â€œWell, well, Scott Fitzgerald. You don’t remember me, do you?”
    â€œOf course—
The Petrified Forest
,” Scott said, noting that, though it was still technically morning, his breath carried the medicinal perfume of juniper. On the table between their chaises sat two highball glasses, an ice bucket and a crystal ashtray heaped with cigarette butts.
    â€œThe Cocoanut Grove?” Bogart prodded. “In the cloakroom?”
    Scott could see the palm trees and Gus Arnheim’s band playing on stage, the ceiling winking with false stars. Long ago they’d stayed at the Ambassador and danced there every night. This had been during Prohibition, and after a few weeks they’d been asked to leave. It had been Zelda’s idea to take all the furniture in their room and make a big pile in the middle, crowning it with the unpaid bill.
    â€œSorry,” Scott said.
    â€œYou gave