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me this.” He turned his head and pointed to a white scar at the corner of his mouth no larger than a grain of rice.
    â€œSupposedly,” Benchley said, “you were of the mind that someone had gone through your coat pockets.”
    â€œI apologize. I’m sure I wasn’t in my right mind.”
    â€œThat’s all right, neither was I. As I recall, I got you pretty good too. Plus I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the story. For a while it was my one claim to fame.”
    â€œIt still is,” his girlfriend said broadly, obviously smashed. “I swear to God, he tells everybody we meet. ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald split my lip.’”
    â€œThe thing is,” Bogart said, “before that I’d never read any of your stuff.”
    â€œJust tell him and get it over with,” she said. “He thinks you’re the greatest writer in the history of the world, blah-blah-blah.”
    â€œI didn’t say that!” he scolded her, then, theatrically, turned back to them, smiling again. “When Bench told me you were coming over, I just had to meet you and tell you how much I like your work, that’s all.”
    â€œThank you,” Scott said. “I did enjoy you in
The Petrified Forest
.”
    â€œThat’s kind of you to say, but really, I think
The Great Gatsby
is a masterpiece. ‘And so we all beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past.’ That’s the stuff, brother.”
    He’d confused a few words and mucked up the rhythm, but, more flattered than embarrassed, Scott didn’t correct him. Bogart offered him a drink, then when Benchley said they had to run, promised to buy him one sometime.
    â€œHe’s between engagements,” Benchley explained on their way into the hills. He had an absurdly large Packard, bought with movie money, and was driving faster than Scott liked. The drop on his right was dizzying. On the horizon, across the hot plain of L.A., the sea was a dark blue line. He thought he could see Catalina. “She’s permanently between engagements. When they’re engaged with each other, it can get pretty loud. She has a gun. Sometimes we get to hear it. But good neighbors, salt of the earth.”
    â€œWhere’s his wife?”
    â€œOn Broadway. She’ll never leave New York. She’s older, met him when he was just breaking in. I don’t think she minds. They’re actually a very charming couple, which might be the problem.”
    â€œHe likes a challenge.”
    â€œDon’t we all,” Benchley said.
    If the slip was inadvertent, he didn’t apologize, and in a larger sense it was true. What man wanted a woman without fire, and vice-versa?
    â€œBy the way,” Benchley said. “Oppy?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œNever lend him money. He drops it on the nags.”
    â€œOkay. Thanks.”
    â€œAnd don’t bounce anything off him. He’ll steal it. That’s how he’s hung around so long.”
    â€œGot it.”
    Ernest was staying with friends, was all Benchley would say, as if sworn to secrecy. It was typical, Scott thought, the needless intrigue. For years, to the delight of Condé Nast readers, Ernest had traveled the globe indulging his self-dramatizing streak, trying on swashbuckling costumes, while Scott stayed home, hoping to patch things together, a labor for which he discovered he had little talent. At one time they’d been equals, and happy to be, but the last few letters he’d received from Ernest had been dismissive, if not outright combative, and rather than reply in kind, he’d appealed to Max, thinking he might broker a peace between them. It hadn’t happened, and as Benchley’s pompous car climbed the curves, he felt a queasy mix of dread and self-righteousness, like a wronged party before a duel. If he was flattered by the invitation, he was also leery of an ambush.
    They reached the top