Thanks for the Trouble

  “There you are, darling,” she said to me, and her voice had an unfamiliar twinge of a Southern accent; apparently, it came with the costume. “I’m afraid I’ve become rather popular already, perhaps because I come bearing libations.” Most of the partygoers were moving out to the back patio, following this fresh infusion of alcohol. “And what about you, Mr. Santé? Aren’t you pleased to see me?” She slipped into my arms and kissed me on the cheek. The thousand tiny question marks of her hair tickled my neck. “Can you guess who I am?”

  I didn’t have the slightest idea, but I was saved by the sound of a cork popping out on the patio. “Heresy!” Zelda shouted. “Are they starting without me?”

  She took my hand and led me outside. Jamie had already filled a red plastic cup with champagne, but when he saw Zelda, he sheepishly offered it up to her. She looked at it as if it were a dead mouse a cat had left on the doorstep.

  “This is champagne, not Coca-Cola. Fetch glasses.” Jamie laughed, but Zelda didn’t crack a smile. “Do I look like I’m joking? Chop-chop.” She clapped a couple of times and turned away.

  “A’ight,” Jamie said. “Damn.” He gulped down the champagne, then handed the empty red cup to me. “Hold on to this, Charlie.” He ran back into the house.

  “Charlie?” Zelda said.

  I did my best impression of Charlie Chaplin, miming a cane and a shaky little walk.

  “Aha. I assume he calls you that because you don’t speak. What a perfect little monster. Now, why don’t you tell me about this outfit of yours. You’re an elderly animal of some sort.”

  “He’s a silver fox,” Alana said, appearing at Zelda’s side along with Tyler.

  Zelda pursed her lips. “I’m not sure I understand the reference.”

  “It’s sorta like the male version of a cougar.”

  “Cougars? Like the cat?”

  Alana and Tyler shared a look. I don’t think any of us knew if Zelda was only pretending not to understand, as part of her Halloween persona, or if she really didn’t understand. “A cougar’s an older woman who gets it on with young men,” Alana said. “Basically, what we all aspire to. A silver fox is an older man who knows how to work the young ladies. And I’m Alana, by the way.”

  “Zelda Fitzgerald, née Sayre.” Zelda gave a little curtsy. “Charmed to make your acquaintance.”

  “Uh, same.”

  Zelda took hold of my wig and gave it a little tug. “Well, I like the silver anyway. Makes you look distinguished.”

  Jamie came back from the kitchen with an armful of glasses.

  “Those are for wine, not champagne!” Zelda shook her head. “But I suppose they’ll have to do.” She raised her glass to be filled, then made the toast. “To youth,” she said.

  “To youth,” we all repeated.

  I’d never had champagne before. It was a lot fizzier than I’d expected. I held some in my mouth and it seemed to evaporate, leaving a cloud of sweet air behind.

  DRINK #4: ANOTHER GLASS OF BUBBLY

  WHILE GLASSES WERE BEING REFILLED, I went to get the sunflowers, which I’d left on the lawn next to the keg. Two of the blossoms had been trampled into yellow mush, but the others were intact.

  “For me?” Zelda asked. She laughed, then took the flowers out of my hand and put her nose into one of their big brown centers. “Well, I can honestly say I’ve never been given a bouquet of sunflowers. And you have no idea how rare it is for someone to surprise me.” She kissed me on the cheek again, though this time I felt the corner of her mouth graze the corner of mine. “Now let’s dance.”

  Sunflowers held aloft like a torch, Zelda led us all back into the house. The living room was packed with dancers, moving in sync like one gigantic, many-limbed organism. I’ve always liked dancing—probably because communication between bodies is always speechless, so my disability more or less disappears. Zelda was a strange dancer, moving in a way that once again brought to mind that comment I’d gotten on my old history paper: anachronistic. She didn’t seem bothered by the fact that nobody else in the room was dancing the way she was, and though she got a few sidelong glances, they were the good kind of sidelong glance, the kind that said, Man, that girl over there is dancing pretty weird, but I can tell she’s not doing it because she has to be the center of attention by acting different, but because that is just the crazy-ass way she dances, because she is her own unique, magical, beautiful self, and she doesn’t give a fuck what anybody else thinks, and any boy in here would be lucky as hell to be her dance partner tonight.

  I should add that I was definitely starting to feel drunk.

  The crowd kept pushing Zelda and me closer and closer together, until our bodies met and there was nowhere to put my arms but around her. She was sparkly with sweat, swinging like a crystal chandelier in a hurricane. When the DJ finally put on a slow song, Zelda molded herself to me, so that I could feel each breath she took as a warm pressure against my chest. I looked over to Alana, who had Tyler’s big hands placed perfectly on her butt cheeks. We made eye contact, and she gave me a subtle thumbs-up, mouthing the words, Well done, Santé.

  DRINK #5: A SWIG FROM A BOTTLE OF $1,000 SCOTCH

  WE EXHAUSTED OURSELVES OVER THE course of the next hour, mashing our bodies into a liquid. Between her unique moves on the dance floor and all that champagne, Zelda already had Alana and company in the palm of her hand. I could tell they were seeing me in a new light now; I felt like a pitted little moon that had just been discovered orbiting a supernova.

  “I’m tired of being cooped up,” Zelda declared in the brief silence between songs. “How about we take this party down to the water?”

  Another cheer went up. If she’d suggested we move the festivities to Brazil, everyone probably would’ve gone along with it. The limousine was still parked outside, so ten of us smushed inside while the rest of the partygoers trekked over to the N Judah, the train line that connects the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. I ended up having to sit apart from Zelda, who was talking up a storm with Jamie and his friends.

  I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

  Who is this girl?! Alana had texted me.

  I looked up and saw her sitting across the limo from me. She raised an eyebrow.

  She’s Zelda, I wrote back.

  That’s her costume, but who is she really?

  Her name’s really Zelda.

  But she told me she’s dressed up as Zelda Fitzgerald for Halloween.

  Who?

  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. We studied her in American history, remember? The Jazz Age?

  I think I slept through that one.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that “Zelda” might be some kind of pseudonym, but it wasn’t as if I’d seen her driver’s license or anything. And now that I thought about it, it did make for a pretty weird coincidence, and one having nothing to do with some rando historical figure: here was this girl very much in need of rescue—given her insistence that she was going to jump off a bridge any minute now—who just happened to have the same name as a famous video-game princess perpetually in need of saving. What were the odds?

  Then again, Zelda hadn’t actually asked for my help. In fact, she was the one helping me—buying me clothes and making me look cool and trying to get me to apply to college. It reminded me of this conversation we’d had in my eleventh-grade Life Skills class. Our teacher, Ms. Northrup, spent a whole period lecturing about “damaging stereotypes in popular culture” like “the damsel in distress.” She asked us what kind of boring life Super Mario would have led if he hadn’t had someone to rescue all the time: “Princess Peach saved him every bit as much as he saved her,” she’d said. “The guy was a plumber, for God’s sake. He’d have been clearing out stopped-up toilets all day if not for Peach.”

  So probably Zelda hadn’t named herself after Princess Zelda as some kind of cry for help (besides, she didn’t seem like the type of girl with an in-depth knowledge of video games). But I still had no idea where the costume end
ed and the real person began. What if this new Southern accent wasn’t fake, and it was the other accent—the bland, American non-accent I’d known up until now—that was put on?

  “My darlings,” Zelda suddenly announced, “please raise your hand if you are under twenty-five years of age.” All of us raised our hands, smashing them against the ceiling of the limousine. “That’s what I thought.” She leaned over and opened the wooden cabinet mounted in the partition separating us from the driver’s compartment. Inside was a tall green box on which was written THE GLENLIVET XXV. Zelda unsealed the top of the box and removed a large bottle full of amber liquid. She cradled it like a baby. “The heavenly beverage we are about to consume costs approximately one thousand dollars a bottle. And do you know why?”

  “Because it’s mad old,” Jamie said.

  “Exactly right, my carbuncular friend.” Jamie grinned at this recognition of his wisdom. “Many years before your mommies and your daddies got the bright idea to spend an evening conceiving you, this divine potation was already resting peaceably in an aged oaken cask. While you were taking your first awkward steps around the living room, this paragon of whiskies was absorbing the flavor of that aged oaken cask, becoming richer and more complex with every passing hour. And all that time, as you grew into toddlers and schoolchildren, as you passed beyond the thorny gates of puberty and came to stand here on the very threshold of adulthood, the whiskey in that cask was slowly but constantly evaporating. They call it the angels’ share, the portion that disappears over the years.” Zelda peeled away the black wax that covered the top of the bottle and removed the stopper. She took a deep whiff and sighed with contentment. “Like many things in life, alcohol famously gets better and better with age. Yet we mustn’t forget that something is also lost as time passes. We all must surrender our angel’s share.”

  The limo had gone silent. Zelda was the kind of girl who could demand attention no matter what she said, but I think we were all a little in awe of her eloquence at that moment. The car filled with the peaty barbecue smell of the whiskey. Zelda drank first, straight from the bottle. She closed her eyes. We waited, spellbound, for her verdict.

  “Paradise,” she said, then passed the bottle to me. “Drink up, darling.”

  None of us were connoisseurs, of course. We wouldn’t have known a twenty-five-year scotch from a twelve-year scotch from a watered-down jug of Jack Daniel’s. But we all did as she’d done, swishing the liquid around our mouths with our eyes closed. A couple of people coughed, as if they were smoking for the first time. We all felt like we’d been let in on a secret.

  DRINK #6: THE LAST SWALLOW OF THE BOTTLE OF $1,000 SCOTCH

  THE LIMO DROPPED US OFF down by the Java Beach Café, where the N Judah turned around and trundled back toward downtown. Everyone who hadn’t been able to fit in the limo would be taking the trolley, so the ten of us had some time on our own. We passed through a narrow rift between two big mountains of sand topped with tall waving grass. The night sky was clear, and the ocean was a black mirror sprinkled with a million tiny whitecap minnows. Without discussing it, we began to build the requisite bonfire. Stones for the outer ring were taken from fires that had already burned out. Finding the necessary driftwood required ranging up and down the beach. To the north, you could see where Great Highway curved up and around Point Lobos, culminating in the palatial luminosity of Cliff House. Down below, rocky caves filled with foam, like a fresh bottle of champagne uncorked every few seconds. We weren’t alone on the beach—there were a few couples walking hand in hand, and far away you could see some other fires already blazing—but the vibe was peaceful and desolate. Everyone seemed content to let the crash of waves be the loudest thing on the beach. I brought an armful of kindling back to the circle. Alana and Zelda were digging the pit out with their hands, laughing about something. Back toward the highway, Tyler and Jamie were struggling with a log nearly as big as themselves.

  Tyler dropped his end just as I was coming up to help. “This shit’s too big to carry.”

  Jamie dropped his end too. “That’s what your mom said.”

  In spite of myself, I laughed. Jamie gave me a funny look. “What are you doing, Charlie? Are you laughing?”

  “Don’t be a dick, man,” Tyler said.

  “But it’s freaky! Anyway, I’m glad he’s here.” He put a sandy hand on my shoulder. “Parker, get real with me. What’s the deal with your girl? You’ve got to be paying her, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “But there’s no way you’re hitting that.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. Obviously, someone beautiful and cool couldn’t possibly want to be with me. If I were a different kind of person, I would’ve lied just to shut him up. But Zelda wasn’t my girlfriend. Not yet, anyway.

  I shook my head again.

  “I knew it,” Jamie said. “So you wouldn’t mind if I stepped up.” Another statement. “Good man.” He clapped me hard on the back and headed toward the bonfire-to-be.

  It took another ten minutes to round up the rest of the wood. Tyler oversaw the architecture of the thing: a boulder of crumpled-up newspaper, soaked in the contents of a couple of plastic Bic lighters; a Jenga-like structure of medium-size logs, packed in between with kindling; and then a teepee of big logs surrounding the whole thing. Alana did the honors of setting it alight. By the time the rest of the party came sprinting across the sand, the flames were going fierce and wild, shooting off little firework bursts every time a log settled and radiating heavy waves of heat to war against the chill.

  Zelda snuck up behind me and pressed something into my hand.

  “Hurry,” she whispered. “Finish it before someone else does.”

  It was the thousand-dollar bottle of Scotch. I smiled and drank off what was left. Then I took Jamie’s PS Vita from my jacket pocket and tossed it on the fire.

  DRINK #7: A MOUTHFUL OF SEAWATER

  BY THIS TIME, IT WAS probably a good thing I wasn’t able to speak, because I doubt I could’ve put together a coherent sentence. The world came to me in flashes, like a flip book badly flipped. There was the sunburn heat of the fire on my face, the sand soft when I took my shoes and socks off, smoke in my lungs. I watched Jamie start a conversation with Zelda. He could be an asshole, but he was charming, too, the way a lot of assholes are. I felt drunkenly jealous—not because I thought anything would happen between them, but because now Jamie knew Zelda just as well as I did.

  I wandered toward the water, down to where the sand turned wet enough to crunch between your toes. Even in the wan starlight, I could make out the circles that blossomed beneath every footfall. An exuberant wave crashed and sprinted up to burble over my skin. It burned at first, then prickled as hot blood filled the chilled veins.

  “What a slimeball,” Zelda said, bringing her pale little feet up close to mine. “He asked me if you were my community service project. I told him we’d been lovers for months. That you’d made me feel things I’d never felt before. That shut him up.”

  She smiled the kind of smile that wants a smile back, but I couldn’t quite summon it up.

  “Are you all right?”

  I got down on my knees, dug my finger into the wet sand.

  Who are you?

  “You know who I am. I’m Zelda Fitzgerald. I’m a writer and a painter and a dancer. An all-around bon vivant straight out of the Jazz Age.”

  Seriously.

  She sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Try me.

  “Okay.” Zelda hiked up her dress and knelt down next to me on the sand. When she wrote, she used two fingers, one a ghostly echo of the other, and drew in a long, looping cursive.

  Name: Griselda Toth

  DOB: 12/19/1770

  Place of Birth: Kassel, G

  We stood up just in time to watch the ocean rush over her words, filling in the curves like a dozen little moats, leaving only a few isolated letters behind.

  I signed two letters at her: B
and S.

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  I can’t explain how shitty it made me feel, that she still refused to tell me anything real about herself. My first date ever, and it was with a fictional character, or else a crazy person.

  “Don’t be blue, darling.”

  She reached out for me, but I stepped away.

  “Oh, he’s a moody boy,” Zelda said. “But I know how to cheer him up.” In one smooth motion, she pulled her black dress up over her head, taking the glittering headpiece with it. Like that, she was naked, white as the white feathers of a seagull, her hair almost blue in the moonlight. I was very suddenly very sober, and about 90 percent less angry.

  “Well?” she said. “Your turn.”

  I’d never taken my clothes off in front of a girl before, but I was about four drinks past hesitation. The wig went first, coming to rest on the beach like some dried-up silver sea anemone. My shirt and jacket, then my pants. I waited for a moment, in my boxers that happened to have Pac-Man on them, to see if Zelda would turn around. She didn’t. And now I could hear the whoops and hollers of the other partygoers, clued into what was going on and eager to join in. If I waited any longer, I’d end up putting on a show for all of them.

  Boxers down.

  Zelda took off toward the ocean, skipping like a long-legged crab, and I followed her. It was only a few steps before we were splashing in the shallows. The water was stupid cold and left us both gasping like freshly caught fish. We laughed hysterically at the sheer agony of it. Black rivers of mascara ran down Zelda’s face. Back on the beach, everyone was tearing off their costumes piece by piece. It was like some kind of crazy dream, the sight of all those people emerging from their disguises, shedding the fake muscles and the plastic armor, the fairy wings and angel wings and devil horns, all of it piled up like a mass grave for make-believe, and I wondered if maybe this was a way for Zelda to show me something true, a version of herself without any clothes or makeup to hide behind. She slipped around me and clamped onto my back, holding her soft shivery self to my spine, wrapping her legs around my hips. She threw a lock of silver seaweed hair over my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “This has been a perfect night.” Other people were splashing into the water now, screaming with the cold and the insanity of it. I turned to smile at Zelda and she kissed me, right on the mouth this time, and I kissed her back. I forgot to keep kicking and we sank like a stone.