Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald Read Online Free PDF

and what harm was there in it? He was nothing more than a way to pass the time until we finished, until I could return home, until that charming lieutenant phoned.
    I asked my sister, “Tootsie, how’d you know you were in love with Newman?”
    “Oh-ho!” She sat down next to me. “Who is he? Tell!”
    Katy called up the stairs, “Miz Rosalind, what’d you all decide?”
    “What did we decide? Pie?”
    I wrinkled my nose.
    “The sandwiches,” Tootsie yelled. “And rinse those berries for me, would you?”
    “Yes’m.”
    Tootsie turned back to me. “Now tell.”
    “Nothin’ to tell. I guess I ought to be aware of what to look for, is all. The signs of true love, I mean. Is it like in Shakespeare?” I sat up and took Tootsie’s hands. “You know, is it all heaving bosoms and fluttering hearts and mistaken identities and madness?”
    The sound of the phone ringing downstairs made my heart leap.
    “Yes,” Tootsie said with wide eyes, holding tightly to my hand as I jumped up. “Yes, it is exactly like that. Gird yourself, little sister.”

 
    3
    In mid-July, Sara Haardt and I were just leaving a Commerce Street hat shop when I heard a man call my name.
    “Miss Sayre! Hello!”
    Scott waved as he walked toward us through a throng of young women who turned to watch him. He tipped his hat and smiled at the women as he passed. Even dressed in civilian clothes—white shirt, blue sweater vest above crisp, cuffed brown pants—he seemed exotic, rare, desirable. I’d seen him twice since our first meeting, once when he brought me the typescript chapter from his novel, and then again after I’d read it. Both meetings had been too-brief exchanges of smiles and compliments enacted over cheese biscuits (Scott) and melon (me) at the diner, while Eleanor and Livye looked on from a booth nearby. Tempted as I was to clear my dance card and devote my weekends to this handsome Yankee interloper, as Tootsie called him, it was hard to know whether I should take his attentions seriously.
    “How nice to run into you,” I said when he reached us.
    “Do I give too much away when I confess it’s no coincidence? Your sister said I might find you here.”
    “Well, gosh, we’re flattered, aren’t we, Sara? Oh—Sara, meet Lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald of Princeton University. This is Miss Sara Haardt, of Goucher College. Suddenly I feel undereducated—not that I have any use for college. I could hardly sit still long enough to finish high school.”
    “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Haardt.”
    “She’s brilliant, don’t let her fool you,” Sara said.
    I pointed to the store’s window display. “Woman of the world that she is, Miss Haardt has been tryin’ to educate me on what up-to-the-minute ladies are wearin’ on their heads these days—which apparently is not these big feathered confectionaries you see here.”
    Scott said, “I’d have to agree. The New York City shops were all showing smaller, less ornate styles last time I was there.”
    “A fella who knows fashion!”
    “I’m observant, that’s all. Writers have to be.”
    Sara, tall and wiry and far plainer in appearance than in intellect, said, “Are you a writer, then?” She did this as innocently as you please, as if I hadn’t already told her everything I knew about him.
    “Since about the time I could hold a pencil.”
    “How fascinating,” Sara said. “I do a little writing myself. Zelda and I were on our way to get lunch; why don’t you join us, and you can tell us all about your work.”
    “I’d love to, truly, but I have to get back to Camp Sheridan.” He turned to me. “Before I go, though, Miss Sayre—Zelda, if I may—I recall you saying a time or two that your birthday’s next week. If you’ll permit me, I’d like to arrange a little party at the Club in your honor.”
    “You would? I don’t know what to say—”
    “Say anything you like, except don’t say no.”
    I laughed. “That narrows my