Children of Light (27 page)

He body-checked her as she rose, and like a coach miming a tackle, eased her in his grip across the foot of the bed and held her there. It took all his strength and weight to keep her down. Her face was pressed against his chest, her mouth was open in a scream of pain, but not a sound came out of her. Panting, he held on. If she chose to bite him he would have to give way. Sometimes she bit him, sometimes not. This time she only kept on screaming, and in the single moment that his grip relented she drove him off the bed and clear across the room and into the beige cloth-covered wall. He hung on to her all the way. His body absorbed her unvoiced scream until he felt he could hardly contain, without injury, the force of her grief and rage.

At last she stopped thrashing and he loosened his grip. He backed away, and they lay together on the floor. She cradled her hands prayerfully beneath her cheek; she was facing him. Her lips moved,
she prayed, mouthed words, sobbed. He put his hand on her shoulder, an inquiring hand, to ask if she wanted him there or not. When he touched her, she drew closer to him.

“Hey, now,” he whispered absurdly. He put his arm around her, his every move seemed feeble and irrelevant to him. “Hey, now,” he kept repeating, like a man talking to a horse. “Hey, now.”

A
round sundown, Axelrod walked into the Drogues’ bungalow with his envelope full of photographs. Young Drogue and his wife were watching a Spanish-language soap opera on their television set. Axelrod set the envelope before them.

“Should I be overjoyed?” Drogue asked. “Is this all of them?”

“All except one print. Dongan Lowndes has it.”

“Jack gave it to Lowndes? But that’s ridiculous.” He looked from Jon to his wife, with an expression of pained mirth. “Isn’t it?”

Axelrod presented Walker’s theory of the Picturesque Lead with Jack’s photograph to support it.

“Somehow,” Drogue said, “I find it hard to take this dopey snapshot seriously.”

“According to Walker, Lowndes is gonna really dish it to us. He says the
NYA
story will make this location look like Butch’s Garden.”

“What’s that?” Drogue asked. “Some S & M joint known only to weirdos?”

“I don’t think it’s in L.A.,” Patty said.

“He means Lowndes is gonna make us look bad. That’s what he thinks.”

“The hell with what he thinks. He got the whole thing started with his dissolute ways. Anyway, no story in
New York Arts
is going to hurt us. Or is it?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to get the picture back,” Axelrod said. “Lowndes is unfriendly. The Europeans might go for it.
Oggi
and those clowns.”

“Christ,” Drogue said irritably. “Does Charlie know about this? He’ll make the night horrible with his cries.”

Axelrod shook his head.

“I think it’s a minor matter,” Drogue said. “It would be nice if we could sort it out without bothering Mr. Freitag.”

“Don’t tell him while he’s eating,” Patty said. “He’s had a bypass.”

“Not only that,” Axelrod said. “He’s got guests.”

“Well,” Drogue wanted to know, “can you get the damn thing back?”

“We’re gonna suggest to Mr. Lowndes that he do the right thing.”

“Don’t start bouncing him off walls. Then we’ll really be in the shit.”

“What I’d like to do,” Axelrod said, “I’d like to have the local police athletic league take his head for a couple of laps around the municipal toilet bowl. Except we’d have to pay
mordida
and the pigs would probably swipe the print.”

“If he’s unfriendly,” Drogue said, “be my guest. Put the screws to him. Just don’t give him anything to sue about.”

“We’re gonna make him sweat,” Axelrod said. “If he doesn’t deliver maybe we should throw him off the set and tell Van Epp he’s unethical. That way we might kill the story before he writes it. Then Van Epp has nothing to fight for.”

“Let’s see how it goes tonight,” Drogue said. “But I don’t want to get involved. If you want him off the set you have to go to Charlie.”

“Charlie should be outraged,” Axelrod said. “The guy’s supposed to be high-class and he deals with blackmailers.”

“Charlie’s instinct will be to buy him out. Put him on the payroll. Option his next book. Wait and see.”

“You should advise him not to do that.”

“I can’t advise him,” Drogue said. “My father can advise him. Not me.”

“What are you gonna do with Jack?”

“I should pour salt down his throat and make him walk to Tijuana. But since he’s Dad’s old pal I guess I’ll pay him off and fly him home. For my father’s sake.”

“Wow,” Patty said, “that’s Christ-like.”

“Damn right,” Walter Drogue junior said. He picked up one of the photographs and examined it. “This is a truly ugly picture,” he said. “I’ll never be able to look at these two turkeys in the same light.”

“Walker’s into it.”

“Walker’s a bum,” Drogue said. “He’s going to end up like Jack.”

“A lot of them do,” Axelrod said.

“He’s got no survival skills,” the director said. He looked at the picture again. “Neither of them have.”

Patty Drogue lit a joint and took the picture from her husband.

“If any kind of shit hit any kind of fan,” Drogue asked Axelrod, “not that I think it will—do you suppose Walker has some kind of moral turpitude thing in his contract? Some kind of Fatty Arbuckle-type thing?”

“That would cut him out and take his points? I don’t know, Walter. It’s not my department. I doubt it.”

“I’m not trying to take the guy’s points, Axelrod. Why does everybody suspect me of being other than a nice person? I just wondered what kind of risk he ran.”

“Not much,” Axelrod said. “Not like she does.”

Walter took a drag on the joint and gave it back to his wife.

“Sometimes I’m inclined to think this is all Charlie’s fault,” he said. “Charlie’s a silly man. Silly shit happens around his pictures.”

“Really,” Patty Drogue agreed.

“The sixties,” Walter Drogue said to them. “You think they were that great?”

Axelrod shrugged.

“Everybody shoplifted,” Patty Drogue said. “People handed out flowers. You could get laid three times a day with an ugly body.”

“That’s all over now,” Axelrod said.

B
athed, anointed, as cool and clean as chastity, she climbed the lighted path. Walker came behind her, walking carefully. They passed a garden bar and lighted tennis courts, following a yucca-bordered path that led to Charlie Freitag’s casita.

The casita’s sunken patio was lit by flickering torches, set at intervals along its border of volcanic stone. A party of grim mariachis was performing; their music seemed strangely muted to Lu Anne, as if each brass note were being instantly carried off on the wind.

Axelrod appeared from the darkness. He smiled at her and hurried past, approaching Walker. The Long Friends, jubilant, fanned out among the guests. She thought it odd that they seemed happy there.

Across the patio from the musicians was a walled barbecue pit where white-capped chefs labored over a spitted joint. The air was smoky with roasting beef. A great cauldron of boiling sauce stood to one side of the pit and, nearby, a company of men in
toques blanches
sharpened carving knives. The waiters had set up a buffet and a long well-attended bar.

Axelrod and Walker were conspiring.

“Fuck him then,” she heard Walker say. “Is he here?”

“Not yet,” Axelrod answered. He turned to Lu Anne. “How are you, Lu?”

“A little tired,” she said. He was studying her. His hard features were firelit. “Will that do?”

“It’ll do fine,” Axelrod said. “Remind her, Gordo. She looks beautiful but she’s a little tired.”

She tried working with them.

“When they ask me how I am,” she assured them, “or how I feel, I’ll say a little tired.”

“Smile,” Walker told her, “when you say it.”

“I’ll try it with the smile,” she said dutifully, “and if it works I’ll keep it.”

She thought some quarrel might be breaking out among the Long Friends, some dispute over precedence or family history. Her anxiety quickened.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. In the patio below, Freitag’s guests were mingling, carrying their drinks among the cloth-covered buffet tables. There were not so many of them as she had thought at first. Her Friends hung on the edge of the light.

“It’s fine,” Walker assured her. “It’s nice here.”

“It’s just friends,” Axelrod said. “Just …” He paused; both he and Walker were watching Dongan Lowndes descend into the lighted garden, making for the bar.

“Just buddies,” Walker said.

“Let’s get down there,” Axelrod told them.

Smiling, unclear of vision, Lu Anne strolled among the guests with Walker at her side. He was conducting her to Charlie.

She went to him in expectation of elaborate greeting but he simply took her by the hand. His fondness seemed so genuine that it made her sad. She thought she could feel Walker beside her grow tense with a suitor’s unease, as though Charlie were his rival.

“You lovely girl,” Charlie said. “You champion.” He turned to Walker. “Want to ask me if I like it?”

A tall horse-faced woman with prominent front teeth stood at Charlie’s elbow. Next to her was a stocky Latin man with a dour Roman face and straight black Indian hair that fell in a sweep across his forehead. He was in black tie and dinner jacket, the only man present in formal clothes.

“You like it,” Walker said. “Have you spoken to Walter?”

In the grip of his emotion, Charlie Freitag turned and sought Walter Drogue among his guests.

“Walter,” he fairly shouted. “Call the director!” A few people turned toward him in alarm. “Get over here, Drogue!” The party recognized his good humor and relaxed.

Walter Drogue made his way to Freitag’s side and a circle began to form around them. Lu Anne saw Lise Rennberg, Jack Glenn and Eric. George Buchanan sipped Perrier. Carnahan and Joy McIntyre were dissolved in rowdy laughter. When he had gathered his principals about him, Charlie raised his glass. “Here’s to all of you,” he proclaimed. “Artists of the possible!”

“And absent friends!” Joy McIntyre cried. Freitag, who had no idea who she was, looked at her strangely for a moment, his smile on hold.

“Like father, like son,” Charlie told Walter Drogue junior when they had quaffed their cup of victory.

The young director gave forth with an insolent simper, the malice of which was lost on Big Charlie Freitag.

“It ain’t over till it’s over, Charlie.”

Freitag’s eye fell on Dongan Lowndes.

“Mr. Lowndes,” he said, “you’ve been lucky. You’ve seen this business at its best. You’ve seen a fine picture made by serious people and it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Lowndes said thickly.

“Maybe we can get you to come out and work with us someday.”

Ignoring Charlie, Lowndes looked at Lu Anne for a moment and turned on Walker.

“Would I like it?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Walker told him, “it beats not working.” Everyone laughed, as though he had said something funny.

Charlie performed introductions for the Mexican and Dongan Lowndes. The others were known to one another. The tall woman was Ann Armitage, a former comic actress and the widow of a blacklisted writer. The Mexican was Raúl Maldonado, a painter.

The thuggish musicians played their way into darkness. A pair of violinists stepped out of the void into which the mariachis had vanished and commenced to stroll. Freitag went off to speak with Lise Rennberg and the attendant circle dissolved.

“Let’s go talk,” Axelrod said to Lowndes. The novelist was disposed
to remain beside Lu Anne. He gazed at her with drunken ardor. Lu Anne returned his look, pitying his flayed face, his sores and fecal eyes.

“Is it important?” Lowndes asked, without disengaging his gaze from Lu Anne’s.

“Not exactly important,” Axelrod said. “Scummy.”

He slid his hand under Lowndes’s arm and drew the man aside. Ann Armitage was asking Lu Anne how she was. Lu Anne stared at the old actress blankly.

“Line!” she called.

“A little tired,” Walker told her.

Lu Anne smiled confidentially. An expression of weariness passed across her face.

“The truth is,” she told Ann Armitage, “that I’ve been feeling a little tired.”

Ann Armitage did the double take for which she had once been famous.

“What are you two? An act?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lu Anne said.

Miss Armitage looked them up and down, world-wearily.

Before the guests could make their way to the seating, young Helena stood on a wooden bench and raised her hands for silence.

“We don’t want you sitting with your worst enemy or your ex-spouse or their lover,” she told the guests. “So as some of you may have noticed, we’ve had lovely little place cards with your many famous names inscribed thereon. So—sorry about the milling. Wherever your card is—after you’ve helped yourself to the buffet—that’s where you’ll sit. And you may in fact want to take note of your place before you fill your plates with all this delicious food.”

There was some smattering of applause punctuated by a harsh raspberry. Joy McIntyre had made her way, unerringly but unsteadily, to Charlie Freitag’s side.

“I mean,” she demanded in a nasal croon, “I mean, what is this, Charlie? High tea with Rex?” She seized his dinner gong and marched off to accost the violinists.

“Who is that woman?” Charlie Freitag demanded of those nearest him. He was told she was Lee Verger’s stand-in.

People walked about carrying their western-style metal plates, colliding with each other and adjusting their spectacles, trying to see in the light of tiny table lamps or flickering torchlight.

“Bang bang went the trolley!” Joy McIntyre sang at the top of her voice. The strolling violinists backed away from her like a pair of ornamental fowl. Charlie returned to his guests.

“That woman,” he said to Walker, “is she actually a stand-in?”

Before Walker could answer, the patio echoed to a horrendous screech.

“My God,” Freitag said. “It’s her again.”

It was Joy again. Bill Bly, uninvited but on watch, was attempting to relieve her of the dinner gong. Joy declined to surrender it.