Children of Light (28 page)

“Get your bloody hand off me fucking wrist, you great fucking poofta bastard!” she protested. The guests had fallen silent. Joy’s struggle, the crackling of cooked meat and the violins, sweetly paired to “Maytime,” were the only sounds in the patio.

“The press is here,” Freitag said. “This looks like hell.” He looked about him in the dimness for Dongan Lowndes and saw the man squared off with Axelrod as though the two of them were at the point of blows.

“Jesus wept,” the gentleman producer cried. Walker took the opportunity to slip away.

Lu Anne sat at the head of one of the buffet tables playing with people’s name cards. Maldonado and Miss Armitage had attempted to enlist at a more congenial sector of the party but, encountering outbursts and angry voices at every turning, had been driven back into the shadows. In the shadows Lu Anne ruled. She had discovered that she, Miss Armitage and Maldonado, Walker and Lowndes, Charlie, Axelrod and the Drogues were all seated together at the very table beside which Charlie had introduced them.

“Do you think,” she asked the couple, “that some table game might be played with these? Something along the order of Authors or Old Maid?”

Miss Armitage smiled sweetly.

“Yes, I do,” she said. She seized the stack of place cards from Lu Anne’s grasp until she had her own and her escort’s, and put them on the next table. “It’s called Switcheroo.”

She picked up two place cards from the same adjoining table and handed them to Lu Anne.

“I’m too old to sit still for silly women, Miss Niceness, just as you’re too old to be one. I’m going to leave you to the luck of the draw.”

Maldonado replaced their cards.

“I want to sit here,” he said heavily. Miss Armitage pursed her lips and looked at the ground. The Mexican took his chair and slowly undid the knot of his dress black tie.

“You’re welcome here, Mr. Maldonado,” Lu Anne said.

Maldonado looked at her.

“Am I?”

“Oh yes,” Lu Anne said. “You and your companion are both welcome. You have the good opinion of my friends.”

Maldonado graciously inclined his head. Ann Armitage gave a comic grimace. “Well, praise God and shut my mouth. If that’s not …”

The painter raised a flabby hand, bidding his friend to silence.

“You all are admired in secret places,” Lu Anne told them. “In quarters that you mustn’t imagine, they think well of you and they give good report.”

“How very mysterious,” Maldonado said. “What does it mean?”

Lu Anne was at a loss to explain. Never in her life had she seen the Long Friends so unafraid of sound or light, almost ready, it seemed, to join her in her greater world and make the two worlds one. Seeing them gathered round, shyly peering from between their lace-like wings, murmuring encouragement, she could only conclude that they approved of her new acquaintanceship with Charlie’s two friends. Moreover, they were beautiful, the two, the elegant old actress and the sad-faced handsome man who had removed his dinner jacket. They were as beautiful and charged with grace as Lowndes was hideous and unclean.

Charlie Freitag came to their table like a man seeking refuge from
the field of defeat. There was a meager ration of salad and beans on his plate. He looked sweaty and unwell. Lu Anne, who loved him as her friend, was concerned.

“What’s this?” Charlie asked. “No one’s eating?”

“Charlie,” she asked, “Charlie, dear, aren’t you well, my poor friend?”

He took her by the hand. “Me? I’m fine. I’m thinking of you.”

“I’m well enough, Charles.” She smiled. “A little tired.”

“You must be wiped out, for Christ’s sake,” Charlie said. “We have you in and out of the water thirty times a day. You’re living on hotel food and missing your family.” He looked about the torchlit patio uneasily. “Everyone’s overworked. But I thought, what the hell, we’re over the hump. I thought since Gordon was coming down and we had this man from
New York Arts
 … and I thought we could all use a lift.”

“Indeed we could,” Lu Anne said. “And it’s my birthday.”

Charlie was surprised. “Well, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “But I thought your birthday was last month.”

Lu Anne gave him a conspiratorial wink. Ann Armitage stared at her, unblinking.

“Where
is
Gordon?” Charlie asked quickly.

“Well, he was just here,” Lu Anne said. She could not remember his leaving; she was suddenly anxious. “I don’t know.” To her horror she saw Dongan Lowndes approaching the table, followed with a vigor bordering on pursuit by Axelrod.

“Isn’t anyone going to eat?” Charlie asked them in mounting distress.

As though in benison, Walter Drogue junior and Patty arrived, their plates piled high. Charlie and Patty Drogue exchanged kisses.

“Where’s your old man?” Charlie asked young Drogue. “Won’t he be joining us?”

Patty, who had hastened to stuff her mouth with food, attempted unsuccessfully to speak.

“He’s having a little trouble with his date,” young Drogue said.

“Yeah?” Charlie asked. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“You must have seen her, Charlie,” Drogue said. “The little Australian job with the dirty mouth?”

Freitag covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.

“Hilarious,” he said softly. He looked about guiltily as though old Drogue might catch him gossiping. “What a riot!”

“Best body on the unit,” young Drogue said. “Present company excepted.”

“That’s Wally,” Ann Armitage said. “I take it he’s in good health?”

“He damn well better be,” Freitag said. “I had a look at that little dollop.”

Lu Anne, knowing that in time she must, turned toward Dongan Lowndes. As she did so she felt what could only be his hand against her knee.

“Walking the bones, Mr. Lowndes?” she asked him.

His damp hand slithered off like a cemetery rat. She watched his face as the rat-hand fled home to him. His blunt features were momentarily elongated and rodentine as he reabsorbed it, the rat within. For all the effort in the world she could not tear her eyes from his nor could she feel a grain of pity. Let the rat stay wherein it dwelled, she thought. Let it gnaw his guts forever, feed behind his eyes. So long as she was safe from it.

Lowndes’s eyes were moist as he stared down her rebuke. She saw in them what he himself must take for human passion, desire, infatuation, an impulse to master the beloved. The trouble was that he was not a man. Not human.

“Mr. Lowndes,” she heard Axelrod say in a low voice, “you want to look at me when I talk to you?”

At last she tore her eyes free from Lowndes’s, a rending.

“Mr. Maldonado,” she asked the man across the table from her, “are you a good painter?”

Miss Armitage started to speak but fell silent.

“One’s never asked,” Maldonado said.

“Lu Anne,” Charlie said sternly, “Raúl is one of Mexico’s very finest painters. He shows throughout the world.”

“I should say so,” Miss Armitage said.

“I myself,” Charlie declared, “own some choice Maldonados. They’re on display in my home and to me—they mean Mexico. The sunshine, the sea. The whole enchilada.”

Maldonado and Miss Armitage looked at him coldly.

“You know what I mean,” he stammered. “Everything we so admire about …” He fell silent, looked at his plate and mopped his brow.

“Dad owns about a ton and a half of them,” young Drogue said.

“In bohemian company,” Lu Anne said, “or some equivalent, in some demimonde like ours—one faces the deliberately tactless question.”

Maldonado smiled faintly. “
Mierda
,” he said.

“You better believe it,” Ann Armitage said.

“Everybody here knows whether they’re good or not,” Lu Anne told him. “Given the least encouragement, everybody here is ready to say.”

“I am not a good painter,” Maldonado told the company. There was a momentary silence, then a chorus of demurrers.

“The great ones,” Charlie said with an uneasy chuckle, “they’re never happy with their work. They need us to encourage them.”

“I wish you were a good painter,” Lu Anne said to Maldonado. “Maybe you are, after all.”

“If for you I could be,” Maldonado said gallantly, “you may be sure that I would. Maybe for myself as well. But I think it would make my life difficult.”

Lowndes’s presence had quieted the Long Friends; they were out of temper again, out where she could not control them and where they might cause her some embarrassment. She began to feel panicky.

“Oh God,” she said, “where’s Gordon? I need him.”

“Jon,” Freitag said to Axelrod, “would you do me a favor and find your friend Walker? Be a pal.”

Even in the unsteady light it was apparent that Axelrod was red-faced with anger.

“Sure, Charlie,” he said. He put a hand on Lowndes’s shoulder again. “What do you say, Dongan? Want to help me find our pal Gordo?”

Lowndes brushed his hand away violently. “I don’t go for this tinseltown familiarity,” he told Axelrod.

“That’s not nice, Dongan,” Axelrod said.

“Mr. Maldonado,” Lu Anne said, “would you find him for me?”

“Can’t you walk?” Miss Armitage asked. “Find your own goddamn friends.”

Lu Anne was carefully pouring the decanted red wine into her glass. She drank it down.

“I can’t see so well,” she explained. “And there’s such a crowd.”

“Of course,” Maldonado said. “Mr. Walker. I’ll find him. I’ll go now.”

He touched his napkin to his mouth, although he had not been eating, and went off.

“Christ almighty, Charlie,” Miss Armitage said to her host. “Where do you get these people?”

“The same place I got you,” Charlie Freitag said brightly. There were no laughs for him at the table.

Walker was in the pool-house lavatory, sniffing cocaine from the porcelain surface of the sink, when the door opened behind him. In the mirror over the sink he saw a man framed in the doorway, discovering him
in flagrante.
The man appeared wild-eyed and disheveled; he was wearing a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck and dark trousers. It was an unwelcome sight.

“
Cocaína
,” the man said.

Walker turned slowly toward the man in the mirror and recognized Maldonado.

“It’s all right,” he said slowly, having no idea himself what he might mean.

“Among my friends,” the painter explained, “it’s frowned on as
bourgeois. As gringo. My companion—Miss Armitage—is very bitter on the subject.”

“I’ll bet,” Walker said. He went past Maldonado to lock the door. “I thought,” he explained, “I had locked this.”

“No,” Maldonado said, “it was open. This is difficult,” he told Walker. “To have some or not?”

“Do have some,” Walker suggested. “I mean, it’s your decision of course.”

“I shall,” Maldonado said. “Why not?”

They took some. The painter paced, frowning.

“A case could certainly be made,” Walker said, “that it’s bad for the Indians. In terms of exploitation.”

Maldonado waved the argument away.

“It’s neither good nor bad for the Indians. It makes no difference for them. It’s ourselves and our societies that we’re destroying.”

“That’s as it should be,” Walker said.

They had more. Instead of pacing, Maldonado fixed Walker with a grave stare.

“Who is the woman, Walker?”

“Do you mean Lee Verger? You were introduced.”

“Lee Verger,” Maldonado repeated. “An actress?”

“A very good actress. Quite well known.”

“Is she acting now? Tonight? Performing?”

Walker hesitated.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Not really.”

“She’s your woman?”

“Yes,” Walker said.

“She sent me to get you. I’m not some house cat to be sent on such an errand but I obeyed her. She asked me if I was a good painter and I replied that I was not. I wanted to humiliate myself.”

“Well,” Walker said, “you’ve probably fallen in love with her.”

“I can explain,” Maldonado said. “I can explain to her. With your permission.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Walker said. “Let’s go back and talk.”

The party seemed to be going well as Walker and Maldonado made their way back to Charlie Freitag’s table. The violinists patrolled unmolested; happy conversation bubbled up from every quarter. Only at the party’s core, in the circle around Freitag, a dark enchantment prevailed.

Maldonado resumed his seat across from Lu Anne. He and all the others at the table watched in silence as Walker guided himself into a chair beside her and she moved to steady him. When he was down beside her she took his hand and kissed it and put her arm around his neck.

“I want to explain myself,” Maldonado said. “I want to explain what I said against my painting.”

“There’s no need for that,” Miss Armitage said. “Everyone knows how wonderful you are. And everyone can see you’ve been drinking.”

The voice of Joy McIntyre rang again through the patio.

“The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” she bellowed. “The choreog—” She began the phrase again but was cut off in mid-word, somewhat disconcertingly.

“Why are people always saying that?” Lowndes asked.

“ ’Cause we’re in tinseltown,” Axelrod told him. “And they’re sending you a message, Dongan.”

“I want to speak about my painting,” Maldonado said. “This lady has challenged me and I dedicate my remarks to her.”

“The lady will excuse you,” Ann Armitage said firmly. “She knows there are things not to say in public. She understands that sometimes we say things that can hurt us in important ways.”

“All the same,” Maldonado said softly.

Walker finished the drink at his place.

“We are true artists here,” he explained, “we work without a net.”

Old Drogue came out of the darkness; there appeared to be dark welts on his neck. He made his way to the table to sit between his son and Patty.

When Charlie rose to welcome him, he raised his right hand in a kind of benediction and sat down.

“Yay, Pops,” Drogue junior said. Patty enfolded his arm in hers.

“I come from Colima,” Maldonado told them. “My people were dust. I went to school and studied art because art is prized in this country. My teacher had been a student of the American William Gropper, so he painted like Gropper and so did I. In Tepic I have a roomful of my early work—all very realistic and political.”