Robert Stone - Children of Light

“Hello, Gordon,” she said calmly.

Her casual greeting stung him like a blow.

“Hello, Lu Anne.”

“We’re having a wonderful time filming your script.”

“That’s great,” he said.

“We have quite a famous author down here to write a piece on us, Gordon. Mr. Dongan Lowndes. From New York Arts. Have you all met?”

“Yes,” Walker said. “We’ve met.”

“You know, Mr. Lowndes,” Lu Anne said, “there are whole passages from Naming of Parts that I can remember just by heart.”

“Lu Anne used to be the president of the Good Old Girls’ Good Old Book Club,” Walker told Lowndes.

He watched Lowndes’s slack mouth tighten. Walker’s hands were trembling and he kept them out of sight.

“You know,” Lowndes said, “a lot of times when Hollywood people tell you they like a book it turns out they’re referring to the studio synopsis.” He laughed rather loudly at his own observation.

“That’s not true of Lu Anne,” Walker assured him. “She’s a great reader.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Miss Verger. It’s just something I began to run into.”

“Was your book ever optioned?” Walker asked.

“Yes,” Lowndes said. “There was something up. I don’t know what became of it.”

“It would have been difficult to film,” Walker said.

“In those days I suppose I would have been thrilled to have it made. Now I realize that the world can get on quite well without a film version of that book.”

From where he sat it seemed to Walker that Lowndes had moved his chair very close to Lu Anne’s, that their bodies must be touching at some point and Lu Anne had made no move to draw away. She seemed to hang on his words.

“If we get into what the world can do without,” Walker said to Lowndes, “God knows where we’ll end.”

Lowndes smiled. His left hand was below the table; Walker could not escape the thought that he was fondling Lu Anne. Yet, he thought, it might all be pure paranoia. As for her, he had imagined every reaction to his arrival except the smiley indifference he was experiencing. He ordered another round of drinks.

“So,” he asked Lowndes when the drinks arrived, “how long have you been down?”

“Just a day,” Lowndes said. “I think.”

Lu Anne nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. A day.”

“Let me tell you a little about what I want to accomplish down here,” Lowndes told Walker. “You may find it interesting.”

Walker saw Lu Anne and Lowndes join hands behind their chairs.

“Why not?” he said to Dongan Lowndes. “Why not do that?”

“I really don’t think anyone’s ever written a good piece on the making of a film until after the fact.” Lowndes disengaged his hand from Lu Anne’s and went into his pocket for cigarillos. Walker declined; Lowndes lighted one for himself. “My thinking is — if I hang around here, see a little of it all going on — I can get an insight into the process. So I did a little boning up on who everybody was. Now I can watch them do their thing. Then I can analyze the final product in terms of what I’ve seen.”

Walker looked at Lu Anne to see if what the man was saying made sense to her. So far as he could tell it did and she seemed profoundly interested.

“I don’t really understand,” he told Lowndes. “That sounds very complicated and ambitious.” He tried to imitate their smug amiable demeanor. “It’s a nice place to spend a couple of weeks. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.”

“You decline to take me seriously, Mr. Walker,” Lowndes said.

“I don’t get it, that’s all. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”

“I have all your scripts,” Lowndes told him. “Every one you ever wrote.”

Jon Axelrod, red and sweating, returned to the table and sat down wearily. “Holy shit,” he said. “Sorry.”

Walker stared across the table at Lowndes. The idea of this soft-spoken, pockmarked man poring over the hundreds and hundreds of scenes that he had written made him feel violated and ashamed. All those scripts, he thought — the record of petty arguments lost or won, half-assed stratagems and desperate compromises. A graph of meaningless motion like the tube-worm trails in a prehistoric seabed. Here and there some shining secret as withered and barren as a stone pearl in a fossil oyster.

He thought of the things written that he ought not to have written. They were like the things done that should not have been done. The things not written were worse.

“How’d you like them?”

Lowndes smiled.

“They’re really very good.”

“Gordo’s very good,” Axelrod said. “Ask anybody.” Axelrod was in the process of discovering an unwholesome stain on his sleeve. He touched his finger to the stain, brought it away, looked at his finger and excused himself again.

“Some things about your writing make me wonder,” Lowndes said.

“Ah,” Walker said. “Wonder about what?”

Walker took a quick look at Lu Anne. There was a fond smile on her lips. In the shadowy light her face was porcelain, as pale and witchy as a Crivelli madonna’s.

“Well, I’m a Georgia boy,” Lowndes said with suitably bucolic languor, “and maybe I’m just simpleminded. But it seems to me — goddamn — you guys got a magic lantern out here. Being simple-minded makes me think of all the things I’d like to try doing if I had the chance.”

Walker stirred his drink.

“You aren’t simpleminded, Mr. Lowndes. You know the secrets of the heart. I know you do because I read your book. It’s a true article, your book. It made me cry, what do you think of that?”

“With envy?” Lu Anne asked.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Walker said, looking into her fixed smile. He saw that she was off her head and in some character of her own construction. He rejoiced; he had thought it was really she there — cold, mocking and lost to him. “I don’t think envy makes you cry. It was for the usual reasons. For love of it.”

“Shit,” Lowndes said. “Love my dog, love me.”

He extended his hand. Walker looked at it, paused and shook it briefly.

“I see what you mean,” Walker said. “My compliments. But even if you were country-simple, as you plainly aren’t, even if you were Pogo’s great-grandpuppy, I’d have trouble believing you were as naive as you claim to be. I think you’re trying to make me feel bad about what I do.”

“Say that again?” Lowndes asked.

“I said that even if your grandfather was a fucking alligator you ought to know more about the movie business than that. Do you really need it all explained to you, or are you just trying to give me a hard time?”

“You got me wrong, man. You’re touchy.”

“I’m sorry. I had a long drive.”

“Don’t be sorry. Bein’ touchy’s good. It indicates you have your pride. Where’d you say you were from?”

“Kentucky,” Walker told him. “Lexington.”

“I wouldn’t have thought that,” Lowndes said. “But you know, I have relatives in Kentucky named Walker. I wonder if you’re one of those Walkers?”

“No,” Walker said.

“Well, let’s pretend my granddaddy was an alligator. How would you explain to me the screenwriter’s role?”

“Oh Christ,” Walker said, “the screenwriter’s role?”

“Is that the wrong terminology?”

“You have to believe that it’s worthwhile,” Walker told him, “and you have to accept the rules. You can’t be a solitary or an obsessive. You can’t despise your audience. It requires humility and it requires strength of character.”

Lowndes turned to Lu Anne.

“Now that’s a very eloquent defense of an often derided trade, don’t you think?”