Robert Stone - Children of Light

Bly was looking down at her bare feet on his plastic doormat. He worked his jaws in embarrassment.

“I figured you were waiting for Gordon Walker.”

“I was,” she said. “I am.”

“Well,” Bly said, “he’s here.”

She shook her head.

“But I’m not, Pig. Just suddenly I can’t handle it. I told him — wait for tomorrow. He’s so nice, you know. He said he would.”

“You scared?”

“I am deathly afraid,” Lu Anne said. “I have to hide. I must.”

“Well,” Bly said, “this is the thing. I ain’t alone tonight.”

She stared at him and, without a sound, mouthed the words.

“Please. Pig.”

He watched her as though he were trying to gauge the measure of her fear. “You want to wait,” he said. She made a move to rush past him but he blocked her with half a step.

“Honey,” she whispered urgently, “I’ll talk to the boy. I’ll explain.”

“I told you to wait, Lu Anne. Now you wait.”

He closed the door and she leaned her head against it. When she heard the Mexican boy’s angry incredulous voice, she raised her hands to stop her ears.

After a minute or two, Bly opened the door and stepped aside. As she went into the large bedroom suite, she thought she caught a glimpse of a moving figure on the mountainside balcony. A pot broke on the tiles outside.

“Was he real mad?” Lu Anne asked.

“Yes, he was,” Bly said.

“He broke a pot, didn’t he?”

“Probably just knocked it over. Climbin’ down.”

“Honestly, Pig, I’d do it for you. I’ll make it up to you. You know there’s always a day and there’s always a way.”

“Just so you know, Lu Anne. It’s the same as if …”

“Pig,” she said earnestly, “I realize that, you know. I’m not so insensitive. Gosh, I hope you were … like … done.”

Bly shrugged. He was standing by the mirror taking his shirt off, checking his pecs.

“I never really feel done,” he said.

He was a serious man and not given to humor. It was Lu Anne’s delight to make him laugh. She rushed to him.

“I’m so happy now,” she said, “and I was so scared before.” On the counter she saw a cluster of amyl nitrate caps. She went over and stirred them affectionately with her forefinger as though they were a litter of pet mice.

“You want a Quaalude?” Bly asked.

“I can’t think of anything nicer,” she said brightly.

Bly’s tanned face reddened, he pursed his lips. It took Lu Anne a moment to realize that he was laughing. She hugged him.

“You smell so nice,” she said.

As he went into the bathroom for some Quaaludes, she realized that in the moment of their embrace she had felt him tense very slightly and that the moment of resistance to her body’s pressure constituted a discreet discouragement of any notions she might be cultivating of fun and games. It would not have been unconscious. Bly was as free of involuntary physical responses as a person could be.

They lay down on the unmade bed together and had their Quaaludes with ice water from a pitcher that sat on a silver salver on the floor.

“I could give that boy some money,” Lu Anne suggested. “I feel so bad about it.”

“He don’t want money. You know,” Bly added after a moment, “we get the wrong idea. Lots of these Mexican people — they don’t want money.”

“Forgive me,” she said.

“No problem. This time.”

The room was chill with air conditioning and the windows were closed. No breezes came from the mountainside. She snuggled next to Bly, put her hands on his muscular shoulders, then guiltily withdrew them.

“You know how it gets.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Now don’t think I have it mixed up, Pig. I mean, I always understood that you and me was a one-time thing. It wasn’t going to go on and all. Because of how we both were.”

“One of them bells,” Bill said, “that now and then rings.”

“How nice Quaaludes are,” she said. “The world is possible with art.”

He turned over, looked at her eyes and lay back on his pillow.

“What’d you tell Drogue about me?” she asked him. “You tell him I was O.K.?”

“You are as far as he’s concerned, Lu Anne. He doesn’t care how you really are. He’s just worried about his ass. Like Charlie’s worried about budget and insurance and all that.”

“How do you think I really am?”

“I don’t know. I can’t always tell because I ain’t as smart as you.”

“I was a quiz kid, Pig. Did you know that?”

Bly yawned.

“Lu Anne,” he said, “if you was half the things you claim you been you’d have to be seventy-five years old.”

“I’m older than people think,” she said sadly.

“I mean,” Bly told her, “I don’t know why you lie. I don’t understand it. You’re a great star, what more do you want? What are you trying to prove?”

She bit her finger and looked at him. Billy Bly believed in never borrowing money to gamble with, that it cost a fortune to erase tattoos, in reincarnation and in Great Stars. The Greater they were, he believed, the easier they were to get on with. Lu Anne was hot really a Great Star in Bly’s order of precedence but he afforded her an honorary inclusion.

“I want you to tell me location stories,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you some.”

Bill Bly loved location stories about high-rolling, monster fuck-ups and partying with Great Stars. He loved show business stories of all sorts. So did Lu Anne. Who didn’t?

“Hell,” Bly told her, “I told you all my good location stories a couple of times.”

It was a stylized demurrer. He told her about the Western director, mortally behind in a heavy poker game, who had heaved the once-in-a-lifetime pot into a bunkhouse fireplace. About the actor who had started shooting lights out from his Vegas hotel room. About misassignations, absurd love affairs, fights, comedians and local good-wives. Suits of armor pissed in, motel rooms filled with dirigible-sized polka-dotted water bags, child actors poisoned, chimpanzees released.

Lu Anne told Bill about Werner, the stunt bunny. The concept of Werner evoked his silent laughter.

“We had a stunt mule one time in Durango,” Bill said. “We had to pull his legs out from under him every time he got shot.”

“Werner was a European hare,” Lu Anne told Bill. “He was always wonderfully dressed and he had perfect manners. We met him at the airport and showed him his fall. It was down the south face of the Jungfrau. He looked that old mountain up and down. ‘Zo,’ he says. ‘Ach, zo.’ You’d a been scared, Pig. We said, ‘Can we get you anything, Werner?’ ‘Chust show me my marks,’ said Werner.”

Bly laughed again, his eyes closed. Lu Anne made a little man with her fingers and walked them along Bill’s chest.

“Werner had the nicest luggage you ever did see,” she told Bly. “He knew how to fold his napkin. You could take him anywhere. You could take him to Le Cirque.”

“Where the fuck’s that?”

She fingered a circle on his chest.

“Ever turn a trick, Pig?”

The sleepy smile on his face vanished. He opened his eyes but did not look at her.

“I guess you know the way I come up, Lu Anne. I guess you know the answer to that.”

“I’m sorry,” Lu Anne said, and shivered. “I was thinking about something. I was wondering about something. Hey, Pig, could I have another half a Quaalude?”

Bly stirred himself and put his feet on the floor.

“How come you asked me that?”

“I wanted to hear about it.”

“Well, it’s ugly as catshit,” he said. “It’s dirty and scary. It smells. Sometimes you dig it. You know yourself there’s plenty of people around here can tell you more about it than me.”