Robert Stone - Children of Light

“We should bury him in sand up to his neck,” Axelrod said, “as a warning to assholes.”

Bly came jogging along the beach toward them. When he saw Walker he drew up short and approached at his stealthy, carefully centered amble. He looked down at the crumpled form of Dongan Lowndes, then at Walker.

“Come on, Bill,” Axelrod told Bly, “let’s get this turkey on ice.”

Bly with very little seeming effort drew Lowndes from the sand and shouldered him. Axelrod steadied the burden with his right hand.

Walker saw that Bly was smiling at him. The smile seemed friendly enough, not triumphant or malicious. In any case, Walker looked away. When Bly and Axelrod went off with the prostrate Lowndes, he found himself alone with Helena.

“Had breakfast?” she asked him. He had been on his way to Lu Anne’s cabana, hoping somehow that she had not spent the night with Bly after all. The notion to swim had seduced him en route.

“No. Have you?”

“I haven’t, actually. Shall we get some coffee?”

“Yes,” Walker said. “Yes, of course.” Helena’s beauty, her youth and her lightly pretended interest in him made Walker suddenly quite sad. The sadness and the thought of Lu Anne with Bly hit him with the force of his rallying hangover and fatigue. He required a line but the cocaine was hidden away in his suitcase in his room.

“We’ll walk up, shall we?” he proposed to Helena. “Then I’ll just have to get something from my room.”

Helena threw him a stagey smile and they walked up the coral steps together. He was tense, unhappy, out of breath. Helena seemed at the point of song.

Breakfast was being served on the terrace that adjoined the bar. Walker took a table with Helena, ordered them coffee with Mexican sweet rolls and excused himself.

He reached his room just ahead of the chambermaid, hung up his No Molestar sign and hurriedly prepared himself a measure. In his haste he had more than he intended; the effect was neither exhilaration nor the horrors but a confused enthusiasm without object. He felt for the moment as if he had replaced his true emotions, whatever they might have been, with artificial ones, artificially flavored. When he went out this time he brought a paper fold of cocaine in his beach bag, wrapped in foil to keep it from melting in the heat.

Jon Axelrod and Jack Glenn had joined Helena at the breakfast table.

Glenn and Walker, who had not seen each other for a year or so, shook hands.

“This is the only man I know who likes Mexican locations,” Jack Glenn told the people at the table. “I hope you didn’t come to make changes.”

“I am death,” Walker said, “destroyer of worlds. I’ve come to write people out of the script.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack Glenn said.

Walker picked up his coffee and drained half of it at a swallow. It was really liquor he wanted, something to slow him down now that he was speeded up.

“To some people,” he declared, “Mexican locations are just dollar-ante poker and centipedes. I’m not like that.”

“Really?” Helena asked.

“I come,” Walker said, “to see the elephants.”

“Well,” Helena said. “This is all very tame stuff, if you ask me. Outside of the usual drunks. It’s so tranquil and businesslike it’s almost boring.”

Walker saw that she was pitching Jack Glenn. He found himself liking Helena a little less each moment.

“That could change overnight,” he told her.

“The last thing I did yesterday,” Axelrod said, “was put a drunk to bed. And what was the first thing I did this morning?”

“It’s psychodrama,” Glenn said. “All location shows are psychodrama.”

“Some of us get a little more psycho than others,” Axelrod said.

There was a brief tense silence.

“A friend of mine was down here making a movie a couple of years ago,” Glenn told them. “It was over by San Miguel. They were all staying at a hotel there and the restaurant cashier fell madly in love with him.”

“I do hope this has a happy ending,” Helena said.

“The thing was, he never even noticed her. So she went home to her village warlock and got a love potion. Like condor wattles and iguana testicles — she had the cook slip them into his huevos rancheros. ”

“Did it work?” Axelrod asked.

“It worked fine. They had to fly him out in a helicopter. I mean, it was Mexico and everybody was sick, but this guy was ready for El Morgue-o. He sent for a priest.”

“What about the girl?” Helena asked.

Axelrod lit a cigar. “She married the cook.”

“Those were the days,” Glenn said, “when the movies spelled romance. ”

Walker stood up and as he did so Helena and Axelrod exchanged quick glances.

“I’m coming with you,” she told Walker gaily. “I’m to show you around.”

“She’ll show you the location,” Axelrod told him. “You can go to the beach. Tonight Charlie’s giving a party for you.”

“Good,” Walker said. “Then you get to carry me home.”

“Writers sleep on the beach, Gordon.”

In the moment before they left the table, Walker noticed Helena try without success to catch Jack Glenn’s eye. She was out of luck, he thought with malicious satisfaction. Jack worked harder at sex than anyone Walker knew and did not miss his moments.

Walker went with Helena to the production offices, which were deep in early morning silence. One of Axelrod’s pistoleros was summoned to drive them to the setup. The drive was accomplished in silence. Helena’s good humor was turning steely. When they were at the setup, their driver got out and waited in the shade of a live oak tree. Walker and Helena sauntered along the trolley tracks toward the bay.

The trolley was parked at the end of the line. Walker climbed aboard, felt the brasswork and the varnished benches.

“Frank found that one in Texas,” Helena told Walker briskly. “He worked from the old Grand Isle photographs. Piece by piece, he found it all fairly close by.”

“How about Frank,” Walker said.

From the trolley, they walked across the waving fields of mock camomile to the dunes. Walker looked over the bathhouse and then walked along the beach to the camera track where Drogue’s Titan had rolled the night before. A couple of Mexican watchmen hunkered by the trolley, watching.

“It must be a kick,” Helena said, “seeing all this. I mean, all of it coming out of something you wrote.”

“Definitely,” Walker said. “A kick.” He was looking out over the bay toward a raft on pontoons that was anchored some forty feet offshore. It was secured by cables to pulleys on the shore to keep it steady in the chop. “Once they built a house I used to live in. Reproduced it in every detail inside and out. It probably cost them more to do it than it cost to build the actual house.”

“You must have been thrilled.”

“As I recall, I was thrilled. It was a long time ago and I’ve done a lot of shows since.”

“And now you take it all in stride? Or find it boring? Or what?”

“What’s that raft out there for?” he asked Helena.

“Walter thought he might want a reverse angle on Edna’s walk. There would have been a bloke on it with a Steadicam.”

“Dr. Zoom,” Walker said. The patches of troubling weather he had seen earlier were still hovering offshore.

“I mean,” Helena said, “I don’t see how you can be so superior about it.”

Walker looked at her. “You’re a film student?”

“No,” she said. “I … just like films. I respect them. I respect the people who make them.”

“Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

“I’m not,” she said, protesting. “Maybe I think more highly of cinema than you do. I’m sure I know less about it.”