Robert Stone - Children of Light

“How do you come to be here?”

“Through friends.”

“Your friends?”

“Yes, why not? Is that your last question?”

“Let me guess,” Walker said. “You’re here through business connections of your father’s. Your father is something like a bookmaker-turned-mogul and he doesn’t sound like you at all. You’re doing the world, a little slumming, a little high life …”

“And you’re a fucking burned-out mediocre film writer with a whiskey face and no manners.”

“And here we are beside the Pacific. Just the two of us, more or less. As a film buff, do you think there’s a scenario here?”

“You’re not very highly regarded on this set. I was warned about you.”

“Well,” Walker said, “next time you’re warned pay attention. What were you supposed to do, keep me dangling with smiles and compliments?”

Helena turned away. “Keep you away from her. So you wouldn’t get her drinking or give her drugs.”

“When your old man turned you loose on the wide world, Helena, didn’t he warn you about pimps? Ponces? You let the people who sicked you on me — Drogue, Jon, whoever it was — turn you out. You pretended to like me. I could have gotten the wrong idea. I was supposed to.”

The young woman looked at him strangely for a moment.

“You’re a tenderhearted soul,” she said.

“Goddamn right,” Walker said.

“Flirtatiousness is fair, you know. It’s a legitimate device.”

“Of course it is.”

“I suppose you’ll go and see her.”

“I’ll go to her bungalow, yes. And you’ll report me.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I owe them hospitality. I don’t owe anything to you.”

“Helena,” Walker said. “If I find her — give us a while. You don’t have to go straight back to Axelrod.”

“It’s not right,” the woman said, “to give her drugs. You’ll harm her.”

“I’m not going there to give her drugs.”

“All right,” Helena said. “We’ll go back.”

They went back to the limousine; the driver left them near the beach at the base of the cliff.

“I’m sorry I was rude,” Walker said when they were out of the car. “I get angry all the time.”

“I really don’t mind exchanging insults,” Helena told him. “I was trained to it from an early age. Anyway, you’re the first person here who’s talked to me as though I were human.” She pointed down the beach toward a point beyond the curve of the cliff. “That’s where the bungalows are.”

“I know,” Walker said. “Give my best to the gang in Katmandu.”

She turned for the water’s edge. Walker trudged along the beach toward the row of bungalows.

A moment after his knock, through the closed door, he heard her startled motion; a shifting step on the tiles, the rustling of cloth. When she opened and saw it was he, she closed her eyes and opened them again.

“Thank God,” she said, and leaned her head against his breast.

“Amen,” Walker said.

She stepped aside to let him come in.

“Have you anything to drink, Gordon?”

“No,” he said. “And you shouldn’t.”

“Last night. I was so demented. I was out of my gourd. I couldn’t handle seeing you.”

“You went to Bly’s.”

She looked at him in alarm and shook her head.

“I went to Billy’s place to sleep because I didn’t want to sleep alone. I mean, he’s gay, Gordon. He’s my pal.”

“You had an affair with him once, Lu, I know you did. When I saw you creep off to him I was a little put out.”

“Gordon, you know I bend the truth from time to time.”

“We all forgive you, Lu. As best we can.”

“But I’m not lying now, Gordon. I went to Billy’s and he gave me a ’lude and we talked. I swear it. I’d just seen you — how could I make it with Billy? I may tell stories, Gordon, but I’m not capable of pushing that many buttons.”

“It’s funny,” Walker said. “I started out being jealous of that Lowndes guy.”

“He’s a piece of shit,” Lu Anne said. She stated it so positively and unemotionally that it sounded like a considered analysis.

“He wrote a good novel,” Walker said. “Of course,” he added with some slight satisfaction, “he only wrote one and that was a while ago.”

“I read his novel,” Lu Anne said. “I don’t care how many he wrote. He’s a piece of shit and he’s after me.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows I’m crazy and he wants to write about it in New York Arts. He’s always watching me.”

“Lu,” Walker said patiently, “he digs you.”

“Do you think,” Lu Anne asked brightly, “that if I called the room service people they’d send down a bottle of tequila?”

“Not if they’ve been told not to.” He paused a moment. “You can always try,” he heard himself say.

“ Mezcal ,” Lu Anne said wickedly, “that’s what we want.” She put her arm around Walker’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. In an instant, as though she had been posing for a quick snapshot, she leaped to the telephone. “We’ll have ourselves an alcoholic picnic. As we were wont.”

“We were wont to lose the odd weekend with our alcoholic picnics.”

Lu Anne ordered her mezcal without objection from the house. The prospect seemed to cheer her; she sat on the edge of the sofa with her hands clasped between her thighs watching Walker.

“Funny about last night,” he said to her. “You’re with Lowndes, you go off with me. You’re with me, you go off with Bly. Lots of La Ronde , entrances and exits, bedrooms and closed doors and nobody really gets any. Very Hollywood.”

“We used to think we were too late,” Lu Anne said. “That we had missed out on Hollywood.”

“How wrong we were.”

Within a few minutes, two waiters wheeled in a rolling table with a liter bottle of mezcal con gusano attended by bottles of mineral water, glasses, lemon wedges and an ice bucket.

Walker poured them out two glasses of straight liquor.

“How about you, Lu Anne?”

She took the drink and drank it down unflinching with a childlike greediness and poured herself another.

“You want to know, Gordon? How it is with me? Is it really your business?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“That I bend my eye on vacancy and with the incorporeal air do hold discourse?”

“Sure. And why. And if you want to, you’ll get to hear how it is with me.”

“You played Lear,” she said.

“Yes.”

“How was it?”

“It was like life but easier to take. I could spend the rest of my time on earth playing Lear.”

“I wish I could play Lear,” Lu Anne said. “Maybe I can. Beard up and play Lear.”

“You could play the Fool.”

Their eyes met. Lu Anne poured them more mezcal.

“That’s good,” Lu Anne said. “Because I could. We could do it together.”

“When this is over,” Walker said. “Well talk it up. I’ll talk to Al.”

“The hell with agents. Well do it on campuses. We’ll do it in church halls for free.”

“Yes.”

She took the bottle of mezcal and examined the little embalmed creature at the bottom of the bottle.

“The worm’s an odd worm.”

“I wish you the joy of it,” Walker said.

“I want to be Cleo too, Gordon. I’m tired of Edna. I’m glad she’s dead.” She sipped her drink and laughed. “I mean, I just can’t die too many times. I can’t get enough of it.”

“You’re such a ham, Lu Anne. You’re lucky you can act.”

“And you’re such a ham,” she said to him, “it’s a crying shame you aren’t any better.”

“What’s happening with Lionel? Where’s he gone?”