Robert Stone - Children of Light

“ Hey ,” he called to Janet Gaynor. “ Mind if I take just one more look? ”

Old Drogue picked up the remote-control panel and stopped the frame. His eyes were filled with tears.

“Listen to me,” he told the others, “this guy was the greatest screen actor of all time. That line — the emotion under it — controlled — played exactly to movie scale. There was never anyone greater.”

Joy McIntyre lay on some heaped cushions beside him, weeping unashamedly.

“Wellman was good,” the younger Drogue said.

“The vulnerability,” old Drogue said, “the gentleness, the class of the man. Never again a Fredric March. What a guy!” He let the film proceed and settled back with head on Joy’s bare belly. “You see what I mean, sweetheart?” the old man asked his young friend. But Joy was too overcome to reply.

“Look at the nostrils on Gaynor,” young Drogue said. “She acted with her nose.”

“Do I have to remind you that she started before sound?”

“I love it,” Patty Drogue said. “ Before sound. ”

“She was ultra-feminine,” old Drogue said.

The younger Drogue studied the images on the screen.

“Her face suggests a cunt,” he said.

The old man sighed.

“I don’t know why it does,” young Drogue said. “It just does.”

“You’re a guttersnipe,” Drogue senior said.

“Something about the woman’s face, Dad. It makes a crude but obvious reference to her genitals.”

“Some people are brought up in poverty,” the old man said, “and they become cultivated people. Others grow up spoiled rotten with luxury and become guttersnipes.”

“You look at her face,” young Drogue declared, “and you think of her pussy.” His brows were knotted in concentration. “Can that be the primal element in female sexual attraction? Can it explain Janet Gaynor?”

“People are surprised,” Drogue senior said quietly, “when they find out you can get sex education lectures at the morgue. They’re not in touch with the modern sensibility.”

Joy was glaring sullenly at young Drogue. The old man shifted his position, the better to fondle her.

“What does he mean,” Patty Drogue asked her husband, “sex education lectures at the morgue?”

“In San Francisco,” young Drogue said absently. “The coroner explains about bondage. Pops got fixated on this.”

On the screen, Fredric March’s body double was wading toward the setting sun. This time it was Drogue junior who stopped the frame.

“This one was the best,” his father said smugly. “Of all the walk-into-the-ocean movies this one was it.”

“In the Mason and Judy Garland,” his son told him, “the Cukor version, the scene’s exactly the same. Frame for frame.”

“The scene is conditioned by what’s around it. The other one is a Judy Garland film. Entirely different thing.”

Young Drogue went pensive.

“Well,” he said, “with Judy Garland now, see, she …”

“Stop,” his father said sternly. “I don’t want to hear it. Whatever idiotic obscenities you were about to utter — keep them to yourself. I don’t want to hear your sexual theories about Judy Garland. I want to go to my grave without hearing them.”

“Some of us want to remember Judy the way she was,” Joy McIntyre said primly.

“Who the fuck asked you?” young Drogue inquired.

Old Drogue kissed Joy on the thigh to soothe her.

“Ours is the best,” the young director declared. “We took a great risk to honor the author’s intentions. We had to reinvent a virtual chestnut because it was in the book.”

“You’re lucky you had a strong script,” his father told him.

They watched Norman Mayne’s funeral and the end of the film.

“There was another Cukor version, right?” young Drogue asked. “Before Wellman’s. It had a walk to the water, didn’t it?”

“There was What Price Hollywood? by Cukor. It’s a similar plot but it doesn’t have anyone in the water.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely certain,” the old man said.

The chimes of the main door sounded. Patty rose to her feet and lifted the drawn shutters to peer out.

“Tell them to fuck off,” said Drogue minor.

“It’s Jack Best,” she said. “But he doesn’t look his jack best, ho ho.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t,” young Drogue said.

“Please don’t be rude to Jack,” his father told him. “He’s got a job the same as you. And he’s been doing stills for us.”

“He’s been underfoot all morning with his stills,” the young director said, going to the door. “Helena saw him trailing after Walker by the beach — like we’re going to sell the movie with Walker’s picture.”

He opened the door to Jack Best, who did in fact appear ill and unhappy.

“Jack, baby,” he said cheerfully, “what’s this we hear about the choreographer at the Sands?”

“Ah,” Jack muttered biliously. “Dumb gag.”

“I didn’t even know the Sands had a line,” Patty Drogue said.

“It doesn’t,” her husband assured her. “Would you like a drink, Jack?”

Jack Best mastered a slight spasm of his jaw. Patty hastened to fix a whiskey and soda for him.

“Dumb gag,” he said. He took the drink from Mrs. Drogue and swallowed half of it. “One too many.”

“So what do you want here, Jack? Where’s your camera?”

Best finished his drink and looked lugubriously about the room. His eyes were bright with the squamous resentment of an old snapping turtle.

“We got trouble,” he said. He was holding a magazine in his hand. He opened it to reveal a photograph that had been inserted between its pages. He put the magazine aside and clutched the photograph to his breast. Everyone in the room looked at it.

“Run along, my dear,” old Drogue said kindly to Joy. “I’ll join you very shortly.” As Joy left pouting, the old man blew her a kiss.

“I can’t believe,” Patty Drogue said, “that you talk to her like that.”

“What’s the pic, Jack?” young Drogue asked.

Best looked from father to son in a state of agitation. He showed his teeth like a frightened pony.

“Miss Verger,” Jack said. “And that Walker. They been shacked up all day.”

The Drogues, father and son, exchanged glances.

“Yeah?” young Drogue asked. “So what?”

Best tried to hand his picture to the old man. His son intercepted it.

“Walker been mistreating you, Jack?” young Drogue asked, turning the picture face up. “He’s such a troublesome guy.”

He looked down at the picture for some time. His wife came to look at it over his shoulder.

“Golliwilkins,” she said. “Gag me with a spoon. And I was so reassuring to poor Lionel.”

The photographs were sunlit shots of Lu Anne and Walker naked in bed. Walker was holding a small shiny rectangle while Lu Anne sniffed at its surface through a drinking straw.

Young Drogue handed the picture to his father.

“So what’s this, Jack? A handout?”

“They got a whole bunch like this,” the aged publicist croaked urgently. “It’s a shakedown.” He turned rather desperately to old Drogue. “Right, Wally? Like when Eddie Ritz had those pictures of Mitch? That’s what it’s like.”

Drogue senior looked from the picture to his old friend. He shook his head sadly, put the print down and walked out of the bungalow.

Finding himself abandoned to the rising generation of Drogues, Jack Best began to shake. The ice in his glass tinkled audibly.

Young Drogue watched him with a bemused smile.

“This is odd,” he told his wife. “I think these were taken very recently. I think they were taken here. On our very own location.”