Robert Stone - Children of Light

“We’re gonna make him sweat,” Axelrod said. “If he doesn’t deliver maybe we should throw him off the set and tell Van Epp he’s unethical. That way we might kill the story before he writes it. Then Van Epp has nothing to fight for.”

“Let’s see how it goes tonight,” Drogue said. “But I don’t want to get involved. If you want him off the set you have to go to Charlie.”

“Charlie should be outraged,” Axelrod said. “The guy’s supposed to be high-class and he deals with blackmailers.”

“Charlie’s instinct will be to buy him out. Put him on the payroll. Option his next book. Wait and see.”

“You should advise him not to do that.”

“I can’t advise him,” Drogue said. “My father can advise him. Not me.”

“What are you gonna do with Jack?”

“I should pour salt down his throat and make him walk to Tijuana. But since he’s Dad’s old pal I guess I’ll pay him off and fly him home. For my father’s sake.”

“Wow,” Patty said, “that’s Christ-like.”

“Damn right,” Walter Drogue junior said. He picked up one of the photographs and examined it. “This is a truly ugly picture,” he said. “I’ll never be able to look at these two turkeys in the same light.”

“Walker’s into it.”

“Walker’s a bum,” Drogue said. “He’s going to end up like Jack.”

“A lot of them do,” Axelrod said.

“He’s got no survival skills,” the director said. He looked at the picture again. “Neither of them have.”

Patty Drogue lit a joint and took the picture from her husband.

“If any kind of shit hit any kind of fan,” Drogue asked Axelrod, “not that I think it will — do you suppose Walker has some kind of moral turpitude thing in his contract? Some kind of Fatty Arbuckle-type thing?”

“That would cut him out and take his points? I don’t know, Walter. It’s not my department. I doubt it.”

“I’m not trying to take the guy’s points, Axelrod. Why does everybody suspect me of being other than a nice person? I just wondered what kind of risk he ran.”

“Not much,” Axelrod said. “Not like she does.”

Walter took a drag on the joint and gave it back to his wife.

“Sometimes I’m inclined to think this is all Charlie’s fault,” he said. “Charlie’s a silly man. Silly shit happens around his pictures.”

“Really,” Patty Drogue agreed.

“The sixties,” Walter Drogue said to them. “You think they were that great?”

Axelrod shrugged.

“Everybody shoplifted,” Patty Drogue said. “People handed out flowers. You could get laid three times a day with an ugly body.”

“That’s all over now,” Axelrod said.

Bathed, anointed, as cool and clean as chastity, she climbed the lighted path. Walker came behind her, walking carefully. They passed a garden bar and lighted tennis courts, following a yucca-bordered path that led to Charlie Freitag’s casita.

The casita’s sunken patio was lit by flickering torches, set at intervals along its border of volcanic stone. A party of grim mariachis was performing; their music seemed strangely muted to Lu Anne, as if each brass note were being instantly carried off on the wind.

Axelrod appeared from the darkness. He smiled at her and hurried past, approaching Walker. The Long Friends, jubilant, fanned out among the guests. She thought it odd that they seemed happy there.

Across the patio from the musicians was a walled barbecue pit where white-capped chefs labored over a spitted joint. The air was smoky with roasting beef. A great cauldron of boiling sauce stood to one side of the pit and, nearby, a company of men in toques blanches sharpened carving knives. The waiters had set up a buffet and a long well-attended bar.

Axelrod and Walker were conspiring.

“Fuck him then,” she heard Walker say. “Is he here?”

“Not yet,” Axelrod answered. He turned to Lu Anne. “How are you, Lu?”

“A little tired,” she said. He was studying her. His hard features were firelit. “Will that do?”

“It’ll do fine,” Axelrod said. “Remind her, Gordo. She looks beautiful but she’s a little tired.”

She tried working with them.

“When they ask me how I am,” she assured them, “or how I feel, I’ll say a little tired.”

“Smile,” Walker told her, “when you say it.”

“I’ll try it with the smile,” she said dutifully, “and if it works I’ll keep it.”

She thought some quarrel might be breaking out among the Long Friends, some dispute over precedence or family history. Her anxiety quickened.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. In the patio below, Freitag’s guests were mingling, carrying their drinks among the cloth-covered buffet tables. There were not so many of them as she had thought at first. Her Friends hung on the edge of the light.

“It’s fine,” Walker assured her. “It’s nice here.”

“It’s just friends,” Axelrod said. “Just …” He paused; both he and Walker were watching Dongan Lowndes descend into the lighted garden, making for the bar.

“Just buddies,” Walker said.

“Let’s get down there,” Axelrod told them.

Smiling, unclear of vision, Lu Anne strolled among the guests with Walker at her side. He was conducting her to Charlie.

She went to him in expectation of elaborate greeting but he simply took her by the hand. His fondness seemed so genuine that it made her sad. She thought she could feel Walker beside her grow tense with a suitor’s unease, as though Charlie were his rival.

“You lovely girl,” Charlie said. “You champion.” He turned to Walker. “Want to ask me if I like it?”

A tall horse-faced woman with prominent front teeth stood at Charlie’s elbow. Next to her was a stocky Latin man with a dour Roman face and straight black Indian hair that fell in a sweep across his forehead. He was in black tie and dinner jacket, the only man present in formal clothes.

“You like it,” Walker said. “Have you spoken to Walter?”

In the grip of his emotion, Charlie Freitag turned and sought Walter Drogue among his guests.

“Walter,” he fairly shouted. “Call the director!” A few people turned toward him in alarm. “Get over here, Drogue!” The party recognized his good humor and relaxed.

Walter Drogue made his way to Freitag’s side and a circle began to form around them. Lu Anne saw Lise Rennberg, Jack Glenn and Eric. George Buchanan sipped Perrier. Carnahan and Joy McIntyre were dissolved in rowdy laughter. When he had gathered his principals about him, Charlie raised his glass. “Here’s to all of you,” he proclaimed. “Artists of the possible!”

“And absent friends!” Joy McIntyre cried. Freitag, who had no idea who she was, looked at her strangely for a moment, his smile on hold.

“Like father, like son,” Charlie told Walter Drogue junior when they had quaffed their cup of victory.

The young director gave forth with an insolent simper, the malice of which was lost on Big Charlie Freitag.

“It ain’t over till it’s over, Charlie.”

Freitag’s eye fell on Dongan Lowndes.

“Mr. Lowndes,” he said, “you’ve been lucky. You’ve seen this business at its best. You’ve seen a fine picture made by serious people and it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Lowndes said thickly.

“Maybe we can get you to come out and work with us someday.”

Ignoring Charlie, Lowndes looked at Lu Anne for a moment and turned on Walker.

“Would I like it?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“Well,” Walker told him, “it beats not working.” Everyone laughed, as though he had said something funny.

Charlie performed introductions for the Mexican and Dongan Lowndes. The others were known to one another. The tall woman was Ann Armitage, a former comic actress and the widow of a blacklisted writer. The Mexican was Raúl Maldonado, a painter.