Robert Stone - Children of Light

As though in benison, Walter Drogue junior and Patty arrived, their plates piled high. Charlie and Patty Drogue exchanged kisses.

“Where’s your old man?” Charlie asked young Drogue. “Won’t he be joining us?”

Patty, who had hastened to stuff her mouth with food, attempted unsuccessfully to speak.

“He’s having a little trouble with his date,” young Drogue said.

“Yeah?” Charlie asked. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“You must have seen her, Charlie,” Drogue said. “The little Australian job with the dirty mouth?”

Freitag covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.

“Hilarious,” he said softly. He looked about guiltily as though old Drogue might catch him gossiping. “What a riot!”

“Best body on the unit,” young Drogue said. “Present company excepted.”

“That’s Wally,” Ann Armitage said. “I take it he’s in good health?”

“He damn well better be,” Freitag said. “I had a look at that little dollop.”

Lu Anne, knowing that in time she must, turned toward Dongan Lowndes. As she did so she felt what could only be his hand against her knee.

“Walking the bones, Mr. Lowndes?” she asked him.

His damp hand slithered off like a cemetery rat. She watched his face as the rat-hand fled home to him. His blunt features were momentarily elongated and rodentine as he reabsorbed it, the rat within. For all the effort in the world she could not tear her eyes from his nor could she feel a grain of pity. Let the rat stay wherein it dwelled, she thought. Let it gnaw his guts forever, feed behind his eyes. So long as she was safe from it.

Lowndes’s eyes were moist as he stared down her rebuke. She saw in them what he himself must take for human passion, desire, infatuation, an impulse to master the beloved. The trouble was that he was not a man. Not human.

“Mr. Lowndes,” she heard Axelrod say in a low voice, “you want to look at me when I talk to you?”

At last she tore her eyes free from Lowndes’s, a rending.

“Mr. Maldonado,” she asked the man across the table from her, “are you a good painter?”

Miss Armitage started to speak but fell silent.

“One’s never asked,” Maldonado said.

“Lu Anne,” Charlie said sternly, “Raúl is one of Mexico’s very finest painters. He shows throughout the world.”

“I should say so,” Miss Armitage said.

“I myself,” Charlie declared, “own some choice Maldonados. They’re on display in my home and to me — they mean Mexico. The sunshine, the sea. The whole enchilada.”

Maldonado and Miss Armitage looked at him coldly.

“You know what I mean,” he stammered. “Everything we so admire about …” He fell silent, looked at his plate and mopped his brow.

“Dad owns about a ton and a half of them,” young Drogue said.

“In bohemian company,” Lu Anne said, “or some equivalent, in some demimonde like ours — one faces the deliberately tactless question.”

Maldonado smiled faintly. “ Mierda ,” he said.

“You better believe it,” Ann Armitage said.

“Everybody here knows whether they’re good or not,” Lu Anne told him. “Given the least encouragement, everybody here is ready to say.”

“I am not a good painter,” Maldonado told the company. There was a momentary silence, then a chorus of demurrers.

“The great ones,” Charlie said with an uneasy chuckle, “they’re never happy with their work. They need us to encourage them.”

“I wish you were a good painter,” Lu Anne said to Maldonado. “Maybe you are, after all.”

“If for you I could be,” Maldonado said gallantly, “you may be sure that I would. Maybe for myself as well. But I think it would make my life difficult.”

Lowndes’s presence had quieted the Long Friends; they were out of temper again, out where she could not control them and where they might cause her some embarrassment. She began to feel panicky.

“Oh God,” she said, “where’s Gordon? I need him.”

“Jon,” Freitag said to Axelrod, “would you do me a favor and find your friend Walker? Be a pal.”

Even in the unsteady light it was apparent that Axelrod was red-faced with anger.

“Sure, Charlie,” he said. He put a hand on Lowndes’s shoulder again. “What do you say, Dongan? Want to help me find our pal Gordo?”

Lowndes brushed his hand away violently. “I don’t go for this tinseltown familiarity,” he told Axelrod.

“That’s not nice, Dongan,” Axelrod said.

“Mr. Maldonado,” Lu Anne said, “would you find him for me?”

“Can’t you walk?” Miss Armitage asked. “Find your own goddamn friends.”

Lu Anne was carefully pouring the decanted red wine into her glass. She drank it down.

“I can’t see so well,” she explained. “And there’s such a crowd.”

“Of course,” Maldonado said. “Mr. Walker. I’ll find him. I’ll go now.”

He touched his napkin to his mouth, although he had not been eating, and went off.

“Christ almighty, Charlie,” Miss Armitage said to her host. “Where do you get these people?”

“The same place I got you,” Charlie Freitag said brightly. There were no laughs for him at the table.

Walker was in the pool-house lavatory, sniffing cocaine from the porcelain surface of the sink, when the door opened behind him. In the mirror over the sink he saw a man framed in the doorway, discovering him in flagrante. The man appeared wild-eyed and disheveled; he was wearing a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck and dark trousers. It was an unwelcome sight.

“ Cocaína ,” the man said.

Walker turned slowly toward the man in the mirror and recognized Maldonado.

“It’s all right,” he said slowly, having no idea himself what he might mean.

“Among my friends,” the painter explained, “it’s frowned on as bourgeois. As gringo. My companion — Miss Armitage — is very bitter on the subject.”

“I’ll bet,” Walker said. He went past Maldonado to lock the door. “I thought,” he explained, “I had locked this.”

“No,” Maldonado said, “it was open. This is difficult,” he told Walker. “To have some or not?”

“Do have some,” Walker suggested. “I mean, it’s your decision of course.”

“I shall,” Maldonado said. “Why not?”

They took some. The painter paced, frowning.

“A case could certainly be made,” Walker said, “that it’s bad for the Indians. In terms of exploitation.”

Maldonado waved the argument away.

“It’s neither good nor bad for the Indians. It makes no difference for them. It’s ourselves and our societies that we’re destroying.”

“That’s as it should be,” Walker said.

They had more. Instead of pacing, Maldonado fixed Walker with a grave stare.

“Who is the woman, Walker?”

“Do you mean Lee Verger? You were introduced.”

“Lee Verger,” Maldonado repeated. “An actress?”

“A very good actress. Quite well known.”

“Is she acting now? Tonight? Performing?”

Walker hesitated.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Not really.”

“She’s your woman?”

“Yes,” Walker said.

“She sent me to get you. I’m not some house cat to be sent on such an errand but I obeyed her. She asked me if I was a good painter and I replied that I was not. I wanted to humiliate myself.”

“Well,” Walker said, “you’ve probably fallen in love with her.”

“I can explain,” Maldonado said. “I can explain to her. With your permission.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Walker said. “Let’s go back and talk.”

The party seemed to be going well as Walker and Maldonado made their way back to Charlie Freitag’s table. The violinists patrolled unmolested; happy conversation bubbled up from every quarter. Only at the party’s core, in the circle around Freitag, a dark enchantment prevailed.