Children of Light Read online

  He staggered as he walked and turned on her.

  “I mean,” he asked in a foggy voice, “you want to hear about the men’s room in the Albuquerque bus station? What you wanna hear?”

  “I’m sorry, Pig.”

  He brought her her half pill and she took it and he climbed into bed with her. They both got under a decorative Mexican quilt to shelter from the air conditioning.

  “I did once,” Lu Anne said. “In New Haven. After the show. It was winter. We were doing As You Like It. I played Rosalind.”

  “You told me a thousand times about that night, Lu Anne, and you never told me that. I think that’s foolishness.”

  “No,” she said. “No, it’s true. A man offered me two thousand dollars. He was a depraved Shakespeare scholar. He would stop at nothing to have me and I suspect he was a Jesuit. ‘Top it off with harlotry,’ he said, ‘you’ll feel like a million and you’ll make an old man very happy.’ ”

  “Bullshit, man,” Bly murmured. His eyes, half open, stared into his pillow.

  “He took me down Stoddard Street,” Lu Anne told Bill. “The cast was holding one of those Communist-inspired parties we used to have in those days with drugs and promiscuity but I didn’t stay for it. I snuck right out of that green room. I was wearing my fake rat fur coat and he took me down Stoddard Street. I remember the Valle’s steak house with all the red snowflakes. He said, ‘It’s Ganymede I’m after’—I said no foolin’? Because they always are, I assure you. I mean, he wasn’t telling me a thing I didn’t know myself.”

  “So,” Bly struggled to ask, “did he buy you a steak?”

  “He took me to a house on a hill. Greek revival. It belonged to another century. The furnishings were exquisite and all the walls were glass. Old glass. From every room you could see all the others, you could see rainbows and tropical fish, everything crystal, Pig, and firelight in the mirrors and outside the glass walls the red snow was falling. In every room there were little glass bells, they shined and they tinkled. Of all the rooms, Pig, there was one into which a body could not see. And do you know why that was?”

  “Well, sure,” Bly said. His eyes closed. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because it was curtained off in furs. And that was where we went. And the man said, ‘You are the finest Rosalind that ever was, my dear child.’ He says, ‘I’ve traveled the world,’ he says, ‘I’ve seen them all, Stratford and the Aldwych, forget ’em all,’ he says. ‘Your voice is dulcet and you know your blocking and your moves are neat.’ ”

  Bly roused himself slightly. “Hot shit for you, Lu Anne. Did he give you two thou?”

  “Better,” Lu Anne said. Bly smiled and she stroked his neck.

  “Better than two? Three?”

  “Better,” she whispered. His eyes closed but the happy smile lit his lean face.

  She leaned her head on his shoulder. Great silly Quaalude tears like Disney raindrops were rolling down her cheeks.

  “If you can hustle, Billy,” she whispered to Bly, “you don’t have to go home. You need never. You can’t ever.

  “Pig?” she asked. “You hear my little ’lude poem, home?”

  His smile had drained away into sleep. It looked to her like dying. “You get to have a few laughs,” she told the aging boy asleep beside her, “but your head will fucking kill you.”

  Early the next morning, Walker was treading water in the lukewarm Pacific. He felt less driven after his sedated sleep. His face was turned toward the beach and the dry mountains that rose above the coastal cliffs. The peaks outlined against the morning sky formed a contrast of surfaces so pure and unambiguous that it was literally joy to behold. As he basked in the day’s matutinal innocence, his hangover salved with cocaine, he became aware of a disharmony. On the beach itself, still half in shadow, he saw a small man in the resort’s livery struggling with a second man twice his size. Walker set out toward shore and as he swam he recalled Joy McIntyre’s story of rained-out romance. Two animals fighting on the beach.

  He picked up his towel, threw it over his shoulders and walked toward the scene of conflict. Winkles.

  One of the hotel’s bellmen was attempting to bring a drunken man to consciousness by standing him upright. Having attempted several mechanical strategies to accomplish this, he had fallen back on the old heave-ho and was pulling on the man’s arm.

  “You’ll dislocate his shoulder,” Walker told the bellman. Together they took the drunken man by his underarms and balanced him on his heels. Walker saw that it was Dongan Lowndes.

  “I never seen him,” the bellman said. “I don’t think he’s from the movies.”

  Walker saw Jon Axelrod descending a coral stairway toward the beach. A black-haired girl of singular beauty whom Walker had never seen before stood watching from the lowest turreted landing, a princess in a tower.

  “Lookit the fucking guy,” Axelrod said. “Mr. Class. His first drink in three years, he says. Then has about twenty of them.”

  “In the sun,” the bellman told them, “he can die.”

  “Listen,” Axelrod told the servant, “this isn’t your job. Go get Mr. Bly—you know who I mean?”

  The youth nodded.

  Axelrod, gripping Lowndes by the one arm, took a loose bill from his pocket.

  “Go get him. Wake him up if you have to.”

  The bellman pocketed his bill and ran off up the stairway. As he passed the girl on the landing he paused to bow and smile deferentially before bolting on up the higher stairways.

  “In the sun,” Axelrod said in imitation of the bellman, “he can die. Because he already fuckin’ dead. And he no make it home to his coffin.”

  “What are you looking for?” Walker asked. “A weapon?”

  “I wanna see if he’s wired. Some of these fucks, you say something dumb and they write it down. You sue them and next thing you find out they were wired. I’m gonna get Billy to go through his room for a video camera.”

  “You think he’d do that?” Walker asked. “He’s the correspondent of New York Arts, not Confidential.”

  “Some of these writers are the lowest scum that ever walked the earth,” Axelrod explained. He looked thoughtfully at Walker. “Then there’s some that are O.K.”

  The smell of Lowndes’s sweating body was making Walker sick. He turned his face to the wind.

  “Who’s the lady?” he asked Axelrod.

  “That’s Helena,” Axelrod told him. “She’s our valued assistant. She’s going to show you around. Come down, doll,” he called up to Helena. “Help us hold up this guy.”

  Helena descended the last flight of steps. She was blue-eyed and lightly freckled. The expression of condescending concern with which she regarded Lowndes made Walker feel like a zookeeper displaying a sick seal.

  “Is he drunk?” Helena asked in the British interrogative.

  “He’s in deep alpha state,” Axelrod said, “from trying to meditate with his clothes on. Helena, this is Gordon Walker.”

  “Ah,” Helena said brightly.

  Walker braced his legs to adjust his leverage on Lowndes and reached out to take her hand.

  “Helena will show you around,” Axelrod told Walker. “She’s been wanting to meet you.”

  “Oh,” Walker said. “Well.” He looked at the young woman to see if such a thing might be true and saw quickly that it was not.

  “Your script is wonderful,” Helena said. “It’s going to be a marvelous film.”

  Lowndes pulled himself free of their hold and immediately lost consciousness again. Walker and Axelrod just managed to catch him.

  “You know what I think?” Axelrod said after a moment. “I think fuck this.” He let go of Lowndes and Walker did the same. The author collapsed in a heap at their feet.

  “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.”

  “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.”