by Robert Stone
“For instance,” he asked Lowndes.
“Jack believes,” Lowndes told them, “that Marty was the beginning of the end. It was all down thereafter.”
“Marty who?” Axelrod asked.
“The picture,” Lowndes explained. “The film of that name.”
Jack Best half rose to his feet.
“You,” he shouted at Walker. He turned to Lowndes and Jon Axelrod. “Him!”
“Yeah, Jack?” Axelrod asked softly. “That’s Gordon, Jack. What you wanna tell us?”
“I saw him years ago. I saw you years ago, Walker. I saw you and I was talking to King and I says”—he heaved a sigh and drew breath—“I says looka that guy. I says look. Because the guy—him. Walker. The guy has this stupid shirt on. A fuckin’ hippie shirt on. Hippie shirt. And his hair. And I says—King. King, I says. Is that a boy? Or a girl? And King says.” A mask of bewilderment closed over his features.
“We must infer what King says,” Lowndes declared.
Walker finished his own drink. “No,” he told them. “King says—fuck you, you disgusting little pissant of a flack. You’re not fit to lick the chickenshit off that talented young man’s shoes. You’re a drunken contemptible cipher, a dirty little hole in the world. A crepuscular fool, King says. A homunculus, King says. Go over to Oblath’s and cut your weaselly little rat throat, King says. Anyway,” Walker told them, “that’s the way I remember it.”
“Hey, Gordon,” Axelrod said, “you’re doing it again, man.”
“King?” Lowndes asked. “Vidor?”
“Kong,” Walker said. “Dennis King. Dolores King. Jack knew them all.”
Best appeared to have gone to sleep. Axelrod nudged him and he sat upright.
“The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” he told the people at the table. Everyone watched him. “That’s it,” he shouted. “The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” He choked and his head fell forward. Just before his nose hit the table he retrieved his posture and his face rose up at Walker like a creature from a black lagoon. He was shaken by spasms of what appeared to be laughter. He reached over and seized Walker’s arm and held it hard. “The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” he shrieked. Freitag and Robinson, the restaurant staff all turned to see him. His voice became a croak. “And the Sands … the Sands doesn’t …” He seemed too shaken by his fit of peculiar laughter to continue. “The Sands doesn’t even have a line!”
Having said so much, he uttered an explosive cry and fell face forward, still clutching Walker’s arm.
“What do you call that?” Axelrod asked.
Walker detached his arm from the old man’s grip.
“The riddle of the Sands,” he said.
The plaza of Bahía Honda town was not much to look at but it took on a little ragged charm at night. There was a raised pavement of whitewashed brick in the center, set around a single pink tile on which glitter-covered seashells had been pasted to form the numeral 1969. Under a row of naked bulbs at the edge of the sere football field, a few vendors were selling tortillas, ices, plastic sandals. The town’s few fishing boats were in port and there was laughter and music from one of the square’s two cafes. The other, opposite, stood empty, gloomy and ill lit. Before the town’s cinema, people of all ages and conditions stood in line for the evening showing of Dr. Zhivago. At the eastern end of the square, the town’s single church, an unimposing box of white masonry surmounted with a little bell tower, stood open for the Friday-night service of benediction.
As Bill Bly, with Lu Anne on his arm, walked past the queue, people fell silent to look after them. One or two of the free spirits in the crowd felt emboldened to whistle; it was Bly who provoked them. He was a man something less than six feet tall, he wore white slacks, a black tee shirt and a white baseball cap with the word SHAKESPEARE over the visor. His hair, spilling out from under his hat brim, was curly and seemed more golden blond than any number of tropical locations’ suns could bleach it. But Bly drew catcalls only from behind his back and only from innocents. The street-wise, the hustler or the desperado had only to check out the way in which he carried himself to know caution. He moved with the balance of a wire walker, as thoughtlessly well centered as an animal. The artisan class of the film industry cherished its Bill Bly stories: the amok knifer in the Philippines spun three hundred and sixty degrees on his own wrist; the bar louts laid out unconscious before they had stopped smiling. Bly worked as a bodyguard quite as often as he did as a stuntman and sometimes informally undertook both jobs at once. In his middle thirties now, he looked younger. He had been a stuntman since the age of fifteen.
Lu Anne walked, as it were, in the lee of him. She wore as her church clothes a beige skirt and blouse and a Spanish mantilla. As they walked up the church steps she clutched his elbow. At the door she smiled up at him. When she went in he lingered outside on the top step, watching the faithful as they passed, playing with a straw finger trap he had picked up in the market.
Benediction had not begun and there were only a few people inside the little church. Lu Anne walked across the stone floor to a crucifix that stood beyond two rows of votive candles to the right of the main altar. The crucifix was as old as anything in that empty quarter of the country, recovered from a fire on the mainland. Its crossbars were burned black, the seared Christus figure was tortured into a shape that made it look stylized and somehow modern. Its charred condition served to enhance the sense of martyrdom and elevated suffering it conveyed. Half a dozen worshippers stood or knelt rapt before it. Lu Anne took her place among them.
My God, she prayed, be there for me. So there is something there for me. So I am not just out in this shit lonely, deluded and lost.
The day’s work, the walk through the town among strangers had made her anxious, and the drink made her head ache. Strange sounds, echoes, toneless music rang in her inward ear. There was an incessant low chatter of inaudible, half-recognized voices. The voices bore some secret inference that made her afraid.
For a moment she thought she might be alarming the people around her. When she saw that they took no notice of her, she bowed her head.
Help me, Lu Anne prayed, You who are more real than I am. My only One, my Reality.
When she looked up at the crucifix she saw that the hanged Christ nailed to the beams had become a cat. It was burned black as the figure had been, its fur turned to ash, its face burned away to show the grinning fanged teeth. She looked away and with her face averted walked to the doorway of the church where Bly was waiting for her. When she was outside she leaned against the building wall, taking deep breaths, avoiding the gazes of the people who were coming in.
“Ain’t you gonna stay for the service?” Bly asked her.
She shook her head. As he stood watching her, she took hold of his arm about the biceps and with the nail of her right hand drew an invisible line around it. Bly stood by in confusion and embarrassment.
In the worst of times, Lu Anne thought, there’s meat.
On the terrace, Jack Best was coming to himself again. His eyes were filled with tears.
“The Sands,” he sputtered, “it doesn’t …”
Axelrod helpfully interrupted him. “It doesn’t have a line, am I right, Jack?” He turned to Lowndes. “I’m hoping this isn’t where you find your story.”
Lowndes stared at him for a moment without answering, then smiled.
“Certainly not,” he said.
In the garden outside, Walker suddenly saw the figure of a woman leaning against the terrace wall. The sight brought him to his feet. As he started toward her she moved away. He went faster, trying to get to her side before she was lost in the shadows. It was as though she were running away from him.
She was wearing her hair as she had worn it fifteen years before, he thought. He knew her silhouette, her moves, her aura.
“Lu Anne,” he called.
“I’m not her,” said a small antipodean voice.
Walker halted in confusion. When he c
ame nearer he saw that it was Joy McIntyre, a stand-in and body double who had once spent time with Quinn. Her husband was a stills photographer, Walker’s acquaintance and sometime connection. The photographer had initiated Joy’s career by spreading her frame across two pages of a slick nudie book.
“That’s twice today you fooled me,” Walker said.
“Gordon, is it? They won’t be happy to see you about.”
“You mean Drogue won’t. Where’s Lu Anne?”
“She’s in church,” Joy sniffed. “That’s what I heard.”
“Are you crying?” Walker asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Hoi,” Joy snorted. “I mean wow!”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m all right.” Her eyes in the darkness appeared wide and wondering.
“How’s Lu Anne?” Walker asked.
“Just fine,” Joy said. “Outside of being in church. Know where I’ve been?”
Walker considered his answer. “With someone?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
“O.K.”
“I’ve been up with Mr. Drogue.”
“Ah,” Walker said.
“Balling, like.”
“Well,” Walker said, “whatever turns you on, we used to say.”
“Not the younger Mr. Drogue,” Joy said unsteadily. “His dad.”
“Ah,” Walker said. “Well …” He broke off. Troubles enough of his own.
“I mean, I had to tell someone, didn’t I?”
“Strictly speaking,” Walker said, “no.”
“I said to him—‘Mr. Drogue, I’m shocked. It’s my turn to be shocked now,’ I said.”
“It’s probably for the best. He can help you. I think you probably did the right thing. Careerwise.”
“I’m not talking about it,” Joy said. “I’m going to forget it ever happened.”
“I will too,” Walker said. “I mean, I’ll forget everything you told me.”
“What have I told you?” Joy demanded. “I haven’t told you anything.”
“Right.”
“Old Ryder,” she said, “he’s your pal, isn’t he?” Ryder was the photographer, Joy’s husband.
“I don’t see him much anymore.”
“We split up, you know. Love lost its luster for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Walker said.
“Boring, like.”
“That’s life, isn’t it?” Walker said. “I mean,” he said, “when it’s there it’s there. And when it’s not it’s not.”
“Oh yeah,” Joy said. “Well, we tried getting the old moonlight and roses back. No way.” She shook her head. “He used to get me into trouble like tonight,” she told Walker. “I mean, he put me forward like that. It must be second nature to me now.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“Well, I’m not,” she told Walker. “I’m blaming him. He’s the one had me out doing that sleazy phornpone,” she said.
“Right,” Walker said.
He recalled that Ryder had coerced Joy into accepting a position as a lewd telephonist for a pack of Melrose Avenue fatsos who rejoiced in her cultured British accent. She had stayed with the job until the owner of the shop was murdered.
“Waste of time, that was,” Joy said.
“A waste of something.”
“See, we took a holiday up in Mendocino, Ryder and me did. Bloody rained. He was piss paranoid. Didn’t bloody speak. The television set was screwed. I spent the whole bloody time walking in the bloody rain.”
“It can be so pretty up there,” Walker said. “Are you sure you’re O.K.?”
“Yeah.” Joy shook her head, took a deep breath and looked at Walker once more as though she had discovered him that moment before her. “One thing,” she told him, “I saw two animals there. Two animals fighting on the beach.”
Walker brightened. “That must have been exciting,” he said. “What sort of animals?”
Joy sighed deeply. “I think they were winkles.”
“The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” Jack Best shrieked. One of the cooks had come out of the kitchen and was crossing herself. Axelrod and a waiter were struggling to get Best out the inner door. At the table where he had been sitting, Walker saw Lu Anne seated next to Dongan Lowndes.
“Well,” Joy said. “Another bloody night, eh, sport?”
“Right,” Walker said.
He walked into the bar, his heart beating faster. Once she seemed to look his way but her eyes never settled on him. He took the chair that Best had been sitting in.
“Hello, Gordon,” she said calmly.
Her casual greeting stung him like a blow.
“Hello, Lu Anne.”
“We’re having a wonderful time filming your script.”
“That’s great,” he said.
“We have quite a famous author down here to write a piece on us, Gordon. Mr. Dongan Lowndes. From New York Arts. Have you all met?”
“Yes,” Walker said. “We’ve met.”
“You know, Mr. Lowndes,” Lu Anne said, “there are whole passages from Naming of Parts that I can remember just by heart.”
“Lu Anne used to be the president of the Good Old Girls’ Good Old Book Club,” Walker told Lowndes.
He watched Lowndes’s slack mouth tighten. Walker’s hands were trembling and he kept them out of sight.
“You know,” Lowndes said, “a lot of times when Hollywood people tell you they like a book it turns out they’re referring to the studio synopsis.” He laughed rather loudly at his own observation.
“That’s not true of Lu Anne,” Walker assured him. “She’s a great reader.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Miss Verger. It’s just something I began to run into.”
“Was your book ever optioned?” Walker asked.
“Yes,” Lowndes said. “There was something up. I don’t know what became of it.”
“It would have been difficult to film,” Walker said.
“In those days I suppose I would have been thrilled to have it made. Now I realize that the world can get on quite well without a film version of that book.”
From where he sat it seemed to Walker that Lowndes had moved his chair very close to Lu Anne’s, that their bodies must be touching at some point and Lu Anne had made no move to draw away. She seemed to hang on his words.
“If we get into what the world can do without,” Walker said to Lowndes, “God knows where we’ll end.”
Lowndes smiled. His left hand was below the table; Walker could not escape the thought that he was fondling Lu Anne. Yet, he thought, it might all be pure paranoia. As for her, he had imagined every reaction to his arrival except the smiley indifference he was experiencing. He ordered another round of drinks.
“So,” he asked Lowndes when the drinks arrived, “how long have you been down?”
“Just a day,” Lowndes said. “I think.”
Lu Anne nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. A day.”
“Let me tell you a little about what I want to accomplish down here,” Lowndes told Walker. “You may find it interesting.”
Walker saw Lu Anne and Lowndes join hands behind their chairs.
“Why not?” he said to Dongan Lowndes. “Why not do that?”
“I really don’t think anyone’s ever written a good piece on the making of a film until after the fact.” Lowndes disengaged his hand from Lu Anne’s and went into his pocket for cigarillos. Walker declined; Lowndes lighted one for himself. “My thinking is—if I hang around here, see a little of it all going on—I can get an insight into the process. So I did a little boning up on who everybody was. Now I can watch them do their thing. Then I can analyze the final product in terms of what I’ve seen.”
Walker looked at Lu Anne to see if what the man was saying made sense to her. So far as he could tell it did and she seemed profoundly interested.
“I don’t really understand,” he told Lowndes. “That sounds very complicated and ambitious
.” He tried to imitate their smug amiable demeanor. “It’s a nice place to spend a couple of weeks. I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.”
“You decline to take me seriously, Mr. Walker,” Lowndes said.
“I don’t get it, that’s all. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”
“I have all your scripts,” Lowndes told him. “Every one you ever wrote.”
Jon Axelrod, red and sweating, returned to the table and sat down wearily. “Holy shit,” he said. “Sorry.”
Walker stared across the table at Lowndes. The idea of this soft-spoken, pockmarked man poring over the hundreds and hundreds of scenes that he had written made him feel violated and ashamed. All those scripts, he thought—the record of petty arguments lost or won, half-assed stratagems and desperate compromises. A graph of meaningless motion like the tube-worm trails in a prehistoric seabed. Here and there some shining secret as withered and barren as a stone pearl in a fossil oyster.
He thought of the things written that he ought not to have written. They were like the things done that should not have been done. The things not written were worse.
“How’d you like them?”
Lowndes smiled.
“They’re really very good.”
“Gordo’s very good,” Axelrod said. “Ask anybody.” Axelrod was in the process of discovering an unwholesome stain on his sleeve. He touched his finger to the stain, brought it away, looked at his finger and excused himself again.
“Some things about your writing make me wonder,” Lowndes said.
“Ah,” Walker said. “Wonder about what?”
Walker took a quick look at Lu Anne. There was a fond smile on her lips. In the shadowy light her face was porcelain, as pale and witchy as a Crivelli madonna’s.
“Well, I’m a Georgia boy,” Lowndes said with suitably bucolic languor, “and maybe I’m just simpleminded. But it seems to me—goddamn—you guys got a magic lantern out here. Being simple-minded makes me think of all the things I’d like to try doing if I had the chance.”