by Robert Stone
“You in training for the race?” the bartender asked.
“That’s right,” Browne said.
“Yeah?” the young woman said. “Too bad.”
The other girl laughed explosively at her friend’s effrontery.
Browne gave them a sad smile and went off with the drinks.
The barmaid made a show of calling after him. “Hey, Mr. Browne! You’re jammin’!” In fact she called only loud enough for Strickland and her friend to hear. The two girls laughed together.
“Like him?” Strickland asked.
She acted out a moment’s reflection.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, and laughed with her friend. Then the other girl went back to her serving station and she was alone with Strickland.
“Think he’s going to win?”
“Definitely,” she said.
“Why?”
“Well,” she said, “because I like him.”
“Because he’s jammin’?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“You mean,” Strickland asked, “you find him attractive?”
The corners of the young woman’s mouth began to turn down.
“How’d you like to be in a movie?” he asked her. “A movie about the race.”
She looked at him unhappily without answering.
“What’s your name?”
The girl swallowed and, under his stare, recited her name, which was Carol Cassidy.
“Stay loose, Carol Cassidy,” Strickland said. “This summer we’ll be filming and I’ll come back and we’ll talk some more, O.K.?”
The girl nodded.
“Now tell me,” Strickland said, “who’s in charge of all this?”
“Well,” the girl said, “Captain Riggs-Bowen, I guess.”
“And which one is he?”
A reporter with a plastic press card hung around his neck came up to the bar. Carol Cassidy took a quick look around and started making the reporter’s drink.
“I don’t see him,” she told Strickland. “But you’ll find him. He’s English. And like very distinguished?”
Setting off around the room, Strickland regretted not having brought his camera. As it stood, he would have to retain the essence of the place in his mind’s eye. But surely, he thought, there would be other such scenes.
The single-handed sailors had been gathered for photographs in the middle of the trophy room. Amid the buzz, Strickland detected a Briton’s upscale, mellow tones. Homing in on the signal, he saw a man he presumed was Captain Riggs-Bowen in conversation with two admiring ladies. He stood by until the ladies drifted off.
“Excuse me, Captain?”
Riggs-Bowen turned an insolent stare on him. He had a brick-red blood-pressure mask around his eyes, which resembled those of a raptor. The irises were light blue and oyster-shaped. Gotta get him in the flick somehow, thought Strickland.
“Who’s g . . going to win?”
“Well,” the captain said, “we don’t know, do we? They’ll race and we’ll see.”
“Any favorites?”
Riggs-Bowen scanned Strickland’s person for some clue to his identity. Strickland wore none.
“Press, are you?”
“Media. Will it be close?”
“Hard to say,” Riggs-Bowen said. “Impossible.”
“Are they all good?”
“Not necessarily. We don’t vet them, you know. If they have a sponsor, they’re in.”
“How about Browne? What do you think of him?”
“Nice fella. As far as I know.”
Strickland looked at the posing sailors.
“Who are the two people with him?”
“His wife,” Riggs-Bowen said, “and his press agent.”
“Really?”
Riggs-Bowen assumed the patient, patronizing tone with which he was most comfortable.
“It’s not unusual for them to have press agents, you know. Sometimes they have literary agents as well. That’s how these things are today.”
“His wife is nice looking,” Strickland said. The captain’s keen glance widened slightly. “And,” Strickland went on, “he has the eyes of a poet.”
Riggs-Bowen favored him with a dark smile.
15
STRICKLAND introduced himself to the Brownes over the telephone. It was arranged that he would join Owen and Anne on Steadman’s Island for a brief weekend.
He arrived early Saturday morning by chartered plane from New York. He brought along videotapes of two of his films: Under the Life, which was about a prostitute named Pamela Koester in New York, and Kid Soto, which recorded the morning, afternoon and fight night of a club boxer in Riverside, California. While the Brownes watched his documentaries, Strickland prowled the house and the grounds outside. Once Anne came out and found him examining the bookshelves. Most of the books in the summer house were naval histories or travel narratives.
The film maker took lunch with them but he had little to say. Strickland believed in withholding himself from the subjects of his films, at least at the outset. Eventually, he reasoned, they came to you.
Over coffee on the porch, the Brownes sought to bring him forth a little by talking about the films.
“I never thought,” Owen said, “that people like that could be so sympathetic.”
Anne joined in. “Really! They’re so funny! You feel for them.”
“Oh,” Strickland said haltingly, “thanks. They’re just folks.”
He had brought a small Olympus camera with him and over the afternoon he took a lot of photographs. The idea was partly to accustom them to the sight of him with a camera, partly to collect their images and pin them to his walls. Every time Anne turned around, she seemed to find him there, at an odd angle to the place she occupied, commanding a long view.
Once she was bold enough to ask him, “Have you always stammered?”
He showed her a sunny, forgiving smile.
“Since I was eleven. There was a kid in sixth grade who stuttered. I was imitating him. Making fun of the kid. They told me it would stick. And it did.”
“Oh no!” Anne cried. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t make it up, would I?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said. By then she obviously regretted the question and was trying to keep it light and distant.
He took a great many pictures of Owen working in the study, assembling charts, making lists. Anne lent him some family snapshots. Shortly before dinnertime he announced his intention to go back to New York. Owen was upstairs in the shower. Anne had opened a bottle of wine.
“Oh dear,” Anne said. “I was counting on your staying for dinner.”
He was uncertain whether she was relieved or disappointed. He suspected something of both. In any case, she made no immediate move to drive him. Owen Browne came downstairs in a bathing suit and T-shirt. He was well built, long-legged, with big shoulders and without flab. It was a conscientious preppy’s body.
“Didn’t you make a picture about the Vietnam War?” Owen asked Strickland.
Strickland nodded quickly.
“What was it called?”
“LZ Bravo” Strickland said.
“I haven’t seen it,” Browne told him. “I’ve heard about it.”
“What have you heard?”
Browne was embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember. Only that I’ve heard of it.”
“One time I’ll run it for you,” Strickland said to them.
“Good,” said Owen.
“Owen was there,” Anne said.
“Yes,” Strickland said, “I know he was.”
It turned out that Anne drove Strickland to the small island airport. She had taken three glasses of wine and she watched the yellow line with her jaw set.
“So,” he asked her. “Why’s he doing it?”
She laughed and tossed her head. Proud of her old man, Strickland thought. It would be necessary to record that one.
“Don’t you know why?
”
“I don’t sail,” Strickland informed her.
“Imagine what kind of a feeling it is,” she said to Strickland. “Making your way across all that ocean. Making your way across the whole world. All on your own savvy and endurance.”
“Sure,” he said. “I guess I can understand that.” He sneaked a look at her and saw that she was basking in the glow of her own words. Her eyes were bright. “You’d like to do it yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“Who, me?” she asked. “I’m an armchair sailor.”
“So you approve of his going?”
Her confident smile tightened. “Oh yes,” she said.
“Who’s he doing it for?” Strickland asked. “You or the rest of the world?”
She looked straight ahead at the road and shook her head slightly, as though she had not understood his question.
They drove up to the Quonset hut that served Steadman’s as an airline terminal and Strickland got out of the car. Before Anne could pull out he leaned in the open window.
“I like to try out a couple of basic questions at the beginning of a project,” he told her. “I need to find out the questions that work, understand? I need to know which questions I’ll be asking. I hope you don’t take it wrong.”
Anne favored him with a quick impatient smile and put the car in gear. He stood and watched her drive away.
The next day, while he worked on the Central American footage, he had Hersey develop the pictures he had taken on Steadman’s Island. He was in search of a title for the film and in that effort had invested in two volumes of Pablo Neruda with facing English and Spanish texts. The film taking shape would have the left-liberal coloration required to justify a reference to that poet. It would also contain a few home truths for the private delectation of that tiny band of perceptual athletes whom Strickland regarded as his core audience.
Hersey put the shiny new Steadman’s Island prints on Strickland’s desk. Strickland turned off the Steenbeck and rolled his chair over to inspect them.
“Hey, Ron,” Hersey said. “These look like nice people.”
Strickland picked up a picture of Anne Browne on her porch and inspected it.
“What do you mean, Hersey? What are you talking about?”
“Well, I mean they don’t resemble our usual run of scumbag.” Thumbing briefly through the rest, Strickland felt the quickening of an old familiar appetite.
“Trust me,” he told Hersey.
About ten o’clock that night Pamela arrived. She had forgiven Strickland for not taking her to Finland. When she came in he was lying on the sofa in his office smoking a joint. He had pinned his Steadman’s Island pictures of the Brownes on the bulletin board, along with that of Mari in Africa and those of the war in Central America. Pamela went to them at once, aglow with enthusiasm.
“Oh wow,” she exclaimed. “This is like the nuclear family, right? Mommy and Daddy and Sis. Shit, I wish my family looked like that.”
“I thought they did,” Strickland said.
She took a print from the board and settled beside him. “Oh my God! She has the khaki skirt. And the little plaid belt. And the little black sleeveless blouse. I can’t stand it.”
“You know what they said about you, Pamela?” He cleared his throat, preparing to do Browne’s voice. “They said, ‘I n-never knew people like that could be so sympathetic.’”
“Oh no!” Pamela cried. Giggling, she folded her arms and shuddered, as with a dread delicious thrill.
“They subscribe to The American Spectator Strickland added. But this further frisson was not available to Pamela, who went to the desk for more pictures and began leafing through them.
“Lookit this! Her hair is getting a tad gray. Prematurely, right? And she’s not doing anything to it.” Pamela breathed an admiring sigh. “How tall is she?”
“Taller than me. Almost as tall as him and he’s over six feet.” He took the picture from her hand. “The two of them look alike, can you see it? She has a sort of square jaw.”
“Like her?” Pamela asked. She looked him in the eye and ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip.
Strickland shrugged. “I don’t know. I look at her and I think of a hundred and twenty-five pounds of pound cake. Of course, I kind of like pound cake.”
“Get real,” Pamela said impatiently. “She’s the handsome prince I’ve always dreamed of. And the guy is a hunk.”
“He’s a hero, too. A pilgrim.”
“Oh, Ronnie, you’ll have such fun.”
“I believe I will have fun,” Strickland said. “Please don’t call me Ronnie.”
“Can’t I meet them, Ron?”
“Nah,” Strickland said.
“Come on!”
“Sure, why not? Sometime maybe.”
He took the pictures from Pamela and looked at them. Pamela, who was watching him, shivered again.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Look at her big Republican butt,” Strickland said fondly.
“She has a derrière poire,” Pamela declared.
“Yes? And what’s that?”
“It means her bum is pear-shaped.”
“Yeah? Is that good?”
“I think they like it in France. I got it from a Frenchman.”
“And who did he say it about? You?”
“Actually,” she told Strickland, “he said it about Kim Basinger. The actress.”
But Strickland was less interested in the answer to his question than in the photograph before him. It was a shot of Owen, Anne and their daughter, Maggie, together, taken by some houseguest the year before, a shot so theatrical and portentous it was hard to believe it had not been contrived. All the same, Strickland understood that it could not have been. It showed the Brownes against a stormy horizon, facing the dark gray ocean. Their gray slacks and sweaters matched the tones of sea and sky and gave the picture a monochromatic feeling. Stoutly, the three of them faced the gathering storm. Anne Browne and her daughter shared the same vocabulary of features and, in this picture, the same exalted, fateful smile. Browne seemed to have thrust himself between his women and the elements.
“Jesus,” Strickland said.
“I love the kid,” Pamela said. “I’d like to lick her.”
“God,” Strickland said, “I’ve got hold of something here. Let me not blow it. Because if I pull this off it will be something.”
Pamela waved an imaginary flag.
“Yay, Ron! Go for it!”
16
ONE MILD spring afternoon, Strickland took lunch with Captain Riggs-Bowen on the premises of a Manhattan club of which the captain was a member. Amid the mellow clutter of books, faded oil paintings and antique statuary they raised their drinks to each other. A pleasant breeze stirred the long lace curtains. Evian water was Riggs-Bowen’s chosen aperitivo.
“I thought that was good about Browne,” the captain told Strickland. “Your ‘eyes of a poet’ line. I had to laugh at that.”
“Thanks,” said Strickland modestly. “And what do they think of him at the Southchester? Browne, I mean.”
Riggs-Bowen was dismissively puffy. “Don’t know that they think anything, really. The commercial interests are part of today’s world, aren’t they?”
“Sure,” Strickland said. “That’s Browne? The commercial interests?”
“Well, he’s a salesman.”
According to Strickland’s information, Captain Riggs-Bowen had found a snug harbor as the husband of two rich American women in succession. He carried two handkerchiefs, one in his breast pocket and another up his sleeve.
“But I’ve seen the Southchester’s m-membership. There are a number of people whom you could call salesmen.”
The captain grew impatient. “Don’t misunderstand, please. We’re in the New World here. It doesn’t matter what people do for a living or whether they do anything at all, if you see what I mean. Commercial is a state of mind.”
Strickland nodded thoughtfully. “An attitude?”
“Yes, exactly. I mean Matthew Hylan, really. And Mr. Harry Thorne.” He gave Strickland a guileless stare across the starched tablecloth. “Come on,” he said, gently suggesting the parody of a New York accent.
Smiling, Strickland watched him.
“Harry Thorne is all over us these days,” the captain went on. “Is he?”
“Yes, altogether. He’s discovered us. Discovered the world of yachting.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes. And we’re getting the benefit of his energy.”
“He’s probably a guy who likes to win,” Strickland said.
Captain Riggs-Bowen seemed at the point of a remark which he visibly reconsidered. A young Irish waiter took their glasses away. For lunch, Strickland ordered the Salisbury steak. The captain chose horsemeat filet.
“Speciality of the house since the war,” he explained to Strickland. “Reminds me of a vanished France.”
“Do you think there’s much support for Browne?”
“No idea,” Riggs-Bowen said.
“Doesn’t it appeal to you that his parents were English?”
Then it was the captain’s turn to stammer. He appeared slightly embarrassed.
“Oh yes, I forgot. They were in service. Out on the island. Of course.”
“What does that mean?” Strickland asked. “What service? What island?”
“Long Island. They were staff. At a house out there. Actually,” he told Strickland, “I’m a U.S. citizen. Have been for twenty years.”
“Who,” Strickland wanted to know, “would you like to see win?”
Riggs-Bowen chortled. “Who, me? Neutral! Completely. A jolly good race is what we want.”
“How is Browne’s attitude commercial?”
The captain appeared to have trouble understanding Strickland’s question.
“Well,” he said after a moment or two, “look at the kind of stuff they’re putting out. Do you read the Hylan press releases?”
“They’re high-minded,” Strickland said.
“They’re bullshit,” the captain said. “Hype.”
“Why’s that?”
“Look,” Riggs-Bowen said, “it’s all Thorne’s way of turning ruin into prosperity. Or trying to. The club’s being used.”