Young Drogue gave him a long cool look and shrugged amiably. Patty stared into the surgical green light of the whirlpool bath. The old man was invisible within the patio’s toy jungle.
“We haven’t changed our plans,” Lionel said. “I don’t see why that should surprise anyone.”
Walter emerged naked from the lighted pool and slipped into a boxer’s silk robe that had YOUNG DROGUE embroidered across the back. The Drogues’ collective nakedness had begun to repel and embarrass Lionel. In his experience, the clothed party held the advantage in mixed encounters. Within the Drogue compound, this principle seemed to have been reversed.
“O.K.,” Walter Drogue the younger said.
“So,” Lionel said, “as I am on my way out, I thought we might speak privately for a bit.”
Young Drogue sat down on a plastic chair and stretched, yawning luxuriantly. “What a good idea,” he told the psychiatrist. “Patty,” he told his wife, “bring me a drink, please. And bring the good doctor one. And the aged P.” Walter Drogue the elder swore audibly from his corner of darkness.
“We exploit Patty a little,” Walter explained to Lionel. “She wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I’d like to speak privately,” Lionel said.
“This is privately, Lionel,” Walter Drogue said. “This is as private as we let it get.”
“It’s about Lu Anne,” Lionel said.
“No shit?”
“I think I just wanted to know … from a second source, as it were, how things were going.”
Walter gave him a soft smile. “Fine, Lionel. Things are going fine.”
“She’s quite good, isn’t she?”
“Oh, I think that would be an understatement, Doctor. She’s always good, your Lu Anne. But this is something else.”
“And the picture? Your feeling about the picture is good as well?”
“Lu Anne and I are the picture,” Walter Drogue said. “We two together. And we’re good enough to eat.”
“I’ve been seeing dailies as soon as they come in,” Lionel told Walter Drogue, “and I’m terribly impressed.”
“We’re sitting on a treasure, my friend. We’re going to astonish the world.”
Patty returned with another tray of drinks.
Lionel wiped his glasses. His head ached with the whiskey.
“I thought …” Lionel began. “I wanted to be sure everything was all right with her.”
The director was silent. Lionel drained his glass.
“Would you like another?” Patty Drogue asked.
“Oh no,” Lionel said. “Not now.”
“She likes bringing drinks,” Walter Drogue explained.
“It’s my way of atoning,” Patty said.
“Tell me what you think,” Walter Drogue said soberly. “You’re her husband, you’ve been living with her. You’re a … specialist in human behavior. How do you think she’s doing?”
“I don’t think that since she left the stage she’s been so involved in a show,” Lionel said.
“Surely,” Drogue said, looking about with his bright-eyed smile, “this is good news?”
“Well,” Lionel said, “yes.”
“But …?”
“Her eyes,” old man Drogue said from the shadows. “I remember her eyes from when she first came out here.” They all turned toward him. “It didn’t show up in her glossies,” old Drogue went on. “You could turn the page right past her. Up on the screen, her eyes, they’d fucking lay you out. I remember,” he said. “From when she first came out here.”
Lionel stared at his huddled figure in the darkness, trying to think of something to say.
“Before sound,” old Drogue said, “they would have loved her eyes.”
“Even you don’t go back that far,” Patty Drogue told the old man playfully. “Can you really say ‘before sound’?” She did a bass imitation of his rasp.
“He was here before sound,” her husband told her. “He worked on House of Sand.”
“You look at their eyes from those days, you’ll see eyes.” He grunted, a laugh or the clearing of his throat. “They came from tough lives.”
“House of Sand!” Patty Drogue declared. “I love it! I love it,” she told Lionel, “when they say ‘before sound.’ ”
“That was the last one Everett French did. He was a lush then. I cut it for title inserts.”
“That’s romantic,” Patty Drogue said. “Everett French losing his shit to gin. Fitzgerald-like.”
“So you tell me,” young Drogue said, addressing himself to Lionel. “How’s my actress and your lady wife?”
“Listen,” Lionel said. He was holding on to Walter Drogue’s silken sleeve, the sleeve of his boxer’s robe. When he saw the Drogues staring at his hand he took it away. “There is a certain kind of artist, don’t you think,” he asked them, “who might be described as a halluciné?”
“Dickens,” Patty Drogue said with enthusiasm. “Joan Miró. What do you think, Walter?”
Young Drogue’s faux naïf smile tightened.
“Sure,” he said, turning the very word to bitter mimicry. “Dickens and Joan Miró.”
“Wagner,” old man Drogue said from his unseen perch. “Mahler. Max Reinhardt.”
Lionel was impressed at their erudition. “Those are all,” he said, “wonderful examples.”
“How about another drink?” Patty asked.
“No, no,” Lionel said. “Your guests will be here. I’ve got to get back shortly to pick up Lu Anne.”
“Bela Lugosi played Hamlet for Reinhardt,” the elder Drogue informed them. “They called him the greatest Hamlet of the German-speaking theater.”
“But over here,” Patty Drogue pointed out, “Abbott and Costello were waiting for him.”
“Because he was a junkie,” Walter said, still smiling. “Because it was Hollywood.”
“Well,” Lionel said, “that’s how I see Lu Anne.”
“As a hallucinée, right, Lionel?” Patty asked. “Not as a junkie.”
“No, no,” Lionel reassured Mrs. Drogue. “As a hallucinée.”
“Like Dickens,” young Drogue suggested.
Lionel paused a moment, then laughed politely. “Well, I don’t have to tell you this, Walter, I’m sure. But some performers put a tremendous emotional investment into their roles. They can’t hold back. They pay a very high price for their work.”
“And that’s Lu Anne, isn’t it, Lionel?” young Drogue asked.
“Well,” Lionel said, “yes. I mean, I don’t know that much about acting — how it works from inside. It’s a mystery to me. Like all mysteries, I find it a bit frightening.”
“You’re a philosopher, Lionel. A student of the mind. And you think the price of this performance might be a mite high for your wife in her sensitive condition. The scenes we’re shooting from now on are some of the most intense in the script. It’s a shame you can’t stay for them.”
“I’m sorry,” Lionel said. “I thought I was performing yeoman’s service putting in so much time down here. I was led to understand location shooting would be over by now.”
“That was last year.”
“Yes. Well, last year is when I arranged for the journey. Originally we thought we’d go together. My parents have planned around it. The kids’ schoolwork has been arranged for. Why are you treating me like a deserter?”
“Come on, Lionel,” young Drogue said. “I’m not doing that. Do you know who Gordon Walker is?”
“He’s the scriptwriter.”
“Did you know he was coming down?”
“I heard something about it,” Lionel said. No one had breathed a word to him.
“Old pal of Lu Anne’s, right? Sort of a second Dickens?”