Drinkless, he went into his living room, turned the television set on, turned it off again and began to pace the length of the room.
This is where we begin, he told himself. We reinvent ourself. We put one foot in front of the other and we go on.
In a moment he went back to the bedroom and did another line. Then he leaned back on the bed and stared through the balcony windows at the still surface of the pool five stories below.
From somewhere amid the damp greenery of the garden, a mockingbird was trilling away, sounding a little fife march. For a fraction of a second Walker was beguiled by a shard of memory, the tiniest part of an old dream. It was gone too quickly to be pinned down.
He got to his feet and went to stand at the window. The bird song came again, under the rush of traffic, stirring recall.
He had gone away from the balcony and was sitting on the bed with the telephone in his hand when the memory surfaced. He put the receiver down and turned to the window. The bird trilled again.
He was remembering Lu Anne Bourgeois, whom the greater world called Lee Verger. She had been half on his mind all the previous spring, but Seattle, the show and the dreadful events of the summer had swept everything away.
Years before, when he and Lu Anne were young and fearless, in the days of mind drugs and transfiguration, they had invented a game together for bad nights. In fact, it was not so much a game as a state of mind to be indulged and they had called it Bats or Birdies.
Bats or Birdies was played in the worst hours before dawn. Winning entailed holding your own until morning, making it through the night with your head intact to the moment when bird song announced the imminence of first light and day. That was Birdies. Losing was not making it through, losing your shit. Bats. Mockingbirds, with their untimely warbles at ungodly hours, upset the game, making you think that it was morning and you had won through when in fact you were still fast in the heart of night.
He thought of Lu Anne and his heart rose. She was pale. She had dark blue saintly eyes and a smile that quivered between high drollery and madness. Nine years before, she had been nominated for an Academy Award in a supporting role; her subsequent career, like Walker’s, had been disappointing.
Long ago, during their time together, Lu Anne had given him Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening. Its setting was Louisiana in the late nineteenth century; Lu Anne was a Louisianan, Chopin’s book had been a favorite of hers. He had written a script, and every day of its writing she had been with him or in his expectation, so that when the principal character of Edna Pontellier was defined in scene and dialogue, Lu Anne inhabited it utterly. In those days they had dreamed of doing it together but it had not turned out that way.
Time passed. The book was discovered by academics and declared a feminist document. Lu Anne had acquired a new agent, who was vigorous, female and literate. About a year and a half before Walker committed for the Seattle Lear, ten years after his last revision of the script and six since his last conversation with Lu Anne, a package had been put together.
A young director named Walter Drogue had been engaged. The Awakening would be Drogue’s fourth picture; he was generally accounted intelligent, original and aggressive. His father, also named Walter Drogue, was one of the industry’s living Buddhas. A director himself for almost fifty years, Drogue senior had been publicly caned, fired upon by sexual rivals, blacklisted, subpoenaed and biographied in French. The father’s name, it was felt, added luster to his son’s project, and the son’s price, like Walker’s and Lu Anne’s, was not immoderate.
A producer of some probity took the picture over. One of the majors was induced to finance and distribute. It was all perceived as prestigious, timely and cheap. There was a real possibility that the interests involved might find themselves in control of a well-made picture that would generate good reviews, awards and, with the right handling, a favorable profit line. A vestigial social impulse was being discharged. Somewhere, deep within the Funhouse, they had opted for a calculated risk.
After shooting most of the summer in New Orleans, the production had moved, for convenience and economy, to the Drogues’ favorite Baja location at Bahía Honda. The elder Drogue had been filming there for many years and had bought hotel property through a nominal Mexican owner. Thus he was able to serve as factor to his own productions.
As far as Walker was concerned, it was a little late. He had been asked down and declined. Probably, he thought, to their relief. There was also the matter of Lu Anne, his dark angel. They had survived their last outing but it had been close. They had survived because they were both young then and married and motivated and skilled survivors. It would not be the same now.
But stoned, abandoned, desolate — Walker found himself listening to birdcalls and thinking of her. His heart beat faster. It had not been quite six years, he thought. She had kissed him casually. He imagined that he could recall her touch and when he did it was the woman he had known a decade before who presented herself to his recollection.
She was married again, to a doctor; she had children. His business now was to save himself and his own marriage, restore his equilibrium. What we need here is less craziness, he told himself, not more.
Then he thought: A dream is what I need. Fire, motion, risk. It was a delusion of the drug. The production’s location office number was in his black book. He found himself with his hand on the phone.
Yours in the ranks of death.
Trapped within some vertiginous silence, he dialed the far-off number. At the first ring he hung up in terror.
A few minutes later, it seemed to him that he was perfectly well again. When he picked up the telephone it was to confirm luncheon with his agent’s office.
At the agency, he got Shelley Pearce on the line. She was Al’s assistant, a Smithie who had gone through the Yale Rep some years after Lu Anne. She had been a student of Walker’s at an acting workshop; he had gotten her her first job, as a gofer on a production at U.A. He had introduced her to Al.
“Hello, Gordon,” Shelley said. She sounded glad to hear from him and he felt grateful.
“Where were you?” he said. “Every night I searched that sea of pale immobile faces. No Shelley.”
“You kidding, Gordon? King Lear? You think I got time for that shit?”
He laughed.
“Yes, Gordon,” Shelley said, “yes, I was there. I saw you. You were wonderful.”
“How’s that?”
“Wonderful, Gordon. Wonderful, O.K.?”
“I thought so too,” Walker said. “I felt underappreciated.”
“Didn’t you see the L.A. Times?”
“Acceptable,” Walker said. “But faint.”
“Don’t be greedy,” Shelley said. “Al will bring you some clippings to slaver over at lunch.”
“Why don’t you and I have dinner tonight?” he asked her suddenly. “Why don’t we go to the San Epo Hotel?”
She was silent for a moment.
“How are you, Gordon? I mean, how are you doing?”
“Not so good,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “The San Epo, sure. Sunset. Know when sunset is? It’s in the paper.”
“I’ll call the Coast Guard.”
“You drinking?” she asked. “You better not stand me up.”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Arriving at Musso and Frank’s, Walker settled in at a banquette table and ordered a martini. Keochakian came in fifteen minutes late to find him ordering a second.
“Bring me one too,” Al told the waiter.
Keochakian studied his client. He had hard, unconfiding eyes behind thick tinted glasses, the face and manner of a Marseilles numéro.