“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.”
Walker stirred his drink.
“You aren’t simpleminded, Mr. Lowndes. You know the secrets of the heart. I know you do because I read your book. It’s a true article, your book. It made me cry, what do you think of that?”
“With envy?” Lu Anne asked.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Walker said, looking into her fixed smile. He saw that she was off her head and in some character of her own construction. He rejoiced; he had thought it was really she there — cold, mocking and lost to him. “I don’t think envy makes you cry. It was for the usual reasons. For love of it.”
“Shit,” Lowndes said. “Love my dog, love me.”
He extended his hand. Walker looked at it, paused and shook it briefly.
“I see what you mean,” Walker said. “My compliments. But even if you were country-simple, as you plainly aren’t, even if you were Pogo’s great-grandpuppy, I’d have trouble believing you were as naive as you claim to be. I think you’re trying to make me feel bad about what I do.”
“Say that again?” Lowndes asked.
“I said that even if your grandfather was a fucking alligator you ought to know more about the movie business than that. Do you really need it all explained to you, or are you just trying to give me a hard time?”
“You got me wrong, man. You’re touchy.”
“I’m sorry. I had a long drive.”
“Don’t be sorry. Bein’ touchy’s good. It indicates you have your pride. Where’d you say you were from?”
“Kentucky,” Walker told him. “Lexington.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that,” Lowndes said. “But you know, I have relatives in Kentucky named Walker. I wonder if you’re one of those Walkers?”
“No,” Walker said.
“Well, let’s pretend my granddaddy was an alligator. How would you explain to me the screenwriter’s role?”
“Oh Christ,” Walker said, “the screenwriter’s role?”
“Is that the wrong terminology?”
“You have to believe that it’s worthwhile,” Walker told him, “and you have to accept the rules. You can’t be a solitary or an obsessive. You can’t despise your audience. It requires humility and it requires strength of character.”
Lowndes turned to Lu Anne.
“Now that’s a very eloquent defense of an often derided trade, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes,” Lu Anne said brightly.
“Very eloquent, Mr. Walker, and I believe every word of it. Only tell me this: isn’t it true that on the screen what you and I might call a cheap shot works infinitely better than on the page?”
Walker thought about it.
“Yeah, O.K. That may be so.”
“Doesn’t it follow then that an instinct for the cheap shot is an advantage to a screenwriter?”
“There are rules, Lowndes, I told you that. You usually work within the terms of genre. Your flights of fancy are reduced to technical possibility because on one level you’re moving machinery. If you’re heavy-handed your characters will flatten out very badly. You have to be good at it.”
“Suppose I say,” Lowndes said, “that as a movie writer you’re restricted to a literal-minded so-called realism that changes its nature every five years or so. Would I be wrong?”
“I have a feeling we’re going to read that in New York Arts whether I think it’s true or not.”
Lowndes laughed.
“I don’t think it’s true,” Walker said. “Nor do I think I have an affinity for the cheap shot.”
“Well,” Lowndes told him, “maybe that’s why you haven’t been as successful as you should.”
“How successful should I be, Mr. Lowndes?”
“Secrets are forbidden,” Lu Anne said helpfully. “There’s a clause.”
“There’s also,” Walker observed, “a sanity clause.”
When Axelrod arrived back from the gents’ a wet spot had replaced the stain on his shirt.
“G’wan,” he said as he resumed his seat, “you no foola me. There ain’t no Sanity Claus.”
Walker and Lu Anne looked blankly into his fading smile. Lowndes kept his eyes on Walker.
“Nobody makes you do it,” Walker told Lowndes. “You’re usually well paid if you don’t get cheated, and you usually don’t. There are things you can do. You can have your moments.”
“I know that’s true,” Lowndes said. “I just wanted to make sure you felt as bad as you should.” He punched Walker on the arm. “Hey, I’m only foolin’ with you, man. I know you’re a serious guy.”
“How bad do you feel, Gordon?” Lu Anne asked.
“Medium,” Walker said.
Jack Glenn came in with some production people and the Peruvian script girl. They waved, hesitated for a moment and took a different table inside the bar. Charlie Freitag and his Las Vegas pal had gone off into the night.
“I’m going to turn in,” Walker said. “I enjoyed our talk. I hope it was helpful.”
“You bet,” Lowndes told him. As he got up he saw Lowndes put his hand over Lu Anne’s.
“Me too,” Axelrod said. He wandered over to the other table.
As he went down the corridor toward the opposite wing he heard running steps on the carpet behind him. For an instant he thought himself pursued by Dongan Lowndes but before he turned he knew it was Lu Anne. Her face was contorted with terror. As she crowded into his arms, she held her hands protectively over her temples as if to ward off a blow. He had to untangle her from her cringing stance to kiss her.
“Gordon,” she said, “you have to help me. That man’s been put over me.”
“Put over you? I thought you were going to let him climb on top of you. I’ve been high on you for five hundred miles and when I get here you’re playing footsie with that big swamp rat.”
“Gordon, you just don’t understand anything at all. I’m really scared, Gordon.”
“It’s all right, Lu. Everybody says you’re doing fine. You look very beautiful.”
“I went to church tonight,” Lu Anne said, “and there was a thing on the cross that wasn’t Jesus at all.”
He experienced a brief surge of panic. The panic was compounded of several fears — his fear of her madness and of his own folly, his fear of death and of life. It was too late for panic to do him any good. He did not propose to let her go.
“You’re alone, aren’t you, Lu Anne? Your husband’s gone and the kids?”
“I’m alone,” she said. “With that man over me. Don’t you think he looks like the winner of a flaming-cat race?”
“Absolutely,” Walker said. “Are the … are you seeing those people you see?”
She put a finger across his lips and nodded.
“What about your pills?”
“I tried,” she said. “I can’t work with them.”
He let her rest her head against his shoulder and stroked her hair. He had no idea what to do.
“That man,” Lu Anne said, “he saw me run out after you. I left him and he’ll take it out on us.”
“I thought you were making it with him.”
“I was fooling him,” she said. “They said I had to. They said he’d write about me.”
“Who said?”
“Well, Charlie. And Jack and Walter.”
“Forget about him. I don’t think it matters what he writes.”
Standing with Lu Anne in his arms, he saw Lowndes appear at the far end of the corridor. Lowndes stood watching them with an expression that appeared vaguely benign. He was uglier upright, slope-shouldered and paunchy, a poor soul. After a moment he went his way.