“Lookit the fucking guy,” Axelrod said. “Mr. Class. His first drink in three years, he says. Then has about twenty of them.”
“In the sun,” the bellman told them, “he can die.”
“Listen,” Axelrod told the servant, “this isn’t your job. Go get Mr. Bly — you know who I mean?”
The youth nodded.
Axelrod, gripping Lowndes by the one arm, took a loose bill from his pocket.
“Go get him. Wake him up if you have to.”
The bellman pocketed his bill and ran off up the stairway. As he passed the girl on the landing he paused to bow and smile deferentially before bolting on up the higher stairways.
“In the sun,” Axelrod said in imitation of the bellman, “he can die. Because he already fuckin’ dead. And he no make it home to his coffin.”
“What are you looking for?” Walker asked. “A weapon?”
“I wanna see if he’s wired. Some of these fucks, you say something dumb and they write it down. You sue them and next thing you find out they were wired. I’m gonna get Billy to go through his room for a video camera.”
“You think he’d do that?” Walker asked. “He’s the correspondent of New York Arts, not Confidential.”
“Some of these writers are the lowest scum that ever walked the earth,” Axelrod explained. He looked thoughtfully at Walker. “Then there’s some that are O.K.”
The smell of Lowndes’s sweating body was making Walker sick. He turned his face to the wind.
“Who’s the lady?” he asked Axelrod.
“That’s Helena,” Axelrod told him. “She’s our valued assistant. She’s going to show you around. Come down, doll,” he called up to Helena. “Help us hold up this guy.”
Helena descended the last flight of steps. She was blue-eyed and lightly freckled. The expression of condescending concern with which she regarded Lowndes made Walker feel like a zookeeper displaying a sick seal.
“Is he drunk?” Helena asked in the British interrogative.
“He’s in deep alpha state,” Axelrod said, “from trying to meditate with his clothes on. Helena, this is Gordon Walker.”
“Ah,” Helena said brightly.
Walker braced his legs to adjust his leverage on Lowndes and reached out to take her hand.
“Helena will show you around,” Axelrod told Walker. “She’s been wanting to meet you.”
“Oh,” Walker said. “Well.” He looked at the young woman to see if such a thing might be true and saw quickly that it was not.
“Your script is wonderful,” Helena said. “It’s going to be a marvelous film.”
Lowndes pulled himself free of their hold and immediately lost consciousness again. Walker and Axelrod just managed to catch him.
“You know what I think?” Axelrod said after a moment. “I think fuck this.” He let go of Lowndes and Walker did the same. The author collapsed in a heap at their feet.
“We should bury him in sand up to his neck,” Axelrod said, “as a warning to assholes.”
Bly came jogging along the beach toward them. When he saw Walker he drew up short and approached at his stealthy, carefully centered amble. He looked down at the crumpled form of Dongan Lowndes, then at Walker.
“Come on, Bill,” Axelrod told Bly, “let’s get this turkey on ice.”
Bly with very little seeming effort drew Lowndes from the sand and shouldered him. Axelrod steadied the burden with his right hand.
Walker saw that Bly was smiling at him. The smile seemed friendly enough, not triumphant or malicious. In any case, Walker looked away. When Bly and Axelrod went off with the prostrate Lowndes, he found himself alone with Helena.
“Had breakfast?” she asked him. He had been on his way to Lu Anne’s cabana, hoping somehow that she had not spent the night with Bly after all. The notion to swim had seduced him en route.
“No. Have you?”
“I haven’t, actually. Shall we get some coffee?”
“Yes,” Walker said. “Yes, of course.” Helena’s beauty, her youth and her lightly pretended interest in him made Walker suddenly quite sad. The sadness and the thought of Lu Anne with Bly hit him with the force of his rallying hangover and fatigue. He required a line but the cocaine was hidden away in his suitcase in his room.
“We’ll walk up, shall we?” he proposed to Helena. “Then I’ll just have to get something from my room.”
Helena threw him a stagey smile and they walked up the coral steps together. He was tense, unhappy, out of breath. Helena seemed at the point of song.
Breakfast was being served on the terrace that adjoined the bar. Walker took a table with Helena, ordered them coffee with Mexican sweet rolls and excused himself.
He reached his room just ahead of the chambermaid, hung up his No Molestar sign and hurriedly prepared himself a measure. In his haste he had more than he intended; the effect was neither exhilaration nor the horrors but a confused enthusiasm without object. He felt for the moment as if he had replaced his true emotions, whatever they might have been, with artificial ones, artificially flavored. When he went out this time he brought a paper fold of cocaine in his beach bag, wrapped in foil to keep it from melting in the heat.
Jon Axelrod and Jack Glenn had joined Helena at the breakfast table.
Glenn and Walker, who had not seen each other for a year or so, shook hands.
“This is the only man I know who likes Mexican locations,” Jack Glenn told the people at the table. “I hope you didn’t come to make changes.”
“I am death,” Walker said, “destroyer of worlds. I’ve come to write people out of the script.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jack Glenn said.
Walker picked up his coffee and drained half of it at a swallow. It was really liquor he wanted, something to slow him down now that he was speeded up.
“To some people,” he declared, “Mexican locations are just dollar-ante poker and centipedes. I’m not like that.”
“Really?” Helena asked.
“I come,” Walker said, “to see the elephants.”
“Well,” Helena said. “This is all very tame stuff, if you ask me. Outside of the usual drunks. It’s so tranquil and businesslike it’s almost boring.”
Walker saw that she was pitching Jack Glenn. He found himself liking Helena a little less each moment.
“That could change overnight,” he told her.
“The last thing I did yesterday,” Axelrod said, “was put a drunk to bed. And what was the first thing I did this morning?”
“It’s psychodrama,” Glenn said. “All location shows are psychodrama.”
“Some of us get a little more psycho than others,” Axelrod said.
There was a brief tense silence.
“A friend of mine was down here making a movie a couple of years ago,” Glenn told them. “It was over by San Miguel. They were all staying at a hotel there and the restaurant cashier fell madly in love with him.”
“I do hope this has a happy ending,” Helena said.
“The thing was, he never even noticed her. So she went home to her village warlock and got a love potion. Like condor wattles and iguana testicles — she had the cook slip them into his huevos rancheros.”
“Did it work?” Axelrod asked.
“It worked fine. They had to fly him out in a helicopter. I mean, it was Mexico and everybody was sick, but this guy was ready for El Morgue-o. He sent for a priest.”
“What about the girl?” Helena asked.
Axelrod lit a cigar. “She married the cook.”
“Those were the days,” Glenn said, “when the movies spelled romance.”
Walker stood up and as he did so Helena and Axelrod exchanged quick glances.