“Not if they’ve been told not to.” He paused a moment. “You can always try,” he heard himself say.
“Mezcal,” Lu Anne said wickedly, “that’s what we want.” She put her arm around Walker’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder. In an instant, as though she had been posing for a quick snapshot, she leaped to the telephone. “We’ll have ourselves an alcoholic picnic. As we were wont.”
“We were wont to lose the odd weekend with our alcoholic picnics.”
Lu Anne ordered her mezcal without objection from the house. The prospect seemed to cheer her; she sat on the edge of the sofa with her hands clasped between her thighs watching Walker.
“Funny about last night,” he said to her. “You’re with Lowndes, you go off with me. You’re with me, you go off with Bly. Lots of La Ronde, entrances and exits, bedrooms and closed doors and nobody really gets any. Very Hollywood.”
“We used to think we were too late,” Lu Anne said. “That we had missed out on Hollywood.”
“How wrong we were.”
Within a few minutes, two waiters wheeled in a rolling table with a liter bottle of mezcal con gusano attended by bottles of mineral water, glasses, lemon wedges and an ice bucket.
Walker poured them out two glasses of straight liquor.
“How about you, Lu Anne?”
She took the drink and drank it down unflinching with a childlike greediness and poured herself another.
“You want to know, Gordon? How it is with me? Is it really your business?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That I bend my eye on vacancy and with the incorporeal air do hold discourse?”
“Sure. And why. And if you want to, you’ll get to hear how it is with me.”
“You played Lear,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“It was like life but easier to take. I could spend the rest of my time on earth playing Lear.”
“I wish I could play Lear,” Lu Anne said. “Maybe I can. Beard up and play Lear.”
“You could play the Fool.”
Their eyes met. Lu Anne poured them more mezcal.
“That’s good,” Lu Anne said. “Because I could. We could do it together.”
“When this is over,” Walker said. “Well talk it up. I’ll talk to Al.”
“The hell with agents. Well do it on campuses. We’ll do it in church halls for free.”
“Yes.”
She took the bottle of mezcal and examined the little embalmed creature at the bottom of the bottle.
“The worm’s an odd worm.”
“I wish you the joy of it,” Walker said.
“I want to be Cleo too, Gordon. I’m tired of Edna. I’m glad she’s dead.” She sipped her drink and laughed. “I mean, I just can’t die too many times. I can’t get enough of it.”
“You’re such a ham, Lu Anne. You’re lucky you can act.”
“And you’re such a ham,” she said to him, “it’s a crying shame you aren’t any better.”
“What’s happening with Lionel? Where’s he gone?”
“He’s gone visiting with the kids. But I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Walker poured himself some mezcal.
“He can’t just not come …”
“No,” she said, “he can’t just not come back. I mean he’s going to leave me. He was aching to get away from me. It was horrible.”
“He can’t take your kids from you.”
“Sweetie,” Lu Anne said, “with the right lawyer in the right state he could get me put to sleep.”
“Things have changed, you know. You don’t have to let him get away with it.”
“No,” she said. “I can kill him. But I don’t think I’d be able.”
They sat in silence drinking. Walker went to the window and saw the sky blighted with thick dark yellowing clouds, as though there were a dust storm over the ocean.
“Connie left me, you know.”
Lu Anne lay on the bed with her eyes closed.
“I never understood why she stayed,” Lu Anne said.
“I was very upset,” Walker said. “I think I still am.”
“Poor baby,” Lu Anne said. “Is that why you came down here?”
“No,” Walker said.
“Then,” Lu Anne asked him, “why did you?”
“I have a lot of excuses,” Walker said, “but I guess I came to see you.”
“Ah,” Lu Anne said briskly. “Yesterdays. Golden sweet sequestered days.”
“Of mad romance and love. Yes, I was moved by the prospect.”
“A reunion.”
“Just so.”
“Well, Gordon,” Lu Anne said, inventing a character for herself as she went along, “I too am moved …” She stopped and put her fist to her forehead, letting the character fall like a shed skin. “I too am moved.” She went to him and reached out, gently touched his cheek and leaned her head against his shoulder. Walker thought he felt an infinite weariness there. “I too.”
He held her and he was thinking that this was his golden girl and that she was in his arms and that they could never have peace or a quiet moment or a half hour’s happiness.
“It was so foolish of you to come, Gordon. Good heavens, man, no wonder Connie left you.”
He said nothing. She broke away from him.
“Connie and I, Gordon mine, we’re confronting hollow-eyed forty-odd. We’ve been screwed, blued and tattooed. We’ve been put with child and aborted, hosed down ripped open chewed and spat out seven ways from sundown! We’ve been burned by lovers, pissed on by our kids, shit on by mothers-in-law, punched out for laughing and punched out for crying and you expect us to sit still for your romantic peregrinations? Foolish man!”
“I don’t believe Connie had lovers,” Walker said.
She stuck out her lower lip and thrust a curved pinky toward him, the gesture of a child’s wager. He put his hand over his face; they both began to laugh.
“Foolish man!” she cried. “Stay home and fuck your fecund imagination!”
“I could do that in my garage,” he said. “When I had a garage.”
“I know all the things one can do in garages,” she said.
He kept smiling but her words gave him a vague chill. The picture they brought to his mind’s eye was not agreeable.
“The girls get all shriveled and the boys get soft and sentimental. That’s how the damn world goes.” She went back and put her arms around him again. “What do you want from me, fool? You want us to be kids again?”
“I wouldn’t have put it that way.”
“Indeed you wouldn’t, sweetheart, but that’s what you want.”
“Who knows?” Walker said.
“Jamais, mon amour. Jamais encore.”
They sat down together on the sofa and he kissed her. She pulled back to see his face.
“You closed your eyes,” she said, “you still do it.”
He shrugged.
“We’ll never be kids again, Gordon.” He felt her arms encircle him, he put his around her and kissed her.
“We’ll have to be spirits of another sort,” she said. After he had kissed her again, she whispered in his ear. “We’re not alone here.”
It brought him up short; then he realized she must be speaking of her Long Friends. They lay together for a moment, then she got to her feet. He stood up and took her in his arms again. The liquor, he supposed, had been a bad idea. It seemed not to matter any longer.
“No more romances for us, Gordon.”
When he started to answer, she covered his lips with her fingertips.
“There’s only work now. That’s all that’s left, it’s all that matters. That’s why I had to stop my pills.”
“If there’s only work,” Walker said, “where does that leave me?”