“People would get the impression I take drugs.” He turned toward the bungalow’s bedroom window. The blinds were closed. “But Lu Anne may be in a divorce court presently.”
“Careerwise also,” Axelrod said. “If it got around that in addition to her other problems she had this — you understand me.”
“We should really get the print back,” Walker said.
“Definitely. We should talk to Lowndes. We should get him to do the right thing. I mean,” Axelrod asked, “why should he want to keep it?”
“They’re such depressing pictures,” Walker said, raising one with his thumb and forefinger.
“Some things you do,” Axelrod observed, “you don’t want to see yourself doing them.”
Walker stared at the picture and shook his head in disgust.
“She caught me with it,” he explained. “It’s very hard to say no to Lu Anne.”
“I know that, Gordon. I understand.”
“You know what they say about her, Axelrod? They say her pictures don’t make money and she has no luck with men.”
“I’ve heard that said about her, Gordon.” He finished his drink and pushed the glass away. “She needed that doctor. He could say no to her.”
“It’s very irritating, Lowndes keeping that picture. What a cheap stunt!”
“No class,” Axelrod said. “No self-respect.”
Walker looked out to sea.
“Of course, it might make a good lead,” Walker said, “if he was writing a certain kind of story.”
“You think so?”
“I’m writing for New York Arts,” Walker said. “Here’s my lead: On the third day after my arrival at The Awakening’s Bahía Honda location, a package arrived at my feet having been slid under my bungalow door. Naturally I assumed it contained the daily trades … ha-ha, jape, flourish et cetera. Imagine my — and so forth — when upon opening it I find it to contain a photograph of two of the principal artists naked in bed, apparently in the act of scoffing I know not what, tooting up, coke and the movies, sordidness and blackmail, hurray for Hollywood, movies as metaphor, crazy California, decline of the West, ad astra ad nauseam! You like my lead?”
“It’s a colorful lead. Is there more?”
“Yes,” Walker said, “there’s more. There’s effect. Charlie Freitag — the movies’ answer to Bernard Berenson, the only man in California off the Redlands University campus who wears a bow tie — is deeply hurt. He subscribes to New York Arts. His wife subscribes, his gardener, the people next door across the canyon. His high-class flick is getting the mondo-bizarro treatment in his very favorite magazine. Sun Pix is pissed off at him. Amalgamated Can is pissed off at Sun Pix. It’s a litigious age. Van Epp is scared stiff. He calls in Lowndes … Did you make this up, Dongo? A literal Dutch uncle. The novelist’s — the former novelist’s — mouth is wreathed in a putrid smile. He reaches under his cape. Observe the snap, mynheer Van Epp.”
Axelrod thought about it.
“As a completely blind item,” he said, “it might not be so bad. It might even be a little … good.” He shrugged.
“Man, Lowndes is going to make this location look like Bosch’s Garden. If we were down here making kiddiebop with grown-ups talking dirty and popping bloodbags, they could run that print on the cover of Christianity Today and we could tell them to eat it. But what if the story just reads as production problems? And then your lofty scene dies the death? They’ll blame it on coke.”
“They’ll blame it on Lu,” Axelrod said.
“That’s right.”
“So,” Axelrod said testily, “why the fuck you give her cocaine, then?”
“Did you approve of my coming down here, Axelrod?”
“I thought it was a bad idea.” He sulked, eyeing the bank of storm cloud as though he wanted to tear it in half. “I might have been able to stop you. I might have hung up on Shelley.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Fuck you, Gordon.”
“You wanted me down here. Tell me why.”
“I thought we might have a few laughs.”
“You figured I’d bring down some blow. You were out.”
“I could’ve scored somewhere, Gordon. I thought maybe it would be … I don’t know what I thought.”
“You thought it would be like old times.”
“Yeah,” Axelrod said disgustedly, “that’s about it.”
“So did I,” Walker said. “Maybe they’ll bring them back. They bring everything back.”
“We gotta nudge Mr. Lowndes a little. So he gives us back our print. I mean,” Axelrod said, “it would be great not to have to tell Charlie about this.”
“What we have to do,” Walker said, “is make him understand he’s playing in the wrong league. Make him understand his position.”
“Right,” Axelrod said.
“We have to make him look down and see where he’s liable to fall. We’ll tell him how we see the big ones and the little ones fall every day. Like sparrows.”
“Yeah,” Axelrod said. He smiled. “Let’s tell him that, Gordon.”
Half an hour later Walker went into the bedroom. His first impulse was to draw open the blinds but he thought better of it. When he turned on the corner ceiling lights he discovered Lu Anne to be awake. Her hair was wet and she had changed into black lace.
“You do take a lot of showers, Lu Anne.”
“I take a lot of showers for a coon-ass. Is that what you meant?”
“Let’s not be crazy,” Walker said.
“Let’s not you be paranoid,” she told him. “Goodness,” she said. “I was drunk when I went to sleep and I’m still drunk.”
She rolled off the bed.
“Christ,” she said, from all fours, “there’s crawling.”
Walker put on a sweatshirt and went into the bathroom to shower.
“How long will you stay?” she asked him through the open door.
“I thought I’d go back on Monday. Leave you to work.”
“Stay longer.”
“Lu Anne,” he said, “I can’t afford this hotel. I’m here on Sun Pix and Amcan.”
“So short a time,” she said, “after so long.”
“It’s been hard for me to get away. The chance came. So I grabbed it.”
“No, no,” Lu Anne told him. “It was more elaborate than that. You connived. What were you thinking of?”
“Honest to God, I don’t know. Maybe of cheating time. Throwing a two-by-four in the treads.”
She sipped from a glass of mezcal, shivered and handed it half finished to Walker. He put it aside.
“Come back,” she said.
He took off the trunks and sweatshirt he was wearing and climbed into bed with her. In the vulgar half light she seemed to draw away as he approached. She did so without moving, with a silent, subtly visible retracting of herself. It was as though she drew in all softness, took up her own slack and curled the flesh around her long bones. Her eyes went dull, her lips were shadows. He could not tell whether it was something she was doing or some warp in his abused perception.
Gallic severity. A crucifix. Charlotte Corday.
“Come in, Gordon,” she said.
He found the game for him. The game for him was to ease through the ivory casing, to loose the bound flesh, draw out the woman and beyond the woman some creature of another sort.
The creature was inside, it fucked like pure madness. It was madness and it frightened him. Down the gullet of fear itself, he charged with a silent hurrah.
“How nice,” Lu Anne said.
When she turned her face to his, she looked flushed and dimpled and happy. The Lady of Mortifications was fled home to Port Royal, madness appeased. Lu Anne was at home.