“A little tired,” she said. He was studying her. His hard features were firelit. “Will that do?”
“It’ll do fine,” Axelrod said. “Remind her, Gordo. She looks beautiful but she’s a little tired.”
She tried working with them.
“When they ask me how I am,” she assured them, “or how I feel, I’ll say a little tired.”
“Smile,” Walker told her, “when you say it.”
“I’ll try it with the smile,” she said dutifully, “and if it works I’ll keep it.”
She thought some quarrel might be breaking out among the Long Friends, some dispute over precedence or family history. Her anxiety quickened.
“Is everything all right?” she asked. In the patio below, Freitag’s guests were mingling, carrying their drinks among the cloth-covered buffet tables. There were not so many of them as she had thought at first. Her Friends hung on the edge of the light.
“It’s fine,” Walker assured her. “It’s nice here.”
“It’s just friends,” Axelrod said. “Just …” He paused; both he and Walker were watching Dongan Lowndes descend into the lighted garden, making for the bar.
“Just buddies,” Walker said.
“Let’s get down there,” Axelrod told them.
Smiling, unclear of vision, Lu Anne strolled among the guests with Walker at her side. He was conducting her to Charlie.
She went to him in expectation of elaborate greeting but he simply took her by the hand. His fondness seemed so genuine that it made her sad. She thought she could feel Walker beside her grow tense with a suitor’s unease, as though Charlie were his rival.
“You lovely girl,” Charlie said. “You champion.” He turned to Walker. “Want to ask me if I like it?”
A tall horse-faced woman with prominent front teeth stood at Charlie’s elbow. Next to her was a stocky Latin man with a dour Roman face and straight black Indian hair that fell in a sweep across his forehead. He was in black tie and dinner jacket, the only man present in formal clothes.
“You like it,” Walker said. “Have you spoken to Walter?”
In the grip of his emotion, Charlie Freitag turned and sought Walter Drogue among his guests.
“Walter,” he fairly shouted. “Call the director!” A few people turned toward him in alarm. “Get over here, Drogue!” The party recognized his good humor and relaxed.
Walter Drogue made his way to Freitag’s side and a circle began to form around them. Lu Anne saw Lise Rennberg, Jack Glenn and Eric. George Buchanan sipped Perrier. Carnahan and Joy McIntyre were dissolved in rowdy laughter. When he had gathered his principals about him, Charlie raised his glass. “Here’s to all of you,” he proclaimed. “Artists of the possible!”
“And absent friends!” Joy McIntyre cried. Freitag, who had no idea who she was, looked at her strangely for a moment, his smile on hold.
“Like father, like son,” Charlie told Walter Drogue junior when they had quaffed their cup of victory.
The young director gave forth with an insolent simper, the malice of which was lost on Big Charlie Freitag.
“It ain’t over till it’s over, Charlie.”
Freitag’s eye fell on Dongan Lowndes.
“Mr. Lowndes,” he said, “you’ve been lucky. You’ve seen this business at its best. You’ve seen a fine picture made by serious people and it doesn’t get any better than that.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Lowndes said thickly.
“Maybe we can get you to come out and work with us someday.”
Ignoring Charlie, Lowndes looked at Lu Anne for a moment and turned on Walker.
“Would I like it?” he asked. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Walker told him, “it beats not working.” Everyone laughed, as though he had said something funny.
Charlie performed introductions for the Mexican and Dongan Lowndes. The others were known to one another. The tall woman was Ann Armitage, a former comic actress and the widow of a blacklisted writer. The Mexican was Raúl Maldonado, a painter.
The thuggish musicians played their way into darkness. A pair of violinists stepped out of the void into which the mariachis had vanished and commenced to stroll. Freitag went off to speak with Lise Rennberg and the attendant circle dissolved.
“Let’s go talk,” Axelrod said to Lowndes. The novelist was disposed to remain beside Lu Anne. He gazed at her with drunken ardor. Lu Anne returned his look, pitying his flayed face, his sores and fecal eyes.
“Is it important?” Lowndes asked, without disengaging his gaze from Lu Anne’s.
“Not exactly important,” Axelrod said. “Scummy.”
He slid his hand under Lowndes’s arm and drew the man aside. Ann Armitage was asking Lu Anne how she was. Lu Anne stared at the old actress blankly.
“Line!” she called.
“A little tired,” Walker told her.
Lu Anne smiled confidentially. An expression of weariness passed across her face.
“The truth is,” she told Ann Armitage, “that I’ve been feeling a little tired.”
Ann Armitage did the double take for which she had once been famous.
“What are you two? An act?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lu Anne said.
Miss Armitage looked them up and down, world-wearily.
Before the guests could make their way to the seating, young Helena stood on a wooden bench and raised her hands for silence.
“We don’t want you sitting with your worst enemy or your ex-spouse or their lover,” she told the guests. “So as some of you may have noticed, we’ve had lovely little place cards with your many famous names inscribed thereon. So — sorry about the milling. Wherever your card is — after you’ve helped yourself to the buffet — that’s where you’ll sit. And you may in fact want to take note of your place before you fill your plates with all this delicious food.”
There was some smattering of applause punctuated by a harsh raspberry. Joy McIntyre had made her way, unerringly but unsteadily, to Charlie Freitag’s side.
“I mean,” she demanded in a nasal croon, “I mean, what is this, Charlie? High tea with Rex?” She seized his dinner gong and marched off to accost the violinists.
“Who is that woman?” Charlie Freitag demanded of those nearest him. He was told she was Lee Verger’s stand-in.
People walked about carrying their western-style metal plates, colliding with each other and adjusting their spectacles, trying to see in the light of tiny table lamps or flickering torchlight.
“Bang bang went the trolley!” Joy McIntyre sang at the top of her voice. The strolling violinists backed away from her like a pair of ornamental fowl. Charlie returned to his guests.
“That woman,” he said to Walker, “is she actually a stand-in?”
Before Walker could answer, the patio echoed to a horrendous screech.
“My God,” Freitag said. “It’s her again.”
It was Joy again. Bill Bly, uninvited but on watch, was attempting to relieve her of the dinner gong. Joy declined to surrender it.
“Get your bloody hand off me fucking wrist, you great fucking poofta bastard!” she protested. The guests had fallen silent. Joy’s struggle, the crackling of cooked meat and the violins, sweetly paired to “Maytime,” were the only sounds in the patio.
“The press is here,” Freitag said. “This looks like hell.” He looked about him in the dimness for Dongan Lowndes and saw the man squared off with Axelrod as though the two of them were at the point of blows.
“Jesus wept,” the gentleman producer cried. Walker took the opportunity to slip away.
Lu Anne sat at the head of one of the buffet tables playing with people’s name cards. Maldonado and Miss Armitage had attempted to enlist at a more congenial sector of the party but, encountering outbursts and angry voices at every turning, had been driven back into the shadows. In the shadows Lu Anne ruled. She had discovered that she, Miss Armitage and Maldonado, Walker and Lowndes, Charlie, Axelrod and the Drogues were all seated together at the very table beside which Charlie had introduced them.