“Do you think,” she asked the couple, “that some table game might be played with these? Something along the order of Authors or Old Maid?”
Miss Armitage smiled sweetly.
“Yes, I do,” she said. She seized the stack of place cards from Lu Anne’s grasp until she had her own and her escort’s, and put them on the next table. “It’s called Switcheroo.”
She picked up two place cards from the same adjoining table and handed them to Lu Anne.
“I’m too old to sit still for silly women, Miss Niceness, just as you’re too old to be one. I’m going to leave you to the luck of the draw.”
Maldonado replaced their cards.
“I want to sit here,” he said heavily. Miss Armitage pursed her lips and looked at the ground. The Mexican took his chair and slowly undid the knot of his dress black tie.
“You’re welcome here, Mr. Maldonado,” Lu Anne said.
Maldonado looked at her.
“Am I?”
“Oh yes,” Lu Anne said. “You and your companion are both welcome. You have the good opinion of my friends.”
Maldonado graciously inclined his head. Ann Armitage gave a comic grimace. “Well, praise God and shut my mouth. If that’s not …”
The painter raised a flabby hand, bidding his friend to silence.
“You all are admired in secret places,” Lu Anne told them. “In quarters that you mustn’t imagine, they think well of you and they give good report.”
“How very mysterious,” Maldonado said. “What does it mean?”
Lu Anne was at a loss to explain. Never in her life had she seen the Long Friends so unafraid of sound or light, almost ready, it seemed, to join her in her greater world and make the two worlds one. Seeing them gathered round, shyly peering from between their lace-like wings, murmuring encouragement, she could only conclude that they approved of her new acquaintanceship with Charlie’s two friends. Moreover, they were beautiful, the two, the elegant old actress and the sad-faced handsome man who had removed his dinner jacket. They were as beautiful and charged with grace as Lowndes was hideous and unclean.
Charlie Freitag came to their table like a man seeking refuge from the field of defeat. There was a meager ration of salad and beans on his plate. He looked sweaty and unwell. Lu Anne, who loved him as her friend, was concerned.
“What’s this?” Charlie asked. “No one’s eating?”
“Charlie,” she asked, “Charlie, dear, aren’t you well, my poor friend?”
He took her by the hand. “Me? I’m fine. I’m thinking of you.”
“I’m well enough, Charles.” She smiled. “A little tired.”
“You must be wiped out, for Christ’s sake,” Charlie said. “We have you in and out of the water thirty times a day. You’re living on hotel food and missing your family.” He looked about the torchlit patio uneasily. “Everyone’s overworked. But I thought, what the hell, we’re over the hump. I thought since Gordon was coming down and we had this man from New York Arts … and I thought we could all use a lift.”
“Indeed we could,” Lu Anne said. “And it’s my birthday.”
Charlie was surprised. “Well, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “But I thought your birthday was last month.”
Lu Anne gave him a conspiratorial wink. Ann Armitage stared at her, unblinking.
“Where is Gordon?” Charlie asked quickly.
“Well, he was just here,” Lu Anne said. She could not remember his leaving; she was suddenly anxious. “I don’t know.” To her horror she saw Dongan Lowndes approaching the table, followed with a vigor bordering on pursuit by Axelrod.
“Isn’t anyone going to eat?” Charlie asked them in mounting distress.
As though in benison, Walter Drogue junior and Patty arrived, their plates piled high. Charlie and Patty Drogue exchanged kisses.
“Where’s your old man?” Charlie asked young Drogue. “Won’t he be joining us?”
Patty, who had hastened to stuff her mouth with food, attempted unsuccessfully to speak.
“He’s having a little trouble with his date,” young Drogue said.
“Yeah?” Charlie asked. “Who’s the lucky lady?”
“You must have seen her, Charlie,” Drogue said. “The little Australian job with the dirty mouth?”
Freitag covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.
“Hilarious,” he said softly. He looked about guiltily as though old Drogue might catch him gossiping. “What a riot!”
“Best body on the unit,” young Drogue said. “Present company excepted.”
“That’s Wally,” Ann Armitage said. “I take it he’s in good health?”
“He damn well better be,” Freitag said. “I had a look at that little dollop.”
Lu Anne, knowing that in time she must, turned toward Dongan Lowndes. As she did so she felt what could only be his hand against her knee.
“Walking the bones, Mr. Lowndes?” she asked him.
His damp hand slithered off like a cemetery rat. She watched his face as the rat-hand fled home to him. His blunt features were momentarily elongated and rodentine as he reabsorbed it, the rat within. For all the effort in the world she could not tear her eyes from his nor could she feel a grain of pity. Let the rat stay wherein it dwelled, she thought. Let it gnaw his guts forever, feed behind his eyes. So long as she was safe from it.
Lowndes’s eyes were moist as he stared down her rebuke. She saw in them what he himself must take for human passion, desire, infatuation, an impulse to master the beloved. The trouble was that he was not a man. Not human.
“Mr. Lowndes,” she heard Axelrod say in a low voice, “you want to look at me when I talk to you?”
At last she tore her eyes free from Lowndes’s, a rending.
“Mr. Maldonado,” she asked the man across the table from her, “are you a good painter?”
Miss Armitage started to speak but fell silent.
“One’s never asked,” Maldonado said.
“Lu Anne,” Charlie said sternly, “Raúl is one of Mexico’s very finest painters. He shows throughout the world.”
“I should say so,” Miss Armitage said.
“I myself,” Charlie declared, “own some choice Maldonados. They’re on display in my home and to me — they mean Mexico. The sunshine, the sea. The whole enchilada.”
Maldonado and Miss Armitage looked at him coldly.
“You know what I mean,” he stammered. “Everything we so admire about …” He fell silent, looked at his plate and mopped his brow.
“Dad owns about a ton and a half of them,” young Drogue said.
“In bohemian company,” Lu Anne said, “or some equivalent, in some demimonde like ours — one faces the deliberately tactless question.”
Maldonado smiled faintly. “Mierda,” he said.
“You better believe it,” Ann Armitage said.
“Everybody here knows whether they’re good or not,” Lu Anne told him. “Given the least encouragement, everybody here is ready to say.”
“I am not a good painter,” Maldonado told the company. There was a momentary silence, then a chorus of demurrers.
“The great ones,” Charlie said with an uneasy chuckle, “they’re never happy with their work. They need us to encourage them.”
“I wish you were a good painter,” Lu Anne said to Maldonado. “Maybe you are, after all.”
“If for you I could be,” Maldonado said gallantly, “you may be sure that I would. Maybe for myself as well. But I think it would make my life difficult.”
Lowndes’s presence had quieted the Long Friends; they were out of temper again, out where she could not control them and where they might cause her some embarrassment. She began to feel panicky.