“Oh God,” she said, “where’s Gordon? I need him.”
“Jon,” Freitag said to Axelrod, “would you do me a favor and find your friend Walker? Be a pal.”
Even in the unsteady light it was apparent that Axelrod was red-faced with anger.
“Sure, Charlie,” he said. He put a hand on Lowndes’s shoulder again. “What do you say, Dongan? Want to help me find our pal Gordo?”
Lowndes brushed his hand away violently. “I don’t go for this tinseltown familiarity,” he told Axelrod.
“That’s not nice, Dongan,” Axelrod said.
“Mr. Maldonado,” Lu Anne said, “would you find him for me?”
“Can’t you walk?” Miss Armitage asked. “Find your own goddamn friends.”
Lu Anne was carefully pouring the decanted red wine into her glass. She drank it down.
“I can’t see so well,” she explained. “And there’s such a crowd.”
“Of course,” Maldonado said. “Mr. Walker. I’ll find him. I’ll go now.”
He touched his napkin to his mouth, although he had not been eating, and went off.
“Christ almighty, Charlie,” Miss Armitage said to her host. “Where do you get these people?”
“The same place I got you,” Charlie Freitag said brightly. There were no laughs for him at the table.
Walker was in the pool-house lavatory, sniffing cocaine from the porcelain surface of the sink, when the door opened behind him. In the mirror over the sink he saw a man framed in the doorway, discovering him in flagrante. The man appeared wild-eyed and disheveled; he was wearing a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck and dark trousers. It was an unwelcome sight.
“Cocaína,” the man said.
Walker turned slowly toward the man in the mirror and recognized Maldonado.
“It’s all right,” he said slowly, having no idea himself what he might mean.
“Among my friends,” the painter explained, “it’s frowned on as bourgeois. As gringo. My companion — Miss Armitage — is very bitter on the subject.”
“I’ll bet,” Walker said. He went past Maldonado to lock the door. “I thought,” he explained, “I had locked this.”
“No,” Maldonado said, “it was open. This is difficult,” he told Walker. “To have some or not?”
“Do have some,” Walker suggested. “I mean, it’s your decision of course.”
“I shall,” Maldonado said. “Why not?”
They took some. The painter paced, frowning.
“A case could certainly be made,” Walker said, “that it’s bad for the Indians. In terms of exploitation.”
Maldonado waved the argument away.
“It’s neither good nor bad for the Indians. It makes no difference for them. It’s ourselves and our societies that we’re destroying.”
“That’s as it should be,” Walker said.
They had more. Instead of pacing, Maldonado fixed Walker with a grave stare.
“Who is the woman, Walker?”
“Do you mean Lee Verger? You were introduced.”
“Lee Verger,” Maldonado repeated. “An actress?”
“A very good actress. Quite well known.”
“Is she acting now? Tonight? Performing?”
Walker hesitated.
“Not tonight,” he said. “Not really.”
“She’s your woman?”
“Yes,” Walker said.
“She sent me to get you. I’m not some house cat to be sent on such an errand but I obeyed her. She asked me if I was a good painter and I replied that I was not. I wanted to humiliate myself.”
“Well,” Walker said, “you’ve probably fallen in love with her.”
“I can explain,” Maldonado said. “I can explain to her. With your permission.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Walker said. “Let’s go back and talk.”
The party seemed to be going well as Walker and Maldonado made their way back to Charlie Freitag’s table. The violinists patrolled unmolested; happy conversation bubbled up from every quarter. Only at the party’s core, in the circle around Freitag, a dark enchantment prevailed.
Maldonado resumed his seat across from Lu Anne. He and all the others at the table watched in silence as Walker guided himself into a chair beside her and she moved to steady him. When he was down beside her she took his hand and kissed it and put her arm around his neck.
“I want to explain myself,” Maldonado said. “I want to explain what I said against my painting.”
“There’s no need for that,” Miss Armitage said. “Everyone knows how wonderful you are. And everyone can see you’ve been drinking.”
The voice of Joy McIntyre rang again through the patio.
“The choreographer at the Sands is dead!” she bellowed. “The choreog—” She began the phrase again but was cut off in mid-word, somewhat disconcertingly.
“Why are people always saying that?” Lowndes asked.
“ ’Cause we’re in tinseltown,” Axelrod told him. “And they’re sending you a message, Dongan.”
“I want to speak about my painting,” Maldonado said. “This lady has challenged me and I dedicate my remarks to her.”
“The lady will excuse you,” Ann Armitage said firmly. “She knows there are things not to say in public. She understands that sometimes we say things that can hurt us in important ways.”
“All the same,” Maldonado said softly.
Walker finished the drink at his place.
“We are true artists here,” he explained, “we work without a net.”
Old Drogue came out of the darkness; there appeared to be dark welts on his neck. He made his way to the table to sit between his son and Patty.
When Charlie rose to welcome him, he raised his right hand in a kind of benediction and sat down.
“Yay, Pops,” Drogue junior said. Patty enfolded his arm in hers.
“I come from Colima,” Maldonado told them. “My people were dust. I went to school and studied art because art is prized in this country. My teacher had been a student of the American William Gropper, so he painted like Gropper and so did I. In Tepic I have a roomful of my early work — all very realistic and political.”
“Passionate,” Miss Armitage told the people at the table. “Fierce and full of rage. It’s wonderful work.”
“It resembles the cartoons of Mr. Magoo,” Maldonado said. “A Mr. Magoo passionate, fierce and full of rage.”
“He tortures himself,” Ann Armitage lamented.
“I torture myself by enduring banalities in silence. I wish on my mother’s grave I had never learned the English language.”
“You probably went too far,” Walker suggested. “You should have learned a little restaurant English. Enough to order flapjacks. Certainly not enough to understand Miss Armitage on the subject of Mexican painting.”
“What’s he doing here anyway?” Miss Armitage asked Charlie of Walker. “Why isn’t he somewhere chained to a hospital bed?”
Charlie muttered soothingly and looked at the table.
Maldonado turned to Lu Anne.
“Before you there should only be truth. Because of your eyes.”
“How serious everything’s become,” Lu Anne said. “First the choreographer at the Sands and now this.”
“You started it,” Walker pointed out to her. “Ask a tactless question and you get the long answer.”
“The choreographer at the Sands?” Lowndes asked.
“I’ve never spoken the truth in English,” Maldonado told them. “Is it possible?”
“Oh yes,” Lu Anne said. “But very Protestant.”
“I’ve taken to diving,” the artist told her. “I take pictures wherever there’s coral. Then from the pictures I paint. Can you imagine what it’s like to vulgarize the bottom of the ocean? The source of life? When you know the difference?”