“Charlie,” old Drogue said, “let them work it out. Don’t put your health at risk.”
Lu Anne got up and went to Freitag and took his arm. Lowndes watched her hungrily.
“They said it would make us sick and we didn’t listen,” she told Freitag. “All summer we would creep over in the middle of the day. Inside it was cool and awful-smelling. We played with the bones until old black Pelletier come yelling at us. You all know how kids are. My sister would run across the street, eat a Sno-ball — never even wash her hands.”
“Go to bed, Lu Anne.” Charlie turned to Walker. “Gordon, please.”
Walker stepped beside her.
“Pictures?” Maldonado asked.
“He’s a reporter,” Ann Armitage explained to her friend. “He has a hot picture and he wants to be paid off.”
The information seemed to depress Maldonado utterly.
“How do you like the sound of that, Lowndes?” Walker asked. He turned to Maldonado. “He can write the birds out of the trees, this guy. The good fairies brought him insight and invention and sound. But the bad fairy took his balls away.”
“Don’t provoke him,” Lu Anne said. “You only think he’s a man. He isn’t really.”
“So here he is,” Walker said. “He’s got all this great stuff going for him. He’s a first-class writer and a fourth-rate human being. He doesn’t have the confidence or the manliness to manage his own talent. He doesn’t have the balls.”
“But you would, would you?” young Drogue asked Walker. “If you were as good as you claim he is, you’d be one terrific human being. Is that what you’re telling us?”
“If I was that good,” Walker said, “I would never waste a moment. I’d be at it night and day. I’d never take a drink or drug myself or be with a woman I didn’t love.”
“Listen to him,” old Drogue said. “You try to tell people writers are assholes and nobody listens.”
The Drogues turned away into the darkness.
“Good night, all,” Ann Armitage said. She drew herself up and waited for Maldonado. “You guys slay me,” she said, “with your going on about balls.” Sadly, the portly Mexican rose and went with her.
“I did get sick,” Lu Anne said. “I breathed them inside me from a cemetery wall. Playing with the bones. Them, there.”
She pointed to the Long Friends who were clustered about Lowndes trying to touch him with their long, delicately clawed fingers, affecting to enfold him in the fine tracery of their dark wings.
“Little sister,” Lowndes said. “You’re a long way from home.”
“I’ve come a long way from my cemetery wall,” Lu Anne said. “Sometimes I think I’ve ceased to be God’s child. I think you found me out, Mr. Dongan Lowndes.”
Axelrod and Lowndes stood up at the same time, Axelrod placing himself between Lowndes and Freitag. Freitag stepped back with Lu Anne on his arm.
“You’re a sweet woman,” Lowndes said. “You don’t belong with this pack of dogs.”
Freitag gasped.
“All right, fucker,” Axelrod said. He tried to take hold of Lowndes but the writer got by him.
“You have found me out,” Lu Anne screamed. “The shit between my toes has stood up to address me.”
Lowndes had bulled his way past Axelrod and was headed for Freitag and Lu Anne. He had lost his glasses and he staggered as though blinded by Lu Anne’s light.
Her teeth clenched, Lu Anne made a swipe at Lowndes’s face.
“He’s all filth inside,” she said. “Look at his eyes.”
Lowndes raised his hands to protect himself. Walker stepped in and gently pulled her back.
Lowndes had backed up against an adjoining table. He had lowered his head into something like a boxer’s stance and his fists, only half clenched, were raised before his face. His pale brown myopic eyes, tearful and angry like a child’s, darted from side to side, trying to focus on the enemy center.
It was enraging to see the man in such a posture, Walker thought. His insides churned with anger, and with pity and loathing.
“Get away from me, you crazy bitch,” Lowndes shouted at Lu Anne.
Walker was uncertain whether Lowndes had tried to strike her or not. He hesitated for a moment, decided the loose fists were provocation enough and decided to go, coke-confident. He felt drunk and sick and ashamed of himself; Lowndes would pay for it. He heard Axelrod shout something about the picture and Charlie Freitag cry that enough was enough. Walker had lived through some dozen bar fights. He was not an innocent and Lowndes was offensive and, he imagined, easy. He was making fierce faces, his right hand floating somewhere back of beyond in the ever-receding future, when Lowndes decked him with a bone-ended ham fist all the way from Escambia County. There was a brief interval during which he was unable to determine whether he was still or in motion.
“You pack of Jew bastards,” Lowndes was screaming. “You bloodsuckers. I’ll kill every one of you.”
Walker felt for the side of his head. After a moment he concluded that he had not been mortally wounded, but he was bleeding and there was not much vision in his left eye. He struggled to stand and after an effort succeeded. No one helped him. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief; his hand came out glistening with coke crystals. He licked them off.
When he stood up he saw that Bill Bly had Lowndes by an arm and was forcing him to his knees. Bly’s free hand was outstretched to keep Axelrod from closing on the fallen man. Charlie Freitag, his face frozen in an icy bitter smile, had placed himself between the struggle and Lu Anne.
She had kicked off her sandals; Walker saw her eyes go wrong. In the next instant she turned and bolted for the pathway that led toward the beach bungalows. For just a moment, Bly hesitated in his subduing of Lowndes and made a motion toward her. On impulse Walker raced down the path after her, slowing to keep his balance on the turns, his heart throbbing. He ran desperately and mindlessly, pursuing. He could hear the padding of her bare feet on the stucco surfacing of the shadowy walkway but she kept one turn ahead of him all the way down.
The sand slowed him as he ran along the beach. He heard her door slam and when he arrived before her bungalow a light was on inside. He rapped on the door and called her name. After a few moments he went around to the rear patio and found its door unlocked. There was no one in the house when he went inside. Her bedroom was sandy and disordered.
He had started wearily for his own quarters when he saw headlights on the turnoff that led from the hotel’s highway gate to its front door. In one desperate rally he raced through the deserted lobby and burst out the front door just as one of the company limousines started away. Running after it, he pounded on the rear door. Lu Anne was in the back seat.
“Wait,” Walker said. He was too out of breath to speak. “Lu. Wait.”
She stared straight ahead, one hand clasped to her mouth.
“No va sin mío,” Walker panted to the driver. “Lu, no va. Sin mío.”
She nodded. The driver pulled over to the side of the driveway. Running back to his room, Walker heard Bill Bly calling her.
He took his cocaine stash, his roll of bills and a green windbreaker that was on the bathroom door. Securing this much, he ran full tilt back out to the limousine and climbed in beside Lu Anne.
“Go,” she said to the driver, “please.”
As they drove to the gate, she leaned against him, trembling with his trembling. He fought for breath.
“I have to get away, Gordon,” she said quietly. “I need a day or two. I need a quiet hour.”
He nodded, unable to speak.
“I wanted you to come,” she told him. “I think I did. I wasn’t running from you, was I?”