The wall of the corridor between the main entrance and the inner lobby of the San Epifanio was covered in worn striped wallpaper against which were hung ghastly seascapes at close intervals. Once past them, he strolled into the candlelit gemütlichkeit of the Miramar Lounge, all nets and floats and steering wheels. There was not much sunset to be seen through the picture windows but the lights were low and the bar and adjoining tables fairly crowded. The customers were middle-aged, noisy and dressed for golf — a hard-liquor crowd. Walker took the only vacant stool at the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary. The drink when it came was bitter, hefty with cheap vodka. Strong drinks were a selling point of the place.
On the stool next to Walker sat a blond woman who was drinking rather hungrily of her gin-and-tonic and toying with a pack of Virginia Slims. She appeared to be in her early thirties and attractive, but Walker was not certain of either impression. He was not altogether sober and it was difficult to see people clearly in the lighting of the Miramar Lounge. That was the way they liked it there.
At the entrance to the bar, adjoining the corridor through which he had passed, was a phone booth, one from the old days decorated with sea horses and dolphins in blue and white tile. After a moment, Walker picked up his drink and went to the phone booth. He took out his black book with its listing of the Baja location numbers and his telephone credit card.
He took a long sip, held his breath and dialed. The resonance of submarine depths hummed in the wires as he waited for the ring. When it came, he closed his eyes.
When the telephone rang she was outside, in a lounge chair on the sand, looking into the afterglow of sunset. Her children were playing with their father at the water’s edge; she had watched the three forms darken to silhouettes in the dying light. The soft honey glow of the children’s bodies had faded in the quick dusk; now their scamperings and her husband’s thin-limbed gestures against the radiant foam and magenta sky suggested puppetry to her. It was an ugly thought and she forced it aside. She let the phone ring until she saw that her husband had heard it; knee deep in light surf, he had turned at the sound. She stood up and took her sunglasses off.
“I’ll get it,” she called to him.
She jogged up to the open door of their bungalow, wiped her sandy feet on the straw mat and rushed to the phone.
“Lu Anne,” said the voice on the far end when she answered. “Lu Anne, it’s Gordon. Gordon Walker.”
She had known, she thought, who it would be. Watching the sun go down she had been thinking of him and thinking that he would call that night.
“Hello? Lu Anne? Can you hear me?”
His voice sounded from the receiver in her hand as clearly as though he were there in Mexico, somewhere in the same hotel.
“Lu Anne?”
Slowly, guiltily, she replaced the receiver.
It had grown dark in the stone bungalow. The only light came from fading pastel sky framed in the doorway. She sat on a high-backed wicker chair looking out. In the darkness behind her she could feel a presence gathering. A confusion of sounds rang in her ears and among them she heard Walker’s voice saying her name. Watchful, perfectly still, she stayed where she was until she saw a figure in the doorway. At first she thought it had to do with the things that were manifesting themselves behind her back; she watched fascinated, virtually unafraid.
“Señora?”
She knew who it was then.
“Sí, sí,” she said, and she reached out for the light that was right over the phone. “Hello, Helga. Good evening.”
Helga Machado was the children’s nanny, supplied by the production unit through the hotel. A stout, pale, heavy-browed young woman, she watched Lee Verger with caution and a formal smile.
“Now,” Helga said, “I may take the children for their dinner. Or else I can come back a little later.”
Lu Anne was blinking in the sudden light. The wariness in Helga’s expression did not escape her.
“Well,” she said cheerfully, “let’s see. Why don’t we call them and they can go to dinner and I’ll say good night to them when we get back.”
“Very good, señora.”
Lu Anne went past Helga and through the doorway. At the water’s edge, Lionel and the children were still playing in the darkness. The shallows flashed phosphorescence where they ran.
“David and Laura,” Lu Anne called to her children. “Dinner time, you-all.”
She saw the dim figures fall still, listened to her little son’s protesting moan. They would be early to sleep. If she missed them that evening there would be only the shortest amount of time available for goodbyes in the morning. She and Lionel were to dine that evening at Walter Drogue’s casita. It was a courtesy — a farewell meal for Lionel — and there had been no chance of declining.
When the children came up from the beach, Lu Anne led them into the bungalow and bent to them, holding each by the hand. They were only a year and a half apart; David was five and Laura seven. They had their father’s red-blond hair a shade darker, and their mother’s blue eyes.
“You guys go with Helga and wash off all the sand and salt. Then you eat your dinners like good children and you can go see The Wizard of Oz in the suite.”
Thus bought off, the children murmured assent.
“Laura,” Lu Anne called after her daughter, “don’t forget your glasses, honey. Or you won’t be able to see the movie.”
“If I had contacts,” the little girl said, “then I’d never forget them.”
Going out, Helga and the children stopped to talk with Lionel, who had come up from the beach. She listened as he joked with them.
“Who was it?” Lionel asked her when he came inside. He was over six feet in height and dramatically thin, with a long face and a prominent nose. His hair was thinning, the sun-bleached strands pasted across his tanned scalp. Lee was facing the dressing-table mirror; Lionel watched her in the glass.
“Oh,” she said, “it just rang and stopped. It must have been the switchboard or something.”
Her husband took off his bathing suit and stood beside her at the mirror rubbing Noxzema on his face and chest. Their eyes met.
“Take your medicine, love?” he asked.
There was a look he had when he asked about the medicine. A stare. It made him seem cruel and unfeeling although she knew perfectly well that he was neither.
“Can’t you tell?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m like an old woman about it. I’ll stop.”
She had stopped taking the pills ten days before. Held her breath and stopped. Sometimes her old pal Billy Bly gave her something to get her through the night. She felt quite guilty about it but she was convinced it had to be done. They were ruining her concentration. They were ruining everything.
“You’ve seemed very well,” Lionel said. “I mean,” he hastened to add, “you’ve seemed happy. That’s what it comes to, I suppose.”
“I’ve been working,” she said. “Nothing like it.”
“It’s good, isn’t it? This.” He meant the film.
“Yes. I mean I think so. Edna — I love her.”
“Do you think she’s you?”
“Are you asking me that as a doctor?”
He had a way of seeming especially serious when he was joking. Sometimes it was hard to tell.
“As a fan.”
“Well, of course she isn’t me. I mean,” she said with a laugh, “things are tough enough as they are.”
She looked up at him in the mirror and saw him smile. He reached out and touched her shoulder and she put her hand over his. After a moment, he went into the bathroom and she heard the shower go on.
If he wanted to, she thought, he could count the pills. Then he would know. She looked at herself in the highlighted mirror, bent toward her own image.