Children of Light (7 page)

“I wasn’t trying to catch you out,” Walker said. “I just asked out of … curiosity or something.”

“Sure,” she said, smiling sweetly. “You wondered if I was still pathological. But I’m not. I’m just fine.”

“Do you have to get stoned to see me?”

She inclined her head and looked at him nymph-wise from under gathered brows. She was lighting a joint. “It definitely helps, Gordo.”

Walker took the joint and smoked of it. He could watch himself exhale in a vanity-table mirror across the room. The light was soft, the face in the glass distant and indistinct.

Shelley’s cassette recorder was playing Miles Davis’ “In a Silent Way.” She took the joint back from Walker; they sat in silence, breathing in the sad stately music. The dope was rich and syrupy. After a while, Shelley undressed and struggled into a sleek one-piece bathing suit. He went to hold her but she put the flat of her hand against his chest, gently turning him away.

“I want to swim,” she said. “I want to while I still know about it.”

Walker changed into his own suit. They gathered up towels and their ice-filled champagne glasses and rode the elevator down to the pool.

The light around the San Epifanio Beach pool was everywhere
besieged by darkness; black wells and shadows hid the rust, the mildew and the foraging resident rats. There were tables under the royal palms, pastel cabanas, an artificial waterfall.

Walker eased himself into a reclining chair; he was very high. He could feel his own limp smile in place as he watched Shelley walk to the board, spring and descend in a pleasing arc to the glowing motionless water. Across the pool from where he sat, the candles of the lounge flickered, the goose clamor of the patrons was remote, under glass. In a nearby chair, a red-faced man in a sky-blue windbreaker and lemon-colored slacks lay snoring, mouth agape.

Shelley surfaced and turned seal-like on her shoulder, giving Walker her best Esther Williams smile. He finished his champagne and closed his eyes. It seemed to him then that there was something mellow to contemplate, a happy anticipation to savor—if he could but remember what it was. Easeful, smiley, he let his besotted fancy roam a varicolored landscape. A California that had been, the pursuit of happiness past.

What came to him was fear. Like a blow, it snapped him upright. He sat rigid, clutching the armrest, fighting off tremors, the shakes. In the pool a few feet away, Shelley Pearce was swimming lengths in an easy backstroke.

Walker got to his feet, went to the edge of the pool and sat down on the tiles with his legs dangling to the water. Shelley had left her champagne glass there. He drank it down and shivered.

In a moment, Shelley swam over to him.

“Don’t you want to swim?”

He looked into the illuminated water. It seemed foul, slimy over his ankles. He thought it smelled of cat piss and ammonia. Shelley reached up and touched his knee. He shook his head.

“You O.K.?”

He tried to smile. “Sure.”

In the lounge, the musical proprietor was singing “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” Light-headed and short of breath, Walker stood up.

“I think I’m feeling cold,” he called to Shelley.

She paddled to a ladder and climbed out of the pool.

“You don’t look good, Gordon. You’re not sick, are you?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just the grass. It’s all in my head.”

They went upstairs holding hands. Walker took another shower, wrapped a bathrobe around himself and lay down on the bed. Shelley Pearce stood naked before the terrace doors, facing the black mist-enshrouded plane of sky and ocean, smoking. A J. J. Johnson tape was running—“No Moon at All.”

When the piece ended she started the tape over again, scatting along with it under her breath. She went back and stood at the window like a dancer at rest. The back of one hand was cocked against her flexed hip, the other at a right angle from the wrist, holding her cigarette. Her head was thrown back slightly, her face, which Walker could not see, upturned toward the darkness outside.

He got off the bed and walked across the room and kissed her thighs, kneeling, fondling her, performing. His desire made him feel safe and whole. After a few minutes she touched his hair, then languidly, sadly, she went to the bed, put her cigarette out and lay down on her side facing him. He thought she wept as they made love. When she came she gave a soft mournful cry. Spent, he was jolly, he laughed, his fear was salved. But the look in her eyes troubled him; they were bright, fixed, expressionless.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello, Gordon.”

“Some fun, eh, kid?”

“Just like old times,” Shelley said.

“Why did you ask me about the beds?”

“ ’Cause I work for a living,” she told him. “I need a good night’s sleep. If there was only one bed I’d have to drive home.”

“You treat yourself better than you used to.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Everybody treats themselves better now. You’re supposed to.” After a moment she said, “Hey, Gordon, how come you’re sniffing after Lee Verger?”

“Come on,” Walker said. “Don’t.”

“I’d like to hear you tell me how that’s a good idea.”

“It’s my script,” Walker said. “I gave it my best. I want to see her do it. In fact, I want you and Al to set it up for me.”

“Al doesn’t want to do it, bubba.”

“Do it on your own. Play dumb. Tell him you thought it was O.K.”

“Why don’t you take a rest?”

“I don’t rest,” Walker said.

“I knew you’d pull this,” she said. “Al told me about your lunch. I wasn’t surprised.”

“Did you call them?”

“I called Charlie Freitag’s office and I spoke with Madge Clark,” Shelley said in a lifeless voice. “I guess they’ll put you up for a day or two. Charlie likes you. Charlie likes everybody. They have to work it out with the location people, so it’ll take a little time to fix.” She stared at him with a vexed child’s stare. He avoided her eyes.

“How about giving other people a rest? Like Connie, huh? Or Lee. Why don’t you give her a rest?”

He only shook his head.

“She’s a fucking psycho.”

“That’s your story, Shelley.”

“Oh yes she is, Gordon. She’s just as crazy as catshit and you better leave her alone.”

“I want to see her,” Walker said.

“You belong in a hospital,” Shelley Pearce told him.

He smiled. “Your boss told me the same thing.”

“Sure,” Shelley said. “We’re in league against you.” She got up and walked to the foot of the bed and leaned against the bedboard. “You know what crazy people like most, Gordon? They like to make other people crazy.”

“You have it wrong,” Walker said, “you and Al.”

“Her husband is with her. Her kids too. You want to walk into that?”

“I want to work,” Walker said slowly. “I want to get back into it. I need a project I care about. I need to work with people I care about.”

“You’re so full of shit, Gordon.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Walker said.

“You’re an assassin, man. You don’t even care if you don’t get laid if you can make some woman unhappy.”

She stood beside the bed shielding her eyes from the harsh lamplight, then turned her back on him, folded her arms and walked toward the balcony with her head down.

“Every time I see you, we talk about your love life, don’t we? We never talk about mine.”

“How’s your love life, Shell?”

“Thanks for asking,” she said.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously?” she asked, rounding on him. “Well, it does just fine without you in it. I get along without you …”

“Very well.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the line. I get along without you very well.” She turned toward him and on her face there was a pained half smile. “It’s absolutely true. No question about it.”

“Good,” Walker said.

She had turned away again, toward the blackness beyond the window; she was singing:

“I get along without you very well, Of course I do.”

She sang it twice over, snapping her fingers, straining for the key. He watched her come over to the bed.

“Wanna sing along with me, Gord?” She raised his chin with her palm. “Except when autumn rain …” she sang. “Da dum de da da dum. Remember, Gord?”

“No.”

“No,” Shelley said. “Naw. Well, that’s good, Gordon. ’Cause then I don’t have to worry about you. Or you about me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Walker said with a shrug. “People should care.”

“Is that what you think, Gordon?” she asked. “You think people should care?”

“Perhaps,” Walker suggested, “you find the sentiment banal?”

“No, no,” Shelley said. “No, baby, I find it moving. I find all your sentiments moving.” She lay down beside him. “You want to fuck some more? Or you too drunk? Tell momma.”

Slowly Walker leaned forward, took the champagne bottle from beside the bed and drank. “Stop it,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, all right.” She took the bottle from his hand. “Why her? Why Lee?”

Walker shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You think you invented her,” Shelley said. “You’re going to be sorry.”

“No doubt,” Walker said, and shortly went to sleep.

A
sweet expensive tropic darkness had enveloped the Villa Liberia; it was included in the budget and thought to enhance production values. Beyond the tiki torches stood illuminated fences and armed men. These, together with the jacaranda, reminded Lionel of South Africa, of Houghton and home.

To the sound of a gentle surf, Lionel climbed the hotel’s elegantly turned stone pathway until he stood upon a broad parapet that commanded the rows of bungalows and the main buildings with their interior gardens and swimming pools. In the lagoon, below and to his left, a few dories swung at anchor, lighted for night fishing. Southward along the coast, beyond the wire, were the lights of the village.

At the parapet, the path divided. A shallow ramp descended to the shadowy beach; a flight of coral-colored steps climbed toward the casitas on the higher slope. Lionel leaned against the stones of the rail and took out a cigarette.

In the morning he would be flying home—Los Angeles, then Rio, then Johannesburg. He had been eight years away. Neither of his children had seen their grandparents. Nor had they seen the beautiful scourged land, the winter roses, apartheid. Thinking about the trip, he was charged with excitement over the children’s impending discovery and his own return. They would lose their innocence there, pick up a small portion of the real world’s burden, learn fear. It was not all so sanitized there as at Bahía Honda.

He smoked and considered his fear and the fear his children would inherit. He and Lu Anne had talked about the danger. They had agreed it was remote, that the Night of the Long Knives was unlikely to come in that very month of that very season as if only to engulf their children. Luck rarely ran that hard. Yet, he thought, someone’s luck would run out there. Sometime, sooner or later, someone and their children, traveling in that country, would awaken in the night out of luck.

For the moment, it was a phantom terror. He was not afraid for himself or for the kids, not really. His long-term apprehensions were serious ones; for his parents too old to run away again, his married sister and her boys, old friends of all colors with complacent styles or dangerous politics. So many of the people who had shared his youth—in Houghton, Durban, the Cape—had become politically involved and he could only imagine the lives engagement imposed on them.

He was a rich doctor in Los Angeles, a world away; a Hollywood shrink, a cliché Married to an actress whose name would be vaguely familiar in Pietermaritzburg or Maclear or Aliwal North.

Then it struck him how happy, how joyful he was to be going away. He lit another cigarette and watched the twinkling dory lights.

He stood and smoked and considered the petty emotional squalor which was his present stock-in-trade. So aroused was he that it took him some little time to understand that the true source of his excitement—his happiness, in fact—was that he would be getting away from her. From her closely reasoned madness, her nightmare undersea beauty and deluded eyes.

He was startled from this insight by the sound of a woman’s laughter.
The laughter was so loud and confident and heedless, so alien to his lonely despair that it surprised him to anger. Looking up the slope, he saw in the fairy glow of the patios a blond woman with her back toward him. She was seated on one of the low, tiled walls that surrounded the whirlpool baths and she appeared to be naked. So far as he could make out, she was wide-shouldered and slim-waisted, attractive in the latest of California styles, the style which was orthodoxy on that production. The girls all looked a bit alike to Lionel. Drawing nearer, he saw that there were two men sitting chest deep in the whirlpool on which the woman rested.

Inadvertently, Lionel had blundered into the director’s compound. He began to back away along the path he had followed but, uncannily, one of the men spotted him in the darkness. He heard his name called. He recognized the man as Walter Drogue. The woman was Drogue’s wife, Patty.

“Lionel,” Drogue called to him. “
Bienvenidos!
Come over and have a drink.”

Lionel trudged self-consciously toward the patio. At his approach, Patty rose from the edge of the Jacuzzi and hastily draped herself in a burgundy-colored beach robe. The second man in the tub got to his feet and climbed for dry land, making no attempt to cover his nakedness. He was an elderly man, grizzly of chest and scrotum, his frame slack and emaciated. He took a chair and observed Lionel’s approach with black gypsy eyes, watchful and expressionless.

The director stayed where he was in the tub, smiling contentedly. He was deeply tanned. His dark hair, moistly pasted to his forehead like Napoleon’s in a cognac ad, was worn short, shaven about his neck and ears in an almost military fashion.

“Lionel,” Drogue declared, “you and Patty know each other.”

“Of course,” Lionel said. “Good evening.”

“Hi,” Patty said, raising her amber eyes to him.

“This is my father, Walter senior,” Drogue told his guest, indicating the naked old man, who had taken a chair beside Patty Drogue. “He’ll be with us for the next ten days. Dad, this is Lionel Morgen, Lee Verger’s husband.”