Children of Light (34 page)

“See the world, Walker? How it goes?”

“Stop!”

Smiling, she shook her head. She pivoted, pointing left and right as though she were working out her blocking. Walker backed toward the ocean, deciding to play deep. He realized at once that it had been a mistake. He would be depending on his speed and she was faster.

“Cut it out,” he said.

“Give me my robe,” she said. “Put on my crown. Hey, it’s Shakespeare, Walker.”

She crouched, hands on her thighs, dodging.

“Immortal longings,” she said. “Here comes your dog Tray, Gordon, lookit there.”

If she went, he thought, the water would slow her down. I’ll get her in the water, he thought.

“Want to marry me, Walker? I see a church.”

“I beg you,” he said.

She clapped her hands. He blinked and stepped back. She feinted left, then right.

“Give me your answer, do!” she sang. “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!”

He shouted and charged. She spun away. He held the incorporeal air. He turned without stopping and saw her hip deep, backing into the surf. The left side of his chest exploded in pain. He stopped open-mouthed, fighting for breath. He could no longer see her face. She was a dark form against the fading sky.

“This is the last,” she laughed, “of the
Gestae Francorum.
” He held his chest and stumbled toward her.

“Come with me, Gordon. This is best.”

“Yes,” he said. He sought to trick her. By the time he reached the water she was under the tuck of a wave.

The tide was low and the drop precipitate. He tried to shake the
pain off. Step by step he lurched toward her into the water. Each step hurt him and each wave’s surge threatened to throw him off balance.

“It’s bliss,” he heard her say. She was standing on a bar, her hair wet down. The light gave her an aura of faint rainbows.

“Come,” she called. “Or else save me.”

Walker lost his footing. He was swimming free. He saw her ahead of him and to the left, perhaps twenty feet away. A tall wave rose behind her and she was swept away. A second later the same wave hit him at its breaking point; he tried to slide beneath it and hit sand. He was in two feet of water over the bar where she had stood. The wave smacked him down, drove him off the bar into deeper inshore water and held him down in it. When he surfaced he was afraid he had breathed seawater. For a moment he could not draw breath. When he was able to swim, the pain subsided.

He thought he heard her voice on the wind. Then the rip drew him out, a tiger of a rip that brought him to the edge of panic, and if she called again he never heard her.

He could only just make out the beach in the darkness, and it seemed farther away each time he looked. In the end he settled into a stroke that kept him parallel to shore, and after what seemed a very long time, he rode the waves in.

Staggering up on the beach, he stepped squarely on her skirt. It surprised him; he thought he had swum miles along the shoreline. When he lay down he found that she had weighted the skirt down with a stone and his heart rose. It made him certain that she would be back and he had only to wait for her. It was another stunt of hers, another death-defying leap. She was the better swimmer.

He called her name until his voice was gone. Then he lay down and tried to pray her back and went to sleep. Hours later the tide came in and woke him. He struck out along the dark beach toward the hotel, guiding his steps by the phosphorescent surf. The waves beat him back when he tried to wade around the point of the bay, so he sheltered against the low bluffs to wait for light. When it came he started again and got around the rocky point dry-footed. He walked, staggered, ran in short bursts, stopping when the pain forced him to.

He was terrified that she was gone. That she might be nowhere at all and her furious loving soul dissolved. He could not bear the thought of it.

When he saw a runner up the beach, he had a moment’s hope. It was so quickly dispelled that he tried to bring it back for examination. The runner was a man out for a morning jog.

The moment’s hope had been a grain of mercy. A shred of hope, a ray. There were a thousand little clichés for losers to cling to while they lost. Why should they seem so apt, he wondered, such worn words? Why should they suit the heart so well?

Watching the runner’s approach, he wondered what mercy might be. What the first mercy might have been. She had asked him if there was one and he had denied it with an oath.

He should have told her that there was, he thought. Because there was. As surely as there was water hidden in the desert, there was mercy. Her crazy love was mercy. It might have saved her.

Jack Glenn pulled up and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

“Shit,” he said breathlessly. He placed his hands palm out over his kidneys and began to walk up and down quickly. “Like … where you been? They’re having kittens, you know. Where’s Lu Anne?”

“Not back?” Walker asked.

“She’s vanished,” Glenn said. “Wasn’t she with you?”

“Yes,” Walker told him.

“So where is she?”

“In the water,” Walker told him.

“Hey, I don’t see her, Gordon.”

Walker saw another figure running up the beach toward them. It was the stuntman, Bill Bly.

“Hey, Gordon,” Jack Glenn said, “I don’t see her.” He turned to look Walker up and down. “Your eye looks bad. Where’d you get the weird duds?”

Walker did not answer him.

“Oh my God,” Jack said. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Because I’m looking, Gordon, and, you know, I don’t see her. Something is wrong, isn’t it?”

Walker nodded.

“Oh my God,” Glenn said. “Oh Jesus Christ, Gordon.”

Walker looked at the young man’s face. It kept changing before his eyes. Glenn was looking at the water, horror-stricken. For a fraction of a second, Walker thought he might be seeing her there. But when he turned there was nothing.

“I lost her,” Walker said.

A
round two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon Shelley Pearce, Jack Glenn and a French actor named Celli were at the bar in Joe Allen’s. Because it was a rainy, chilling day and because they had spent the morning at a memorial service, they were drinking brandy and each of them was somewhat drunk.

They had begun to talk about the drunk-driving laws and about accidents friends of theirs had had when Gordon Walker came in. They watched in startled silence as he came up to join them.

“Well, hello, Gordon,” Jack said.

He introduced Walker to Celli. Celli gave Walker a hearty American handshake while the others watched him to see whether he knew who it was that he was meeting.

“How was it?” Gordon asked Shelley.

“Oh, it was good, Gordon. Real good as those things go.”

Walker nodded.

“I was gonna say you should have been there, but of course you shouldn’t.”

“I wasn’t asked.”

He signaled the bartender and ordered a Perrier.

“I mean,” Shelley said, “what do you mean, ‘How was it?’ It was god-awful. Her kids cried. He looked relieved, which he damn well
was. There was press but they didn’t stay.” She took a long sip from her snifter. “The press likes a coffin and we didn’t have one.”

“It was a long time afterward to have it,” Celli said. “Because in France we do everything right away. The memorial, two months, it seems different.”

“Well,” Shelley said, “maybe they were waiting for her to …”

“Right,” Jack Glenn said quickly. “That was another blow. That she wasn’t found.”

“It wasn’t a blow,” Walker said. “It was better. I thought it was.”

“Did you, Gord?” Shelley asked. “That’s good. I see you’re drinking Perrier.”

“I had hepatitis,” he explained. “If I hadn’t had the gamma globulin shot I would have died.” He ran his finger around his glass. “So my drinking days are over.”

“Isn’t it tough?” she asked him.

“What have you been up to?” Walker asked her.

“Isn’t it tough not drinking? How do you manage it?”

“Oh,” Walker said. “Well, I watch television.” He laughed in embarrassment. “Evenings it’s hard, you get blue. And I drink a lot of tomato juice with Tabasco.” He cleared his throat. “I drink unsalted tomato juice because my blood pressure’s a little high.”

“That’s neat,” Shelley said. “That’s prudent. Do you jog?”

“Not yet. They say I might start in a month or so. When my blood pressure’s better. I’m starting to write again.”

“So you never really had a heart attack?” Jack asked.

“Apparently not.”

Shelley ordered another round and another Perrier for Walker.

“What brings you to the coast?” she asked him. “What’d you do, lurk outside? The mystery mourner?”

“I hear you opened your own shop,” Walker said to her.

“That’s right, man. Power to the people.”

“She says they’ll only represent women,” Jack said. “The truth is, she’s taking two-thirds of Keochakian’s clients. The poor guy’s on the phone twenty-four hours a day begging people to stay.”

“Did you go with her?” Walker asked Jack Glenn.

“You bet I did.”

“I don’t understand why you’re in town,” Shelley said. “You doing deals or what?”

“We’re moving out,” he said. “We’re relocating East.”

“We are?” she asked. “Who are we?”

Walker sipped his Perrier.

“Connie came back from London when I got sick. So we’re together. We’re relocating. East.”

“Oh, Gordon,” Shelley said. She put a hand to her chest as though it were
her
heart that was at risk. “Is that ever neat! Connie came home. For heaven’s sake! How about that, fellas?” she asked her friends. “Isn’t that neat?”

“Really glad to hear it,” Jack said.

Gordon thanked him. The Frenchman raised an eyebrow and looked into his glass.

“I haven’t been reading the trades,” Walker said. “How’s the picture?”

“It’s on the bottom of the Pacific,” Shelley said. “With the late Lee V.”

“They’re recutting it,” Jack said. He shrugged. “They shot some scenes with Joy. Lots of luck.”

“It’s wonderful that Connie came home,” Shelley said. “Hey,” she said delightedly, “how about that for a title?
Connie Came Home
? But I suppose people would think it was an animal picture.”

Jack Glenn laughed and bit his lip.

“I think it’s wonderful, Gordon,” Shelley said. “Plumb wonderful. Really.”

Walker looked away.

“When she died, Gordon, did you think of any great quotes from Shakespeare? He can quote Shakespeare from here to Sunday,” Shelley explained to her friends. “He’s a walking concordance. So was she. Come on, Gordo,” she insisted. “You stood on the shore when she went down for number three. What did you say?”

“I was very drunk the night it happened. The truth is, I remember
very little of what went on. What I remember is pretty bad. Anyway, why don’t you stop?” he said.

“You’re no fun anymore now that you stopped drinking. Drunks aren’t fun when you’re not drunk. I bet nobody ever told you that before.”

“Often,” Walker said. “Repeatedly.”

“I can think of a quote,” Shelley said. “Too much of water hast thee, maid.” She reached across the table and pushed his Perrier into his lap. “How’s that grab?”

Walker tried to dry his clothes with his napkin.

“The reason I came here after the service,” he told Shelley, “was to see you.”

Shelley swallowed hard.

“Oh,” she said brightly. “Oh, me.”

“I was hoping that in future … I was hoping that in future you might represent me.”

She blinked and looked around Joe Allen’s as though she were expecting someone. She was smiling brightly.

“Sure, Gordon. Absolutely.”

“I have some things in mind,” he told her.

“Oh yeah?” her voice came as a croak. “Excuse me,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Like what?”

“We can talk another time. I have to go.” He stood up and shook hands with Jack and Celli. “I thought that at my present age I might stop going with the flow.”

“We’ll do good stuff,” Shelley said, not looking at him. “You better believe it. Hey. I’m sorry about your drink, Gord.”

“It’s just water,” he said. “So long.”

“Right,” Shelley said as he went toward the door. “And I paid for it too.”

“Goodbye, Shelley,” Walker said.

When he was outside they sat in silence for a while.

“Excuse me,” Celli said. “But I don’t know how to make of it.”

“You were pretty tough on the guy,” Jack Glenn said. “Pretty tough on Lu Anne too.”

Shelley turned on him.

“Goddamn it,” she said. “I mourned her. You think I didn’t mourn her? I thought she was wonderful. I always thought it was like somebody fed her a poisoned apple.”

She took out her handkerchief and cried into it. Jack ordered another round.

“One more,” he said. “One more can’t hurt.”

When the drinks came Jack handed Shelley hers. “Drink me,” he said. Shelley drank.

“She used to talk about her big night as Rosalind,” Jack said. “I think it was a student thing.”

“I was there,” Shelley said. “I had applied to Yale Rep, so I drove down from Northampton. I saw her do Rosalind.”

“And was it, like, tremendous?”

“Yeah,” Shelley said. “Yeah, it was nice.”

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.” Jack asked, “That’s
As You Like It
, right?”

“That’s it,” she said. She put her handkerchief away. “Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

“Great line,” Jack Glenn said.