Free Children of Light by Robert Stone Page A

to astonish the world.”
    Patty returned with another tray of drinks.
    Lionel wiped his glasses. His head ached with the whiskey.
    “I thought …” Lionel began. “I wanted to be sure everything was all right with her.”
    The director was silent. Lionel drained his glass.
    “Would you like another?” Patty Drogue asked.
    “Oh no,” Lionel said. “Not now.”
    “She likes bringing drinks,” Walter Drogue explained.
    “It’s my way of atoning,” Patty said.
    “Tell me what you think,” Walter Drogue said soberly. “You’re her husband, you’ve been living with her. You’re a … specialist in human behavior. How do you think she’s doing?”
    “I don’t think that since she left the stage she’s been so involved in a show,” Lionel said.
    “Surely,” Drogue said, looking about with his bright-eyed smile, “this is good news?”
    “Well,” Lionel said, “yes.”
    “But …?”
    “Her eyes,” old man Drogue said from the shadows. “I remember her eyes from when she first came out here.” They all turned toward him. “It didn’t show up in her glossies,” old Drogue went on. “You could turn the page right past her. Up on the screen, her eyes, they’d fucking lay you out. I remember,” he said. “From when she first came out here.”
    Lionel stared at his huddled figure in the darkness, trying to think of something to say.
    “Before sound,” old Drogue said, “they would have loved her eyes.”
    “Even you don’t go back that far,” Patty Drogue told the old manplayfully. “Can you really say ‘before sound’?” She did a bass imitation of his rasp.
    “He was here before sound,” her husband told her. “He worked on
House of Sand.
”
    “You look at their eyes from those days, you’ll see eyes.” He grunted, a laugh or the clearing of his throat. “They came from tough lives.”
    “
House of Sand
!” Patty Drogue declared. “I love it! I love it,” she told Lionel, “when they say ‘before sound.’ ”
    “That was the last one Everett French did. He was a lush then. I cut it for title inserts.”
    “That’s romantic,” Patty Drogue said. “Everett French losing his shit to gin. Fitzgerald-like.”
    “So
you
tell
me
,” young Drogue said, addressing himself to Lionel. “How’s my actress and your lady wife?”
    “Listen,” Lionel said. He was holding on to Walter Drogue’s silken sleeve, the sleeve of his boxer’s robe. When he saw the Drogues staring at his hand he took it away. “There is a certain kind of artist, don’t you think,” he asked them, “who might be described as a
halluciné
?”
    “Dickens,” Patty Drogue said with enthusiasm. “Joan Miró. What do you think, Walter?”
    Young Drogue’s
faux naïf
smile tightened.
    “Sure,” he said, turning the very word to bitter mimicry. “Dickens and Joan Miró.”
    “Wagner,” old man Drogue said from his unseen perch. “Mahler. Max Reinhardt.”
    Lionel was impressed at their erudition. “Those are all,” he said, “wonderful examples.”
    “How about another drink?” Patty asked.
    “No, no,” Lionel said. “Your guests will be here. I’ve got to get back shortly to pick up Lu Anne.”
    “Bela Lugosi played Hamlet for Reinhardt,” the elder Drogue informed them. “They called him the greatest Hamlet of the German-speaking theater.”
    “But over here,” Patty Drogue pointed out, “Abbott and Costello were waiting for him.”
    “Because he was a junkie,” Walter said, still smiling. “Because it was Hollywood.”
    “Well,” Lionel said, “that’s how I see Lu Anne.”
    “As a
hallucinée
, right, Lionel?” Patty asked. “Not as a junkie.”
    “No, no,” Lionel reassured Mrs. Drogue. “As a
hallucinée.
”
    “Like Dickens,” young Drogue suggested.
    Lionel paused a moment, then laughed politely. “Well, I don’t have to tell you this, Walter, I’m sure. But some performers put a tremendous emotional investment into their roles. They can’t hold