Children of Light by Robert Stone Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t you say?”
    “Absolutely,” Lu Anne said. “Landmarks crumble, baby, but when you say dinner with Walter you’re saying all you can say. It should be on the Universal Tour.”
    She watched him set out for the path; the taste of his betraying kiss was still warm on her lips. She was getting the universal tour. As he strode out of sight she considered herself as life, its deserving stooge and representative.
    The Long Friends were gathering in the dark; she felt beyond fear or anger.
    She had done her best—she felt sure she had. Lionel had done his, a tough, resolute, truly loving man. She thought she heard little Charles crying; she raised a hand to her mouth. Everyone had done their best.
    She must not hate him; it was wrong and no good would come of it.
    Then it occurred to her that Gordon Walker must be coming down.

 
    W alker did not try to place the call again. He picked up his drink from beside the telephone and went back to his barstool.
    She might have been on the line, he thought. Perhaps it was onlya thrill of fear she felt at the sound of his voice. Perhaps calm resolution and refusal. Perhaps someone else had picked up the phone.
    But it was Mexico, Mexican phones. As likely as not he had spoken into a dead line, into an unheeding, untroubled past. There was so much to be said, he thought, for leaving things alone.
    Beside him, the blond woman on the neighboring stool had put a cigarette to her lips, supporting it with a bridge of fore and middle finger. It seemed somehow a quaint gesture, suggestive of
film noir
intrigue. Walker’s hand was on the lighter in his jacket pocket, but he checked the impulse. He did not want to pick her up. And although he was curious about her, he did not feel like forcing conversation.
    He studied her in the candlelight. Not bad for the San Epo, he thought. She seemed free of the principal undesirable qualities common to pickups at the lounge, in that she was neither a prostitute nor a man in drag. She seemed, in fact, a fresh-faced, confused and vaguely unhappy young woman who had no business on a San Epifanio Beach barstool. He was about to give her a light out of common politeness when, from somewhere behind him, a flame was thrust forth and she inclined her cigarette to receive it. She smiled uncertainly over Walker’s shoulder and murmured her gratitude. Walker, who had not turned around, found himself listening to merry masculine laughter of an odd register. A voice boomed forth, subduing all other sounds in the place.
    “I’ve recently had the opportunity to visit Mount Palomar,” the voice declared with a dreadful earnestness, “and was devastated by the sheer beauty I encountered there.”
    Such a sound, Walker considered, could only be made by forcing the breath down against the diaphragm, swallowing one’s voice and then forcing the breath upward, as in song. He listened in wonder as the voice blared on.
    “Everywhere I travel in California,” it intoned, “I’m—utterly dazzled—by the vistas.”
    He’s raving mad, thought Walker.
    “Don’t you find your own experiences to be similar?” the voicedemanded of the young woman at the bar. It was a truly unsettling sound, its tone so false as to seem scarcely human.
    To Walker’s astonishment, the woman smiled wider and began to stammer. “I certainly … yes … why, I do. The vistas are ravishing.”
    “How pleasant an experience,” brayed the voice, “to encounter a fellow admirer of natural wonders.”
    With as much discretion as possible, Walker turned toward the speaker. He saw a man of about fifty whose nose and cheekbone had been broken, wearing a hairpiece, a little theatrical base and light eyeliner. Returning to his drink, Walker cringed; he had feared to see a face to match the voice and that was what he had seen. It was a smiling face, its smile was a rictus of clenched teeth like a ventriloquist’s. The thought crossed his mind that he was hallucinating. He dismissed