I stepped inside the room without being asked. The French doors to the balcony were open. Outside, on a table, were two half-empty Bloody Marys, celery stalks sticking out of the crushed ice. Earlier a bellhop had told me that a child had fallen into the river and was thought to have drowned. “Last night you seemed quite interested in Linda Gail’s contract with a film company called Castle Productions,” I said.
“You lost me, son.”
“You’ve heard of that company?”
“I could have. I don’t remember. What’s the problem?”
“You seemed to be enjoying a private joke about it.”
He removed a pocket comb from his slacks and combed back the hair on the sides of his head. “We didn’t give you enough money?”
“I’d just like a straight answer.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Weldon.”
“Roy Wiseheart told me he makes movies.”
“He and his father own half the planet. Why should you be surprised they’re in the movie business?”
“Does Roy Wiseheart own Castle Productions?”
“Ask him. I never met the gentleman.”
“Maybe I think too much, huh?” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that. You can’t be too careful in business.”
I went out on the balcony. Down below, two divers in wet suits and air tanks were climbing out of the river. An ambulance was parked close by, its back doors yawning open. An overweight Mexican woman was crying inconsolably, reaching out for a gurney that a paramedic was pushing toward the ambulance. Behind me, Lloyd Fincher put on his aviator glasses to protect his eyes from the glare. He screwed a cigarette into a gold holder. He stepped next to me and lit the cigarette, then dropped the burnt match over the railing. In profile, I could see the tiny red veins in the whites of his eyes, the discoloration of his skin from the booze still in his system, his down-hooked snub of a nose that reminded me of a sheep’s. I wondered who Lloyd Fincher was.
“A fine day,” he said. He took a puff off the cigarette holder and exhaled the smoke into the breeze.
“It’s too bad what happened down there,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“The little boy,” I said.
He looked at me, then at the ambulance. “What happened?” he said.
“I thought you were watching.”
He leaned over the rail to see better. “I was watching the skywriter. Look.” He pointed upward. A canary-yellow biplane was writing the word “Pepsi” in smoke against a sky as flawless as blue silk. “That pilot’s an artist, isn’t he?”
He continued to enjoy his cigarette and watch the biplane climb straight up into the sky. I didn’t know what to say. I believe there are people among us who are not simply insentient but are also incapable of thought. Lloyd Fincher was one of these. I left him to his reverie and started toward the door.
“Weldon?” he said behind me.
I turned around.
“Watch yourself,” he said.
“Regarding what?”
He drank the ice melt and remaining vodka and tomato juice out of his glass. He bit off a piece of celery and chewed it. “Whatever comes down the pike,” he replied. “It’s a nest of vipers out there. Maybe that’s why I have to get laid almost every day. It keeps my mind off things.”
ROSIT
A AND I stayed over an extra night and ate in an outdoor Mexican restaurant on the River Walk, by an arched stone bridge and a cypress tree whose leaves resembled green lace. I paid the mariachi band twenty dollars to play “San Antonio Rose” so we could dance under a full moon to Bob Wills’s signature song in front of the Alamo. I didn’t think those who died within the mission walls would find us disrespectful; in fact, I believed their voices whispered to us and told us to celebrate the lives that had been given us and the love we shared. They also told us to treat the world as a grand cathedral and to give no sway to either death or evil men who sought to spread their net over the globe.