Lancelot

tonight. You may not be able to leave tomorrow.”
    â€œI know. But those bastards want to make a party out of it. Margot ought to have better sense.”
    â€œIf I were you, I would leave now. It’s all the same to me.” It was.
    He paced the gallery, frowning, cocked an eye at the yellow sky.
    â€œOr is Jacoby still the director?”
    â€œJacoby! That son of a bitch couldn’t direct traffic in Boutee, Louisiana.”
    â€œWell?”
    He snapped his finger. “By God I will leave!” His spinning white-fibered eye looked past me into the future. He snapped his finger again. “You know what I’m going to do?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI’m going to head north right out of this swamp. I’m going to drive straight to Virginia, up the Shenandoah Valley, and pick up Frances, who has a horse farm near Lexington. I’ll say to her: Let’s go back to Tanzania. We were there once. We lived in a Land Rover. We saw leopard. She’s a soldier, a good girl. She might even—She’s always been my love. I took her once to Spain and showed her the Ebro River, where I fought. Yes, Christ, I did that too. Can you believe it? She’s a good girl, a comrade. She’s a comrade, brother, daughter, lover to me. All I have to do is say, Honey, let’s go back to the high country, and she’ll go. Jesus, what an idea you’ve given me! I might even do a film. What do you think of a film about a man and woman who are good comrades, go on a hunt, and then have good sex together?”
    â€œIt sounds fine.”
    â€œIf it is fine, why do I feel so rotten? I’ve always been a man with a great longing and lust for life and love, Lance. Do you understand that?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI know it could be good between me and Frances again.”
    â€œIt might be.”
    â€œTell me honestly.”
    â€œIt’s possible.”
    â€œIt would be good even if—”
    â€œYes, it would.”
    â€œI feel rotten now but it could be good between us. What do you think?”
    â€œI think it might be good between you.”
    â€œFrances knows me better than any other woman.”
    â€œI’m sure of it.”
    â€œShe and I were always good together.”
    â€œThat’s good.”
    â€œWe could be good together again.”
    â€œI’m sure of that.”
    â€œI might do something, a story, something, about the dying out of the wildebeest and the death too of human love and then a renewal and a greening, a greening and a turning back of the goddamn advancing Sahara. You understand?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe Sahara of the soul too.”
    â€œYes, but right now you ought to think of leaving.”
    â€œI’m leaving. I’ll speak to the others.”
    â€œWhat about the others?” I asked with a slight constriction of anxiety in the throat.
    â€œTo say goodbye. Christ, they wouldn’t dream of leaving. Do you know what they’re doing now?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œRaine is taking sandwiches and champagne up to your belvedere. They’re going to have a party named Goodbye movie, hello Marie.”
    I must have looked blank for he explained: “Goodbye movie hurricane, hello the real thing.”
    â€œThat’s a good place to get killed up there. Too much glass.”
    â€œJust try to tell them that.”
    â€œI intend to speak to Margot.”
    â€œOn second thought why don’t you tell her goodbye for me. As for the others, I’d as soon Marie blew their asses in the river. Do you know what those batbrains are doing?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey’re popping pills and hauling anisette and tequila up to the belvedere. They’re going to have a party.”
    â€œI know.”
    Merlin gave me a long firm handshake with two hands and a long level-eyed stare clouded with hidden meanings. He’d been in the movies too long.
    â€œLucy, jump in your Porsche and take off for school. You’ve got thirty minutes.”
    â€œPapaaauh!” She trailed off in a musical downbeat-up-beat, an exact rendering of Raine’s famous mannerism.
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œI want to stay with Raine through the hurricane.”
    â€œNo goddamn it. Now get going.”
    Lucy looked surprised. Everyone acted as if I were an ancestor who had wandered out of his portrait and begun giving orders. Everyone obeyed from sheer surprise.
    Later I heard