Joan Didion - Play It as It Lays

"Three times," Maria said. Leonard was Helene's hairdresser.

"I don't mind if I'm out of town, but if I'm in town and Leonard's not —who was that on the telephone?"

"Somebody's leg man."

"What do you mean, somebody's? Whose?"

"Some columnist in the trades. I don't know."

"What did he want?"

"He wanted to know if I was dating anyone in particular. He also wanted to know what I thought of Carter's dating Susannah Wood."

Helene shrugged. "You knew that."

"I mean the word dating? Doesn't it strike you funny?"

“Not particularly." Helene was studying her hair line in a small mirror. "If I'm in town, and Leonard's not , I feel almost. . frightened."

Maria said nothing.

"I don't suppose you understand that."

Maria watched the tears welling in Helene's eyes.

"Don't, Helene," she said finally. "Don't be depressed."

"lt’s shit," Helene said. "It's all shit.'

EVERYTHING MARIA could think to do in the town she had already done. She had checked into the motel, she had eaten a crab at the marina. At three in the afternoon she had been the only customer in the marina restaurant and it had been a dispiriting thirty or forty minutes, sliced beets staining the crab legs and a couple of waitresses arguing listlessly and a piped medley from Showboat . After that she had walked on the gravelly sand and she had driven aimlessly to Port Hueneme and back to Oxnard and now she sat on a bench in the downtown plaza, watching some boys in ragged Levi jackets and dark goggles who sat on the grass near her car. Their Harleys were pulled up to the curb and they seemed to be passing a joint with furtive daring and every now and then they would look over at her and laugh. Because there was an oil fire somewhere to the north a yellow haze hung over the town, a stillness over the plaza. On the next bench an old man coughed soundlessly, spit phlegm that seemed to hang in the heavy air. A woman in a nurse's uniform wheeled a bundled neuter figure silently past the hedges of dead camellias. Maria closed her eyes and imagined the woman coming toward her with a hypodermic needle.

When she opened her eyes again the boys in the Levi jackets seemed to be rifling the glove compartments of parked cars. To hear the sound of her own footsteps Maria stood up and walked to the pay phone by the public toilet and asked the operator to try the number in Los Angeles again.

She would tell him she could not wait.

She would tell him she was sitting in a park watching some hoods rifling cars and she could not wait.

Maybe she would not feel this way if she talked to him, maybe he would make her laugh. Maybe she would hear his voice and the silence would break, the woman in the nurse's uniform would speak to her charge and the boys would get on their Harleys and roar off.

But when the operator got the studio a voice said only that Mr.

Goodwin could not be reached.

When she hung up the phone the silence was absolute. The boys in the Levi jackets were all watching

her now, because they were standing around her car, they knew it was her car, they had watched her lock it.

They were trying various keys. They were watching to see what she would do. As if in slowed motion she

began walking across the grass toward the car, and as she got closer they melted back, formed a semicircle. Abstractly she admired the way that she and they together were evolving a choreography, hearing the same silent beat. She kept her eyes steady, her pace even, and when she found herself unlocking the car under their blank gaze it was with extreme deliberation. As she slid into the driver's seat she stared directly at each of them, one by one, and in that instant of total complicity one of them leaned across the hood and raised a hand in recognition of what had passed between them, his palm out, inscribing an arc in the still air. Later those few minutes in the plaza in Oxnard would come back to Maria and she would replay them, change the scenario. It ended that way badly, or well, depending on what you wanted.

SHE SAT IN THE MOTEL room near the Southern Pacific tracks in Oxnard and waited for Les Goodwin to call. He had said nine-thirty or ten but she had driven past the theater in the afternoon, the marquee read MAJOR STUDIO PREVIEW 8 p.m. An eight o'clock sneak meant eleven, by the time they counted the cards. When the telephone rang, it was quarter to eleven and he said it would be another half hour. Maria took two Librium, washed her face although she had showered an hour before, straightened the immaculate room as if to erase any sign of herself. When there was nothing left to straighten she walked across the parking lot to the ice machine by the swimming pool and filled a paper bucket with ice.

After she had arranged the bucket on a tray with two water glasses and a bottle of whisky she sat on the bed and turned the pages of the Oxnard-port Hueneme telephone book. There were fourteen Wyeths listed, twenty-three Langs and twenty Goodwins.

When she finally opened the door for him she avoided his eyes, buried her face against his shirt. They were both shaking. He poured Scotch into the two glasses without ice and they sat down on the bed and still they had not looked at each other.

"I almost didn't come," he said then. "I called the house this afternoon, I was going to tell you I wasn't coming up, they'd canceled the preview."

"I know."

"You know."

"I was going to tell you I was here and couldn't wait."

"You came up this afternoon?"

"I didn't have anything in particular to do in town," she said, and then she looked at him. "I came up this afternoon because I was afraid you'd call me up and tell me they'd canceled the preview."

"This is a lousy place," he said finally. "Let's get out of here."

They drove up the coast until they were exhausted enough to sleep, and then they did sleep, wrapped together like children in a room by the sea in Morro Bay.

"I've got until tomorrow, we can go on up the coast," he said the next morning.

"We co uld go up to Big Sur."

"We could have a picnic, we could stay at the Lodge."

“We could buy a sleeping bag and sleep on the beach."

"I've got to call Felicia," he said then.

“Wait until I'm dressed."

She dressed with her back to him, then left the motel room and walked down to the water. A culvert had washed out and the equipment brought in to lift it was mired in the sandy mud. Bare-legged and bare-armed, shivering in her cotton jersey dress, she stood for a long while watching them try to free the equipment.

When she got back to the motel he was dressed, sitting on the unmade bed.

"Don't cry," he said.

"There's no point."

"No point in what."

"No point in our doing any of those things."

He looked at her for a long while. "Later," he said then.

"I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

On the drive back they told each other that it had been the wrong time, the wrong place, that it was bad because he had lied to arrange it, that it would be all right another time, idyllic later. He mentioned the strain he had been under, he mentioned that the preview had gone badly. She mentioned that she was getting the curse. They mentioned Kate, Carter, Felicia, the weather, Oxnard, his dislike of motel rooms, her fear of subterfuge. They mentioned everything but one thing: that she had left the point in a bedroom in Encino.

MARIA MADE A LIST of things she would never do. She would never: walk through the Sands or Caesar's alone after midnight . She would never: ball at a party, do S-M unless she wanted to,