Joan Didion - Play It as It Lays

borrow furs from Abe Lipsey, deal. She would never: carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills.

'I'LL BE AWAY a few weeks," Carter said. "I came by because I'll be away, I wanted to tell you — you know the picture's entered at Cannes.”

"I read that."

"You seen it yet?"

"How would I have seen it, it's not in release, I mean is it?"

"Maria, for Chrisfs fucking sake, they've been screening it every night for a month, you know that — oh shit."

"I didn't mean to be that way," she said after a while.

"You never mean to be any way."

It was always that way when he came by but sometimes later, after he had left, the spectre of his joyless face would reach her, talk about heart's needle, would flash across her hapless consciousness all the images of the family they might have been: Carter throwing a clear plastic ball filled with confetti, Kate missing the ball. Kate crying. Carter swinging Kate by her wrists. The spray from the sprinklers and the clear plastic ball with the confetti falling inside and Kate's fat arms stretched up again for the catch she would always miss. Freeze frame. Kate fevered, Carter sponging her back while Maria called the pediatrician. Kate's birthday, Kate laughing, Carter blowing out the candle. The images would flash at Maria like slides in a dark room. On film they might have seemed a family.

"Listen," Maria said to Carter the night before he left for Cannes.

She had put off calling until almost midnight but had finally made herself do it. "The picture's fine. I went to a screening, it's a beautiful picture."

There was a silence. "If you need to reach me call BZ," he said then. "He'll know where I am."

"The picture. I really liked it."

"Fine. Thanks."

"What's the matter."

"Just forget it, Maria." His voice was tired. "There hasn't been a print in Los Angeles all week."

During the next few weeks Maria bought Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and studied them dutifully for small mentions of Carter. After Cannes he seemed to be in London, and after that in Paris again, where he appeared on television discussing the auteur principle.

“Carter's staying another week in Paris, I guess you know,"

Helene said on the telephone.

"The touring auteur ," Maria said.

Helene paused only slightly. "BZ called them last night, apparently she has to stay over to talk about a picture."

"I suppose he was pleased about Cannes."

"He didn't talk about it much but she said—"

“You think you're telling me something, Helene, you're missing the point."

Helene giggled. "Whose point."

That afternoon Maria had a small accident with the Corvette, received a call from the bank about her overdrawn account, and learned from the drugstore that the doctor would no longer renew her barbiturate prescriptions. In a way she was relieved.

MARIA STOOD IN THE SUN on the Western street and waited for the young agent from Freddy Chaikin's office to back his Volkswagen past the Writers' Building to where she was. It was hot and no one had left her name at the gate and there was a spot on her skirt and she was annoyed because of the trouble at the gate and because Freddy Chaikin had not come himself. He had arranged for her to see a director who wanted her for a bike picture and the least he could have done was show up himself. She did not even want to do another bike picture.

"Looks like we missed him," the young agent said. He did not turn the motor off.

"How do you mean, we missed him."

"I mean I guess he's already left for lunch." The agent looked uncomfortably past Maria. "Actually it wasn't two hundred percent confirmed, he told Freddy he might be tied up with the girl they're looking at for the lead."

Maria pushed her hair back and watched the agent avoid her eyes. "What exactly did they want me for," she said finally.

"The high-school teacher, Freddy must've told you that. You read the script, that's the part , the lead's just any teeny fluff. I mean the teacher , she. . she carries the picture."

"The teacher," Maria said. "Who plays the Angel Mama?"

"His girlfriend."

"I have to go now," Maria said, and without waiting for him to speak she turned and began walking toward the gate. Once in her car she drove as far as Romaine and then pulled over, put her head on the steering wheel and cried as she had not cried since she was a child, cried out loud. She cried because she was humiliated and she cried for her mother and she cried for Kate and she cried because something had just come through to her, there in the sun on the Western street: she had deliberately not counted the months but she must have been counting them unawares, must have been keeping a relentless count somewhere, because this was the day, the day the baby would have been born.

"I WANT TO TELL you right now I'm never going to do anything again," Ivan Costello had said in the beginning. "If you want to live that way, O.K. There's not going to be any money and there's not going to be any eating breakfast together and there's not going to be any getting married and there's not going to be any baby makes three. And if you make any money, I'll spend it."

She had said she wanted to live that way.

"What if I did," she had said a long time later.

"Did what."

"Got pregnant. Then at least I'd have a baby."

"No you wouldn't," he had said.

"MAYBE NEXT TIME," the hypnotist said. "Next week."

"I'm not coming next week." Maria did not look at him. "I can't come any more."

The hypnotist watched her as she opened her bag, found her car keys, dropped them beneath a sofa cushion and groped for them.

The room was overheated but he was wearing two faded cardigan sweaters and standing over a furnace vent.

"It doesn't prove anything, you know," he said.

“What doesn't."

"That you couldn't open enough doors to get back. Your failure.

It doesn't prove anything at all."

"I have to leave."

He shrugged. As she stood up he was pouring water into a cheese glass coated with Pernod, swirling the mixture into a rnilky fluid.

"Some people resist," he said. "Some people don't want to know."

Maria drove down to the New Havana Ballroom on Sunset and, trembling, made a telephone call.

"I need help," she said. "Ivan, I need help bad."

"WHO'S YOUR FRIEND," Ivan Costello said.

"Who loves you.”

It was five o'clock in Los Angeles and eight in New York and he was drunk. She should have known better than to call him. She did not even like him. She could not bring herself to give the answer he expected, could not pick up the old litany, could not say you do .

"I don't know," she said.

“What's the matter with you."

"I just wanted to talk to you."

"You just wanted. ." He paused, and she knew that he was turning on her. "To talk to me."

She said nothing. The bar in the New Havana was empty and smelled of disinfectant and the bartender was watching her distrustfully.

"You mean you want to talk to me direct, you don't want me to make an appointment? Go through your agent?"

"All right. I get it."

"You're feel ing good enough to talk to me? You aren't sick?

You aren't asleep? You aren't out of town?

You aren't just fucking una vail able?"

"Ivan—"

" ‘lvan’ shit ."

"All right," she said. "O.K."

"You want to know what I think of your life?"

"No," she said, but he was already spitting into the telephone.