Joan Didion - Play It as It Lays

SHE SAT IN THE MOTEL in the late afternoon light looking out at the dry wash until its striations and shifting grains seemed to her a model of the earth and the moon. When BZ came in she did not look up.

"Let me entertain you," BZ said finally.

Maria said nothing.

"I could do my turn about Harrison calling one of the grips a vicious cunt."

"Please don't smoke in here, BZ."

"Why not."

She got up and filled a glass with the warm water from the tap. "Because it's a felony."

BZ laughed. Maria sat on the bed and drank the water and watched him roll a cigarette.

"I said don't, BZ."

"I get the feeling you want me to leave."

"I don't feel like talking to anybody."

"You don't have to talk to me." He lit the cigarette and handed it to her. "You want to know where Carter is?"

"Still shooting."

“Maria, it's seven-thirty.”

"I give up."

"He's with Helene."

"I thought I didn't have to talk to you."

"You aren't paying attention, Maria. Carter is fucking Helene. I thought these things made a big difference to you."

Maria got up and walked back to the window. In the few minutes that BZ had been distracting her the light had changed on the dry wash. Tomorrow she would borrow a camera, and station it on the dry wash for twenty-four hours.

"Fell me what matters," BZ said.

"Nothing," Maria said.

If Carter and Helene want to think it happened because I was insane, I say let them. They have to lay it off on someone. Carter and Helene still believe in cause-effect.

Carter and Helene also believe that people are either sane or insane. just once, the week after the desert, when Helene came to see me in Neuropsychiatric, I tried to explain how wrong she had been when she screamed that last night about my carelessness, my selfishness, my insanity, as if it had somehow slipped my attention what BZ was doing. I told her: there was no carelessness involved. Helene, I said: I knew precisely what BZ was doing. But Helene only screamed again.

Fuck it, I said to Helene. Fuck it, I said to them all, a radical surgeon of my own life. Never discuss. Cut. In that way I resemble the only man in Los Angeles County who does clean work.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK about it," Maria asked Carter.

"About what."

"What I just told you. About the man at the trailer camp who told his wife he was going out for a walk in order to talk to God."

"I wasn't listening, Maria. Just give me the punch line."

"There isn't any punch line, the highway patrol just found him dead, bitten by a rattlesnake."

"I'll say there isn't any punch line."

"Do you think he talked to God?"

Carter looked at her.

"I mean do you think God answered? Or don't you?"

Carter walked out of the room.

The heat stuck. The air shimmered. An underground nuclear device was detonated where Silver

Wells had once been, and Maria got up before dawn to feel the blast.

She felt nothing.

"I'm giving this one more chance," Carter said when he saw her sitting by the window. "Tell me what you want."

"Nothing."

"I want to help you. Tell me what you feel."

She looked at the hand he held out to her. "Nothing," she said.

"You say that again and I swear to Christ—"

She shrugged. He left the motel.

They had three days left on the desert.

Except when they let Carter or Helene in, I never minded Neuropsychiatric and I don't mind here. Nobody bothers me. The only problem is Kate. I want Kate.

"WE SHOT THE LAST MASTER after you left this afternoon," Carter said when he came in with Helene. "Three set-ups in the morning and we're home. Fantastic."

“'Susannah was fabulous," Helene said. "Supergood."

BZ said nothing. Maria stared out the window.

"You should have seen Carter working with her."

"I bet he was fabulous," BZ said. "Fab."

The one time Ivan Costello got through the switchboard to me here he told me that I had lost my sense of humor.

In spite of what Carter and Helene think, maybe my sense of humor was all I did lose.

"YOU WERE FANTASTIC TODAY," Helene said when Susannah Wood came in.

"Super-good," BZ said. "Really key."

Susannah Wood lay down on Maria's bed. "Let's go into Vegas."

"It’s all planned." Helene did not look at BZ. "Sylvie Roth's over, and Cassie and Leona and—”

BZ stood up. "You go into Vegas."

"Don't you want to see Sylvie?"

"No."

"Don't you want to see Leona's last show?"

"No.”

The cords tightened on Helene's neck. "Exactly what do you want.”

Susannah Wood giggled. "I saw the charts today, Leona's single stopped at 85."

BZ looked at Helene. "Exactly nothing," he said pleasantly.

Maria dropped a tray of ice on the floor.

Carter and Helene still ask questions. I used to ask questions, and I got the answer: nothing. The answer is

"nothing." Now that I have the answer, my plans for the future are these: (1) get Kate, (2) live with Kate alone (3) do some canning. Damson plums, apricot preserves.

Sweet India relish and pickled peaches. Apple chutney.

Summer squash succotash. There might even be a ready market for such canning: you will note that after everything I remain Harry and Francine Wyeth's daughter and Benny Austin's godchild. For all I know they knew the answer too, and pretended they didn't.

You call it as you see it, and stay in the action. BZ

thought otherwise. If Carter and Helene aren't careful they'll get the answer too.

“I THOUGHT YOU'D BE in Vegas," BZ said when Maria opened the door. He was holding a bottle of vodka and in spite of the heat he was wearing a blazer and a tie. "With Carter and Helene and Susannah and Harrison and Sylvia and Cassie and Leona and

— "

"You knew I wasn't going." Maria lay down on the bed again.

“All right, I knew." He sat on the edge of the bed and loosened his tie. "Look at me all duded up. Why are you in bed at nine o'clock."

"Why not."

"Beautiful."

Maria looked at him. "Tell me why you're sad."

"You're a good girl." All the musculature seemed gone from BZ’s face. He put down the bottle of vodka and reached into his pocket.

"You know what these are?"

He poured twenty or thirty capsules onto the bed before she answered.

"Grain-and-a-half Seconal."

"You want some?"

She looked at him. "No."

"You're still playing." BZ did not take his eyes from hers. "Some day you'll wake up and you just won't feel like playing any more."

"That's a queen's way of doing it."

"I never expected you to fall back on style as an argument."

"I'm not arguing."

"I know that. You think I'd be here if I didn't know that?"

She took his hand and held it. "Why are you here."

"Because you and I, we know something. Because we've been out there where nothing is. Because I wanted — you know why."

"Lie down here," she said after a while. "Just go to sleep."

When he lay down beside her the Seconal capsules rolled on the sheet. In the bar across the road somebody punched King of the Road on the jukebox again, and there was an argument outside, and the sound of a bottle breaking. Maria held onto BZ's hand.