Joan Didion: Play It as It Lays

Whether or not Carter could afford the rent, whether it was a month like this one when he was making a lot of money or a month when the lawyers were talking about bankruptcy, the boy came twice a week to vacuum the pool and the man came four days a week to work on the roses and the water in the pool was 85°. Sometimes it occurred to Maria that maybe the pretty children and the enameled bracelets came the same way, but she did not like to think about that.

"Tell me who you've seen," she said. She did not much want to hear who BZ had seen but neither did she want BZ to leave. BZ had not yet mentioned Carter. BZ was the producer on the picture, BZ had come in from the location two days before and he was going back to the location tomorrow and he had not once mentioned Carter. "Tell me about the Willards' dance."

"Strobe lights in Pasadena." BZ stood up. "On nights like that you could kill yourself for being a Gentile."

"Don't leave."

"I'm late now. I'm supposed to be somewhere.' "Who is it," she said, not looking at him.

"Nobody special, I'm meeting Tommy Loew, you know Tommy, he's in from New York."

"I don't mean you." She wondered without interest if Tommy Loew was a faggot. "You know I don't mean you"

"I don't know what you're talking about." BZ put his glass on a table, and looked at Maria for a long while. “Just let him finish."

"Who is it." She did not know why she persisted.

"Listen, Maria. I don't know if you know this, but he wanted you in this picture very badly. At one point he was ready to scrap the deal, jeopardize the entire project, just because he wanted to use you."

"I know that."

"Then why not stop thinking Carter designs his every move expressly to thwart you. Why not stop thinking like Carlotta."

"You don't have any idea in your mind how I think." Carlotta was BZ's mother. Carlotta had $35 million and was engaged in constant litigation with her estranged second husband. Maria sat down on the edge of the pool and splashed the clear water over her bare feet.

"Listen to the music from the Kuliks'. They're having a party."

"You going?"

"Of course I'm not going. He's a gangster.'

"I just asked if you were going to a party, Maria, I didn't ask for a grand-jury indictment." BZ paused. "In the second place he's not a gangster. He's a lawyer."

"For gangsters.'

BZ shrugged. "I think of him more as a philosopher king. He told me once he understood the whole meaning of life, it came to him in a blinding flash one time when he almost died on the table at Cedars."

"Larry Kulik's not going to die at Cedars. Larry Kulik's going to die in a barber chair."

"It's uphill work making you laugh, Maria. Anyway, Larry Kulik's a great admirer of yours. You know what he said to Carter? He said,

'What I like about your wife, Carter, is she's not a cunt."'

Maria said nothing.

'That's very funny, Maria, Kulik saying that to Carter, you lost your sense of humor?"

"I've already heard it. Give me your glass."

“I told you, Tommy Loew. I'm already late."

"Who is it," she repeated.

"He's two weeks behind schedule now, Maria. Just let him finish the picture." BZ stood up, and ran the tips of his fingers very lightly across Maria's bare back. "Seen anything of Les Goodwin?" he said finally.

Maria watched a leaf in the water and tried not to recoil from BZ’s fingers. "Les and Felicia are in New York," she said carefully, and then reached for a towel. "You're already late for Tommy Loew, I mean aren't you?"

Later in the week she saw in one of the columns that BZ had been at the Kuliks' party with Tommy Loew and a starlet whose name she did not recognize. She did not know why it annoyed her but it did. She wondered if Tommy Loew and the starlet had gone back to BZ's later, and who had watched whom) and if Helene had been back from La Costa.

"JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW I'M thinking of you,"

Freddy Chaikin said on the telephone. "I'll be frank, I was surprised to hear you wanted to work again. After that debacle with Mark Ross, I just naturally thought—"

"I've always wanted to work." Maria tried to keep her voice even.

Freddy would be sitting in his office with the Barcelona chairs and the Giacometti sculpture and anything he wanted to say Maria would have

to hear.

“—an actress walks off a set, people tend to think she doesn't want to work.”

"That was almost a year ago. I was sick. I was upset about Kate. I haven't walked off any more sets, you know that, Freddy."

"You haven't had any sets to walk off."

Maria closed her eyes. "What are you doing right now, Freddy," she said finally. "You sitting there playing with a Fabergé Easter egg?

Or what?"

'Calm down. Actually I talked to Morty Landau about you today at lunch. I Said, Morty, you know Maria Wyeth, and he did—'

"I should think so. I had the lead in two features." Right, Maria, of course you did. You know that. I know that. And they were very interesting little pictures. Carter parlayed those two little pictures, one of them never distributed, into a very nice thing. Carter's in the enviable position now where he wants to do something, it's just a question of working out the numbers. I'm proud to represent him.

I'm proud to represent both of you, Maria. Maybe I could arrange for Morty Landau to see some film, you give me your word that you really want to work."

"See some film ."

'Where's the problem, Maria? There's something so unusual about wanting to see some film? I show film on talent getting two, two-fifty a picture."

"Morty Landau makes television."

"Let's get to the bottom line, Maria, if Carter were around he'd say the same thing. You want to work, I'd arrange for Morty Landau to see film."

"Carter is around."

There was a silence, and when Freddy Chaikin spoke again his voice was gentle. "All I meant, Maria, was that Carter's on location.

All I meant."

ON THE TENTH DAY OF OCTOBER at quarter past four in the afternoon with a dry hot wind blowing through the passes Maria found herself in Baker. She had never meant to go as far as Baker, had started out that day as every day, her only destination the freeway. But she had driven out the San Bernardino and up the Barstow and instead of turning back at Barstow (she had been out that far before but never that late in the day, it was past time to navigate back, she was Out too far too late, the rhythm was lost) she kept driving. When she turned off at Baker it was 115° and she was picking up Vegas on the radio and she was within sixty miles of where Carter was making the picture. He could be in the motel right now. They could be through shooting for the day and he could be having a drink with BZ and Helene, thinking about going into Vegas for dinner or just resting, resting on the unmade bed with his shirt off. The woman who ran the motel only made the beds once a week, Carter had made a joke about it in an interview, Maria had read it in the trades. She could call. "Listen," she could say. "I'm in Baker. I just happen to be in Baker."

'So you just happen to be in Baker," he could say.

"Get on up here."

Or he could even say: "Listen. Get up here quick."

Those were things he could say but because she did not know if he would say them or even if she wanted to hear them she just sat in the car behind the 76 station in Baker and studied the pay phone by the Coke machine. Whatever he began by saying he would end by saying nothing. He would say something and she would say something and before either of them knew it they would be playing out a dialogue so familiar that it drained the imagination, blocked the will, allowed them to drop words and whole sentences and still arrive at the cold conclusion. "Oh Christ," he would say. "I felt good today, really good for a change, you fixed that, you really pricked the balloon."