Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“Why don’t you trot Suzy’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office,” Charlotte said without turning around. She was watching the FBI man in the window of the apartment across the street. “Why don’t you trot Warren’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office.”

“Tell him we’re going to trade off the felony and plead the two misdemeanors,” Leonard said into the telephone.

“ Warren and Polly Orben would be good,” Charlotte said.

“And tell him I don’t want any of that boom-boom shit at the hearing.” Leonard hung up the telephone. “Speaking of Warren he says you won’t see him. He says you misunderstand him.”

“The fuck I misunderstand him.”

“Felicitously put,” Leonard said after a while. “In any case I told him to come by.”

“Tell him I’m in Hollister. Tell him I’m in Hollister and about how there’s no telephone on the ranch.”

“There are eight telephones on the ranch. On three separate lines.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“For Christ’s sake, Charlotte, go to Hollister if you don’t want to see him. Go now. Go right now.”

“I can’t actually go to Hollister.”

“Why can’t you, besides the fact that it might entail getting dressed.”

She could not go to Hollister because she was afraid Warren might find her there, alone at the ranch. She could not go to Hollister because if Warren found her there alone at the ranch something bad would happen. This seemed so obvious to Charlotte that she could not bring herself to say it. “I can’t go to Hollister because you have people coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”

“Tell me who I have coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”

“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow you have …” She could not think.

“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow I have … the leaders of … two dissident factions within … the Haight-Divisadero Coalition. You got a whole lot you want to say to them?”

Charlotte picked up a brush and began attacking her hair in abrupt chops.

“On the subject of day-care versus guerrilla theater? Maybe we could get Dickie and Linda up from Hollister and get their thinking?”

“I don’t know why you put all those telephones on the ranch anyway.”

“I don’t know, Charlotte. Communication?”

“Nobody in my family ever found it necessary to keep three different calls going on that ranch.”

“Nobody in your family ever found it necessary to pay the taxes on that ranch, either. Tell me again why you can’t go to Hollister.”

The hair Charlotte pulled from her brush was dry and wiry and faded.

When Marin was small she had played a game with Charlotte’s hair and called it gold.

“I feel so old,” Charlotte said.

“Tell me why you can’t go to Hollister.”

“I keep remembering things.”

“Most of us do. Tell me why you won’t see Warren.”

“You don’t know what he wants.”

“Of course I know what he wants. He wants you back. You think I make my living being dense?”

“Then why did you ask? ”

Leonard lifted a mass of Charlotte’s hair and let it drop through his fingers. “Because I was interested in whether you knew it. You don’t look so old.”

WHO CAN SAY WHY I CRAVE THE LIGHT IN BOCA GRANDE, who can say why my body grows cancers.

Who can say why Charlotte left Leonard Douglas.

Maybe she thought it was easier.

Maybe she believed herself loose in the world, maybe she was tired, maybe she had just remembered that people died. Maybe she thought that if she walked back into the Carlyle Hotel on Easter morning with Warren Bogart Marin would be there, in a flowered lawn dress.

“It’s too late,” she said to her gynecologist the morning he confirmed that she was carrying Leonard’s child. “It didn’t happen in time.”

Somebody cuts you .

Where it doesn’t show .

I have no way of knowing about the cuts that don’t show.

I know only that during the fifth week after the release of Marin’s tape Charlotte woke early every morning, dressed promptly, and immersed herself in the domestic maintenance of the house on California Street. She made inventories. She replaced worn sheets, chipped wine glasses, crazed plates. She paid an electrician time-and-a-half to rewire, on a Saturday, two crossed spots on the Jackson Pollock in the dining room. She was obsessed by errands, and she laid it to her pregnancy.

Leonard did not.

So entirely underwater did Charlotte live her life that she did not recognize her preoccupations as those of a woman about to abandon a temporary rental.

Leonard did.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE LAST EVENING CHARLOTTE SPENT with Leonard Douglas appeared a year later in Vogue , Charlotte showed them to me.

There was Leonard, standing with an actor at the party in Beverly Hills, standing with his head bent, listening to the actor but looking somewhere else.

There was Charlotte, sitting with an actress at the party in Beverly Hills, Charlotte smiling, her eyes wide and glazed and in the end as impenetrable as Marin’s.

She had not meant to go with Leonard to the party in Beverly Hills at all.

She had not even meant to go with Leonard to the airport.

But on the fifth day of the fifth week after the release of Marin’s tape she had opened the door of the house on California Street and found Warren standing there.

“I guess you can give me a drink.”

“Actually I’m just about to drive Leonard to the airport.” She followed his gaze to the limousine idling at the curb. She had not until the moment intended going to the airport. “I mean I’m not exactly driving him to the airport but I’m driving with him to the airport.”

“I guess there’s room for me.”

“Actually you don’t want to drive to the airport, it could take hours.” She had not in fact spoken to Warren since the nights he called from the Beverly Hills Hotel on Bashti Levant’s bill. “This time of day. The traffic.”

“I’ve got time.”

“Hours. Literally.”

“You’re swimming upstream, Charlotte.”

In the car Charlotte had sat on the jump seat and fixed her eyes on the driver’s pigtail.

“While you were upstairs Warren was telling me about this ninety-two-year-old Trotskyist he drinks with in New York,” Leonard said. “This Trotskyist lives at the Hotel Albert. Naturally.”

“Charlotte knows Benny,” Warren said. “You remember Benny, Charlotte.”

Charlotte had not remembered Benny. Charlotte had not even thought that she was meant to remember Benny, whoever Benny was. Benny was only Warren’s way of reminding her that he had a prior claim.

“This Trotskyist drinks Pisco Sours,” Leonard said.

“Sazeracs,” Warren said. “Not Pisco Sours. Sazeracs. Benny always asks about you, Charlotte. You ought to go see him, he’s not going to live forever.”

Charlotte kept her eyes on the driver’s pigtail.

“Neither is Porter,” Warren said. “In case you forgot.”

“Neither is Charlotte,” Leonard said. “You keep this up. Something I’ve never been able to understand is how you happen to know more Trotskyists than Trotsky did.”

“You know more Arabs, it evens out. What am I going to tell Porter, Charlotte?”

“All of them ninety-two-years old,” Leonard said.

“I said what am I going to tell Porter, Charlotte.”

“All of them sitting around the Hotel Albert drinking Pisco Sours,” Leonard said.

“Sazeracs. What do you want me to tell Porter on his deathbed, Charlotte.”

“Personally I want you to tell Porter about this ninety-two-year-old Trotskyist,” Leonard said. “You’re overplaying your hand, Warren. You’re pushing her too hard while she’s still got an ace. I’ll lay you odds, she’s going to see her ace. She’s going to say she’s coming with me.”