Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

Not Elena.

Elena’s only developed instinct is for the presence of the sexual current.

“I want you to take an apartment,” was the third thing Gerardo ever said to Charlotte Douglas.

SEXUAL CURRENT.

The retreat into pastoral imagery to suggest this current has always seemed to me curious and decadent.

The dissolve through the goldenrod.

The romance of the rose.

Equally specious.

As usual I favor a mechanical view.

What Charlotte and Gerardo did that afternoon was reverse the entire neutron field on my lawn, exhausting and disturbing and altering not only the mood but possibly the cell structure (I am interested in this possibility) of everyone there. Charlotte never spoke at all to Gerardo, only turned away and engaged Tuck Bradley in one of those reflexive monologues she tended to initiate at the instant of distraction. It sometimes seemed to me that these monologues had for Charlotte the same protective function that ink has for a squid. This one touched on whether or not Tuck Bradley had ever been in the courtroom when Leonard did “one of his really dazzling redirects” (Tuck Bradley had not); what Tuck Bradley thought about the national lottery (Tuck Bradley saw both its “good points” and its “bad points”); what Tuck Bradley thought about assassination in the United States (Tuck Bradley thought it “deplorable”); and what “offbeat” hotels Tuck Bradley could recommend in Paris.

Tuck Bradley recommended the George V.

“What about London,” Charlotte said, her voice suddenly weary. She did not turn to meet Gerardo’s gaze.

“I would say …” Tuck Bradley tamped his pipe. “The Savoy.”

Charlotte took a drink from a tray and I waited to see what she would do with it. Charlotte never exactly “drank” a drink. Sometimes she drained it like a child and sometimes she just played with the ice and quite often she dropped it. This time she set it on a tiled bench, quite carefully, without tasting it.

“Or Claridge’s,” Tuck Bradley said.

There was a silence.

“I want to jot all this down,” Charlotte said vaguely, and then she turned away from Tuck Bradley.

Gerardo watched her as she ran across the lawn.

Victor watched her as she ran across the lawn.

Antonio crouched on the lawn by Carmen Arrellano’s hammock and watched Gerardo and Victor.

“This is so absorbing but you can take me home now,” Carmen Arrellano said to Antonio.

“ Norteamericana cunt,” Antonio said without moving.

“And I suppose another choice in Paris would be …” Tuck Bradley was still intent on his pipe. “The Plaza Athénée.”

“She’ll definitely want to jot that down,” Elena said. “Possibly you could catch her and tell her. The Plaza Athénée. Are we going to get dinner? Is anyone going to le Jockey?”

“Did Charlotte Douglas say she was going to Paris?” Ardis Bradley said.

“ ‘ Le Jockey,’ ” Carmen Arrellano said to Antonio. “Listen to Elena. Your interesting sister-in-law thinks she’s in Paris. I don’t want dinner.”

“I mean if she is going to Paris,” Ardis Bradley said, “she’s going to miss her husband.”

I looked at Ardis Bradley.

She could not have had more than two drinks but she did not drink well.

No one else seemed to have heard what she said.

“ I want dinner,” Elena said. “And I also want to go to Paris.”

“Go to Paris.” Antonio rose from his crouch. Some chemical exchange in his brain seemed to have switched on another of his rages. I used to be interested in Antonio’s cell metabolism. “Go to Paris, go to Geneva. Buy a parrot. Buy two parrots, give one to your friend the norteamericana cunt.”

“The norteamericana cunt is not your sister-in-law’s friend,” Carmen Arrellano murmured from the depths of the hammock. “The norteamericana cunt is Victor’s friend.”

“Gerardo will drop you home now, Carmen.” Victor spoke very clearly in a tired voice. His eyes were closed. “Won’t you. Gerardo.”

“No,” Antonio said. “He won’t.”

“Antonio is going to drop Carmen home,” Gerardo said. He was still gazing across the lawn. “Antonio is either going to drop Carmen home or Antonio is going to drop Carmen in Arizona. With Isabel and Dr. Schiff. Carmen’s choice. Why is she here?”

“Who?” Victor said.

“Mrs. Douglas.”

“More to the point, why are you here?” Victor did not open his eyes. “Why aren’t you off bobsledding somewhere.”

“I thought my country needed me,” Gerardo said. He did not turn around. “ Patria , Victor. Right or wrong. Where exactly is Mr. Douglas?”

The only sound was that of the DDT truck which grinds past this house early each evening to spray.

“Caracas,” Ardis Bradley said.

This time everyone seemed to have heard what Ardis Bradley said.

“Or he was when he called Tuck.”

Victor opened his eyes and stared at her.

“Wasn’t it Caracas? Tuck?”

“I have no idea.” Tuck Bradley stood up. “It’s time, Ardis.”

“I have always loathed that phrase. ‘It’s time, Ardis.’ You told me Caracas.”

“We’ll get dinner, Ardis.”

Ardis Bradley stood up unsteadily.

I watched the cloud of DDT settle over the spindly roses at the far end of the lawn.

It occurred to me that my attempt to grow roses and a lawn at the equator was a delusion worthy of Charlotte Douglas.

One of whose husbands appeared to be in Caracas.

Not a delusion at all.

“Is he coming here?” Victor said suddenly.

“I would rather hope not,” Tuck Bradley said, and he smiled, and he took Ardis Bradley’s arm and after they left no one spoke for a long time. I think no one bothered to get dinner that night except Charlotte, who was seen at the Jockey Club as usual and was reported to have eaten not only the plato frío and the spiny lobster but two orders of flan.

At the time this surprised me.

At the time I had no real idea of how oblivious Charlotte Douglas was to the disturbance she could cause in the neutron field of a room, or a lawn.

AS A MATTER OF FACT LEONARD DOUGLAS DID NOT COME to Boca Grande that spring.

Leonard Douglas did not come to Boca Grande until early September, at a time when the airport was closed at least part of every day while the carriers negotiated with the guerrilleros and when visitors to the Caribe were routinely frisked before they could enter the dining room.

I have no idea whether he had even intended to come in the spring, or what he had called Tuck Bradley to say.

Or to ask.

Neither Ardis nor Tuck Bradley ever mentioned the call from Caracas again.

If he had called from Caracas to ask about Charlotte he never took the next step and called Charlotte herself: Victor had her calls monitored, both at the Caribe and at the apartment on the Avenida del Mar she rented the week after she met Gerardo, and, at least until the week the guerrilleros knocked out the central monitoring system, there was no record of a call from Leonard Douglas to Charlotte Douglas.

Nor, on the other hand, was there any record of a call from Leonard Douglas to Tuck Bradley, which made Victor depressed and suspicious about his Embassy surveillance team.

I believe he put the entire team under what he called “internal surveillance,” but it turned out to be just another case of mechanical failure.

Most things at the Ministry did.

I recall thinking that Victor would not be entirely sorry to turn over the Ministry to whoever was trying to get it that year.