Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“Carmen wasn’t using an M–3,” Charlotte said. She leaned forward slightly and her face was entirely grave. “Antonio was. Carmen was using an M–16.”

Gerardo looked away.

“And they weren’t shooting up ‘the place,’ Gerardo. I mean what is ‘the place.’ ‘The place’ is some rusted Cats and five flamingoes. They were only shooting the crates.”

Something about Charlotte’s querulous precision seemed extreme, and unnatural.

“What crates?” I said.

Charlotte looked at me.

“The crates of vaccine,” she said. “The Lederle vaccine.”

Charlotte never changed her expression.

“Unopened crates of Lederle vaccine,” she said. “Cholera. It ran on the street when they shot up the crates.”

I looked at her for a long time.

“It ran on the street,” she repeated. “If you call that a street.”

I think I loved Charlotte in that moment as a parent loves the child who has just fallen from a bicycle, met a pervert, lost a prize, come up in any way against the hardness of the world.

I think I was also angry at her, again like a parent, furious that she hadn’t known better, furious that she had been wrong.

Tell Charlotte she was wrong .

What had Charlotte been wrong about exactly.

Who was wrong here.

I looked away from her.

“Why are you doing this with Antonio?” I said to Gerardo.

“I’m not ‘doing’ it, it’s done. It’s in progress. Underway. Its own momentum now.”

“I know that,” I said. “I want to know why you did it.”

“It was something to do,” Gerardo said.

“I happen to know about M–16’s because Marin had one when she went to Utah,” Charlotte said. Charlotte always referred to the day Marin hijacked the L–1011 and burned it on the Bonneville Salt Flats as “when Marin went to Utah,” as if it had been a tour of National Parks. Charlotte was not looking at me any more. “Or so they told me.”

“Get her out before it happens,” I said to Gerardo.

“The M–16 is supposed to be the ‘ideal’ submachine gun,” Charlotte said. “Leonard called it ideal. They didn’t.”

“Tell me when it’s time,” I said to Gerardo.

“You always hear it,” Gerardo said. “Eat that crab, Charlotte. I picked that crab for you.”

I always did hear it.

I heard it because I listened.

Charlotte heard even more than I heard but Charlotte seemed not to listen.

Charlotte seemed not to see.

Charlotte had stood out there in the bamboo at Progreso and let the sun burn her face and heard Antonio call her norteamericana cunt and heard Carmen Arrellano call her la bonne bourgeoise and heard the carbine fire shatter the vials of clear American vaccine and still she did not listen. Charlotte had watched the clear American vaccine shimmer on the boulevards of Progreso and still she did not see.

That was August.

Boca Grande is.

Boca Grande was.

Boca Grande shall be.

LAND OF CONTRASTS.

Economic fulcrum of the Americas.

By the day in early September when Leonard Douglas finally arrived in Boca Grande it was clear that Victor was only playing for time. His couriers shuttled between Boca Grande and Geneva carrying heavy pouches. Military passes had been canceled. All day long Radio Boca Grande broadcast a single message, delivered by two voices, one male, one female, each threatening terrorists and saboteurs with death. It was clear that Victor would be leaving soon to convalesce in Bariloche. El Presidente had in fact already left to convalesce in Bariloche, omitting even the traditional move in which he first spends a week confined to the palace with a respiratory infection complicated by extreme exhaustion. Ardis Bradley had discovered a pressing need to take her children to Boston for school interviews. Tuck Bradley had stayed on but had twenty seats reserved on every flight leaving Boca Grande for any destination. I had two.

One for me.

One for Charlotte.

In other words.

All the markers were on the board.

“I’m Charlotte Douglas’s husband,” Leonard Douglas said to me.

“I know you are,” I said to Leonard Douglas.

I knew that he had arrived in Boca Grande on one of the two or three flights that had managed to land the day before. He had gone directly to the Caribe and after a while he and Charlotte had been observed walking on the Avenida del Mar. It had been assumed that they were walking to her apartment but instead they had turned onto Calle 11 and entered the birth control clinic.

Victor had told me that.

Tuck Bradley had also told me that.

Gerardo had told me that he had no interest in Charlotte Douglas’s former life.

“I wouldn’t call yesterday her ‘former life’ exactly,” I had said to Gerardo.

Gerardo had told me that I had too literal a mind.

Charlotte had told me nothing at all.

I got Leonard Douglas a drink.

He sat in my living room and drank it.

“I met your husband once,” he said finally.

“He’s dead now.”

“I know that.”

I got him another drink.

He put it on the table untouched.

“In Bogotá,” he said. “I met him in Bogotá.”

“When was that?”

“Before he died.”

“Not after, then.”

The acerbity in my voice went unnoticed.

“We had some business.”

Leonard Douglas seemed absorbed in some contemplation of either Bogotá or Edgar, I did not know which.

I recall being uneasy.

“Where’s Charlotte?” I said abruptly. “Did Charlotte send you to see me?”

“No.” Leonard Douglas picked up the drink and put it down again. “I liked him. Your husband. I think he liked me. He gave me an emerald. As I was leaving. He gave me an emerald to take to Charlotte.”

The square emerald.

The big square emerald Charlotte wore in place of a wedding ring.

The big square emerald Leonard had brought her from wherever he was when he met the man who financed the Tupamaros.

Bogotá.

Quito.

Charlotte had no idea whether it was Bogotá or Quito.

It was Bogotá.

I had no idea.

I prided myself on listening and seeing and I had never even heard or seen that Edgar played the same games Gerardo played.

Leonard Douglas was watching me.

“Why did you tell me that,” I said finally.

“I wanted you to know that I understand what’s going on here.”

“Why.”

“Because,” Leonard Douglas said, “I want you to get Charlotte out.”

“It could be smooth,” I said after a while. I did not believe that it would be smooth. “Sometimes it’s smooth.”

“It’s not going to be smooth,” Leonard Douglas said.

“How do you know.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m involved here.”

“Nobody said you were.”

“I want you to believe me.” Leonard Douglas seemed to tense as he spoke. “I have no interest here.”

“I believe you.”

As a matter of fact I did believe him.

I also believed him about Edgar.

I still do.

It still disturbs me and I still believe him.

“It’s not going to be smooth,” he repeated. “I’m not involved but I hear things.”

I said nothing.

“I hear there’s more outside hardware than there’s supposed to be. You know what I mean.”

I did know what he meant.

He meant that someone had outplayed Gerardo and Antonio.

He meant that the guerrilleros were not going to just serve their purpose and get gunned down on the fourth day by an insurgent army under Antonio’s command.

He meant that for a certain number of days or weeks no one at all could be certain of knowing the right people in Boca Grande.