Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“So get her out,” he said finally.

“Why don’t you take her out?”

“She won’t go with me.”

“Why not?”

Leonard Douglas sat for a while and ran his finger around the rim of his glass.

“She remembers everything,” he said after a while.

And then: “You met Warren Bogart.”

It was a question.

“Once. In New Orleans. He said he was dying.”

“Yes. Well.” Leonard Douglas looked suddenly exhausted. “He was right.”

“WHO WAS THERE,” CHARLOTTE HAD SAID WHEN LEONARD told her that Warren Bogart was dead.

As he sat in my living room and told me what she had said he kept repeating the words as if he could not believe them: who was there .

He remembered that she said it at the corner of Avenida del Mar and Calle 11.

He had come to Boca Grande to tell her three things.

He had come to tell her that certain of his former clients had put him in touch with someone in the underground who had put him in touch with Marin.

He had come to tell her to get out of Boca Grande.

He had come to tell her that he had buried Warren Bogart a few days before in New Orleans.

He told her none of these things until they were out of the Caribe and walking on the Avenida del Mar where they could not be heard.

He told her that Marin was living with six other people in a semi-detached house in the industrial section of Buffalo and she said nothing at all. She began to cry and she kept on walking and she said nothing at all. He told her to get out of Boca Grande and she said nothing at all. She folded and refolded the piece of paper he had given her with the number of the post-office box in Buffalo and she said nothing at all. He told her that he had buried Warren Bogart and she walked until they reached the corner of Avenida del Mar and Calle 11 and as they turned the corner onto Calle 11 she said something. He remembered that he had just realized that she was walking not idly but toward a specific destination and then she said something.

She said who was there .

“I told you. He was alone. He’d been in and out of Ochsner for a month and this time he just walked out without anybody knowing and he was alone on the street. And he collapsed. And they took him to Long Memorial and they put him on life-support but he never woke up.”

“Who was there.”

“Charlotte. No one was there. He had a letter in his coat with the number on California Street. Your number and Porter’s number. They tried to get Porter and they couldn’t. Porter was in New York. They tried to get you and they got me. He was on the machine for the rest of the day and he died before I got there.”

“Who was there,” Charlotte repeated. “When he was buried. You said you buried him. Who came. ”

“I got hold of Porter. Porter came.”

She seemed to be waiting for something.

“A couple of people I didn’t know.”

She still seemed to be waiting for something.

“And six FBI.”

She had stopped in front of a building on Calle 11 and still she seemed to be waiting.

“It was fine, Charlotte. He didn’t want anyone there. The letter said so. The letter they found in his coat. All he wanted was nobody there and somebody singing ‘Didn’t I Ramble.’ ”

Charlotte said nothing.

The letter in Warren Bogart’s coat also had a message for Charlotte and Marin but Leonard did not mention the message.

“He carried it in his coat. The letter.” Leonard shook his head. “He did. Didn’t he.”

“He did what.”

“He did ramble.”

The message for Charlotte and Marin had read only “ you were both wrong but it’s all the same in the end ” and Leonard did not mention the message.

“Not a letter really,” he said. “A note. On the back of an envelope.”

“This is where I work,” Charlotte said. “I’m quite late now.”

She looked directly at Leonard as she spoke and then she turned and walked inside and down a corridor and into an office. When he followed her into the office she was standing at the window smoking a cigarette and staring out at the blank wall of the adjoining building and she did not turn around.

“Would you go to the desk for me,” she said after a while. She did not turn from the window. “Would you tell them I can’t see anyone for a few minutes. Twenty minutes.”

“I’ll call.” Leonard picked up the telephone and jiggled it. “How do you call?”

“You don’t. The switchboard’s out. Or something. Since the bomb.”

He stared at her.

“You had a bomb here?”

“Or something.”

“When was the bomb? Or something.”

“I don’t know. Yesterday. No, it was the day before, because I still had the curse, I was changing a Tampax when it went off. Would you please go to the desk?”

Leonard put the telephone down and watched Charlotte crush her cigarette on the ledge outside the window.

“I want you to come with me,” he said after a while. “I never told you what to do but I’m telling you now. I want you to come with me to the airport. Now.”

“Actually I can’t.” Charlotte said, and then she turned abruptly from the window. “ Didn’t Marin come. ”

“She couldn’t have, Charlotte. I told you. The FBI were there. Naturally the FBI were there.”

“ Did you tell Marin. ”

“Yes.”

“ Did she want to come. ”

There was a silence.

“I don’t know,” Leonard said.

“Tell her she was wrong,” Charlotte said. “Tell her that for me.”

“AND WHAT ABOUT THIS FUCKING BOMB,” LEONARD Douglas said to me.

He had finally drunk his second drink and then a third and a fourth. He was in no way drunk but he gave off the sense of a man who normally had one drink, maybe two when politesse required it, a man who prized control and had been pushed in a single week almost beyond it.

He had found Marin Bogart in an empty room in Buffalo.

He had buried Warren Bogart in an empty grave in New Orleans.

He had come to save Charlotte from an empty revolution in Boca Grande and Charlotte was not listening.

He had found his way to me and in my house there were flowers in the vases and ice cubes in the carafes and clean uniforms on the maids. In my house it did not seem so empty and I was listening.

“ ‘A bomb or something,’ she says. Don’t miss the or something . I look around, I discover the back wing of the building blew up three days ago, I find four people died outright and the fifth’s dying now, peritonitis, this fifth one got caught on the table, the doctor jumped and punctured this one’s fucking—”

Leonard Douglas seemed to have rendered himself temporarily mute.

“Uterus,” I said. “I heard there was a bomb. Before you came. I asked Charlotte about it. Charlotte said—”

I broke off. Charlotte had said that when the bomb went off she was in the bathroom and she had forgotten about her Tampax and had spotted blood all over the clinic without realizing it.

That was all she had said.

“She said it wasn’t near her office,” I said.

“Never mind where it wasn’t . Because she goes charging in where it was , the ceiling’s still falling, she gets three people out, she’s a heroine, she’s mad as hell, she’s shouting ‘ Goddamn you all ’ the whole time. They tell me that. Charlotte doesn’t. All Charlotte remembers about this bomb is it went off while she was changing her fucking Tampax.”

“She bled.” I did not know what else to say. “She remembers she bled all over the clinic.”