Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“You know what you need here,” she said to Victor, lifting her fingers from his arm as if burned. “You know what Boca Grande needs.”

“We’re making great headway with the People-to-People program,” Tuck Bradley said. “Leaps and bounds.”

Neither Charlotte nor Victor looked at him.

“I know what you need here,” Charlotte said.

“What do I need here,” Victor said. His voice was almost hoarse. “Say it.”

She studied the square emerald on the hand that had touched Victor and slid it up and down. She seemed aware of nothing she was doing. She was reflexively seductive. I did not want to watch this happening. I did not want to think of Victor and this woman in the apartment in the Residencia Vista del Palacio and I did not want to see the black Mercedes limousine with the BOCA GRANDE 2 plates parked outside the Caribe.

“Think of what made Acapulco,” she said finally. “Think of what turned Acapulco around overnight.”

Victor stared at the emerald as if transfixed.

Tuck Bradley snapped the toothpick in two.

I looked away.

“I’m not sure Mrs. Douglas realizes the problems,” Tuck Bradley said.

“Think,” Charlotte repeated.

“Say it,” Victor repeated.

“A film festival,” Charlotte Douglas said.

“You won’t want the details but it’s rather a tragic situation,” Ardis Bradley said. “Tuck could tell you better than I.”

“I won’t bore you with the details but it’s rather an interesting situation,” Tuck Bradley said. “Don’t ask her about her daughter.”

I could not have asked Charlotte Douglas about her daughter in any case because Charlotte Douglas had already left, with Victor. I went as planned to Victor’s and ate with Bianca, alone. The black Mercedes limousine with the BOCA GRANDE 2 plates was seen first at the Residencia Vista del Palacio and later at the Caribe. Bianca did not then and docs not now go out, nor does she express interest in her husband’s arrivals and departures. That is another example of the genteel behavior Bianca was taught at Sacre Coeur in New Orleans.

The next afternoon when I saw Charlotte Douglas arguing with the pharmacist in the big drugstore on the Avenida Centrale she did not look at me. She looked disheveled and unwell, her eyes puffy beneath dark glasses, her bright hair unkempt and only partly covered by a bandana.

“You tell me chloromycetin.” The pharmacist slapped the counter with his palm. “I give you chloromycetin.”

“This is tincture of opium.”

“Different type chloromycetin.”

“I can smell it, it’s opium.”

“Same thing. Para la disentería. ”

“But they’re not the same thing at all.” Even in her distress she seemed determined to instruct him on this point. “They’re both para la disentería , but they’re quite different. Chloromycetin is a—”

“I give you chloromycetin.”

“Forget the whole thing,” she said, her voice low and her eyes averted from where I stood.

Later that afternoon I sent a maid to the Caribe with twenty chloromycetin and a note asking Charlotte Douglas to have dinner when she was recovered.

“CHARLOTTE DOUGLAS IS ILL,” I SAID AFTER CHRISTMAS lunch in the courtyard at Victor and Bianca’s.

No one had spoken for twenty minutes. I had timed it. I had counted the minutes while I watched two mating flies try to extricate themselves from a melting chocolate shaving on the untouched Bûche de Noël. The children had already been trundled off quarreling to distribute nut cups to veterans, Gerardo had already made his filial call from St. Moritz, Elena had already been photographed in her Red Cross uniform and had changed back into magenta crepe de chine pajamas. Isabel had drunk enough champagne to begin crying softly. Antonio had grown irritable enough with Isabel’s mournful hiccups to borrow a pistol from the guard at the gate and take aim at a lizard in the creche behind Bianca’s fountain. Antonio was always handling guns, or smashing plates. As a gesture toward the spirit of Christmas he had refrained from smashing any plates at lunch, but the effort seemed to have exhausted his capacity for congeniality. Had Antonio been born in other circumstances he would have been put away early as a sociopath.

Bianca remained oblivious.

Bianca remained immersed in the floor plan for an apartment she wanted Victor to take for her in the Residencia Vista del Palacio. Bianca had never been apprised of the fact that Victor already had an apartment in the Residencia Vista del Palacio. For five of these twenty minutes it had seemed to me up in the air whether Antonio was about to shoot up Bianca’s creche or tell Bianca about the Residencia Vista del Palacio.

“I said la norteamericana is sick.”

“Send her to Dr. Schiff,” Antonio muttered. Dr. Schiff was Isabel’s doctor in Arizona. “Let the great healer tell la norteamericana who’s making her sick.”

Victor only gazed at the sky. I did not know whether Victor had seen Charlotte Douglas since the night he took her from the Embassy to the Residencia but I did know that a Ministry courier had delivered twenty-four white roses to the Caribe on Christmas Eve.

“So is Jackie Onassis sick,” Elena said. Elena was leafing fretfully through a back issue of Paris-Match . “Or she was in September.”

“So am I sick,” Isabel said. “I need complete quiet.”

“I should think that’s what you have,” Elena said.

“Not like Arizona,” Isabel said. “I should have stayed through December, Dr. Schiff begged me. The air. The solitude. The long walks, the simple meals. Yoghurt at sunset. You can’t imagine the sunsets.”

“Sounds very lively,” Elena said without looking up. “I wonder if Gerardo knows Jackie Onassis.”

“If that’s the norteamericana Grace is talking about I think she had every right to marry the Greek,” Bianca said. “Not that I would ever care to live in Athens. I wonder about the view from the Residencia.”

“Grace was talking about a different norteamericana , Bianca.” Victor leaned back and clipped a cigar. “Of no interest to you. Or Grace.”

“This norteamericana is of interest only to Victor.” Antonio seemed to be having trouble drawing a bead on the lizard. “But she could tell you about the view from the Residencia. She’s an expert on the view from the Residencia. Victor should introduce you to her.”

“I don’t meet strangers,” Bianca said. “As you know. I take no interest. Look here, the plan for the eleventh floor. If we lived up that high we’d have clear air. No fevers.”

“Almost like Arizona,” Elena said. “I wonder if Gerardo knows Jacqueline de Ribes.”

“Arizona,” Isabel said. “I wonder what Dr. Schiff is doing today.”

Antonio fired twice at the lizard.

The lizard darted away.

Two porcelain wise men shattered.

“Eating yoghurt in the sunset I presume,” Elena said.

“Dr. Schiff doesn’t believe in guns,” Isabel said.

“What do you mean exactly, Isabel, ‘ Dr. Schiff doesn’t believe in guns’? ” Antonio thrust the pistol into Isabel’s line of sight. “Does Dr. Schiff not believe in the ‘existence’ of guns? Look at it. Touch it. It’s there. What does Dr. Schiff mean exactly? ”

Isabel closed her eyes.

Elena closed the copy of Paris-Match .

Bianca began to gather up the fragments of porcelain.

Victor looked at me and spoke very deliberately. “There’s no longer any need for you to see the norteamericana , Grace. An extremely silly woman.”

“But then so is your manicurist,” Elena murmured.