I keep those cuts that don’t show in mind when I think about Charlotte Douglas’s passage from the house on California Street to the Boca Grande airport. Charlotte Amelia Douglas. Charlotte Amelia Bogart. Born Charlotte Amelia Havemeyer. Charlotte. I am not even certain she was talking figuratively.
In the first week after the release of Marin’s tape these events occurred.
Charlotte received a call from a young woman in New York who said that Warren would arrive in San Francisco on a midnight plane. Warren did not.
Charlotte received a call from a spiritualist in the Netherlands who said that he perceived the aura of a girl in a pinafore selling tripe in the Belleville section of Paris. He would discuss his vision in detail upon receipt of a first-class airplane ticket to San Francisco, round-trip and refundable.
Leonard received a call from the sister of a convict at San Quentin who said that her brother had reason to know that Marin was working as an aide in a state mental hospital. He would name the state upon receipt of an unconditional parole.
The young woman in New York called back to say that Warren had missed the midnight plane but would arrive in San Francisco the next afternoon. Warren did not.
A pair of FBI men came for coffee every morning.
An apartment-court manager on the outskirts of Detroit told NBC that he had seen Marin and “two jumped-up coloreds” loading carbines into the trunk of a 1957 Pontiac at dawn in the Livonia Mall parking lot. By the time he appeared on CBS he described Marin’s companions as “possibly black or Indian” and the car as a 1957 Pontiac “or some later-model General Motors vehicle.” In the Detroit Free Press the story was headlined “A SEARCH FOR A NERVOUS INDIAN.”
Marin was said to be in Havana.
Marin was said to be in Hanoi.
Warren left two messages on the answering service that he would definitely arrive in San Francisco via TWA the following morning at 10:35 A.M. He did not.
“What have we here,” Leonard said when he finally walked into the room Charlotte had taken in the Fairmont Hotel. Leonard had addressed a bar luncheon on constitutional law at the Fairmont and a telephone had been brought to the dais and it was Warren calling from New York. Charlotte had watched Leonard take the call from Warren and then she had left the dais and gone to the desk and asked for a room and telephoned Leonard to meet her upstairs when he finished lunch. The room was cold and the radiator jammed off and the big windows overlooking the Pacific Union Club would not close. Yet for an hour and ten minutes Charlotte had been sitting barefoot in the gray afternoon light wearing only the handmade navy-blue silk underwear she had just bought in a shop in the lobby. She had been trying not to remember about Marin or Warren. She had been trying to remember a carnal mood.
“No. Don’t tell me,” Leonard said. “Let me guess. You decided the way to avoid seeing Warren was to move to the Fairmont.”
“I don’t want to talk about Warren,” Charlotte said.
“I got him a ride out.”
“Don’t talk about him,” Charlotte said. “Come here.”
“I know perfectly well what you’re doing. Even if you don’t.”
“Don’t talk about it. Don’t laugh. I just want it.”
“You don’t want it at all.”
Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and pulled the spread around herself. “I did.”
“You’re transparent, Charlotte. To everyone but yourself.”
Charlotte gazed out the window. “Somebody died,” she said after a while. “Somebody died at the Pacific Union Club. While you were talking. Downstairs.”
“How do you know.”
“The fire department came. The resuscitator squad. And then an ambulance. And they lowered the flag.”
Leonard sat on a chair facing the bed. “I know exactly what you’re trying to do.”
“Look. You can see the flag. Half mast. What do you mean, you got him a ride out?”
“Never mind Warren. It’s a lousy idea, Charlotte, trying to have a baby.”
“Who said anything about a baby? I say I want to fuck, you say I don’t. You say you got Warren a ride out, I say how, you say never mind Warren. I say somebody died at the Pacific Union Club, you start talking about having a baby. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Leonard kept his eyes on Charlotte but she did not meet them.
“Quite honestly I don’t.”
“Quite honestly I don’t think you do. Quite honestly I always know what you’re thinking before you do. What you’re thinking now is this: you get yourself pregnant, Warren can’t get to you. ABC. QED. Don’t ask me why. Where did you get that underwear.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“Has it ever occurred to you that your primary erogenous zone is your underwear?”
Charlotte had pulled the bedspread closer and smoked a cigarette without speaking and there had not seemed any point in staying in the cold room after that. In the elevator it occurred to her that he had been trying to make her laugh with him but that was another mood she could not remember. In fact she did want a baby.
“He apparently called the office and gave Suzy a lot of shit before he got me here.” Leonard nodded at the Fairmont doorman. “ ‘Your friend Warren,’ Suzy calls him.”
“I don’t want him to come out here.”
“It’s not up to you, Charlotte. Come out of your trance. He wants to come out.”
“Then why hasn’t he.”
“You know as well as I do why hasn’t he, Charlotte, he hasn’t been able to promote an airplane ticket, that’s why hasn’t he.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Of course he didn’t say that. Wake up.”
Charlotte concentrated on trying to tie her scarf in the wind.
“So as soon as the Q-A was over I made a call and got him a ride out on Bashti Levant’s plane.”
“I can’t—” Charlotte broke off.
“You can’t what.”
Charlotte shrugged.
“You can’t what, Charlotte.”
“I can’t see Warren on a small plane with Bashti Levant for five hours.” She had just seized on this but it was true. Bashti Levant was in the music business. Bashti Levant had “labels,” and three-piece suits and large yellow teeth and obscure Balkan proclivities. “They won’t like each other.”
“No. They won’t. They will cordially dislike each other and they will entirely entertain each other. That’s not what you were going to say. You can’t what.”
Charlotte gave up on the scarf. “I can’t deal with Warren right now.”
“What’s to ‘deal with’? You were married to him, now you’re married to me. You think you’re the only two people in the world who used to fuck and don’t any more?”
“Not at all.” Another thing Charlotte could not deal with was Leonard’s essentially rational view of the sexual connection. “There’s also you and me.”