“Delightful. Why.”
“Why what?”
“Why the St. Francis Grill?”
“I just thought—” Charlotte did not know what she had just thought. She had rejected the house because it was watched. She had hit upon the St. Francis Grill as a place where all corners of the room could be seen. “Is there somewhere you’d rather go?”
“Not at all, I don’t keep up with where the beautiful people eat. Not to worry about my recognizing you, I’ve seen pictures of you.”
“I’ve seen pictures of you too.”
“Before,” the woman said. “I meant before. Pictures of you and your beautiful home.”
Charlotte had met the woman at one-thirty and at two-thirty the code remained impenetrable. The woman did not seem interested in talking about her son, or about Marin. The woman seemed interested instead in talking about a friend who had a decorator’s card.
“You’ll adore Ruthie.” The woman was drinking daiquiris and had refused lunch. “I’m getting you together soonest, that’s definite, a promise. Meanwhile I’ll borrow her card and we’ll do the trade-only places. How’s Tuesday?”
“How’s Tuesday for what?” Charlotte said faintly.
“Monday’s a no-no for me but if Tuesday’s bad for you, let’s say Wednesday. Earliest. Grab lunch where we find it.”
“Listen.” Charlotte glanced around the room before she spoke. “If there’s something to see I think we should — I mean could we see it now?”
“But I haven’t got Ruthie’s card. I mean unless you have a card—” The woman looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about taking you shopping.” The woman’s eyes reddened and filled with tears. “Unless of course you’re too busy. But of course you are. Too busy.”
Charlotte touched the woman’s hand.
The last woman Charlotte had known to talk about “shopping” was her mother.
The last time Charlotte had been asked to go “shopping” it had been by her mother.
“Your ex-husband isn’t too busy. I heard him on the radio. He was blotto but he talked to me. I called in to chat, he wasn’t too busy to chat. Although blotto. On the radio. Whatever his name is.”
“Warren.” Charlotte did not want to hear about Warren on the radio. Leonard had once said that Warren could arrive in a town where he knew no one and within twenty-four hours he would have had dinner at the country club, been offered a temporary chair in Southern politics at the nearest college, and been on the radio. Charlotte did not want to think about Warren on the radio and she did not want to think why Enid Schrader was crying and she did not want to think about her mother shopping. Her mother had been shopping the day she died, at Ransohoff’s. “His name is Warren Bogart.”
“Whatever. The little whore’s father.”
The woman gave one last cathartic sob.
Charlotte reached for the check.
“My treat,” the woman cried, her voice again sprightly. “You do it next time.”
All the next day Charlotte could not erase from her mind the first newspaper picture she had seen of Enid Schrader’s son. “They’ll ditch the harelip,” Leonard had said when she showed him the picture. “The harelip’s the fresh meat they’ll throw on the trail, they can’t afford him, Marin’s not stupid.”
“I wouldn’t rely on that,” Warren had said.
Another picture Charlotte could not erase from her mind was her mother alone at Ransohoff’s.
I knew my mother was dead when I saw them carry out her bed to be burned, my father could not tell me. I knew my father was dead when the doorman at the Brown Palace would not let me go upstairs, he sent for a maid to tell me. She brought an éclair and cocoa. I waited for her on a red plush banquette. Unlike Charlotte I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away from any brush where it might coil unnoticed. The morning Edgar died I called Victor, signed the papers, walked out to Progreso as usual and ate lunch on the sea wall.
15
“I HAVE A LOUSY TRIP TO PHILADELPHIA, LOUSY FLIGHT back, I watch my own plane blow a tire on closed-circuit TV, I go to my office, I find Suzy in tears because Warren’s camped in her one-room apartment, I come home and I find my wife hasn’t gotten dressed in two days. I finish this call, Charlotte, I’m going to trot your ass over to Polly Orben’s office, this isn’t healthy.” Leonard uncupped the receiver and spoke into it. “Try the other line, Suzy, see if you can keep your finger off the disconnect this time.”
“Why don’t you trot Suzy’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office,” Charlotte said without turning around. She was watching the FBI man in the window of the apartment across the street. “Why don’t you trot Warren’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office.”
“Tell him we’re going to trade off the felony and plead the two misdemeanors,” Leonard said into the telephone.
“Warren and Polly Orben would be good,” Charlotte said.
“And tell him I don’t want any of that boom-boom shit at the hearing.” Leonard hung up the telephone. “Speaking of Warren he says you won’t see him. He says you misunderstand him.”
“The fuck I misunderstand him.”
“Felicitously put,” Leonard said after a while. “In any case I told him to come by.”
“Tell him I’m in Hollister. Tell him I’m in Hollister and about how there’s no telephone on the ranch.”
“There are eight telephones on the ranch. On three separate lines.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Charlotte, go to Hollister if you don’t want to see him. Go now. Go right now.”
“I can’t actually go to Hollister.”
“Why can’t you, besides the fact that it might entail getting dressed.”
She could not go to Hollister because she was afraid Warren might find her there, alone at the ranch. She could not go to Hollister because if Warren found her there alone at the ranch something bad would happen. This seemed so obvious to Charlotte that she could not bring herself to say it. “I can’t go to Hollister because you have people coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”
“Tell me who I have coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”
“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow you have …” She could not think.
“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow I have … the leaders of … two dissident factions within … the Haight-Divisadero Coalition. You got a whole lot you want to say to them?”
Charlotte picked up a brush and began attacking her hair in abrupt chops.
“On the subject of day-care versus guerrilla theater? Maybe we could get Dickie and Linda up from Hollister and get their thinking?”
“I don’t know why you put all those telephones on the ranch anyway.”
“I don’t know, Charlotte. Communication?”
“Nobody in my family ever found it necessary to keep three different calls going on that ranch.”
“Nobody in your family ever found it necessary to pay the taxes on that ranch, either. Tell me again why you can’t go to Hollister.”
The hair Charlotte pulled from her brush was dry and wiry and faded.
When Marin was small she had played a game with Charlotte’s hair and called it gold.
“I feel so old,” Charlotte said.
“Tell me why you can’t go to Hollister.”
“I keep remembering things.”
“Most of us do. Tell me why you won’t see Warren.”