“Look at the slut on Easter morning.”
She had screamed.
Marin had screamed.
She had picked up Marin and when Warren hit her again his hand glanced off Marin’s temple.
She had picked up the kitchen knife.
She had thrown up.
She and Warren had taken Marin to the Carlyle and she had not had enough money to pay the bill. The beautiful principessa, the headwaiter had crooned over Marin. The beautiful principessa, the beautiful family. King of Crazy, Queen of Wrong. The headwaiter did not know that. The headwaiter would see to it that the bill was mailed. Charlotte lay on the motel bed and she thought about the beautiful principessa and about the beautiful family and about all the bills that had been mailed and never paid. She thought about all the unpaid bills and she thought about all the days and nights when she had promised Warren she would never leave.
There was another unpaid bill.
“You can’t drink,” Warren had said that Easter morning and held her shoulders as she threw up. “You can’t drink at all, you never could.” And then he washed her face and he took her to the Carlyle and she did not have enough money to pay the bill. Look at the slut on Easter morning. Marin had a straw hat one Easter, and a flowered lawn dress. Warren gave her his coat.
19
WHEN WARREN CAME THAT DAY TO THE DOOR OF THE house on California Street Charlotte did not answer.
When Warren telephoned Charlotte hung up.
When Warren stood on the sidewalk outside the house on California Street at two A.M. and threw stones at the windows Charlotte closed the shutters.
When Warren left the note reading “THIS IS THE WORST BEHAVIOR YET” in the mailbox of the house on California Street Charlotte tore the note in half and avoided those rooms which fronted on the street.
When the two FBI men came to tell Charlotte that the boy with the harelip scar had been apprehended on an unrelated charge in Nogales, Arizona, and had hanged himself in his cell Charlotte left the room without speaking. That was on the second day of the sixth week after the release of Marin’s tape.
On the morning of the third day of the sixth week after the release of Marin’s tape Dickie called from Hollister to say that Warren was at the ranch.
“Acting crazy. Irrational. He told Linda that he talked to Leonard in Miami and Leonard said he could stay.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“He yelled at Linda.”
Charlotte said nothing.
“Obscenities.”
Charlotte replaced the receiver and lay down on Marin’s bed.
“You’re aware Mark Schrader killed himself in Mexico,” the reporter said on the telephone.
“Arizona,” Charlotte said. She was still lying on Marin’s bed. The sound of the man’s voice hurt her ear and she held the receiver several inches away.
“About Mark and Marin—”
“Arizona. Not Mexico. He killed himself in Nogales, Arizona.”
“Absolutely. My slip. Would you say that Marin was romantically involved with Mark?”
“Romantically involved,” Charlotte repeated.
“Involved in a romantic way, yes.”
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.
“You see you’re thinking of Nogales, Sonora,” Charlotte said.
“Absolutely,” the reporter said. “Very good. About Mark and—”
“You don’t have to congratulate me. For knowing the difference between Arizona and Mexico.”
“About Marin and—”
This is the worst behavior yet.
“Fuck Marin,” Charlotte said.
“Because he was married to you,” Leonard said when she called him in Miami. “That’s why I told him he could stay at your fucking ranch. Because you kissed him goodbye at Idlewild and told him you’d be back in a week. Because he was Marin’s father. And because I don’t happen to believe it’s Porter who is dying.”
“Is Marin’s father, Is.”
“You didn’t hear what I said. I said I don’t happen to believe he’s talking about anybody but himself.”
There was a silence.
“I heard what you said,” Charlotte said finally. “Tell me—”
“Tell you what.”
“Tell me—”
“Tell you if you’re not there when I get back I’ll shoot myself?”
Charlotte said nothing.
“I won’t. That’s his game, not mine. I want you. I don’t need you.”
“If you think he’s dying he’s not,” Charlotte said after a while. “If you’re trying to say you think he’s dying you’re wrong.”
Leonard said nothing.
“Something else you were wrong about,” Charlotte said. “You said I’d leave you the same way I left him. I’m not. I’m leaving you. I’m telling you.”
The rain was light and the dark came early and the traffic moved. By the time she arrived at the turn-off to the Hollister ranch she was just ten months short of the Boca Grande airport. El Aeropuerto del Presidente General Luis Strasser-Mendana. My brother-in-law. Deceased.
THREE
1
SHE HAD BEEN GOING TO ONE AIRPORT OR ANOTHER FOR four months, one could see it, looking at the visas on her passport. All those airports where Charlotte Douglas’s passport had been stamped would have looked alike. Sometimes the sign on the tower would say “Bienvenidos” and sometimes the sign on the tower would say “Bienvenue,” some places were wet and hot and others dry and hot, but at each of those airports the pastel concrete walls would rust and stain and the swamp off the runway would be littered with the fuselages of cannibalized Fairchild F–227’s and the water would need boiling.
I knew why Charlotte went to the airport even if Victor did not.
I knew about airports.
People who go to the airport first invent some business to conduct there, a ticket to be adjusted, a query about cargo rates, a newspaper unavailable elsewhere. Then they convince themselves that the airport is cooler than the hotel, or has superior chicken salad. Then one day they see a plane, “their” plane, one plane of many but somehow marked, a mirage on the tarmac.
They pay the lunch check.
They buy the ticket, they glance at the clock above the counter.
Quite as if they were ordinary travelers.
Quite as if they traveled on ordinary timetables.
I supposed that one day Charlotte Douglas would be sitting in the Boca Grande airport and would see her plane and get on it, just as she had clearly gotten on her plane from New Orleans to Mérida and Mérida to Antigua and Antigua to Guadeloupe and Guadeloupe to Boca Grande, supposed that she would maintain that blind course south, but she never did.
2
LOOK AT THE VISAS. TRACE BACK THE COURSE.
Before Boca Grande she had been on Guadeloupe.
A few tourists had been killed by terrorists on Guadeloupe that year and until the Air France crash Charlotte was the only guest at the hotel, which had been built just before the trouble and was very large with open terraces where the rain splashed. Her clothes mildewed. The untouched butter in the little crocks went rancid by noon and by dinner was dusted with the fine volcanic ash still falling from an eruption two years before. One of the killings had taken place on the dining terrace of the hotel, and there was a stubborn bloodstain on the concrete at which a busboy scrubbed desultorily every afternoon.