“Look at her bébé dress,” Elena said. Elena was watching Gerardo. “Not that she is a bébé.”
“So original actually,” Ardis Bradley said. “If you like that.”
But Gerardo only watched Charlotte Douglas.
I remember that the grass was wet and that Charlotte walked very slowly and that when she stumbled once on a sprinkler head she stopped and took off the high-heeled sandals and then walked on toward us, barefoot.
“Very déjeuner sur l’herbe,” Elena said.
“California,” Ardis Bradley said.
I remember that Charlotte only kissed me absently and dropped into a wicker chair and did not speak.
You smell American.
I wonder if that could be because she is.
I wonder if I do.
And still Charlotte said nothing at all.
“You haven’t met my son,” I remember saying in the silence. “Gerardo. Mrs. Douglas. Mrs. Douglas is staying at the Caribe.”
But Gerardo said nothing, only touched Charlotte’s hair, a touch so tentative that it was almost not a touch at all.
Almost not a touch.
But it was.
“Extraordinary,” Elena said.
“I wonder what ‘American’ smells like exactly,” Ardis Bradley said.
Charlotte stood up then and without taking her eyes from Gerardo she brushed back her hair where he had touched it. She did not seem to know what to do with her hands after that and she fingered the batiste of her skirt. She looked unsteady, ill, stricken by some fever she did not understand, and when I put out my hand to steady her she flinched and pulled away.
“I don’t like the Caribe,” was the second thing Gerardo ever said to Charlotte Douglas.
His voice was low but so conversational and so unexceptional that for the moment after he spoke I could see Ardis Bradley marshaling opinions on the Caribe, pro and con.
Not Elena.
Elena’s only developed instinct is for the presence of the sexual current.
“I want you to take an apartment,” was the third thing Gerardo ever said to Charlotte Douglas.
4
SEXUAL CURRENT.
The retreat into pastoral imagery to suggest this current has always seemed to me curious and decadent.
The dissolve through the goldenrod.
The romance of the rose.
Equally specious.
As usual I favor a mechanical view.
What Charlotte and Gerardo did that afternoon was reverse the entire neutron field on my lawn, exhausting and disturbing and altering not only the mood but possibly the cell structure (I am interested in this possibility) of everyone there. Charlotte never spoke at all to Gerardo, only turned away and engaged Tuck Bradley in one of those reflexive monologues she tended to initiate at the instant of distraction. It sometimes seemed to me that these monologues had for Charlotte the same protective function that ink has for a squid. This one touched on whether or not Tuck Bradley had ever been in the courtroom when Leonard did “one of his really dazzling redirects” (Tuck Bradley had not); what Tuck Bradley thought about the national lottery (Tuck Bradley saw both its “good points” and its “bad points”); what Tuck Bradley thought about assassination in the United States (Tuck Bradley thought it “deplorable”); and what “offbeat” hotels Tuck Bradley could recommend in Paris.
Tuck Bradley recommended the George V.
“What about London,” Charlotte said, her voice suddenly weary. She did not turn to meet Gerardo’s gaze.
“I would say …” Tuck Bradley tamped his pipe. “The Savoy.”
Charlotte took a drink from a tray and I waited to see what she would do with it. Charlotte never exactly “drank” a drink. Sometimes she drained it like a child and sometimes she just played with the ice and quite often she dropped it. This time she set it on a tiled bench, quite carefully, without tasting it.
“Or Claridge’s,” Tuck Bradley said.
There was a silence.
“I want to jot all this down,” Charlotte said vaguely, and then she turned away from Tuck Bradley.
Gerardo watched her as she ran across the lawn.
Victor watched her as she ran across the lawn.
Antonio crouched on the lawn by Carmen Arrellano’s hammock and watched Gerardo and Victor.
“This is so absorbing but you can take me home now,” Carmen Arrellano said to Antonio.
“Norteamericana cunt,” Antonio said without moving.
“And I suppose another choice in Paris would be …” Tuck Bradley was still intent on his pipe. “The Plaza Athénée.”
“She’ll definitely want to jot that down,” Elena said. “Possibly you could catch her and tell her. The Plaza Athénée. Are we going to get dinner? Is anyone going to le Jockey?”
“Did Charlotte Douglas say she was going to Paris?” Ardis Bradley said.
“ ‘Le Jockey,’ ” Carmen Arrellano said to Antonio. “Listen to Elena. Your interesting sister-in-law thinks she’s in Paris. I don’t want dinner.”
“I mean if she is going to Paris,” Ardis Bradley said, “she’s going to miss her husband.”
I looked at Ardis Bradley.
She could not have had more than two drinks but she did not drink well.
No one else seemed to have heard what she said.
“I want dinner,” Elena said. “And I also want to go to Paris.”
“Go to Paris.” Antonio rose from his crouch. Some chemical exchange in his brain seemed to have switched on another of his rages. I used to be interested in Antonio’s cell metabolism. “Go to Paris, go to Geneva. Buy a parrot. Buy two parrots, give one to your friend the norteamericana cunt.”
“The norteamericana cunt is not your sister-in-law’s friend,” Carmen Arrellano murmured from the depths of the hammock. “The norteamericana cunt is Victor’s friend.”
“Gerardo will drop you home now, Carmen.” Victor spoke very clearly in a tired voice. His eyes were closed. “Won’t you. Gerardo.”
“No,” Antonio said. “He won’t.”
“Antonio is going to drop Carmen home,” Gerardo said. He was still gazing across the lawn. “Antonio is either going to drop Carmen home or Antonio is going to drop Carmen in Arizona. With Isabel and Dr. Schiff. Carmen’s choice. Why is she here?”
“Who?” Victor said.
“Mrs. Douglas.”
“More to the point, why are you here?” Victor did not open his eyes. “Why aren’t you off bobsledding somewhere.”
“I thought my country needed me,” Gerardo said. He did not turn around. “Patria, Victor. Right or wrong. Where exactly is Mr. Douglas?”
The only sound was that of the DDT truck which grinds past this house early each evening to spray.
“Caracas,” Ardis Bradley said.
This time everyone seemed to have heard what Ardis Bradley said.
“Or he was when he called Tuck.”
Victor opened his eyes and stared at her.
“Wasn’t it Caracas? Tuck?”
“I have no idea.” Tuck Bradley stood up. “It’s time, Ardis.”
“I have always loathed that phrase. ‘It’s time, Ardis.’ You told me Caracas.”
“We’ll get dinner, Ardis.”
Ardis Bradley stood up unsteadily.
I watched the cloud of DDT settle over the spindly roses at the far end of the lawn.
It occurred to me that my attempt to grow roses and a lawn at the equator was a delusion worthy of Charlotte Douglas.
One of whose husbands appeared to be in Caracas.
Not a delusion at all.