Play It as It Lays

72

THEY HAD BEEN on the desert three weeks when Susannah Wood got beaten up in a hotel room in Las Vegas. The unit publicity man got over there right away and Harrison Porter did a surprise Telethon for Southern Nevada Cystic Fibrosis and there was no mention of the incident. When Maria asked Carter what had happened he shrugged.

"What difference does it make," he said.

Susannah Wood was not badly hurt but her face was bruised and she could not be photographed. Carter tried to shoot around her until the bruise was down enough to be masked by makeup but by the end of the fourth week they were running ten days over schedule.

"Was it Harrison?"

"It's over, she's O.K., drop it." Carter was standing by the window watching for BZ’s car. BZ had been in town for meetings at the studio. "Susannah doesn't take things quite as hard as you do. So just forget it."

'Was it you?"

Carter looked at her. "You think that way, get your ass out of here."

In silence Maria pulled out a suitcase and began taking her clothes from hangers. In silence Carter watched her. By the time BZ walked in, neither of them had spoken for ten minutes.

"They're on your back," BZ said. He dropped his keys on the bed and took an ice tray from the refrigerator.

"I thought they liked the dailies."

"Ralph likes them. Kramer says they're very interesting."

"What does that mean."

"It means he wants to know why he's not seeing a master, two, closeup and reaction on every shot."

"If I started covering myself on every shot we'd bring it in at about two-five."

"All right, then, it doesn't mean that. It means he wants Ralph to hang himself with your rope." BZ looked at Maria. "What's she doing?"

'Ask her," Carter said, and walked out.

"Harrison did it," BZ said. "What's the problem."

"Carter was there. Wasn't Carter there."

"It was just something that got a little out of hand."

Maria sat down on the bed beside her suitcase. "Carter was there."

BZ looked at her for a long while and then laughed. "Of course Carter was there. He was there with Helene."

Maria said nothing.

"If you're pretending that it makes some difference to you, who anybody fucks and where and when and why, you're faking yourself."

"It does make a difference to me."

"No," BZ said. "It doesn't."

Maria stared out the window into the dry wash behind the motel.

"You know it doesn't. If you thought things like that mattered you'd be gone already. You're not going anywhere."

"Why don't you get me a drink," Maria said finally.

"What's the matter," Carter would ask when he saw her sitting in the dark at two or three in the morning staring out at the dry wash.

"What do you want. I can't help you if you don't tell me what you want."

"I don't want anything."

"Tell me."

"I just told you."

"Fuck it then. Fuck it and fuck you. I'm up to here with you. I've had it. I've had it with the circles under your eyes and the veins showing on your arms and the lines starting on your f ace and your fucking menopausal depression—"

“Don't say that word to me."

"Menopause. Old. You're going to get old."

“You talk crazy any more and I'll leave."

"Leave. For Christ's sake leave."

She would not take her eyes from the dry wash. "All right."

"Don't," he would say then. "Don't."

"Why do you say those things. Why do you fight."

He would sit on the bed and put his head in his hands. "To find out if you're alive."

In the heat some mornings she would wake with her eyes swollen and heavy and she would wonder if she had been crying.