Play It as It Lays

61

THEY LET HER make one call, and she called Freddy Chaikin. It was not as easy for Freddy to fix as it might have been, because when they vacuumed the car they picked up marijuana, but still, by sundown, she was flying back across the desert with Freddy in a Lear he had borrowed from a client. Freddy had done everything. Freddy had driven out to the Malibu ranch where the actor was shooting a Western and had told the actor whom to call to retract the complaint. Freddy had waited there while the actor did it. Freddy had gotten in touch with one of the big savings-and-loan Democrats, who got in touch with someone in Nevada and the marijuana came off the report. And now as the jet gained altitude Freddy was handing Maria a drink. She was still wearing the silver dress and she was still barefoot and her face was streaked with dust and when she tasted the drink it all came up, all the pills and the not eating and the liquor and the fear and the way she had felt about the actor and the way she had felt when the matron had her finger up her looking for drugs, all that came up in a trail of mucous on the floor of the Lear that Freddy had borrowed in his day-long effort to protect Carter. Freddy watched her clean it up.

"I don't understand girls like you," he said finally.

She clutched a towel to her mouth but the convulsion passed.

"I mean there's something in your behavior, Maria, I would almost go so far as to call it. .” Freddy paused, and lit a cigarillo with his gold Cartier lighter. When he spoke again he measured each word. "Almost go so far as to call it a very self-destructive personality structure.”

Maria closed her eyes. "You know what, Freddy?"

"What."

"I'd almost go so far as to call you—"

Freddy Chaikin flicked the gold lighter closed and smiled at her.

Maria took his hand, and went to sleep.