Play It as It Lays

83

“I THOUGHT YOU'D BE in Vegas," BZ said when Maria opened the door. He was holding a bottle of vodka and in spite of the heat he was wearing a blazer and a tie. "With Carter and Helene and Susannah and Harrison and Sylvia and Cassie and Leona and

— "

"You knew I wasn't going." Maria lay down on the bed again.

“All right, I knew." He sat on the edge of the bed and loosened his tie. "Look at me all duded up. Why are you in bed at nine o'clock."

"Why not."

"Beautiful."

Maria looked at him. "Tell me why you're sad."

"You're a good girl." All the musculature seemed gone from BZ’s face. He put down the bottle of vodka and reached into his pocket.

"You know what these are?"

He poured twenty or thirty capsules onto the bed before she answered.

"Grain-and-a-half Seconal."

"You want some?"

She looked at him. "No."

"You're still playing." BZ did not take his eyes from hers. "Some day you'll wake up and you just won't feel like playing any more."

"That's a queen's way of doing it."

"I never expected you to fall back on style as an argument."

"I'm not arguing."

"I know that. You think I'd be here if I didn't know that?"

She took his hand and held it. "Why are you here."

"Because you and I, we know something. Because we've been out there where nothing is. Because I wanted — you know why."

"Lie down here," she said after a while. "Just go to sleep."

When he lay down beside her the Seconal capsules rolled on the sheet. In the bar across the road somebody punched King of the Road on the jukebox again, and there was an argument outside, and the sound of a bottle breaking. Maria held onto BZ's hand.

"Listen to that," he said. "Try to think about having enough left to break a bottle over it.”

"It would be very pretty," Maria said. "Go to sleep."

She was almost asleep when she sensed that his weight had shifted.

" Don't." After she had said it she opened her eyes.

He was swallowing the capsules with a glass of water. There were not very many left on the bed.

"Don't start faking me now." BZ turned off the light and lay down again. "Take my hand. Go back to sleep."

"I'm sorry," she said after a while.

"Hold onto me," BZ said.

When Maria woke again the room was blazing with light and Carter was shaking her and Helene was screaming. Maria thought she had never heard anyone scream the way Helene screamed. She closed her eyes against the light and her ears against Helene and her mind against what was going to happen in the next few hours and tightened her hold on BZ's hand.