15

“I HAVE A LOUSY TRIP TO PHILADELPHIA, LOUSY FLIGHT back, I watch my own plane blow a tire on closed-circuit TV, I go to my office, I find Suzy in tears because Warren’s camped in her one-room apartment, I come home and I find my wife hasn’t gotten dressed in two days. I finish this call, Charlotte, I’m going to trot your ass over to Polly Orben’s office, this isn’t healthy.” Leonard uncupped the receiver and spoke into it. “Try the other line, Suzy, see if you can keep your finger off the disconnect this time.”

“Why don’t you trot Suzy’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office,” Charlotte said without turning around. She was watching the FBI man in the window of the apartment across the street. “Why don’t you trot Warren’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office.”

“Tell him we’re going to trade off the felony and plead the two misdemeanors,” Leonard said into the telephone.

“Warren and Polly Orben would be good,” Charlotte said.

“And tell him I don’t want any of that boom-boom shit at the hearing.” Leonard hung up the telephone. “Speaking of Warren he says you won’t see him. He says you misunderstand him.”

“The fuck I misunderstand him.”

“Felicitously put,” Leonard said after a while. “In any case I told him to come by.”

“Tell him I’m in Hollister. Tell him I’m in Hollister and about how there’s no telephone on the ranch.”

“There are eight telephones on the ranch. On three separate lines.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“For Christ’s sake, Charlotte, go to Hollister if you don’t want to see him. Go now. Go right now.”

“I can’t actually go to Hollister.”

“Why can’t you, besides the fact that it might entail getting dressed.”

She could not go to Hollister because she was afraid Warren might find her there, alone at the ranch. She could not go to Hollister because if Warren found her there alone at the ranch something bad would happen. This seemed so obvious to Charlotte that she could not bring herself to say it. “I can’t go to Hollister because you have people coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”

“Tell me who I have coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”

“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow you have …” She could not think.

“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow I have … the leaders of … two dissident factions within … the Haight-Divisadero Coalition. You got a whole lot you want to say to them?”

Charlotte picked up a brush and began attacking her hair in abrupt chops.

“On the subject of day-care versus guerrilla theater? Maybe we could get Dickie and Linda up from Hollister and get their thinking?”

“I don’t know why you put all those telephones on the ranch anyway.”

“I don’t know, Charlotte. Communication?”

“Nobody in my family ever found it necessary to keep three different calls going on that ranch.”

“Nobody in your family ever found it necessary to pay the taxes on that ranch, either. Tell me again why you can’t go to Hollister.”

The hair Charlotte pulled from her brush was dry and wiry and faded.

When Marin was small she had played a game with Charlotte’s hair and called it gold.

“I feel so old,” Charlotte said.

“Tell me why you can’t go to Hollister.”

“I keep remembering things.”

“Most of us do. Tell me why you won’t see Warren.”

“You don’t know what he wants.”

“Of course I know what he wants. He wants you back. You think I make my living being dense?”

“Then why did you ask?”

Leonard lifted a mass of Charlotte’s hair and let it drop through his fingers. “Because I was interested in whether you knew it. You don’t look so old.”