A Book of Common Prayer Read Online Free PDF Page A

him.
    “I know what you need here,” Charlotte said.
    “What do I need here,” Victor said. His voice was almost hoarse. “Say it.”
    She studied the square emerald on the hand that had touched Victor and slid it up and down. She seemed aware of nothing she was doing. She was reflexively seductive. I did not want to watch this happening. I did not want to think of Victor and this woman in the apartment in the Residencia Vista del Palacio and I did not want to see the black Mercedes limousine with the BOCA GRANDE 2 plates parked outside the Caribe.
    “Think of what made Acapulco,” she said finally. “Think of what turned Acapulco around overnight.”
    Victor stared at the emerald as if transfixed.
    Tuck Bradley snapped the toothpick in two.
    I looked away.
    “I’m not sure Mrs. Douglas realizes the problems,” Tuck Bradley said.
    “Think,” Charlotte repeated.
    “Say it,” Victor repeated.
    “A film festival,” Charlotte Douglas said.
    “You won’t want the details but it’s rather a tragic situation,” Ardis Bradley said. “Tuck could tell you better than I.”
    “I won’t bore you with the details but it’s rather an interesting situation,” Tuck Bradley said. “Don’t ask her about her daughter.”
    I could not have asked Charlotte Douglas about her daughter in any case because Charlotte Douglas had already left, with Victor. I went as planned to Victor’s and ate with Bianca, alone. The black Mercedes limousine with the BOCA GRANDE 2 plates was seen first at the Residencia Vista del Palacio and later at the Caribe. Bianca did not then and docs not now go out, nor does she express interest in her husband’s arrivals and departures. That is another example of the genteel behavior Bianca was taught at Sacre Coeur in New Orleans.
    The next afternoon when I saw Charlotte Douglas arguing with the pharmacist in the big drugstore on the Avenida Centrale she did not look at me. She looked disheveled and unwell, her eyes puffy beneath dark glasses, her bright hair unkempt and only partly covered by a bandana.
    “You tell me chloromycetin.” The pharmacist slapped the counter with his palm. “I give you chloromycetin.”
    “This is tincture of opium.”
    “Different type chloromycetin.”
    “I can smell it, it’s opium.”
    “Same thing. Para la disentería. ”
    “But they’re not the same thing at all.” Even in her distress she seemed determined to instruct him on this point. “They’re both para la disentería , but they’re quite different. Chloromycetin is a—”
    “I give you chloromycetin.”
    “Forget the whole thing,” she said, her voice low and her eyes averted from where I stood.
    Later that afternoon I sent a maid to the Caribe with twenty chloromycetin and a note asking Charlotte Douglas to have dinner when she was recovered.

8
    “C HARLOTTE DOUGLAS IS ILL ,” I SAID AFTER CHRISTMAS lunch in the courtyard at Victor and Bianca’s.
    No one had spoken for twenty minutes. I had timed it. I had counted the minutes while I watched two mating flies try to extricate themselves from a melting chocolate shaving on the untouched Bûche de Noël. The children had already been trundled off quarreling to distribute nut cups to veterans, Gerardo had already made his filial call from St. Moritz, Elena had already been photographed in her Red Cross uniform and had changed back into magenta crepe de chine pajamas. Isabel had drunk enough champagne to begin crying softly. Antonio had grown irritable enough with Isabel’s mournful hiccups to borrow a pistol from the guard at the gate and take aim at a lizard in the creche behind Bianca’s fountain. Antonio was always handling guns, or smashing plates. As a gesture toward the spirit of Christmas he had refrained from smashing any plates at lunch, but the effort seemed to have exhausted his capacity for congeniality. Had Antonio been born in other circumstances he would have been put away early as a sociopath.
    Bianca remained