A Southern Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page A

Impossibly affected, but nevertheless somehow nice, Brett has felt. The two women instinctively like each other, perhaps in part because both feel themselves displaced, out there in California, in Hollywood, or Santa Monica.
    “My darling, how are you?” croons Edith-Fleurette, nearsightedly peering at Brett. “My angel, you don’t look well—”
    “I don’t feel—”
    “Sweetheart, tell Fleurette. Or, better still, tell old Edith.” Fleurette is fond of dividing herself in this way: Fleurette the vamp, and Edith the good old pal, whose accent is faintly cockney.
    “I don’t know, but I sort of think—”
    “Oh Mary, mother of God—you’re not, please don’t tell me you’re preggers.”
    “Well, I’m not at all sure—”
    “Let me look at your eyes. Oh dear Lord God, you can’t possibly want five children. Or would this make six?”
    “Six. No, I—”
    The next day on the telephone they talked again, and the next day and the next—by which time Fleurette had arranged for them to go to San Francisco.
    Russ was surprisingly pleasant about the trip. “I’ve heard that drive is something amazing. You memorize it for me, hear? And I think it’ll do you good, you’ve been looking a little peaked. You’re not stopping off at San Simeon?”
    Their California nanny, Suzanne, would take care of Russ and the children for the five days that Brett would be gone.
    There was the magnificent Pacific. Miles and miles of winding coastal highway, above the sea, flat and brilliantly shimmering in the sunlight. Brett closed her eyes against the terrifying drama of this view, its intensity. She is not thinking, though, of any of her ordinary concerns, not of Russ or the children. Certainly not of the word she does not use, “abortion.” Her mind is filled with the prospect just beforeher, what she will see as soon as she opens her eyes, and then tomorrow night San Francisco. A party in their hotel.
    “There’re just these rather fun people I happen to know up there,” Fleurette has said. “They drink rather too much, but it’s fun, and perfect to take your mind off things.” After a small pause she adds, “And my mind too. I can’t seem to stop dreading this bloody war, which of course most of you Yanks don’t believe is going to happen.”
    The day after that, on the way home, more or less, they will “stop by,” as Fleurette puts it, a little clinic out in the Sunset District (“Not quite as romantic as it sounds, sweetie pie. But there are some sand dunes, and more lovely views of the sea”). Their stay at the clinic should not take more than an hour; Brett can rest in the car as they slowly drive down to L.A., “and everything by then will be hunky-dory,” said Fleurette happily, clearly looking forward to the trip.
    That night, in a large suite in the Mark Hopkins Hotel—not her own suite, though hers is quite large enough—Brett tries to explain to a kindly older man just how she feels about the sea, and California. “There was absolutely nothing else in my mind,” she tells him. “All emptied out, no room for anything but all that light and water, everything blue and shining.” She realizes that she is a little drunk, her words spinning out of control, but realizes too that it doesn’t really matter; this man doesn’t matter, and then tomorrow the knife will possibly kill her (she had not really thought of this before).
    The older man, whose name is Barney, owns theatres, movie houses. He lives up here because he likes it betterthan down there. He has heavy white hair and a reddish face, with narrow sad blue eyes. Brett has the crazy (drunken) thought that if he were younger they could make love—something about him, his height, perhaps, and the hard molded shape of his mouth, is vaguely exciting. What would he do if she simply leaned forward and placed her mouth against his?
    As though he had read her mind, he moves slightly away from her, and he asks, “More champagne?” But then