No. She seemed abruptly agitated. It is not imperative. At all. He is not dying.
I sat without speaking awhile.
The tissue around Charlottes eyes was reddening but she did not cry.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
I didnt mean that its imperative you go anywhere in particular, I said finally. I dont care where you go. Go to Caracas, go to Managua. Just get out of here.
She put on her dark glasses and tried to smile.
Just leave, I said.
I dont believe I can quite manage this display of hospitality. There was in Charlottes voice an inflection of which she seemed entirely unaware, an inflection I had heard before only in the Garden District of New Orleans. Heres-your-hat-whats-your-hurry, seems about the size of it.
Heres-your-hat-whats-your-hurry.
Mrs. Fayards been learning West Texas manners.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
Charlotte. I felt as if I were talking to a child. Ive told you before, there is trouble here. There is going to be more trouble here. You are going to find yourself in the middle of this trouble which is not your business.
Just leave, I said.
I dont believe I can quite manage this display of hospitality. There was in Charlottes voice an inflection of which she seemed entirely unaware, an inflection I had heard before only in the Garden District of New Orleans. Heres-your-hat-whats-your-hurry, seems about the size of it.
Heres-your-hat-whats-your-hurry.
Mrs. Fayards been learning West Texas manners.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
Charlotte. I felt as if I were talking to a child. Ive told you before, there is trouble here. There is going to be more trouble here. You are going to find yourself in the middle of this trouble which is not your business.
I dont know anything about any trouble. So how could I possibly be in the middle of it.
Because Gerardo is.
She looked at me as if I had mentioned someone she had met a long time before and did not quite remember.
I think I fucked you one Easter.
I think I did that and forgot it.
I think she did forget it.
In any case Im not affected, she said after a while. Because Im simply not interested in any causes or issues.
Neither is anyone here.
Charlotte said nothing.
Charlotte. I tried again. What do you think all those people were doing at your dining-room table?
Charlotte looked at me.
You were there too, she said finally.
That was July.
Boca Grande is.
10
I RECALL IT NOW AS A YEAR WHEN WE ACTUALLY HAD seasons.
Definite changes.
Changes not in the weather but in the caliber of the harmonic tremor.
I am not sure when everyone else realized that Antonio had diverted enough secret support from Victors army to be finally immune from Victor but I know when I realized it. I realized it the evening Gerardo and Charlotte came back from Progreso and Charlotte began to cry at dinner.
What upset her? I said to Gerardo when Charlotte had left the table.
Gerardo was picking the meat from a crab and did not look at me.
I suppose she didnt like Progreso, he said after a while. I suppose she got tired. A days outing. Very tiring.
I said what upset her.
I suppose she didnt find Progreso as peaceful as you claim to. Gerardo placed the crabmeat as he picked it on Charlottes plate. I suppose its a special taste.
I want to know what upset her out there.
M3s, Charlotte said from the doorway.
She had washed her face clean of makeup and she seemed entirely composed.
I grew up with shotguns but I cant stand carbines. She sat down and picked up her napkin. Why are you staring at me?
There was a silence.
Whose carbines? I said.
Gerardo avoided my eyes. Grace hasnt been out to Progreso lately, Charlotte. Grace hasnt seen what did you call it? Did you call it the machinery?
I called it the hardware, Charlotte said.
She calls it the hardware, Gerardo said.
I dont have cancer of the ear, I said. Whose hardware is it?
Antonios got some of the army with him. Of course. Gerardo shrugged. The only clear evidence I have of Gerardos intelligence is that he has always known how to cut his losses, yield the position, supply the information. Gerardo differs in that respect from Victor. Actually it wasnt the guns that upset Charlotte. It was Antonio. Antonio and Carmen. Antonio gave Carmen an M3 and let her shoot up the place.
Charlotte picked up her fork and laid it down again.
You have a rather bizarre idea of a days outing, I said to Gerardo.
Carmen wasnt using an M3, Charlotte said. She leaned forward slightly and her face was entirely grave. Antonio was. Carmen was using an M16.
Gerardo looked away.
And they werent shooting up the place, Gerardo. I mean what is the place. The place is some rusted Cats and five flamingoes. They were only shooting the crates.
Something about Charlottes querulous precision seemed extreme, and unnatural.
What crates? I said.
Charlotte looked at me.
The crates of vaccine, she said. The Lederle vaccine.
Charlotte never changed her expression.
Unopened crates of Lederle vaccine, she said. Cholera. It ran on the street when they shot up the crates.
I looked at her for a long time.
It ran on the street, she repeated. If you call that a street.
I think I loved Charlotte in that moment as a parent loves the child who has just fallen from a bicycle, met a pervert, lost a prize, come up in any way against the hardness of the world.
I think I was also angry at her, again like a parent, furious that she hadnt known better, furious that she had been wrong.
Tell Charlotte she was wrong.
What had Charlotte been wrong about exactly.
Who was wrong here.
I looked away from her.
Why are you doing this with Antonio? I said to Gerardo.
Im not doing it, its done. Its in progress. Underway. Its own momentum now.
I know that, I said. I want to know why you did it.
It was something to do, Gerardo said.
I happen to know about M16s because Marin had one when she went to Utah, Charlotte said. Charlotte always referred to the day Marin hijacked the L1011 and burned it on the Bonneville Salt Flats as when Marin went to Utah, as if it had been a tour of National Parks. Charlotte was not looking at me any more. Or so they told me.
Get her out before it happens, I said to Gerardo.
The M16 is supposed to be the ideal submachine gun, Charlotte said. Leonard called it ideal. They didnt.
Tell me when its time, I said to Gerardo.
You always hear it, Gerardo said. Eat that crab, Charlotte. I picked that crab for you.
I always did hear it.
I heard it because I listened.
Charlotte heard even more than I heard but Charlotte seemed not to listen.
Charlotte seemed not to see.
Charlotte had stood out there in the bamboo at Progreso and let the sun burn her face and heard Antonio call her norteamericana cunt and heard Carmen Arrellano call her la bonne bourgeoise and heard the carbine fire shatter the vials of clear American vaccine and still she did not listen. Charlotte had watched the clear American vaccine shimmer on the boulevards of Progreso and still she did not see.
That was August.
Boca Grande is.
Boca Grande was.
Boca Grande shall be.
11
LAND OF CONTRASTS.
Economic fulcrum of the Americas.
By the day in early September when Leonard Douglas finally arrived in Boca Grande it was clear that Victor was only playing for time. His couriers shuttled between Boca Grande and Geneva carrying heavy pouches. Military passes had been canceled. All day long Radio Boca Grande broadcast a single message, delivered by two voices, one male, one female, each threatening terrorists and saboteurs with death. It was clear that Victor would be leaving soon to convalesce in Bariloche. El Presidente had in fact already left to convalesce in Bariloche, omitting even the traditional move in which he first spends a week confined to the palace with a respiratory infection complicated by extreme exhaustion. Ardis Bradley had discovered a pressing need to take her children to Boston for school interviews. Tuck Bradley had stayed on but had twenty seats reserved on every flight leaving Boca Grande for any destination. I had two.
One for me.
One for Charlotte.
In other words.
All the markers were on the board.
Im Charlotte Douglass husband, Leonard Douglas said to me.
I know you are, I said to Leonard Douglas.
I knew that he had arrived in Boca Grande on one of the two or three flights that had managed to land the day before. He had gone directly to the Caribe and after a while he and Charlotte had been observed walking on the Avenida del Mar. It had been assumed that they were walking to her apartment but instead they had turned onto Calle 11 and entered the birth control clinic.
Victor had told me that.
Tuck Bradley had also told me that.
Gerardo had told me that he had no interest in Charlotte Douglass former life.
I wouldnt call yesterday her former life exactly, I had said to Gerardo.
Gerardo had told me that I had too literal a mind.
Charlotte had told me nothing at all.
I got Leonard Douglas a drink.
He sat in my living room and drank it.
I met your husband once, he said finally.
Hes dead now.
I know that.
I got him another drink.
He put it on the table untouched.
In Bogotá, he said. I met him in Bogotá.
When was that?
Before he died.
Not after, then.
The acerbity in my voice went unnoticed.
We had some business.
Leonard Douglas seemed absorbed in some contemplation of either Bogotá or Edgar, I did not know which.
I recall being uneasy.
Wheres Charlotte? I said abruptly. Did Charlotte send you to see me?
No. Leonard Douglas picked up the drink and put it down again. I liked him. Your husband. I think he liked me. He gave me an emerald. As I was leaving. He gave me an emerald to take to Charlotte.
The square emerald.
The big square emerald Charlotte wore in place of a wedding ring.
The big square emerald Leonard had brought her from wherever he was when he met the man who financed the Tupamaros.
Bogotá.
Quito.
Charlotte had no idea whether it was Bogotá or Quito.
It was Bogotá.
I had no idea.
I prided myself on listening and seeing and I had never even heard or seen that Edgar played the same games Gerardo played.
Leonard Douglas was watching me.
Why did you tell me that, I said finally.
I wanted you to know that I understand whats going on here.