by Joan Didion
At four that afternoon and again at noon the next day and again at noon of the day after that, she had bought the local paper and whatever day-old American papers she could find in the coffee shop and gone down to the Intercon pool and tipped the boy to set up a chaise within range of the pool shack telephone. She had sat on the chaise under the gray sky and she had read the newspapers all the way through, one by one, beginning with the local paper and progressing to whatever Miami Herald or New York Times or USA Today had come in that morning. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the dock strike in the Grenadines. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the demonstration in Pointe-à-Pitre to protest the arrest of the leader of the independence movement. She read in a week-old USA Today about the effect of fish oil on infertile pandas in distant zoos. The only stories she avoided outright, there on the chaise at the Intercon pool, were those having to do with the campaign. She moved past any story having to do with the campaign. She preferred stories having to do with natural forces, stories about new evidence of reef erosion in the Maldives, say, or recently released research on the deep cold Pacific welling of El Niño.
About unusual movements of wind charted off the coast of Africa.
About controversial data predicting the probability of earthquakes measuring over 5.5 Richter.
American, the pool boy had said when she tipped him the first day with an American dollar. Whole lot of Americans coming in.
Really, she had said, by way of closing the conversation.
Good for business, he had said, by way of reopening it.
She had looked around the empty pool, the unused chaises stacked against the shack. I guess they don’t swim much, she had said.
He had giggled and slapped his thigh with a towel. Do not swim much, he said finally. No.
By the third day she had herself begun noticing the Americans. Several in the coffee shop the night before, all men. Several more in the lobby, laughing together as they stood at the entrance waiting to get into an unmarked armored van.
The van had CD plates.
Swear to Christ, that deal in Chalatenango, I did something like three and a half full clips, one of the Americans had said.
Shit, another had said. You know the difference between one of them and a vampire? You drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, the fucker dies.
No Americans at the pool.
Until now.
She had become aware as she was reading the local paper that one of the men she had seen waiting to get into the van with the CD plates was standing between her chaise and the pool, blocking the tiled walkway, smoking a cigarette as he surveyed the otherwise empty pool area.
His back was to her.
His warm-up jacket was lettered 25TH DIVISION TROPIC LIGHTNING.
She realized that she was reading for the third time the same follow-up on a rash of thefts and carjackings in the immediate vicinity of Cyril E. King International Airport on St. Thomas.
Excuse me, she said. Do you know what time it is.
He flicked his cigarette in the direction of the clock over the pool shack counter.
The clock read 1:10.
She put down the local paper and picked up the Miami Herald.
She continued reading the Miami Herald until she reached page sixteen of the B section.
Page sixteen of the B section of the July 2 Miami Herald, two days late.
McMAHON, Richard Allen: age 74, died under care of physician June 30, 1984, at Clearview Convalescent Lodge, South Kendall. No services are scheduled.
She folded the newspaper, got up from the chaise and edged her way past the American in the warm-up jacket.
Pardon me, he said. Ma’am.
Excuse me, she said.
Outside the hotel she got a taxi and told the driver to take her to the American embassy. The “little business” (as she thought of it) at the main embassy gate took ten minutes. The “kind of spooky coincidence” (as she thought of it) or “incident” (as it immediately became known) at the embassy picnic took another ten minutes. When she got back to her room at the Intercon at approximately two-thirty on the afternoon of July 4 she wrote two letters, one to Catherine and one to Wynn Janklow, which she took to an air express office to be shipped for delivery the next day in the United States. Sweet bird, the letter to Catherine began. She had spoken to Catherine twice from San José and again the evening she arrived on the island but the calls had been unsatisfactory and now she could not reach her.
Tried to call you a few minutes ago but you had signed out to go to Cape Ann with Francie and her parents—didn’t know how to reach you and there are two things I need you to know right away. The first thing I need you to know is that I’m asking your father to pick you up and bring you to Malibu for a while. Just until I get back from this trip. You don’t need summer credits anyway and he can probably arrange a way you can do the S.A.T. prep out there. The second thing I need you to know is I love you. Sometimes we argue about things but I think we both know I only argue because I want your life to be happy and good. Want you not to waste your time. Not to waste your talents. Not to let who you are get mixed up with anybody else’s idea of who you should be.
I love you the most. XXXXXXXX, M.
P.S. If anyone else comes and wants to take you from school for any reason repeat ANY REASON do not repeat DO NOT go with him or her.
The letter to Wynn Janklow was short, because she had reached him, at the house in Malibu, as soon as she got back from the embassy. She had placed the call from a pay phone in the Intercon lobby. Had he not answered the phone she would have waited in the lobby until he did, because she needed to talk to Wynn before chancing any situation (the elevator, say, or the corridor upstairs) in which she might be alone.
Any situation in which something might happen to prevent her from telling Wynn what it was she wanted him to do.
Wynn had answered the phone.
Wynn had told her that he had just walked in off a flight from Taipei.
She had told Wynn what it was she wanted him to do.
She had not mentioned the kind of spooky coincidence at the embassy picnic.
My understanding is that Dick McMahon will not be a problem, she had heard the familiar but unplaceable voice say at the embassy picnic.
The steel band that was playing Sousa marches had momentarily fallen silent and the familiar but unplaceable voice had carried across the tent.
Deek McMaa-aan was the way the familiar voice pronounced the name. My understanding is that Deek McMaa-aan will not be a problem.
She had not placed the voice until she saw the Salvadoran across the tent.
Here is my concern, she remembered the Salvadoran saying in the Pan Am lounge at the Miami airport as he fingered the envelope Barry Sedlow had slipped him. We have a little problem here.
Transit passenger, she remembered Barry Sedlow saying in the car just after he shot out the streetlight with the 9mm Browning. Already on the six-thirty back to San Sal. Not our deal.
The Salvadoran was the kind of spooky coincidence.
The Salvadoran was why she called Wynn.
The Salvadoran was why she tried to call Catherine.
The Salvadoran was why she wrote the letters and took them to the air express office for next-day delivery to Catherine and to Wynn.
The Salvadoran was why she went from the air express office to a local office of the Bank of America, where she obtained eleven thousand dollars in cash, the sum of the cash available on Elena McMahon’s various credit cards.
The Salvadoran was why she then destroyed the cards.
My understanding is that Dick McMahon will not be a problem.
Not our deal, Barry Sedlow had said, but it was.
She wrote the letters and she arranged for Wynn to take care of Catherine and she got the eleven thousand dollars in cash and she destroyed the credit cards because she had no way of knowing what kind of problem Dick McMahon’s daughter might be seen to be
.
Half a generation after the fact, from where I sit at my desk in an apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, it would be easy to conclude that Elena’s actions that afternoon did not entirely make sense, easy to assume that at some point in the hour between learning her father was dead and seeing the Salvadoran she had cracked, panicked, gone feral, a trapped animal trying to hide her young and stay alert in the wild, awake in the ether, alive on the ground.
All I can tell you is what she did.
All I can tell you is that at that time in that place there was a logic to what she did.
Wynn, the second of the two letters she wrote that afternoon read.
What I couldn’t tell you on the phone was that something bad is happening. I don’t know what it is. So please please do this one thing for me.
P.S., the postscript read.
You have to pick her up yourself. I mean don’t send Rudich.
Rudich was someone who had worked for Wynn’s father and now worked for Wynn. Rudich was who did things for Wynn. Rudich had a first name but no one ever used it and she had forgotten it. Rudich was who Wynn would call if he needed somebody to fly to Wyoming to take a ranch out of escrow. Rudich was who Wynn would send if he needed somebody to deliver a contract in person the next morning in Tokyo. Rudich was probably who now called the caterer to lay on the tennis lunches.
Rudich could do anything but Rudich could not do this one thing she needed done.
Please please do this.
Love. Still. E.
9
The last time I was in Los Angeles I made a point of going to see Wynn Janklow.
“Why not come by the house Sunday,” he had said on the telephone. “I’m having some people, we’ll talk, bring a racket.”
I made an excuse to go instead to his office in Century City.
I admired, at his prompting, the photographs taken a few months before at Catherine’s wedding.
“Big blowout,” he said. “Under the huppah on the beach at sunset, I flew Bobby Short out to play during dinner, then two bands and fireworks, I’m still finding champagne glasses in the shrubbery but what the hell, great kids, both of them.”
I appreciated, again at his prompting, the view of Catalina from his office windows, the clarity of the atmosphere in spite of what he referred to as “all this enviro-freak sky-is-falling shit which as God is my witness I hear even from people I call my friends.”
I waited until the secretary had brought in the requisite silver tray with the requisite folded linen napkin, the requisite two bottles of Evian, the requisite Baccarat tumblers.
Only when the secretary had left the room and closed the door did I ask Wynn Janklow to try to remember what he had thought when he received first the call and one day later this letter from Elena.
He had furrowed his brow for my benefit. “That would have been, let me think, when.”
Nineteen eighty-four, I said. July 1984.
Wynn Janklow swiveled his chair and gazed out the window, squinting, as if 1984 might materialize just off Catalina.
No big deal, he said then. As he remembered he had to be in New York that week anyway, he flew into Logan instead, got a car to take him down to Newport, he and Catherine had been in New York by midnight.
Big killer heat wave, he remembered.
You know the kind.
The kind where you step out of the car onto the street and you sink into the asphalt and if you don’t move fast you’re methane.
He remembered he had Catherine call Elena that night, report she was scarfing Maine lobster in the Hollywood Suite at the Regency.
Great kid even then. Always a great kid.
True enough, on the money, now that I mentioned it there had been some trick about calling Elena, the hotel didn’t have her registered right, you had to ask for somebody else, she had given him the name when she called and he had given the name to Catherine.
Elise Meyer, I said.
Elise Meyer, he repeated. No problem, he was glad to be able to do what Elena wanted.
He had been here and Elena had been there but no problem, they stayed on good terms, they had this great kid after all, plus they were adults, unlike some people who got separated or divorced or whatever he and Elena had always maintained a very civilized kind of relationship.
True enough, again on the money, her call had seemed maybe a little overwrought.
Fourth of July, he was just off the plane from Taipei, thinking he’d play a little tennis, work off the jet lag before he had to be in New York.
And then this call from Elena.
Whoa, hold on, he remembered saying. So something happened at the embassy, some clerk gave you the runaround, let me make a few calls, shoot a rocket up the fucker’s fat ass.
You don’t understand, he remembered Elena saying.
You have to be here to understand, he remembered Elena saying.
Wynn Janklow had again gazed out the window. “End of sad story,” he said.
There had been a silence.
“The sad story is what,” I said finally. “You think Elena might have been right? Is that the sad story?” I tried for a neutral tone, a therapist guiding the client back. I wanted to see him confront that hour during which Elena had gone feral. “You think maybe you did have to be there to understand?”
He did not at first respond.
“Maybe you noticed this gadget I have on the wall there,” he said then.
He got up and walked to an electronic Mercator projection mounted on the wall, one of those devices on which it is possible to read the time anywhere in the world by watching part of the map pass into darkness as another part emerges into daylight.
“You can watch the sun rise and set anyplace you want,” he said. “Right here. Standing right here looking at this.” He jabbed at the map with an index finger. “But it doesn’t tell you shit about what’s happening there.”
He sat down behind his desk.
He picked up a paperweight, then buzzed an intercom.
“It’s just a toy,” he said then. “Frankly it’s just something I use when I’m making calls, I look over there and I can see at a glance who’s likely to be awake. Meaning I can call them.”
He had again buzzed the intercom.
“And in all fairness, I have to admit, sometimes they’re awake and sometimes they aren’t.” He had looked up with relief as the secretary opened the door. “If you could locate a few stamps for her parking ticket, Raina, I’ll walk our guest downstairs.”
10
Of course Elena might have been right.
Of course you had to be there to understand. Of course, had you not been there, it might have seemed a definite stretch to call what happened at the embassy Fourth of July picnic an “incident.”
Of course, had you not been there, what happened at the embassy Fourth of July picnic might have suggested not an “incident” but merely that it was time to make a few calls, shoot a few rockets up a few fat asses.
“The incident” was what Alex Brokaw called it when he suggested to his DCM that it might be useful to run a background on Elise Meyer. “I’ll have to excuse myself to follow up on a little incident,” was what the DCM said by way of cutting short a conversation with the Brown & Root project manager who had just arrived to supervise the hardening of the perimeter around the residence. “Just crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on a rather troubling incident we had here,” was what the DCM said when he put through the request for the background on Elise Meyer.
This was the rather troubling incident in its entirety:
“I’m an American citizen and I need to speak to a consular officer,” Elena McMahon had said when she walked into the tented area reserved for the embassy picnic.
The traditional Fourth of July picnic held by every American embassy and open to any American citizen who happens to be in the vicinity.
The Fourth of July embassy picnic that must have seemed, given a country in which any Amer
ican citizen who happened to be in the vicinity happened also to be in the official or covert employ of one or another branch of the embassy, a trying tradition at best.
She needed, she had said, to replace a lost passport.
She did not want to interrupt the picnic, she had said, but she had gone to the consulate and the guard at the gate said the consulate was closed for the holiday, and she needed her passport replaced immediately.
She needed her passport replaced immediately because she needed to return to the United States immediately.
The woman had seemed, according to the consular officer who was finally located to deal with her, “a little confused,” and “unable or unwilling” to accept his “offer to try to clear up the confusion.”
The confusion of course was that this woman already had her passport.
Her presence inside the tented area was proof that she already had her passport.
The confusion with this woman had begun at the gate.
She had also told the marine on duty at the gate that she had lost her passport, and when he told her to return the next morning when the consular office reopened she had insisted that tomorrow would be too late, she needed to see a consular officer now.
The marine had explained that this would be impossible because all the consular officers were at the Fourth of July picnic.
The Fourth of July picnic that unfortunately she could not attend because guests were required to present an American passport.
At which point this woman had produced her passport.
And left it, as any other guest not known to the embassy would have left his or her passport, with the guard at the entrance to the tented area.
This woman had left her passport and signed the embassy guest book.
There it was, he could show it to her, her signature: Elise Meyer.
Here it was, the guard could and would return it to her, her passport: Elise Meyer.
That was the confusion.
According to the consular officer she had taken the passport and held it out, as if she were about to show or give it to him. There had been a moment of silence before she spoke. “This was just to get me in because I need to explain something,” she had said, and then she had fallen silent.