Play It As It Lays: A Novel (FSG Classics)

by Joan Didion

“I WANT A VERY LARGE STEAK,” she said to Les Goodwin in a restaurant on Melrose at eight o’clock that night. “And before the very large steak I want three drinks. And after the steak I want to go somewhere with very loud music.”

The bathhouse was full of old people, their loose skin pink from the water, sitting immobile on the edge of the pool nursing terminal cancers and wens and fear.