Play It as It Lays

by Joan Didion

What I play for here is Kate.

I might as well lay it on the line, I have trouble with as it was.

Quite often with Carter she felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight,

She waited for him to play it through.

He stood over Maria with his hand frozen in air. He had been about to hit her.

“Because I—” The boy studied his grimy fingernails, as if no longer confident that the story illustrated a special acumen. “Because I personally know everybody from around here,” he said then, his eyes on his fingernails. “I mean I guessed right away you weren’t somebody I already knew.”