Play It as It Lays

by Joan Didion

Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant.

It occurred to Maria that whatever arrangements were made, they worked less well for women.

Sometime in the night she had moved into a realm of miseries peculiar to women, and she had nothing to say to Carter.

Felicia always spoke on the telephone as if a spurious urgency could mask her radical lack of interest in talking to anyone.

As if in trance Maria watched the woman, for it seemed to her then that she was watching the dead still center of the world, the quintessential intersection of nothing.

She did not decide to stay in Vegas: she only failed to leave.

“I wasn’t listening, Maria.