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Chapter 9
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Play It As It Lays, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Meaninglessness
Gender Inequality and Identity
Loss and Recovery
Superficiality
Summary
Analysis
Maria lies outside in the sand and daydreams about brushing Kate’s hair. The masseur calls to her from the kitchen, and she thinks about all the people she “trie[s] not to hear at BZ and Helene’s.” Maria recalls the moody men BZ meets abroad, and Helene’s female friends, who are wives of industry men, get routine plastic surgery, and are always slightly older than Helene.
Maria would rather daydream about Kate than hang out with Helene and BZ and their friends. She “trie[s] not to hear” these people because she finds them shallow and uninteresting. Helene is portrayed as beautiful but insecure, per her habit of surrounding herself with slightly older female friends in order to emphasize her relative youthfulness. Maria’s passing remark about BZ’s “moody men” is another reference to his probable homosexuality. It draws on the derogatory stereotype that gay men are emotional or effeminate—“moody.”
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BZ’s friends are more difficult to ignore than Helene’s, though—especially the masseur. Maria had originally thought she recognized him, though she couldn’t place him, and he hadn’t recognized her. Maria remembers first meeting him at someone’s house in Santa Barbara, though he was an actor’s secretary then, not a masseur. Maria feels disturbed thinking back to that day, since the man looks exactly as he did then, and she does not.
Maria hears the masseur taunt BZ for having artificial lemon juice in his refrigerator. Helene wryly jokes about all BZ’s friends being “purists.” BZ, whose body is “perpetually tanned,” turns to Carter and jokingly complains about his “bitch for a wife.” The masseur orders Helene to run to the beach to ask Audrey Wise for some lemons. Helene starts gossiping about the Wises and grows too distracted to fetch the lemons.
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An irritated Carter finally throws down the script he’s been reading and goes down to get the lemons himself. Once Carter is gone, Maria sits up and takes in the scene around her: she sees BZ and the masseur, “their bodies gleaming, unlined,” and Helene looking down at Audrey and Jerry Wise’s houses from the edge of the deck. She notes that Helene is carrying a little extra weight. Maria muses that “whatever arrangements were made, they worked less well for women.”
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Suddenly, Maria wraps a towel around her sunburnt body and runs into the house. When her stops vomiting, she pulls off her bathing suit and sees no blood, indicating that her period is nearly two months overdue.
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