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Chapter 66
Themes
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
Carter tries to convince Maria to go to the desert with him, BZ, and Helene. When Maria declines the invitation, Carter tells her she’s welcome to stay behind and kill herself. Maria stays home. She finds a new doctor to prescribe her barbiturates and takes long drives in the evenings.
Carter probably expected Maria yield to him the second time he invited her to join him in the desert. He tells her to stay home and kill herself because he feels humiliated and disempowered by her rejection.
Themes
One night, Maria sees a lighted cigar in her darkened living room and hears Ivan Costello’s voice chide her for not calling her answering service. A visibly drunk Ivan tells Maria to come to him, but she says no. Ivan tells her that’s fine, that she’ll “like it better” if she resists. Later that night, Ivan tells Maria he came to her to “make [her] remember.” Maria tells him she can’t and orders Ivan to leave her alone.
Given that Maria is taking barbiturates, which can cause hallucinations as a serious side effect, it’s unclear whether this passage is happening in reality or in Maria’s mind. Maria resists Ivan’s advances, but he ignores her, insisting that she’ll “like it better” if she resists. The narrative doesn’t describe their ensuing sexual encounter, but it’s insinuated that Ivan violently assaults Maria—or at the very least, Maria passively chooses to go through the motions of another unfulfilling, numbing sex act with a man she doesn’t care about. Whether this passage really happened or not, Maria’s sudden decision to expel Ivan from her home suggests that she’s growing tired of using meaningless sex to distract herself from her meaningless life.
Themes
That afternoon, Maria calls Les Goodwin and says that “something bad” is going to happen to her. Les tries to make her laugh and gets annoyed when he’s unsuccessful. He complains about needing to do a rewrite and having a fight with Felicia. Maria hangs up on Les and drives into the desert.
