Jun. 1974 – Boca Grande

Army trucks rumble past a desolate avenida as we hear Victor say, “We now believe la norteamericana is working for the CIA.” 

Grace weeds in her garden. She talks to herself, “Oil wells about to come in have a sound the attentive ear can detect.” The distant sound of an army truck. She turns to camera: “As do earthquakes. Weeks before they erupt, volcanoes transmit a signal called ‘the harmonic tremor.’” The sound of the truck builds. “Similarly, I know months before Boca Grande goes through a transition. There is an occasional tank on the Avenida Centrale. Sentries with carbines appear on the roof of the presidential palace.” 

At the Ministry of Defense, Victor explains to Grace that Charlotte Douglas has been making suspicious late night phone calls to California. He presses play on a tape recorder and a robotic voice describes road conditions in the Diablo mountain range. Grace says it’s just a traffic report, but Victor thinks it’s a coded message. He tells her that Gerardo is sometimes in the apartment when these calls are made. He suspects that Leonard Douglas and Bebe Chicago are associated somehow. It’s all part of the “harmonic tremor.” 

Weeks later, Grace and Charlotte meet for tea at the Hotel Caribe. There is a cholera outbreak, and Charlotte has volunteered to help distribute inoculations. Grace tells her it’s a waste of time. A headline in the Times reads, “New Lease on Democracy in Boca Grande?” Grace says Victor is the holder of the old lease -- more harmonic tremor. Just then, Charlotte spots three children sneaking into the pool area and jumping into the algae-covered, unattended pool. She runs out and jumps in to save them. When she comes back up from under the filthy water, the children are out of the pool and fighting over Charlotte’s purse. Her vision blurred by water, Charlotte thinks one of them is Marin. As her vision clears, she sees the girl’s black hair and the triangular scar on her cheek. The children take her purse and run away laughing.

Later, as Charlotte showers, a car in front of the Hotel Caribe explodes, blowing out the windows of the hotel room. Grace looks out the window cautiously. “That’s Antonio’s Bentley,” she says, “It’s happening sooner than I expected.” What is?” Charlotte asks.

Grace confronts Victor about blowing up Antonio’s car. Victor denies it but says, “If you think I did it, then you know why I did it. Antonio is planning to overthrow me.” Victor asks Grace if she -- like her son -- prefers Antonio to him. She shrugs, “Not particularly.” Then why won’t she help Victor? “Because it doesn’t make any difference. Just let it happen. With grace. Without violence.” He stares at her blankly. “I can’t do that.” GRACE VO: “Of course he couldn’t.”

MONTAGE: A series of cheaply built Boca Grande buildings explode: a strip joint, a cigar bar, a social club. GRACE VO: “Over the next two weeks, three more explosions occurred in locations where Antonio might normally have been, killing six and injuring fourteen. Then there was the usual odd calm.”

Charlotte starts volunteering at the Red Cross tent, helping to distribute inoculations.

No one shows up to get the vaccine, despite the banner on the tent: “INOCULACIONES DE COLERA GRATIS!.”

The Red Cross nurse tells Charlotte it’s always like this in Boca Grande. Grace was right. But Charlotte doesn’t quit.

“CORAZON DE MELON” by GLORIA LASSO plays over the following: Charlotte convinces the Hotel Caribe to donate cases of the chocolates they use for turn-down service; then she gets flight attendants to donate some cases of tiny liquor bottles from their airplane. The next day the banner on the tent reads: GRATIS! CHOCOLATE Y LICOR!” A huge crowd of men, women and children are waiting to get inoculated in exchange for free candy and liquor. “CORAZON DE MELON” ENDS.

It goes well for about a day and a half. Then an army truck pulls up, and a colonel named Higuera orders his men to repatriate the vaccine supplies for the people of Boca Grande. Charlotte argues that the Red Cross is giving the vaccine to the people. Higuera suggests that perhaps la norteamericana is prepared to purchase the vaccine from the state? Charlotte simply turns and walks away from him and back to the city. He raises his pistol and aims it at her back but does not pull the trigger.

Nov. 1975 – Boca Grande

Grace: “Charlotte walked away from the Red Cross tent and never looked back. Had she learned the dangers of practicing “good works” in Boca Grande? Sadly, no. The next day, she began volunteering as an advisor at the birth control clinic in the city, as if her experience with the cholera vaccine had never happened.”

Aug. 1974 – Boca Grande

In the smoke-filled apartment they now share, Charlotte and Gerardo host “one of their evenings.” Poets, artists, revolutionaries and film critics – even Bebe Chicago -- are there. Gerardo works the room, shaking hands. Grace arrives and asks Charlotte what these “evenings” entail. Charlotte explains the “intelligentsia’ smoke, drink and solve the world’s problems. Then Victor arrives. Grace is surprised. She tells Charlotte, “He’s the world’s problem they’re trying to solve.”

It makes for an awkward but interesting evening.

Days later, Gerardo takes Charlotte to Progreso, a deserted island city that was Luis’s pet project. It was abandoned when Luis was assassinated. The causeway has collapsed, so they go by motorboat. The site is littered with rusting construction equipment. Inside the only completed glass pyramid (20 were planned), he shows her a huge cache of American weapons. She also sees  the Red Cross vaccines that the army colonel commandeered. Upset, she walks out just as Antonio and Bebe Chicago arrive in an amphibious military vehicle. Antonio is surprised to see Charlotte, but he welcomes the opportunity to terrorize her. He mentions that his friend Colonel Higuera almost shot her in the back. Then he and Bebe Chicago use machine guns to shoot up the stolen vaccine.

Afterwards, Gerardo and Charlotte go to Grace’s for dinner. Charlotte can’t hide how upset she is. Seeing her cry, Grace realizes she has come to love Charlotte like a parent loves an adult child. She tells Gerardo gravely, “Get her out before it happens.” He says, “You’ll know before I do. You always hear it.” Grace looks into camera, “I always did hear it. I heard it because I listened. Charlotte seemed not to listen. Charlotte seemed not to see.”

“DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON ME” by ELTON JOHN PLAYS AS WE...

CUT TO BLACK.

END OF EPISODE.

Photos are intended to represent approximate ages and physical types only.

No actors are involved with, or attached to this project at this time.