Part 2: Chapter 7 Summary

This chapter is written as the account of the tragedy that Inez gives to Didion. Paul Christian seemed to have come back from a trip to Tunis changed, she says. He began to object to the way the business was being run, took a room at the Y, and lived as if he were impoverished. He and Janet quarreled about his behavior and stopped talking to each other. He refused to take part in the company or in family-related social activities, and he asked the newspaper to retract a picture of Janet and Omura at a charity event.

At the same time, Dwight had been squeezing Dick Ziegler out of the business; Paul had known about this and commiserated with Dwight. Even so, Dick had told Inez that the calls disturbed him. "I think your dad went off the deep end...