The Blonde (15 page)

“My people were. Enough games, now. Bring that body over here, and grab that champagne, too, while you’re at it.”

She kicked the skirt off and, taking the champagne bottle by the neck, went tiptoeing over to the couch. He didn’t make room for her, or move to touch her, and as she stood over him it occurred to her that he might be the one holding out. She swigged from the champagne bottle and handed it over. Watching her, he swigged, too, but remained still. They passed the bottle back and forth a few more times before he put it down on the floor and took
her waist. With sure hands he arranged her so that she was on top of him, her thighs parted over his hips.

“So tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me what happened to you today that wore you down so bad.”

“Oh, I don’t have any complaints, really. Just had to talk to a lot of bores over a bad banquet dinner is all, but I’m glad to be in New York. Do you know what a man has to do to win a West Virginia primary?”

“No.” Her eyes widened. “What?”

“Well, it isn’t cheap, I’ll tell you that.”

“No?” She smiled sweetly. “Does it cost more than it costs to get me for a picture?”

“Nobody in pictures would ever ask you to eat the slop I’ve been obliged to eat in the diners of West Virginia this week, and I think they’d cry if they saw a woman like you in person. But I will say this: There are some greedy sheriffs down there who would put your studio bosses to shame.”

Her eyes sparkled. “How greedy?”

“Aw, never mind that, baby.” His hands were just as firm at her waist, and he looked up at her with the same intensity as when he’d been trying to draw her away from the door. “I’ve talked politics plenty with the boys. Why don’t you tell me what had you running out of the house wearing sunglasses so late at night?”

“Oh.” She laughed and tossed her hair. “Who cares about that?”

“I care. Otherwise you wouldn’t be on top of me right now.” His mouth opened as he lifted a finger to trace the triangular opening of her robe. Her mouth opened, too, and her eyelids sank, as he reached under the robe and took hold of her ribs. Now she could feel him breathing, too, and the quickening where her panties grazed his tuxedo pants, and she was glad of that piece of lace between them. With a sudden push, his hand was underneath her bra, and breath escaped her lips.

“Not yet,” she whispered hoarsely. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Not yet, okay?”

“Not yet,” he repeated, confidently, as though that had always been his intention. Was he saving face, pretending that he hadn’t been trying to lay her quick and hustle her out? He seemed almost genuine, but then it didn’t matter, so long as she held his attention. Meanwhile his hand traveled down her side, his fingertips gliding along her skin, before he took her by the waist again, this time under the robe, loosening the belt. His eyes shone with a quality she might have mistaken for wonder, if she wasn’t vigilant to interpret every gesture as carnal. “Not yet. I want to look at you awhile, and anyway, we’ve got all night.”

Morning spilled through high, leaded windows, and Marilyn draped her arm across her eyelids to protect them. She had just been asleep, so asleep that she was hazy on her current location, which was a surprise. She hadn’t slept that deep in a long while. Yesterday—she was fairly certain—she’d woken up in Los Angeles, but today … Today a little drool had escaped the corner of her mouth, and her face was sealed to a pillow made of leather. Squinting, she lifted her head and arched a brow at the white cotton robe covering her naked body. She pressed the palms of her feet against the opposite armrest of the couch, and made a fist to welcome the day’s first wave of dread.

There was no one on the couch with her.

“Good morning.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, sitting up and drawing the robe over her chest. The coffee table was still a mess of newspapers, beer cans, an empty champagne bottle, china plates dotted with sandwich crumbs, although the scene was now completed by her own black lace bra, draped across the wreckage, as though she had slept in the fanciest fraternity house ever. Beyond all that, facing away from her and holding a coffee cup, was the balding man who had delivered the maid’s uniform. “Where’s Jack?”

“Left, half an hour ago, for LaGuardia.”

Shit
, she mouthed.

“I had them bring your clothes up,” he went on matter-of-factly, indicating the side table by the front door without turning. “There’s coffee if you want it.”

“I thought you were taking extra precautions, now that Senator Kennedy is a presidential candidate.”

“The staff at the Carlyle”—Bill paused to slurp his coffee—“are very understanding of Senator Kennedy’s demanding schedule, and incomparably discreet when it comes to his R and R.”

Keeping an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t see, she felt under her robe and discovered her panties were still in place. The last thing she remembered was being very drowsy and full of bubbles and resting her head against Kennedy’s shoulder as he listed the names of his many siblings, and told her how they had driven around West Virginia, shaking hands at churches and diners and coal mines. In dreamland she’d had eight siblings, every one of them with Russian names that ended in –vich and –skaya. If she had her panties on, then perhaps she’d held out too much, and this time Kennedy had left disappointed and without any intention of seeing her again.

“I don’t let just anybody see these,” she considered saying, as she removed the robe to hook her bra, but was stalled by the fact that, in his current position, he couldn’t actually see them. Anyway, it would be simpler to dress and leave. She had pulled on the white sweater and was smoothing the navy pencil skirt over her hips when Bill turned.

“Ready?” He placed his coffee cup on the polished walnut dining table and put his arms over his chest.

She bent to step into her tan pumps without acknowledging him, and paused a while longer to brush her hair out with her fingers before meeting his eye. He didn’t flinch at her gaze, and she didn’t flinch either, as she crossed the room with head held high. Amidst the abandoned sandwiches were several beer cans, and she took an unopened one, loudly cracked the lid, and swigged. Holding his gaze she swished the liquid over her teeth and
tongue before spitting it into his coffee cup. “Ready,” she announced with an angelic smile.

She was halfway to the front door when he said: “Not that way, little lady.”

Swiveling in his direction, she showed him the face she gave bellboys when they were too starstruck to do their jobs properly. After a silence, she put a hand on her cocked hip. “Which way, then?”

“Allow me.” He made a flourish that might have been sarcastic, or might have been chivalrous, and strode past her, grabbed her bag, and headed for the rear of the apartment, gesturing for her to follow. They moved down a long hall, off which were the rooms where Bill and Jack’s brother had slept. At the end was a metal door that required some force on Bill’s part to heave open, and then, all of a sudden, they were out of the plush part of the Carlyle and in a small, windowless room. Bill pressed a button on the wall, and her heart jumped when she heard a mechanical screech and the floor dropped. “Private elevator,” he said with a grin.

“How nice for you.”

“Necessary precautions, sweetheart.”

“Sure.” She kept her expression placid and dewy as they sank through the stories of the hotel, and when the elevator came to a noisy halt, on what must have been the first floor, she kept her relief to herself. Bill smiled and, from his jacket pocket, produced a pair of sunglasses just like the ones she’d broken the night before. They emerged into a large and busy kitchen, frenetic enough that nobody noticed as the big man in the fine suit advanced through the commotion with one arm sheltering the blonde behind sunglasses. They made their way to a dimly lit hall, down a long tunnel, up a narrow staircase, and through another door.

“Good morning, Louis!” Bill called as he ushered her onward. This room was dimly lit, too, but in a way she liked. The man Bill had addressed was pushing a mop across worn floorboards, and he took a while to glance up. He was an old black man with a stooped back, and he exhibited no surprise at this intrusion. The place smelled like spilled beer and rotting fruit, and by
the time she saw the letters painted on the transom over the front door she realized that it was the Joy Tavern, where she used to like a beer by herself after analysis. Louis did not reply, but she was too happy to be out on the sidewalk, where people strolled in the cool morning, to worry about that.

A taxi was coming down the avenue, and she stepped off the curb with her arm raised. When the car swerved in her direction, she took her bag from Bill.

“The California primary’s in less than a month.” Now unburdened, he paused to light a cigarette and exhale. “Can the senator count on your vote?”

“Why not,” she murmured, gazing uptown.

“With that and the Democratic National Convention being in Los Angeles this year, he’ll be spending a lot of time out in Hollywood.” Bill took another drag of his cigarette and removed a card from his breast pocket, which he tucked into her tote bag. “If you leave a message at that number, he’ll get back to you soon as he can. That’s how you reach him. And he wanted me to tell you thanks.”

She glanced at the spot where the card had disappeared into her bag and up at him blankly.

Then, with affected solicitousness, he said: “Miss Monroe, it’s been a real honor to meet you,” and opened the taxi door for her. While she made herself comfortable in the backseat, he leaned in the driver’s window and handed him a bill. “Take the lady wherever she wants.”

She was glad of this, not because she cared whether he paid for her ride, but because it meant he missed the smile that darted across her face.

“Okay, mister,” the driver replied disinterestedly. As the taxi pulled away she kept her head down and her hand protecting her face the way she did when the press was in a harassing mood.
I’m in
, she thought, as the car hurtled down the empty avenue and her smile flickered and grew,
I’m in
.

THIRTEEN

Reno, July 1960

THE air coming off the high desert was over a hundred degrees, the kind of heat that melts the borders of a girl’s body. The girdle beneath her tight, low-backed, black wool dress was already damp with sweat, so she kept still under the shade of a parasol, held by a local boy, while she waited to do the scene for maybe the twentieth time. She didn’t focus her eyes on anything in particular, and held the little kernel she had of Roslyn, the character she was playing, in her mind. What Roslyn would feel going to the courthouse to get her Nevada divorce.

Around her people hustled to get cameras in place, dragging thick black cords across the sidewalks. It was the second day of shooting, and already the proceedings had taken on a fractious quality. Huston was shouting at somebody, but she tried not to make out the words. Arthur was also nearby, no doubt waiting with proprietary intensity for her to muff his lines. At the top of the steps stood the man playing her husband Raymond, wearing a slick suit, watching her as though they were playing chess and it was her move. He had been at the Actors Studio when she was first working with Lee, so she was familiar with his disdain. They’d all regarded her with disdain—those handsome, pretentious boys in love with theater, resentful of fame’s intrusion in their erudite clubhouse, and yet unable to avert their gaze.

So she didn’t look at him, and she put his real name out of mind. He had been gone, anyway, by the time she humbled herself enough that the other students forgot her special aura and realized she, too, just wanted to learn. And she did learn. The things she had learned with Lee she still used and
would use every day in Reno. For instance, the way she was going to play the dance scene—the one in which she danced, drunk, alone under a tree. To get herself there she’d mainline a memory of Amagansett, the atmospherics of a night when she and Arthur had invited some fisherman over and she’d cooked spaghetti and they’d played gin rummy and drank bourbon until she’d swayed on the rag rug of the small shingled house they’d rented for the summer. The whiskey burning her tongue, the moldy smell off the cards, the salt wind. She had been happy and sad and luminous with mystery, and she knew she’d made them happy by dancing.

But today, at the courthouse, she didn’t have a memory to go by. Instead she had a premonition of some future morning when it would be one too many silent breakfasts, and the sensation of orange juice going down her throat wrong as she realized that her marriage to Arthur was really over. That the house had been sacked before it burned down, and there was nothing to go back for. She was so fixated on the bitter orange juice that she didn’t know when they said “action,” only sensed when Thelma as Isabelle was ready beside her, and they walked up the steps toward Raymond.

He blocked her way at the top of the steps, cajoling her, as she tried to pass. He spoke words, and she spoke words back.

“You can’t have me now, so you want me, that’s all,” Roslyn said.

Huston must have yelled “cut,” but she didn’t hear. She only knew they were done because the actor playing Raymond turned his back on her. The spell was broken, and her shoulders sank, and she looked around for an explanation.

“What happened?” she asked Thelma, wearing her costume of housedress and sling.

“They weren’t picking you up, honey,” she replied wearily and took a step in the direction of their first position marks. “Couldn’t hear you. We’re going to have to do it again.”