The Blonde (32 page)

And, too, she had been pondering the news out of Cuba. What the president called an episode, and Havana called an invasion of a mercenary army, at a place vividly named the Bay of Pigs. Perhaps Castro had received advance warning of the operation by some other avenue, but Marilyn couldn’t help but feel sick over what she’d told Alexei during those bleak days in Payne Whitney, and wonder if she weren’t to blame for the fighters who had been shot up on the beach, or executed in the ensuing terror, suddenly and without trial. It made her almost nonchalant about what he might yet do to her. But mostly she had been staring at the spot in the far corner of the swimming
pool where Jack the senator had given it to her, at dawn, almost a year ago now. She shouldn’t miss him, but she did. “I just wanted to say hello to the ocean, I guess,” she said eventually.

Pat paused with her hand on the back of the lounge chair and gazed out, as though just remembering about the ocean, and that it was so close to her house. “It’s a pretty night, isn’t it? The way the moon paves the water silver.”

“Yeah …” Marilyn murmured vaguely, her gaze shifting to the moon, which was where Jack wanted them to go. For a moment she was with those men, one Russian and one American, who had looked down on Earth from space within weeks of one another, wondering if they’d been lonesome up there.

But it was not in Pat’s nature to stand around in reflection, and before Marilyn could drift too far into her own mind, she said: “Come on, Blondie, I have a surprise for you.”

Dutifully Marilyn stood, slipping her feet into high-heeled mules. For a few moments her vision was splotchy from staring at the moon and at the ghostly underwater illumination of the swimming pool. Then it came back: the palm trees, the lavender sand beyond the glass walls spreading out to the shore, the manicured lemon trees of the Lawfords’ garden. And amongst those shadows, behind the broad tree trunks, she saw men wearing suits creeping toward the house. Her breath shortened, and she was afraid she was hallucinating, as she had frequently since her days of confinement.

But Pat tilted her head back, shaking her hair out with her fine, rippling laugh. “Don’t be scared, darling, they’re here to protect him.”

“What?” She hadn’t known she’d seemed scared, and was more concerned with concealing that than parsing the word
him
.

The hostess didn’t bother responding, and laced her arm through Marilyn’s and drew her toward the party. “You’ve never met a president before, have you?” she went on teasingly.

Too late, Marilyn realized what the surprise was and regretted the clothes she’d chosen for the evening. If Pat had told her, she’d have put on a dress,
not the yellow slacks and white blouse she’d worn for what she’d imagined would be another casual, intimate gathering of the Lawfords’ close friends and allies. She was about to say that in fact she
had
met Pat’s older brother, but of course that had not been the question. “No,” she said. “I’ve never met a president before.”

“Be nice to him. They really gave him hell in Europe, and he was lucky to get a few days out here to relax while Jackie and the children are in Middleburg, doing whatever horsy stuff she does out there.” Pat was talking low and conspiratorial, her nose at Marilyn’s ear. “Lord knows there’s no rest when that woman’s around. He had to marry her, you know. Without her he’d never have been really class, and I guess he got served exactly what he ordered up. She’s so stiff it’s
absurd
, runs the water whenever she’s in the bathroom for fear somebody’ll hear her doing what everybody else does, you know.”

Marilyn was only half listening to this commentary. Her mind was occupied with her appearance, and she was hoping that she would manage to slip away to fix her lipstick before Jack saw her. They had come up the steps, through the heavy Spanish door, into the large open room where the Lawfords’ guests had been served digestifs, and she saw that she was too late. Jack was entering from the opposite side, handsome in his navy blue suit, tie loosened. His eyes met hers automatically. The whole time his gaze was on her she couldn’t breathe, and though she told herself to smile, she had no idea whether or not she managed to. He did seem fatigued—the skin under his eyes was purplish, and his expression communicated the variety of displeasure that comes from lack of rest. There was a blink of recognition, after which his gaze shifted. A moment later he saw someone he knew, and gave them his dazzling, toothy smile, and Marilyn, now feeling much farther than a room away, experienced that weightlessness of having never existed at all.

“Poor Jack, he must have had a long flight,” Pat went on in the same manner, not noticing how thoroughly her friend had been cut. The mood of the
party had been languorous before, but it perked up now. The twenty or so dinner guests were standing, talking over each other while they watched the most important person in the world make his way across the carpet. “Come. They’ll be sucking his blood in a minute if we don’t save him.”

“Oh, but everybody wants to say hello …” Marilyn began to protest, hoping that if she had some time to recover, she’d be better prepared to meet him.

“Of course they do. That’s exactly why we have to save him.” Pat’s arm remained interlaced with hers until they reached her brother and she let go. “Here you are at last!” she cried, embracing him. “Have you met our Marilyn?”

“Marilyn Monroe.” He pronounced the name, not as he once had—like he could not quite believe he was beholding her with his own eyes—but as though she were a person he had grown bored of, and was annoyed to find hanging around.

“This is Prez.” Pat had not taken her eyes off her brother, so she would not have noticed how Marilyn’s face fell.

“Hey there, Prez,” Marilyn murmured, trying hard to conjure the shy flirtatiousness that used to work on him.

“Ah yes. Nice to meet you. I believe we’re both acquainted with Mr. Frank Sinatra,” Jack said flatly before turning his attention back to his sister. “I’d clear a small village for a drink about now. Tell me where, I’ll fix it myself.”

“What’ll you have? I’ll get it for you, darling,” Pat replied, her eyes focused, brilliant with adoration, on her brother.

“Just point me in the right direction,” he said, squeezing his sister’s waist. “It’ll be the only five minutes I get alone all month.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Pat said with a sigh, before pointing out the bar and moving on to greet her younger brother, Robert, who had arrived in the president’s wake. Marilyn smiled bravely for whomever was watching, and then found an inconspicuous couch. The way Jack had said
Frank Sinatra
bruised her; it had seemed to suggest she was that man’s problem now. Not that this wasn’t somewhat true. Luckily, Frank was away doing a
show in Honolulu that weekend, but he had helped her in many ways over the last few months, setting her up with an apartment on Doheny, finding her a new analyst—his, in fact, a Dr. Ralph Greenson, who saw her in his own lovely house with a view of the sea, and had no compunction about prescribing her enough pills to get to sleep. Which was a lot, considering her dreams these days. Frank was protective, and made sure she wasn’t too alone in Los Angeles, offerings she wished she didn’t need. He would have liked bedroom favors in return, she knew, but he had plenty of other girls and did not seem to mind letting their attachment be mainly for publicity. Of course, that explanation never satisfied anybody, and anyway, Jack’s indifference to her seemed entirely more complete than that.

She did not sit in quiet contemplation long. The conversation swept around her and picked her up; Jack was the star of whatever room he was in, but her aura was strong, too, so she did not have the chance to wallow in the awkwardness she felt. After a while the president went for a swim—which incited some animated, admiring chatter—and when he came back he was wrapped in a towel, and he sat down next to a film producer’s wife who wore a turban and smoked a Kent. Out of the corner of her eye, Marilyn monitored him, and when he rose—saying he wanted to fix himself a drink, and repeating the line about it being the only five minutes he’d get alone all month—she, too, made an excuse.

“Hey there, Prez.” She had come up behind him at the unmanned tiki-style bar, her lips already quivering. She made herself think about that high-pitched groan—
fuck me, Jack, fuck me
—so that her fingers trembled as she took the shaker from him and began to fix his daiquiri, and she wouldn’t have been able to meet his eye even if she wanted to. It was an impression of hopeful weakness that only a very cruel person could have shut out entirely. Of course, she had told herself not to hope, but there hope was, anyway. They were out of earshot, but even so she let her voice burn down to a whisper before going on, “You forgot about me, huh?”

“Forgot about you.” He exhaled dismissively and put his elbows against the bar, showing her his profile.

She thought he was going to say something more, but when he didn’t she went on in the same manner, as though every syllable required the marshalling of her whole spirit. The tremble in her fingers was too strong now—she set the shaker down, drinks unmixed. “I mean, I understand. I do! There must be all sorts of important things you gotta see to now. Maybe I never thought you’d stay interested in me very long. But I miss you. I’d like to say I didn’t care anymore, but there doesn’t seem much sense in lying, you know?”

“Some girl.” Jack shook his head, keeping his gaze on the window, at the illuminated jungle plants outside, vivid against the black night. “You get me choked up on the most important day of my life, so that the only thing I wanted on this green earth was to listen to you say a few words to me over long distance. I made all those speeches, kept myself upright through those uncertain hours, and then what do I discover? The thing I’d been counting on was a lie.”

Marilyn had never been a shy girl at a high school dance—she had already been married off, to a merchant marine, by the time she was old enough for that—but for a moment she thought she knew what it was to be a wall-flower who finds herself unexpectedly in the arms of the most popular jock in school. The trembling routine was forgotten, and—slowly, cautiously—she put her fingers against his wrist. The words coming out of her mouth were not very intelligible, but they were sincere. “But I—why?—Bobby …” She closed her eyes, swallowed. “Bobby said you wouldn’t see me anymore.”

“He said—?” Jack turned toward her suddenly, and there was his torso above the towel, the bare chest and still-damp hair, and the gravitational pull made her seasick.

“When I called that day, he—”

“What are you two on about?” Pat called out as she approached, and Marilyn swerved in her direction, hoping that her face wasn’t quite so spread
open with longing as it had been a moment before. “Our Marilyn’s an actress, you know; we don’t let her do this sort of plebeian thing.” Wearing a broad smile, she picked up the shaker Marilyn had set down. “Can’t cook an egg, but of course she was built for better things.”

“We were talking about Lincoln.” Marilyn’s blood had become cooler; she had a clear vision of her play. “Pat, sugar, do you have a pen? I want to be sure I write down the name of this wonderful book about Lincoln that Jack has just
got
to read before I forget.”

“Yes, darling, in the credenza over there,” Pat said, in a tone that implied,
Go ahead and write the title of a book Jack won’t have time to read
. She had come around behind the bar, tossed the contents of the shaker, and gone about remaking the drinks.

Marilyn winked at Jack and went to the credenza where she found a piece of paper that she ripped in half, writing on one
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg
and on the other
882 Doheny off Santa Monica
. She returned with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and she placed one piece of paper next to the cut-glass ashtray on the bar in front of Jack, and the other one inside it. “Care for a smoke, Mr. President?” She delivered the line Lauren Bacall style, so that he would know it was a ruse.

He glanced up from the scrawled address in the ashtray. “Sure.”

She inhaled, lighting the cigarette for him and dropping the match into the ashtray without blowing it out, so that the paper curled into flames. “There you go,” she said. “Oh!” she exclaimed, in her own persona, bending and blowing out the mini-conflagration. “Damn me!”

Pat turned around, wrinkling her nose at the smell of burned paper. “See? That’s why we keep her out of the kitchen,” she said, lining up three glasses, pouring the drinks.

“Oh, not for me.” Marilyn let her eyelids droop and smiled wistfully. “I’m exhausted—I think I must still be on New York time! I should probably head home.”

“Don’t go. We’re only just getting started.”

Marilyn was afraid that if she so much as looked at Jack she would reveal herself to Pat, so she only batted the request away with her hand and said, “You enjoy your brother, sug, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“All right.” Pat leaned across the bar, kissed her on either cheek, and then shouted: “Bobby, you ready for another daiquiri?” by which time Marilyn had already drifted to the margin of the room.

She glanced back once, at those nicely tanned people arranged in clusters on the low, buff-colored furniture, the men with their collars open and the women with their hair down. Jack’s naked back was to her, but even that felt like a secret message, and she stepped out of her shoes and picked them up, so that she could exit quickly and quietly. The adrenaline was making her feel weightless in a different way, and as she darted through the hall into the interior courtyard, she wasn’t certain whether she was more excited that Jack had been thinking about her all this time—that he had thought it was she who had forgotten him—or because she finally had a way back in, and could stop being afraid that Alexei would arrive to punish her further. Anyway, Jack would be coming after her soon, she was sure of it, which was perhaps why she was not surprised by the footfalls that sounded behind her as she passed through the portico adjacent to the street. Trying not to smile, she asked the butler if he could bring her car around.