Hedda was wearing a salmon pink linen skirt and jacket, with a matching hat: salmon felt decorated with silver applique waves and, I kid you not, an honest-to-God, life-size gold-lame fish lunging after the fly that dangled from the miniature rod stuck through the crown.
"Pan, darling!" Hedda oooed. "And dearest Nicholas! What luck to find you both here!"
Rudo paused and looked to me. "You know Hedda, Mr. Williams?"
It was the first time I'd ever seen him taken off guard. Hedda breezed right in between us.
"Oh pish, darling," Hedda said, "you know I have my little spies everywhere." She reached up and pinched his cheek, then linked arms with me and patted the back of my hand. "Nicholas and I go back a long way."
Rudo took a long drag on his cigarette. "I should never be surprised by anything you know, Hedda."
Hedda laughed and led me a ways off into the set. "So, Nick, what you got for me?"
How should I put this? Hedda owned a lot of people in Hollywood. One of the ones she owned was me. She'd given me a couple breaks early in my career - back when I was nothing more than a frightened young actor - and she made sure I knew I owed her. I was part of her spy network, and that, more than anything, was what got me to turn pro at it.
That press contact I'd phoned in the Wally Fisk story to? That was Hedda. The job for Welles had been a conflict of interests since the beginning.
I wondered what Flattop would think. His hero, the ace Will-o'-Wisp, was a spy for Hedda the Hat.
I sighed, recalling the list I'd prepared for her. "Well, Jeff Chandler has a new girlfriend. And I told you about Wally Fisk ... he died this morning."
"Old news, dearest," she said, patting my hand. "I put it in this morning's column. Now, tell mother what she wants to know: What's the job you're doing for Orson? Wally's old case.
"Now don't look so shocked, dearest," Hedda said as I struggled to keep my St. Elmo's from springing up and killing the old hag. "Mother knows lots of things, and who do you think it was who got you this lovely job? The moment I heard about poor Wally, all I had to do was have dearest Kimberly drop a word in Orson's pudgy pink ear and voila! Here you are.
"So now, my little Nicholas, tell mother the dirt."
Have you ever been caught so off guard you can't speak? That was me. I was so good at deceptions, I'm surprised I didn't come up with one immediately.
"And no lies, Nicholas," Hedda said. "Mother can tell. And," she said significantly, "since I know Kimberly, if I find out you've lied to me, I'll be forced to tell the truth to Jack Braun. You know him - the glowing freak with the photogenic bottom and the hands that can punch through walls? You're considerably thinner than a wall, Nicholas, and I'm sure he'd have no trouble at all getting through you. And wouldn't that be a horrid scandal."
She smiled, as if relishing the possibility, and I swallowed. Electric ace or not, there was no way I could stand up to Golden Boy.
I wish I'd had the stomach for cold blooded murder. Hedda had her arm around mine, and all it would take was one jolt to send the old harpy to Hell. But I knew the nature of the beast I was dealing with - upon her death, Hedda's lawyers would send packets to various addresses, and there was no way of knowing whether a sheaf of photographs would be her bequest to Jack Braun.
I settled for the simple truth and told Hedda the gist of Wally's investigation. All I said about my own work was that it had been fruitless - nothing about the little altercation under the pier, or the unprovable connections to Howard Hughes and Willie Hearst.
Hedda clicked her tongue. "My, my, how very interesting. You've done well, my little Nicholas. But isn't there something you're not telling mother?"
I shook my head, smiling. It was hard, but I told myself that even if Hedda found out, I could hide behind J. Edgar. Golden Rat may have been the strongest man in the world, but the one thing he was frightened of was the Feds.
Hedda pinched me on the cheek. "Oh come now, Nicholas, don't be so shy. I've heard the rumors. You've been seeing Marilyn, haven't you?"
I blushed, feeling the strangest mixture of fear and relief. There was a reason why Hedda called her home "The House that Fear Built."
She crowed with laughter. "You're so wonderfully ingenous, Nick. I think that's why you've always been one of my favorites." Hedda extended her hand to be kissed.
I did it carefully, holding down my gorge and my ace.
"Thanks, Nicholas," she said. "You're a dear. But as they say at Disney, TTFN, ta-ta for now!"
Hedda left, the fishing fly on her hat bobbing like some Satanic sound boom, and I slumped back against a piece of scenery. My life was swiftly becoming a nightmare.
But there's never bad without some good. That evening I lay in bed with Marilyn, just holding on. There was so much I wanted to tell her, but couldn't.
"Shh, Nickie," she said, stroking my hair. "Shh. You can tell me when you feel its time. But I have something to tell you."
"What, Marilyn?"
"I talked with Dr. Rudo this afternoon. He's interpreted my nightmares, and says I have a choice: I can be all women to all men, or one woman to one man." She paused and I looked up into her blue eyes. "Will you be my one man, Nickie?"
I began to cry, hugging her, holding her. "Yes."
She kissed me and we made love.
"There's one other thing, Nickie," she said once we were done. "I'll never be whole until I have a child. I hope you like children."
"I love children, Marilyn."
A few days later, she told me she thought she was pregnant.
"And it has to be yours, Nickie," Marilyn said. "I've counted, and Jack and Bobby always use condoms, and Pan's had a vasectomy."
That satyr had an appropriate name, at least. I asked about Jack Braun and Tom Quincey.
Marilyn shook her head. "I gave Jack a blowjob and he passed out. And Tommy's sweet, but we were through months ago. It has to be you."
It was then that I realized that with all the pills she'd been taking, none of them had been birth control. And I'd never used a condom.
She begged me to keep it a secret. With as many as I had, one more wasn't any trouble.
But, oh God, what a dilemma. If Marilyn had a child conceived out of wedlock, the controversy would wreck the movie. Possibly her career.
"It's my career, Nickie. I can wreck it if I like, she told me. "I can do anything I want."
But I'd heard Marilyn's nightmares and her whispered confidences. She'd had abortions before, and I knew one more would destroy her.
There's an old legend that will-o'-wisps are the souls of unbaptized children. In Marilyn s dream, they were the souls of her abortions. They haunted her night by night, saying, "We are the dead and we are secrets and you will never know who we are. That is our vengeance and that is how we will haunt you."
She loved me, she said, but she could never marry a man who couldn't tell her his secrets. One more secret and she would die.
I didn't tell her any of mine, let alone my nickname for my little ball lightning charges. But I held her in my arms all that night and told her that the ghosts would go away if she would just name them. And one by one Marilyn named them, all seven, until she fell asleep in my arms.
I didn't sleep well at all, knowing all that. But we all make sacrifices for our careers, and Marilyn's had been her children. I know that the law makes her a murderess, but I couldn't bring myself to hate her for that. Maybe it sounds crazy, but as she fell asleep against my chest, I think I loved her all the more.
The weeks flew by and March passed to April. Marilyn was Blythe as she had never been and I was alternately stand-in or spy, but my heart wasn't in either. It was with Marilyn. Welles had hired me to save his movie, but I knew the greatest threat to Blythe was our love, and I wouldn't kill our child or destroy the woman I loved to save a strip of cellulose. It was none of his business anyway.
Hedda wasn't even a consideration. She'd discover everything in due time through her other spies. I'd even give her a refund if she complained.