It was then that I realized I had told Marilyn my secrets, my fears, my lies, all of them. And she still loved me. It was the most wonderful day of my life. It was also the most frightening.
Marilyn took charge of the espionage game as if she'd been born to it. She got us a room, then went to the local bank, rented a safe deposit box and secreted one set of photographs.
Then we went back to our hotel room and she called Welles, laughing and apologizing about having stolen his Golden Boy stand-in for a quick jaunt. She asked him to convey her apologies to the Lawfords and the Kennedys, but she just couldn't stand the pressure. But she'd make sure not to miss the "Happy Birthday" bash later that month.
I was seeing a great actress at work: Pretend you've run away for a short fling, then call and apologize to everyone you've let down. The Strasbergs' Method served her well.
At the hotel gift shop, she bought a toy tiger. She ripped a seam in its neck and slipped the negatives inside, then stitched it back together with her sewing kit. It was the perfect thing to give the President as a present in front of a million people. I hid the last set of photographs under the catpeting in the trunk of my car.
The getaway was mad and beautiful. Marilyn took me out to dinner at the inn, which had a creek running through the old Victorian dining room. She said there was supposed to be the ghost of a priest or a drowned girl who walked through every once in a while, but we never saw it.
Funny, isn't it; a dead man telling ghost stories.
And then came the hardest thing I've ever done. We drove back down the next day, the day Hedda's column was supposed to run, and pretended that nothing had happened. Marilyn went on with her role, and Welles called me into his office and chewed me out. He'd hired me to protect his movie, dammit, not run off with the star, make them run a day over budget, and piss off the President and the Attorney General in the process.
I tried Marilyn's Method, doing Lovestruck Swain Grovels Before Boss. I managed not to get fired, but mostly, I think, because Welles didn't want to upset Marilyn. If I'd become her pet, well, he'd dealt with bigger expenses, and at least she'd lightened up on the pills.
Marilyn had gone off them all cold turkey, in fact. She couldn't swallow even one, knowing that they were the intended murder weapon had the Card Sharks plans for her succeeded. She drank more, though, and two days later fired Dr. Rudo. I got to watch the scene as she tore into him, calling him the most overpriced gigolo in Hollywood, and underendowed to boot. She threatened to tell the AMA and Louella Parsons how many times they'd had sex on his psychiatrist's couch.
It was a spout of venom worthy of Hedda. Budo glared at me the Whole time, but I didn't say a word.
That evening I got a call from Marilyn. She wondered if I could come home a bit early. I didn't even question the reason; I knew how much pressure she was under. I think the only thing that held us together that week was holding each other in our arms at night. I hadn't gone to my own place except to pick up clothes.
I slipped into Marilyn's house, under the portico with its strange little inscription: My journey ends here. I never thought of it as an epitaph. It sort of fits, you know.
I went inside the house and called Marilyn's name. Then I heard her voice from the back yard, stuttering like she always did when she was scared "N-Nickie, could you come out here?"
I didn't suspect anything. I really didn't. When your nerves are that raw, it's either suspect nothing at all, or suspect everything and go mad. And I'd already seen enough of madness.
I Stepped outside the house, and in the late afternoon light I saw the impossibly high hat stacked with a florist's shop of silk begonias, Hedda and a chromed pistol resting in the shade beneath. She sat in the deck chair as if she were a countess holding court, one leg crossed over the other.
Marilyn sat to one side in another chair, clutching the toy tiger, while Dr. Rudo sat a bit behind and kept a businesslike Luger pointed at her back.
"You see," Marilyn said then. "There's n-nothing to be shocked about. He'll do whatever I want."
I came closer, taking Marilyn's signal, and put my hands in the air where both Hedda and Rudo could see them and where I could throw my will-o'-wisps.
"Hello, Nick," Hedda said as if it were nothing more important than one of her afternoon teas. "You've always been practical, so please don't play the hero. You'll just get both yourselves killed."
She pulled back the hammer of her gun. "Stand by the edge of the pool please."
"Your scheme's ruined, you know," Marilyn said.
Hedda bowed her impossible hat slightly. I know, darling. You've really fucked things to a turn."
"I'm pregnant," Marilyn said.
There was a moment of dead silence. At last Hedda licked her lips. "Could you repeat what you just Said, dearest?"
"I'm Pregnant," Marilyn said it with the exact same tone and inflection. "Do you W-want to know who the father is?"
Hedda paused, the nature of her profession plain on her face. "Does it have any bearing on the present situation?"
"Most l-l-likely, since the father is either J-Jack or Bobby Kennedy. I f-found out last week."
"Are you considering an abortion, dearest?"
"No." Marilyn said it definitely, with force. "I'd decided I was going to h-have it, both for myself, and to spite all the m-men who've u-used me."
There was a look on Rudo's face I couldn't quite make out "Which men, Marilyn?"
"Jack. Bobby," she said, and her voice became harder, clearer. "Zanuck. It would serve them all right. It was going to be the one thing I was going to do for myself. Darryl Zanuck stuck me on this lousy jokers pic for the last spot on my contract and there was nothing I could do about it. Except this."
She gripped the toy tiger in her lap, her knuckles turning white on the plush fur. "If I puff up without a husband, the protests will wreck any pic I work on. It'd serve Zanuck right to have to swallow the entire budget for gyping me on my contract. And the scandal would toss Jack and Bobby out on the street with the jokers they love so much. I planned to sink this filthy jokers pic myself."
Marilyn turned towards Hedda, slowly. "You don't believe me. But there's a lot about me you don't know, Mrs. Hopper. You want the exclusive? When I was nine, I was raped. By a joker." Her face contorted and tears began to run down her cheeks, smearing her mascara. "It was at my foster parents' house. One of them - you know I had four different sets. These ones rented out rooms, and one of their boarders was a joker. He had these furry green eyebrows that moved when you talked to him, but I'd been told he was a nice man, and I was too young to know what sort of monsters jokers were. So I went into his room and he took out his penis and it was all spiky. Sharp, green spikes, curving backwards, like a foxtail, and he ... he ... stuck it into me."
She let go of the tiger and her head collapsed into her hands. "He r-raped me," she blubbered between her fingers, her voice quaking like a little girl's. "I bled for days. And I was so ashamed I never told anyone.
"It was years before I learned that normal men weren't like that. All green and spiky." She shook with sobs. "You know some of it, Dr. Rudo. I told you about Flattop following me around. I'm afraid of him. His penis is probably as stretched out and spiky as the rest of him. His diseased body makes me sick."
Hedda and Rudo looked as if they didn't know if they were hearing the truth or a method actress giving the performance of her life. But I knew from Hedda's expression that Marilyn was offering a scandal that would both kill the movie and hang the Kennedys with rope to spare.
"Darling," said Hedda, testing, "I know you've spent the night with Jack Braun."
Marilyn shrugged, straightening back up and wiping some of the tears from her cheeks. "That was business. I've done a lot worse on the casting couch than just give a joker a blowjob to get help with a script. His dick's normal enough. And," she said, "a girl does what she has to."