Watching this, our ritual, Terry dips a handinto the inside pocket of his suit coat. He plucks out a chromecigarette case and snaps it open, removing two cigarettes, which heplaces, together, between his lips. Terry flicks a flame to jump fromone corner of the chrome case, and lifts it to light both cigarettes.With a snap of his wrist, the flame is gone, and Terry replaces the thincase, returned to inside his coat. He plucks one cigarette from hismouth, trailing a spiral of smoke, and reaches to place it between thered lips of Miss Kathie.
This flashback takes place before thecrow’s-feet caused by Paco Esposito. Before Iscratched the frown lines related to the senator into this mirror of Dorian Gray.
Wielding the diamond, I get to work drawing. Itrace any new wrinkles, adding any new liver spots to this long-termrecord. Sketching the network of tiny spider veins puckered around thefilter of Miss Kathie’s burning cigarette.
Terry says, “A word of warning, Lady Kath.”Sipping his filthy champagne, he says, “If you’ll take my advice. Youneed to be careful.…”
As Terry explains, too many lady stars in hersituation have opened their doors to a young man or a young woman,someone who’d sit and listen and laugh. The rapt attention might lastfor a year or a month, but eventually the young admirer would disappear,returning to another life among people his own age. The young womanwould marry and vanish with her own first child, leaving the actress,once more, abandoned. On occasion a letter might arrive, or a telephonecall. Keeping tabs.
In the same manner TrumanCapote kept in touch with Perry Smithand Dick Hickock while they sat on death row.Biding his time. Capote needed a finale for In ColdBlood.
Every major publisher in America harbors abook, the advance money already paid to some pleasant young person, ahandsome, affable listener, who’d spun a few evenings of dinner into amovie-star tell-all biography and needed only a cause of death tocomplete the final chapter. Already, that pack of stage-door hyenaswaited on Mae West to die. They phoned Lelia Goldoni, hoping for bad news. Scanned theobituary pages for Hugh Marlowe, Emlyn Williams,Peggie Castle and Buster Keaton.Vultures circling. Most were already finagling introductions to Ruth Donnelly and GeraldineFitzgerald. At this moment, they sit in front of a fireplace inthe parlor of Lillian Gish or Carole Landis, vacuuming up the thorny anecdotesthey’d need to flesh out two hundred pages, their vulture eyescommitting to memory every gesture of ButterflyMcQueen, every tic or mannerism of Tex Averythat could be sold to the ravenous reading public.
All of those future best-selling books, theywere already typeset, merely waiting for someone to die.
“I know you, Kath,” says Terry, turning hishead to blow smoke. The stale air of the crypt heavy with the smell ofsmoke and mold. He takes the wedding ring from the dusty stone shelf,saying, “I know you’re a sucker for an audience, even an audience ofone.”
Some grocery delivery boy or a girlconducting a door-to-door survey … these ambitious stray dogs, they eachsit clack-clacking on a rusty typewriter athome. A pretty, wide-eyed, starstruck youngster will steal MissKathie’s life story. Her reputation. Her dignity. Then pray for her todie.
With the diamond, I cut the furrows ofsadness across her forehead. Updating Miss Kathie’s life story. The mapof her. The mirror already scratched with years of worry and grief andscars documenting Miss Kathie’s secret face.
Judy Garland, Terrysays, and Ethel Merman never again walkedout, not in public, not with as much of their previous pride andglamour, after Jacqueline Susann cast them asthe fat, drunken, foulmouthed characters Neely O’Haraand Helen Lawson in TheValley of the Dolls.
In response, the diamond shrieks against theglass. The high-pitched, wailing sound of funeral keening.
Dropping to one knee on the cold stone floor,Terry looks up at Miss Kathie and says, “Will you marry me? Just tokeep you safe?” He reaches out to take her hand. He says, “At leastuntil something better comes along?”
This, a sodomite and a faded movie star, iswhat Walter Winchell calls a “match made inresignation.” Terry proposes becoming her emotional bodyguard, a live-inplaceholder between real men.
“Just like your portrait here,” says Terry,nodding at the mirror in its silver frame, “any friendly youngbiographer is only going to showcase your flaws and faults in order tobuild his own career.”
As always, I drag the diamond in straightlines to mimic the tears running down Miss Katie’s face.
I shake my head, Don’t. Don’t let’s repeatthis torture. Don’t trust another one.
As always, another duty of my job is to neverpress too hard lest the mirror shatter.
My Miss Kathie slips a hand into the slit ofone fur coat pocket, fishing out something pink she sets on the dustyshelf. Exhaling cigarette smoke, she says, “I guess I won’t be needingthis.…” So many years ago, this something Miss Kathie meant to leavebehind forever.
It was her diaphragm.
Terry slips the wedding band onto her finger.
Miss Kathie smiles, saying, “It still feelswarm.” She adds, “The ring, not the diaphragm.” And I pour everyone another round ofchampagne.
ACT I, SCENE THIRTEEN
The scene opens with a tight shot of John Glenn strapped into the astronaut seat withinthe capsule of the Friendship 7spacecraft, the first American to orbit Earth.Beyond the capsule’s small window we see our glorious blue planetswirled with white clouds, suspended among the pinprick stars in thedeep blackness of space. As Glenn’s gloved hands fiddle with the wideassortment of controls on the panel before him, flipping a switch,turning a knob, he leans into a microphone, saying, “Mission control, Ithink we might have a problem.…”
Glenn says, “Mission control, do you readme?” He says, “I seem to be losing power.…”
In unison, every light on the control panelblinks out. The lights blink on for a moment, then off. Flickering, thelights go out altogether, leaving Glenn in only the faint glow of thestars. Seated in absolute silence, Glenn wraps both gloved hands aroundthe microphone, bringing his mouth almost to touch the wire mesh of itand shouting, “Please, Houston!” Screaming, “Alan Shepard, you bastard, don’t let me die uphere!”
The shot pulls back to reveal an interiorpanel in the wall behind Glenn’s astronaut chair. A handle in the centerof the panel begins to slowly turn. Drawing focus because it’s the onlymovement in the shot, highlighted by a key light in the otherwise murkycompartment.
Glenn quietly sobs in the darkness.
Insert a close-up of the handle turning,intercutting with extreme close-ups of Glenn’s face, his sobs and tearsfogging the inside surface of his helmet face shield.
From offscreen, we hear a familiar voice say,“Pipe down.”
In a medium shot, we see the panel behindGlenn swing open, revealing a stowaway LillianHellman as she steps free from what appears to be a storagelocker. In one continuous shot, she steps through a doorway, under astenciled sign reading, WARNING: AIR LOCK.Hellman says, “Wish me luck, you big baby.” She draws a deep breath,and her hand slaps a large, red button labeled, JETTISON.An inner door slides shut, sealing the air lock, and a burst of mistbelches Lilly from the side of the orbiting capsule. She wears nohelmet, no pressurized suit, only an elegant sports ensemble of slacksand sweater designed by Adrian.