by John Rechy
“I’ll pay you back,” Troja promised. “You didn’t have much.” She tried to laugh.
“Did you intend to steal more from me?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Normalyn held her eyes on Troja.
“Cause after I did, I kept remembering the real close day we had together.”
Anger at Troja’s stealing from her was almost replaced by the warmth she felt at the assertion of closeness. For this moment she believed her! What she didn’t dare ask was whether Kirk had seen the letter.
Normalyn jumped when the telephone rang in the other room.
Troja rushed to answer it.
She was eager to break these moments, Normalyn was sure. She heard Troja’s purry sounds on the telephone. . . . “Kirk!” Troja screamed suddenly.
Normalyn ran out of her room.
Kirk was staring into his suddenly bloodied hands.
Troja hurried into the bathroom, returned with a pill. Kirk swallowed it. She dabbed at the bleeding nose with a towel. She filled her accusation with concern. “All that coke! Bound to happen.”
“I’m all right now,” Kirk answered her stare. “You go ahead now, sweetheart. Go ahead.”
It was over! Another ordinary extraordinary moment in Troja’s and Kirk’s lives was over. How quickly Troja had learned to adjust her life to Kirk’s. In minutes, she was ready to go—in a swirly pale yellow dress. As she passed Normalyn, she said, desperately, “You get prettier every day, hon. Really!” She blew Kirk a sad kiss, and then she was gone.
Kirk said, “She’s right, Normalyn. You are very pretty.”
Normalyn retreated from him.
“You know there’s nothing to be afraid of from me,” Kirk said. “You had to know it from that first night when I came to your room.”
It had been him, not a nightmare about Ted!
“I wouldn’t have done anything,” Kirk said in a tired voice. “I just wanted to know if I could still even think of becoming aroused. You looked so pretty that night, Normalyn; I don’t think you knew it. But I wouldn’t have done anything if I had been able to. I would never hurt Troja. I hope you believe that. I just wanted to find out, for myself.” He turned away.
Without fearing him, Normalyn still hated him in those moments. She was about to close the door of her bedroom when the words of an announcer pulled her attention to the newscast Kirk had turned on.
“—shifting now to reporter Tommy Basich outside the Chinese Theater.”
A man with a mighty moustache appeared on the screen. “This is where a group of young cultists were arrested and detained briefly,” he said, “when they attempted to force their way into a reputedly secret cellar where, Hollywood legend has it, cement blocks of prints belonging to movie stars banished from the foyer are kept.” The camera panned to reveal that next to the man was the youngwoman with flaming red hair, the felt orchid in it. About her, other painted faces vied for the camera.
“Lady Star—that is what you call yourself?” The announcer addressed the youngwoman. “What were you and your fellow Dead Movie Stars, as you call yourselves, looking for in the cellar of this famous theater?”
“The block with the prints of the great Verna La Maye,” Lady Star said. “They were removed after the scandals that followed her tragic unsolved murder.” The announcer reminded his viewers that according to police “the scandalous murder was solved.” Lady Star let a strap of her filmy dress fall off a skinny shoulder. She adjusted it with a flip of her hand. “Not correctly.”
Back in the studio, anchorwoman Mandy Lange-Jones announced an upcoming “in-depth” series of news segments that would “probe fan-adulation and focus on bizarre activities, including midnight auditions, of the group known as the Dead Movie Stars.”
“Rhymin’ weatherman Clive Barnes” was beginning to deliver his forecast: “A breeze from the East— . . .” when Kirk clicked him off, locating a black-and-white movie.
Normalyn looked about the room for the discarded tabloid Kirk and Troja had been reading. She picked it up from the floor and took it into her bedroom. Tidied now, the room looked almost unoccupied to her in the midst of the clutter of the rest of the house.
The article, written by someone named Helena Wallace, stated that there had been “heavy response” to David Lange’s recent story concerning “growing speculation” that Marilyn Monroe had given birth to a daughter in the last days of her life, eighteen years ago. Women of all ages—“without any substantiation”—claimed “personal association.” The article quoted writer David Lange: “A recent death may result in possible dramatic information in this matter.”
In the warm day hinting of heat, Normalyn felt cold. She did not say a word to Kirk as she left the house.
She walked to the telephone booth at the gas station. She dialed the number she obtained from Information. “David Lange, please,” she said to an operator at the newspaper. The moment she pronounced the man’s name, it seemed to have been extracted from another life. “It’s in reference to a story he wrote. . . . Yes, that one.” She was transferred to someone else. “Helena Wallace,” the woman answered . . . “About the Marilyn daughter story?” Yes. “Leave a number and Mr. Lange will call you back,” the woman said . . . if,” she emphasized, “you identify the distinct nature of your call.” Normalyn understood. She was being asked for “evidence” of some sort.
“I can’t be reached by telephone, but I’ll call back within an hour for him to leave a number where I can call him.” Normalyn’s own words fascinated her. “Tell Mr. Lange that Enid Morgan died recently, and that my name is”—she separated the name carefully—“Norma-lyn.”
She went to a drugstore nearby. She bought a paperback edition of Wuthering Heights. She located one of her favorite parts, where the angels fling Catherine out of a passive heaven so she can live her passionate life on earth.
She returned to the telephone booth. This time she looked around, as if she might be watched. She dialed again. The operator quickly transferred her. Yes, Helena Wallace said, Mr. Lange had left a number for her to call him directly.
Normalyn dialed. She held her breath. She imagined the reporter’s harsh, curt voice. . . .
“This is Normalyn Morgan.”
The soft voice said, “May I see you . . . Miss Morgan?”
Normalyn took down the address he gave her, and she hung up without another word.
Eight
Then Troja’s life took over violently.
Normalyn had just returned to the house, still holding in her hand the mysterious telephone number and address she had written on a torn piece of paper, when Troja walked in.
Her pale yellow dress was slashed. Kirk held her trembling body. He said words to a new presence at the door: “I’ll kill you—”
Coldly blond, eyes like black stones, Duke stood there. “Tell him what happened,” he said to Troja.
“It wasn’t Duke, Kirk.” Troja rushed her words in panic. “It was someone else, waiting for me. Tore my beautiful dress with a knife—tore and tore.” She looked down in astonishment at the violated dress. She held a gashed portion of it in her hand. “Duke stopped him, Kirk—I swear it—and he drove me here!”
Normalyn had to look away from Troja, hurting for her, remembering another time.
“You find out who it was and I’ll cut him up,” Duke said.
Troja did not face Duke as Kirk continued to hold her.
“Lucky for you I hear everything,” Duke said. “How you been freelancin’ and shit. That’s real dangerous. Drove there to tell you that when I heard—and just in time, too.” His dark eyes bored on Kirk and Troja. “You need protection, babe. This just shows you how bad you need Duke.”
Normalyn longed to see Kirk advance on the man, smash the pale scruffy face. But he didn’t. And it was clear that the ugly skinny man was responsible, had planned to be there to stop the attack—a vicious warning. They just didn’t dare acknowledge that.
“I even got some g
ood news for you both,” Duke said with a twisted smile for Kirk and Troja. “Got something for both of you again. No hurry on that.” He placed a paper by the blonde wig on the stand on the cleared table with the glorious photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the pose Troja had imitated. His eyes glided icily over Normalyn. He nodded. Then he smoothed the hair on the wig. “Too pretty not to wear it,” he said to Troja.
Troja shook her head, just slightly.
With mocking delicacy, Duke left Kirk a packet of cocaine on his bed.
“Troja—” That was all Normalyn could say.
2
That ugly incident was not possible! Normalyn sat up in her bed, wide awake. She heard no sounds. Dressing, she opened the door. Troja was still asleep. Yes, it all had occurred. There was the piece of paper near the wig. Kirk lay awake, his massive arms behind his head, looking up at nothing.
Determined not to connect with Duke, Troja went out on a few “leads”—real auditions. She would return exposing her dark moods to Normalyn, keeping them from Kirk. What had made her desirable as an entertainer, the black impersonation of Marilyn Monroe, was what she now refused to do since the sacrificial assault at the Hollywood Four Star. She did “perform” occasionally, as a “backup”—“for singers I can sing rings around,” she asserted. Normalyn suspected that she still went out on guarded “dates.” There was no absence of cocaine for Kirk.
Once Troja returned very tired, rubbing her feet as if she had been walking and standing for long. Normalyn did not allow herself to believe that she had again joined the women on the streets, increasing her dangers.
Kirk went on an interview once, to a bar in a wealthy beach community called Marina del Rey. While he was gone, Troja read aloud—twice, for Normalyn to congratulate—the advertisement Kirk had found in one of the entertainment-trade newspapers she bought daily: “Must be muscular and good-looking,” she read the job requirements, and added, “They could’ve put Kirk’s name on the ad, fits him so right.” But Kirk returned to inform that the job had “already gone”—to a “kid” he had once trained at Gold’s Gym.
Since that one day of revelation, Troja had not proposed another drive. She seemed to want only to protect Kirk. So Normalyn would walk or ride the bus throughout the city of complicated wonders, tired and luxurious streets, broken and lofty buildings—and flowers everywhere. As spring aged, her joy at seeing the frail, now fading jacarandas was tainted by sadness.
Normalyn thought constantly of David Lange. She always carried with her his telephone number and his address. Whenever she passed the telephone at the gas station, she paused. It still surprised her to remember that she had made that first call.
Sometimes Normalyn would apply slightly heavier makeup. She had bought her own, with Troja’s suggestions on “the best.” She would see in the mirror, always fleetingly, “that someone else” she had seen before. Once she reached the front door on her way out before she returned to wipe away the extra makeup.
At times, aware of someone looking at her with interest, she would allow herself a momentary pleasure before the feeling of being set up for ridicule conquered. Once at the corner, a good-looking youngman filling the gas tank of his car started a conversation with her. Normalyn was definitely attracted, too. As soon as she became aware of that, she rushed away. Still, she hardly ever put on her glasses. She knew now she had never needed them, as Enid had insisted.
When Troja’s telephone would ring, Normalyn might wonder now and then whether it would be Ted Gonzales. She was not sure whether that would gladden her or anger her.
“We are becoming one strange family,” Troja observed once as they sat watching a silly mystery called The Thin Man. The detective was a pitiful alcoholic and everyone in the movie thought that was hilarious. Normalyn remembered Enid’s pain-etched face—and remembered it now with such sorrow that she decided to escape the memory and the movie by taking a short walk.
She passed the telephone booth. She took out the slip of paper. She dialed David Lange’s private number. She knew she would hang up once she asserted what she now thought she had only imagined: that his voice had been concerned, gentle. When there was no answer, it became imperative that she reach him! She dialed again, demanding the telephone connect her. She focused sudden anger on the numbers themselves, punching digits, letting the phone ring, hanging up, dialing again immediately. She was about to hang up and dial yet another urgent time when she realized that the telephone had been answered, by the same soft voice she remembered. Her fingers almost crashed on the receiver.
“Normalyn? If it’s you, please don’t hang up.”
He knew it was her!—had expected her!—perhaps had even kept from answering the telephone, knowing she would become determined, and then— She stopped herself from attributing such enormous knowledgeability to a man she did not know. She drained all surprise from her voice: “David Lange?” She spoke the name her mind had been repeating so often in the past days.
“Yes.”
She could not think of what to say. He suggested that she might like to come to his office for a talk. If she preferred, he would of course meet her anywhere convenient for her. Then he said, “I believe our meeting would be to mutual advantage, Miss Morgan.” She set the time, and the date—tomorrow.
Of course she wouldn’t be there. As she walked away from the telephone, it was as if she had not called, so strange did it all seem.
In the morning she decided to verify its full reality.
Normalyn’s words stumbled on each other as she told Troja and Kirk that she was going “on an interview.”
“Secretary job?” Troja said absently as she added rouged highlights to her cheeks with a moistened finger. “And why, with all your money, hon?”
“What makes you assume it’s a ‘secretary job’?” Normalyn was annoyed. “And as for all my money—”
“Goin’ out myself,” Troja said. “I’ll drop you off if you’re goin’ my way.”
Trapped. Normalyn did not want anybody to know where she was going—especially not why, since she wasn’t sure herself. Not able to think up a reasonable address, she consulted the paper where she had written David Lange’s. She read it aloud, altering the last two numbers.
“Good address,” Kirk reacted. “Agents, producers, big shits. Best section of the strip.”
“Then I can drive you,” Troja decided, insisting that it was “sinful” to waste good money on a cab “when there are needy people everywhere.”
“Why are you so damn mysterious, hon?” Troja couldn’t keep herself from snapping when she dropped Normalyn off.
Normalyn waited until the Mustang had disappeared along the street before she hurried to the correct address. It was a small handsome building, only two stories high. Perhaps once it had been a comfortable home. As she walked up carpeted steps, a sobbing woman running out almost collided with her. She was in her sixties, attempting to look much younger; her hair was bleached colorless, her face was a calcimined mask outlined with makeup.
Along a wide hallway were six doors. One was open. She stood before it, before a large elegant room of quiet light.
“Normalyn,” David Lange said from behind his desk.
Normalyn walked in.
Nine
She stood inside an oaken office, only two steps into it, committing herself only that far, leaving the door open.
The man who had spoken to her stood up instantly from a graceful leather chair behind an antique desk.
He looks so kind . . . and sad, Normalyn thought.
“Please.” The man indicated an upholstered chair facing his.
Only when she accepted did he sit down again. Normalyn knew immediately she was not in danger from this gentle, courteous, intense man.
“I’m David Lange, Miss Morgan. I’m delighted that you’re here.” He clasped his hands before his chin and looked at her intently. “This is my private office, away from the newspaper. It’s where I write, think.” He seemed to want to expla
in the incongruity between this room and the tabloid he wrote for.
He was in his late forties, only slightly heavy, dressed impeccably in a suit. Brown hair was just beginning to thin. He wore glasses over dark eyes.
It was his eyes Normalyn had looked at first. They transformed what might have been a somewhat ordinary man into an extraordinary presence: eyes that were powerful and direct and yet seemed pulled into a depth of sorrow, as if they might command and plead at the same time.
His office was illumined only by sunlight reflected from the Hollywood hills through a large window sheltered by shutters, drawn open now, made of thin strips of wood, real wood. A stilled light that would probably remain constant for the greater part of the day created the impression that there were no shadows, only the controlled consistency of static light, compressed into one brilliant pinpoint within the very center of a beautiful crystal sphere on his desk. There were only two other objects on the gracefully carved desk: a cylindrical wooden container with pencils, a pad of long paper on a brown board. Books, mostly uniformly bound sets, lined paneled walls.
Behind the desk was an incongruous modern painting—bleeding slashes of smeared colors. About it, forming a perfect rectangle, each framed identically, were four photographs of—
Marilyn Monroe, Normalyn recognized.
In the first one, was she still Norma Jeane?—pretty, young, smiling. In the next photograph she had become a star—no, a demi-star, wearing a V-cut dress that adored her body, her head flung back in exultation before the camera. . . . Normalyn’s eyes skipped to the last photograph—a woman grown somewhat older, a woman of almost unreal beauty, wide eyes questioning. Sorrow and joy had interlocked to create a look that defined only her. Her lips parted slightly . . .
. . . as if undecided whether to laugh triumphantly or scream, Normalyn thought.
She allowed her eyes to return to the third photograph—of a woman with dark sunglasses, a hand about to guard her face from the eager focus of a pursuing camera. This face revealed a shielded despair. Grainy, a blown-up detail of a larger one, that photograph was . . .
