by John Rechy
Normalyn followed the anxious gaze of the three young people beside her—up, up to a window in the violated building.
“It’s her!" gasped one of the boys.
Normalyn saw a youngwoman drape herself on the sill of the open window. In a ray of light, her satin gown gleamed electric blue. She had hair so orange it seemed capable of scorching the orchid stuck in it. Loftily, her hand rose in a measured gesture of acknowledgment.
“She saw me!” screamed the second youngman. He wore a pin-striped suit with hugely padded shoulders.
“She’s calling me!” The youngman who had spotted the youngwoman at the window wore a leather jacket, scruffy engineer boots.
“Clearly, Lady Star is signaling to me!” The fat youngwoman with pinched red lips and a thousand yellow ringlets of hair tried to be haughty.
Normalyn knew that the powdery apparition at the window had focused her attention only on her.
Like a stuntman, a wiry youngman sprang out of one of several entrances to the building. He wore tall, glazed boots, shiny like linoleum, and a widely opened bloused shirt imitating satin. On his chest was a tattoo of a black tombstone, cracked. Out of the crack, a red flower bloomed.
“It’s Billy Jack!” one of the youngmen gasped, dancing excitedly with the two others about the young Dead Movie Star. Normalyn did not move. Her eyes were still on the window, the figure there about to rule what would occur down here.
“Who are you petitioning to be?” Billy Jack barked at the three.
“Shelley Winters!”
“Rudolph Valentino!”
“Zachary Scott!”
“Hmmm.” Billy Jack glanced back at the figure poised on the windowsill. With one finger, she sliced at her throat, twice, commanding execution. Then she spread out her hands, in an indifferent flutter.
Billy Jack said to the rotund girl, whose pouty face seemed constantly about to produce tears or sprinkles of giggles, “Don’t you know that Lady Star hates Shelley Winters? She’s not glamorous at all, and her only tragedy is that she can’t shut up.”
“I said Shirley Temple,” the plump girl revised.
“Get outta here and don’t come back.” Billy Jack’s wrath swept over to the skinny youngman picking nervously on a bad complexion: “You want to be Valentino? In a leather jacket and those fucked-up boots?”
“I m-m-meant James Dean,” said the assaulted youngman.
“James Dean had a red jacket, and it wasn’t leather,” said Billy Jack, “and we already got a James Dean—and three pretenders waiting for him to crash and die, so you haven’t got a fuckin’ chance, man.”
“Zachary Scott,” the youngman who had received ambiguous indifference from the figure in the window reminded.
“You can try again, that’s all.” Billy Jack interpreted Lady Star’s gesture. “I’ll even give you a tip,” he growled. “Curl your eyelashes some more.”
“Thank yowl” the youngman hardly breathed. “Give my love to Lady Star. Tell her I’ll be back!” He walked jauntily away, separating himself from the banished fat girl and the skinny youngman.
In his bloused shirt and shiny boots, exhibiting the tattooed tombstone and rose, Billy Jack stared at Normalyn. “Wow,” he said. Normalyn only stared back.
In the window of the château, Lady Star touched the flower in her hair and nodded.
“Cummon!” Billy Jack said to Normalyn. “Me and Lady Star been waiting for you!” Heavy eyebrows, darkened, loomed over colorless eyes. His inky black hair was slicked straight.
Disoriented by his words, Normalyn retreated. They were expecting her?
“Don’t you recognize me?” Billy Jack struck a three-quarter profile. “I’m Billy Jack—on TV and other me-dee-ah!” He elongated the mighty word. “Me and Lady Star founded the Dead Movie Stars. The reason we use different names is so we can be whatever movie star we want, when we want. And Billy Jack is”— he glowered as if at himself—“just a name I chose.” He discarded unspoken words. As if wired to an electric source, he could not stand still. He tangoed about, cocked his head, tried another expression—many vague people seeking to become one clear one. When she still was not impressed, Billy Jack warned, “I wouldn’t be so confident about looking like her." He withheld the ineffable name. “We’ve never allowed anyone to get as far as being a contender for her.” He still did not utter the awesome name. “And this time there’s another real good petitioner for her,” he added to his ominous warning.
He had easily assumed whom she had made herself up as, Normalyn thought with some satisfaction, some apprehension.
In the courtyard, debris gathered where there should have been flowers, perhaps waterlilies floating in the fountain. Now only sputters of yellow peeked out of weeds. Even the “Rooms and Apts For Rent” sign had aged.
Normalyn followed Billy Jack into the old château.
The wallpaper, which remained clinging but graying, had been painted over. Lightbulbs, bare, were mounted on ornate fixtures that might once have held candles. Leprous fragments of carpet still hinted of a former thickness crushed by unnoticing steps.
Normalyn went up the stairs with Billy Jack, into another corridor. The semidarkness was broken only by streaks of light where it managed to scurry in through a broken window.
Billy Jack stopped on a step, in a puddle of light created by one lonesome bulb, still glowing. “You think I look like Valentino? That’s who I’m thinking of trying out—for a while.”
Normalyn thought of the proud statue in the small park. She shook her head, no.
In a second, Billy Jack—who was about eighteen—turned for her into a boy dressed oddly, reacting against rejection. He slicked back his hair with saliva-moistened palms, regaining his shaken stature. “Cummon!”
He stopped before a door. “I got this fantasy,” he confessed with sudden wistfulness, “that she really comes back and out of all the guys who said they loved her, she chooses me—just in time!”
He knocked on the door.
“Just in time. You know huccome? So you won’t have to kill yourself again, Marilyn Monroe,” he addressed Normalyn.
Twenty-Four
“Pass through!” commanded a deepened female voice behind the closed door.
Kill herself? Normalyn looked at the strange youngman who had said that, so easily. He was smiling as if he had made a joke.
“Shouldn’t’ve called you Marilyn Monroe,” he confided. “We don’t allow petitioners the name of the Dead Movie Star until they pass real hard auditions.” He opened the door.
The room was darkened except for a cone of light. Within it, the youngwoman in electric blue reclined now on an old chaise whose fabric had torn, creating eruptions of gray cotton.
Billy Jack twisted the fringed shade of a floor lamp. Light sprang on Normalyn.
Lady Star rose from the chaise and strided toward Normalyn. In her hair, the orchid, real today, had begun to wilt. “My Gawd!” Lady Star gasped at Normalyn. “You’re good!”
Billy Jack stood proudly beside Normalyn as if he had discovered her.
Reedily slender, the youngwoman in the shiny gown was the same age as Billy Jack. The satin dress dipped at small but proud breasts. On her whitened face, her mouth gleamed orange-red. An improvised slit on the lower part of her gown allowed one thin leg to emerge.
Normalyn matched Lady Star’s gaping stare, blink for blink.
The sparsely furnished room was cluttered with black-and-white movie-star photographs—on walls, propped on tables.
Lady Star whipped the edge of her gown; it made a slicing sound. She moved back and stood by her chaise, one hand on its curved back. Like Billy Jack, she subdued her initial reaction of approval.
“So! You aspire to be a Dead Movie Star, darling! Well, you have to know at the onset—” She paused to verify the word to herself. “Outset?” She shrugged. “You must know how difficult the prospect of becoming a Dead Movie Star is, but we will take your petition under advisement.” She tossed
the last word as proudly as she tossed her reddened head. The hair did not move, the orchid fell. “Shit!” She was about to retrieve it, but she disdained: “Let the old wither and die,” she pronounced. “A secret admirer has been sending fresh orchids.” She plucked a slightly soiled felt orchid from a box on a table nearby; cheap jewelry spilled out, opaque glass.
Normalyn studied this extraordinary creature she had seen giving interviews on television.
“There was a reasonable petitioner for Lana Turner earlier today—down there.” Lady Star’s hand indicated the vast world outside her window.
Billy Jack said confidentially but with a slightly mischievous boyish grin, “Lady Star, Lana Turner isn’t dead.”
Lady Star slammed her hand against the back of the chaise. “How many times do I have to tell you and the world?—they’re dead when you think they’re dead—or when they grow old and awful.” She flung out despised words.
“Everyone knows Lana Turner isn’t dead,” Normalyn said. And she’s more beautiful than ever, Miss Bertha verified. “And she’s more beautiful than ever!” Normalyn said. Although she wasn’t exactly sure who Lana Turner was, Normalyn bristled against the cruelty.
With a stabbing finger, Lady Star indicated a canvas chair for Normalyn to sit on; there were several about the room.
Normalyn chose another chair. She decided she would be deliberately subdued, quiet, mysterious. Like Enid.
“Now!” Lady Star got down to essentials. “This is how it works, darling: From among many would-be petitioners for Dead Movie Stars—” She waved her hand royally toward the window to indicate that they were even now gathering outside the château longing for an audience with her.
“There’re four more already!” Billy Jack reported, looking out the window.
“From those many, many, we select, for preliminary interview, a few perhaps likely candidates. Like you,” she tossed away. “And if—if!—” Her finger rose in admonitory emphasis. “—if, based on certain, uh . . .” She paused to rehearse the next word. “—devicements”—she shrugged—“if you survive as a would-be petitioner—and don’t think it’s easy,” said a squeaky voice, “you may be allowed at our next auditions,” resumed the throaty one.
“Secret auditions,” Billy Jack added gravely.
“Yes, it is the only time we do not welcome outside attention,” Lady Star added solemnly, and continued to explain the chain of elevation: “And if you sustain our interest through preliminary examination, you may, just may, be granted the status of . . . pretender! And if—if—and it gets harder and harder,” she said with girlish breathlessness, again deepened, “. . . if you survive more scrutiny, you will enter the last and most difficult phase of auditions . . . as a contender! And then!”
“Then!” Billy Jack intoned.
“Then if—and this is the biggest if of all,” said the excited voice, once again conquered by the deepened one, “if you pass rigorous attention—and we allow a range of creative approaches to convince us—you may, just may—just possibly may—be deemed worthy to become . . . a Dead Movie Star”—she closed her eyes— “for Marilyn Monroe!”
Petitioner! Pretender! Contender! Allowed . . . permitted . . . the words themselves made Normalyn wince. This was what those eager young people outside, and so many others, were willing to put up with to join this motley group? Normalyn forced an extended yawn, calling attention to it by pretending to disguise it.
Billy Jack whispered to Lady Star.
Lady Star glared at him. “She needs us!”
Normalyn controlled her suspicions. What was there to suspect? She stood up, stretching as if now doubly wearied.
Quickly Lady Star allowed, “Oh, I suppose, darling, that you do have a certain, oh, shane-see-kwa—”
“What?” Billy Jack stared at Normalyn to see what Lady Star had detected on her.
“It’s French,” she informed, “for I-don’t-know-what.”
Normalyn’s hope that she might find something relevant here—perhaps some source of information—had disappeared. She would not stay any longer.
“We can help you . . . darling,” Lady Star said.
Had her voice become sinister? “If I help you?” Normalyn challenged. She was sure that earlier Billy Jack had whispered a warning of restraint to Lady Star.
“Tit for tat!” Lady Star plucked twice at the darkened air.
Step by step. An echo of David Lange’s words—
Billy Jack quickly answered a knock at the door. A man, slightly hefty, middle-aged, in an ordinary business suit, stood there; he carried a camera, paraphernalia. He looked at Normalyn.
Past him and through the still open door, Normalyn hurried out and down the corridor—the wrong way! Billy Jack caught up with her at a dead end. She felt trapped against the grimy wall. A cracked window allowed twisted light in. Through the broken pane, there was suddenly the incongruous scent of flowers.
“Huccome you ran away like that?” Billy Jack demanded.
“Because I don’t want to be photographed—yet!” Normalyn added the qualification to placate his further suspicions.
“Okay,” Billy Jack accepted after a few thoughtful moments. “You can stay in my room till he’s gone.” He led her into a small jutting corridor within lurking shadows. He opened a door with his key. Normalyn did not go in.
“I see him! He’s got his camera!” Billy Jack coaxed her in.
Normalyn dashed into the room—and only then was sure no one else had been in the hallway. Billy Jack locked the door behind her.
Normalyn saw: a rumpled army cot, a small shower without curtains, boxes as furniture, scattered clothes, dozens of photographs of movie stars, movie posters. And there was a colored blowup of Marilyn Monroe. Normalyn gasped—it was her own reflection in a streaked, yellowing mirror!
Billy Jack aimed a spotlight, hooked to a wall, at a splintered mantel over a fireplace sealed with crossed boards. On the shelf was a framed photograph of the nude body of Marilyn Monroe on red velvet, “Golden Dreams.” Next to it was another framed photograph, the same size.
“Go ahead and look at it,” Billy Jack said.
In the second photograph, Billy Jack, naked, posed so that his body seemed to be reacting sexually to the one next to it.
“I told ya, my fantasy,” Billy Jack said huskily. He opened his shirt on the tattoo of the cracked tombstone and flower. He turned the spotlight on Normalyn.
Her body fought new and remembered terror. She pressed against the wall, where the bold light had smashed and frozen. “I trusted you!” she yelled.
“Shouldn’t’ve,” he said. “You’re fuckin’ gullible.” He advanced on her. “You trust too much—just like her. She believed lies, too!”
“I’ll scream—” Normalyn’s mouth was so dry she could hardly form words.
“In this fuckin’ dump?” Billy Jack sneered. “People scream all the time. Scream, goddammit! I like that!” His wiry arms reached out for her.
She prepared to claw at him, kick—
He doubled over laughing, like a nasty child. “Fooled ya! I was just acting! Pretty damn good, huh? You really thought I was gonna rape you, huh? See—that’s what you’re going to have to do at auditions: be convincing, act out dramatic scenes from the secret lives of the movie stars—rape, murder, suicide— glamorous shit like that.”
The reversal was so startling that Normalyn did not yet feel relief.
“Now I gotta go make sure I’m in the picture with Lady Star!”
When he left, Normalyn pulled at the door. Locked! There was one window, painted black, partly open. She looked out. Too far to jump! She saw the desolate garden below. She pushed against the flimsy door.
“Sorry about locking the door.” Billy Jack was back. “Just do it automatically. Did it scare you? The photographer’s gone.”
“Move away from the door!” Normalyn used her most assertive voice.
“Aw, cummon,” he said, “you don’t have to be scared of m
e. I’m just helping you rehearse for auditions—because,” he said, “we want you to be a contender.”
“Why?” She could not rein her suspicions.
He shrugged. “Cause that’s what makes auditions good,” he said easily. He moved to one side, and, bowing, spread his hands to assert her safe exit.
In a tangoing step, he accompanied her along the corridor. Lady Star waited at the open door of her room. “It was a short sitting—but worthy, worthy. A feature in L.A. Weekly,” she dismissed. “Oh, the mee-dee-ahs”—she trilled the word —“are crazy about us! . . . And, darling, if you don’t have a place to stay, I may be able to importune on the manager for an occupancy—”
Billy Jack said, “There’s always rooms in this dump. All you have to do is wait an hour for some old creep to die.”
“I myself hope to die at midnight on my twenty-ninth birthday,” Lady Star sighed. She tossed over her shoulder at Normalyn, “Darling, now all you have to do to become a petitioner is to come up with a spectacular secret about her—something only you know. And of course you must already know one or you wouldn’t be here!”
You’re doing it again, Normalyn warned herself; you’re letting yourself Suspect everything, everyone! But this persisted: Lady Star wanted something from her.
Lady Star fished a fake-pearl necklace from her improvised jewel box; she wound it experimentally about her arm. “Joan Crawford wore it once, like this.” She showed Normalyn.
Normalyn had heard that from—
Like decorated shadows in the darkened room, several young people walked in: a youngwoman with blonde hair piled on her head in giant curls; another with ink-black hair framing a whitened face; one with an eye obliterated by a yellow wave; a red-jacketed youngman with pouty lips, squinty eyes, tousled hair; one with a thin strip of a moustache, and a red bandanna about his neck; and another with thickened, long, long eyelashes, darkened eyebrows.
Lady Star greeted them in her little-girl voice: “Hi, Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr, Veronica Lake, James Dean, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power . . . Where’s Rita Hayworth?”
“Her mother found her!” gasped the tiniest, Veronica Lake.
