Tell-All

by Chuck Palahniuk

  The Katherine Kenton fantasy stand-in lifts a tube of lipstick, twists it to its full red length and reaches toward the mirror. Over the beautiful reflection of herself, she writes: Webster’s amazing, massive penis is the only joy in this world that I will miss. She writes, As the French would say … Adios. The fantasy version of Miss Kathie dashes a tear from her eye, turning quickly and exiting the dressing room.

  As the shot follows her, Miss Kathie dashes through the maze of backstage props, unused sets and loitering stagehands; the voice-over reads, “ ‘According to the statements of Miss Hazie, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., had often talked in private about ending his own life. Despite the general public impression that he and Katherine were deeply, devotedly in love, Miss Hazie testified that a morose, secret depression had settled over him. Perhaps it was this same secret sorrow which now drove my exquisite Katherine to eat those tainted sweets only minutes before the hit show’s finale.’ ”

  Onstage, Japanese bombs pelt the ships of Pearl Harbor. Under this pounding cascade of exploding death, the svelte Miss Kathie leaps from stage right, bounding up the tilting deck of the USS Arizona. Already, her complexion has paled, turned pallid beneath the surface of her pancake makeup.

  In voice-over, we hear Webster reading, “ ‘At the greatest moment of the greatest career of the greatest actress who has ever lived, the rainbow reds and greens and whites of those fatal candies still tingeing her luscious lips …’ ”

  At the highest point of the doomed battleship, the ideal Miss Kathie stands at attention and salutes her audience.

  “ ‘At that moment, in what was clearly and undeniably a romantic self-murder,’ ” the voice-over continues, “ ‘my dearest Katherine, the greatest love of my life, blew a kiss to me, where I sat in the sixth row … and she succumbed.’ ”

  Still saluting, the figure collapses, plunging into the azure tropical water.

  The voice of Webster reads, “ ‘The end.’ ”

  ACT III, SCENE THREE

  We open with the distinct pop of a champagne cork, dissolving to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the family crypt. Froth spills from the bottle she holds, splashing on the stone floor as Miss Kathie hurries to pour wine into the two dusty champagne glasses I hold. Here, in the depths of stone beneath the cathedral where she was so recently wed, Miss Kathie takes a glass and lifts it, toasting a new urn which rests on the stone shelf beside the urns engraved Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., Loverboy, Lothario. All of her long-dead loved ones.

  The new urn of shining, polished silver sits engraved with the name Terrence Terry, and includes a smudged lipstick kiss identical to the old kisses dried to the magenta of ancient blood, almost black on the urns now rusted and tarnished with age.

  Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a toast to this newest silver urn, saying, “Bonne nuit, Terrence.” She sips the champagne, adding, “That’s Spanish for bon voyage.”

  Around us a few flickering candles light the dusty, cold crypt, shimmering amid the clutter of empty wine bottles. Dirty champagne glasses hold dead spiders, each spider curled like a bony fist. Abandoned ashtrays hold stubbed cigarettes smudged with a long history of lipstick shades, the cigarettes yellowed, the lipstick faded from red to pink. Ashes and dust. The mirror of Miss Kathie’s real face, scratched and scarred with her past, lies facedown among the souvenirs and sacrifices of everything she’s left behind. The pill bottles half-full of Tuinal and Dexamyl. Nembutal, Seconal and Demerol.

  Tossing back her champagne and pouring herself another glass, Miss Kathie says, “I think we ought to record this occasion, don’t you?”

  She means for me to prop the mirror in its upright position while she stands on the lipstick X marked on the floor. Miss Kathie holds out her left hand to me, her fingers spread so I can remove her Harry Winston diamond solitaire. When her face aligns with the mirror, her eyes perfectly bracketed by the crow’s-feet, her lips centered between the scratched hollows and sagging cheeks, only when she’s exactly superimposed on the record of her past … do I take the diamond and begin to draw.

  On the opening night of Unconditional Surrender, she says Terry had paid her a visit backstage, in her dressing room before the first curtain. In the chaos of telegrams and flowers, it’s likely Terry purloined the Jordan almonds. He’d stopped to convey his best wishes and inadvertently made off with the poisoned candy, saving her life. Poor Terrence. The accidental martyr.

  As Miss Kathie speculates, I plow the diamond along the soft surface of the mirror, gouging her new wrinkles and worry lines into our cumulative written record.

  Since then, Miss Kathie says she’s ransacked Webster’s luggage. We can’t risk overlooking any new murder schemes. She’s discovered yet another final chapter, a seventh draft of the Love Slave finale. “It would seem that I’m to be shot by an intruder next,” she says, “when I interrupt him in the process of burgling my home.”

  But at last she’s managed a counterattack: she’s mailed this newest final chapter to her lawyer, sealed within a manila envelope, with the instructions that he should open it and read the contents should she meet a sudden, suspicious death. After that she informed the Webster of her actions. Of course he vehemently denied any plot; he protested and railed that he’d never written such a book. He insisted that he’d only ever loved her and had no intention to cause her harm. “But that’s exactly,” Miss Kathie says, “what I’d expected him to say, the evil cad.”

  Now, in the event Miss Kathie falls under an omnibus, bathes with an electric radio, feeds herself to grizzly bears, tumbles from a tall building, sheathes an assassin’s sharp dagger with her heart or ingests cyanide—then Webster Carlton Westward III will never get to publish his terrible “lie-ography.” Her lawyers will expose his ongoing plot. Instead of hitting any best-seller list, the Webster will go sit in the electric chair.

  All the while, I drag the diamond’s point to draw Miss Kathie’s new gray hairs onto the mirror. I tap the glass to mark any new liver spots.

  “I should be safe,” Miss Kathie says, “from any homicidal burglars.”

  Under pressure, the mirror bends and distorts, stretching and warping my Miss Kathie’s reflection. The glass feels that fragile, crisscrossed with so many flaws and scars.

  Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a champagne toast to her reflected self, saying, “As Webb’s ultimate punishment, I made him marry me.…”

  The would-be assassin has now become her full-time, live-in love slave.

  The bright-brown-eyed wonder will do her bidding, collect her dry cleaning, chauffeur her, scour her bathroom, run errands, wash her dishes, massage her feet and provide any specific oral-genital pleasure Miss Kathie deems necessary, until death do they part. And even then, it had best not be her death or the Webster will likely find himself arrested.

  “But just to be on the safe side …” she says, and reaches to retrieve something off the stone shelf. From among the abandoned pill bottles and outdated cosmetics and contraceptives, Miss Kathie’s hand closes around something she carries back to her fur coat pocket. She says, “Just in case …” and slips this new item, tinted red with rust, blue with oil, into her coat pocket.

  It’s a revolver.

  ACT III, SCENE FOUR

  Here we dissolve into yet another flashback. Let’s see the casting office at Monogram Pictures or Selig studios along Gower Street, what everyone called “Poverty Row,” or maybe the old Central Casting offices on Sunset Boulevard, where a crowd of would-be actresses mill about all day with their fingers crossed. These, the prettiest girls from across the world, voted Miss Sweet Corn Queen and Cherry Blossom Princess. A former reigning Winter Carnival Angel, a Miss Bountiful Sea Harvest. A pantheon of mythic goddesses made flesh and blood. Miss Best Jitterbug. A beauty migration, all of them vying for greater fame and glory. Among them, a couple of the girls draw your focus. One girl, her eyes are set too close together, her nose dwarfs her chin, her head rests squarely on her chest without any hint of an inte
rvening neck.

  The second young woman, waiting in the casting office, cooling her heels … her eyes are the brightest amethyst purple. An almost supernatural violet.

  In this flashback, we watch the ugly young woman, the plain woman, as she watches the lovely woman. The monstrous young woman, shoulders slumped, hands hanging all raw knuckled and gnawed fingernails, she spies on the young woman with the violet eyes. More important, the ugly woman watches the way in which the other people watch the lovely woman. The other actors seem stunned by those violet eyes. When the pretty one smiles, everyone watching her also smiles. Within moments of first seeing her, other people stand taller, pulling their bellies back to their spines. These queens and ladies and angels, their hands cease fidgeting. They adopt her same shoulders-back posture. Even their breathing slows to match that of the lovely girl. Upon seeing her, every woman seems to become a lesser version of this astonishing girl with violet eyes.

  In this flashback, the ugly girl has almost given up hope. She’s studied her craft with Constance Collier and Guthrie McClintic and Margaret Webster, yet she still can’t find work. The homely girl does possess an innate, shrewd cunning; none of her gestures is ever without intention and motivation. In her underplaying, the ugly girl displays nothing short of brilliance. Even as she watches those present unconsciously mimic the lovely girl, the ugly one considers a plan. As a possible alternative to becoming an actress herself, perhaps the better strategy would be to join forces—combining her own skill and intelligence with the other girl’s beauty. Between the two of them, they might yield one immortal motion picture star.

  The homely girl might coach the pretty one, steer her into the best parts, protect her from dangerous shoals and entanglements of business and romance. The beastly girl can boast of no prominent cheekbones or Cupid’s-bow mouth; still, such a bland face nurtures a nimble mind.

  In contrast, beauty which evokes special favors and opens doors, such astounding eyes can cripple the brain behind them.

  Counting backward, before the Webster was Paco, before him the senator. Before him the faggot chorus boy. Before that came the suicidal business tycoon, but even he wasn’t her first husband. The first “was-band” was her high school sweetheart—Allan … somebody—some nobody. Her second was the sleazy photographer who snapped her picture and took it to a casting director; good riddance to him. Her third husband was an aspiring actor who’s now selling real estate. None of those first three posed a threat.

  While my position was never that of husband or spouse or partner, I was always far more important.

  Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., was another story. The founder of a steel smelting empire, only he possessed the resources to marry my Miss Kathie and give her a life at home, a passel of children, reduce her to the status of a Gene Tierney hausfrau … which is the Italian word for loser. Steel would buy her away from the larger world the way the Grimaldi family bought Grace Kelly, and I would be left with nothing to show for my effort.

  Every husband had been a step forward in her career, but Oliver Drake represented a step forward in her personal life. By the time they’d met, Miss Kathie could no longer play the ingénue, which is Spanish for slut. The future meant scratching for character roles, featured cameos shot on location in obscure places. Instead of the glory of playing Mrs. Little Lord Fauntleroy or Mrs. Wizard of Oz, Miss Kathie would take billing in third place as the mother of Captain Ahab or the maiden aunt of John the Baptist.

  Poised at that difficult fork in life, Miss Kathie was looking for an easier path.

  It was so enormously selfish of her. The life’s work of writers and directors, artists and press agents had built this pedestal she was tempted to abandon. There were larger things at stake than love and peace. The independent, pioneering role model for millions was leaving the stage. A legend seemed about to retire. Thus the tycoon’s apparent death by suicide would preserve a cultural icon.

  It was no difficult task to persuade several top film executives and directors to testify to Mr. Drake’s depressed state of mind. Some of Hollywood’s biggest names swore that Drake often spoke of ending his own life by cyanide. In that manner, the film community was able to retain one of its brightest investments.

  In the flashback, we see the ugly girl wend her way closer to the pretty one. With a studied, rehearsed nonchalance the homely girl stumbles into contact with the beauty. Jostling her, the clumsy beast says, “Gosh, I’m sorry.…”

  The mob mills around them, that crowd of pretty anonymous faces. The Hay Bale Queen. The Sweet Onion Princess. Lovely, forgettable faces, born to flirt and fuck and die.

  All those years and decades ago, the beauty smiles that astonishing smile, saying, “My name’s Kathie.” She says, “Really it’s Katherine.” Offering her hand, she says, “Katherine Kenton.”

  Every movie star is a slave to someone.

  Even the masters serve their own masters.

  As if in friendly greeting, the beast offers her own hand in return, saying, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Hazie Coogan.”

  And the two young women join hands.

  ACT III, SCENE FIVE

  We slowly dissolve back to the present. The mise-en-scène: the daytime interior of a basement kitchen in the town house of Katherine Kenton; arranged along the upstage wall: an electric stove, an icebox, a door to the alleyway, a dusty window in said door. A narrow stairway leads up to the second floor. Still carved in the window glass, we see the heart from Loverboy’s arrival as a puppy, oh, scenes and scenes ago.

  In the foreground, I sit on a white-painted kitchen chair with my feet propped on a similar white-painted table, my legs crossed at the ankle; my hands turn the pages of yet another screenplay. Open across my lap is a screenplay about Lillian Hellman starring Lillian Hellman written by Lillian Hellman.

  Upstage, Miss Kathie’s feet appear on the steps which descend from the second floor. Her pink slippers. The hem of her pink dressing gown. The gown flutters, revealing a flash of smooth thigh. Her hands appear, one clutching a ream of paper, her other hand clutching a wad of black fabric. Even before her face appears in the doorway, her voice calls, “Hazie …” Almost a shout, her voice says, “Someone telephoned me, just now, from the animal hospital.”

  On the page, Lilly Hellman runs faster than a speeding bullet. She’s more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

  Standing in the doorway, Miss Kathie holds the black fabric, the ream of papers. She says, “Loverboy did not die from eating chocolates …” and she throws the black fabric onto the kitchen table. There the fabric lies, creating a face of two empty eyes and an open mouth. It’s a ski mask, identical to the one described in Love Slave, worn by the Yakuza assassin wielding the ice pick.

  Miss Kathie says, “The very nice veterinarian explained to me that Loverboy was poisoned with cyanide.…”

  Like so many others around here …

  On the scripted page, Lilly Hellman parts the Red Sea and raises Lazarus from the dead.

  “After that,” she says, “I telephoned Groucho Marx and he says you never invited him to the funeral.…” Her violet eyes flashing, she says, “Neither did you invite Joan Fontaine, Sterling Hayden or Frank Borzage.” Her dulcet voice rising, Miss Kathie says, “The only person you did invite was Webster Carlton Westward III.”

  She swings the ream of paper she holds rolled in her fist, swatting the pages against the black ski mask, making the kitchen table jump. Miss Kathie screams, “I found this mask, tucked away—in your room.”

  Such an accusation. My Miss Kathie says that I poisoned the Pekingese, then invited only the bright-eyed Webster to join us in the crypt so he could arrive bearing flowers at her moment of greatest emotional need. Throughout the past few months, while I’ve seemed to be warning her against the Webster, she insists that I’ve actually been aiding and abetting him. She claims I’ve been telling him when to arrive and how best to court her. After that, the Webster and myself, t
he two of us poisoned Terry by accident. She says the Webster and myself are plotting to kill her.

  Bark, honk, cluck … conspiracy.

  Oink, bray, tweet … treachery.

  Moo, meow, whinny … collusion most foul.

  On the screenplay page, Lilly Hellman turns water to wine. She heals the lepers. She spins filthy straw into the purest gold.

  When my Miss Kathie pauses to take a breath, I tell her not to be ridiculous. Clearly, she’s mistaken. I am not scheming with the Webster to murder her.

  “Then how do you explain this?” she says, offering the pages in her hand. Printed along the top margin of each, a title. Typed there, it says, Paragon: An Autobiography. Authored by Katherine Kenton. As told to Hazie Coogan. Shaking her head, she says, “I did not write this. In fact, I found it tucked under your mattress.…”

  The story of her life. Written in her name. By someone else.

  Flipping past the title page, she looks at me, her violet eyes twitching between me and the manuscript she holds. Her pink dressing gown trembles. From the kitchen table, the empty ski mask stares up at the ceiling. “ ‘Chapter one,’ ” my Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘My life began in the truest and fullest sense the glorious day I first met my dearest friend, Hazie Coogan.…’ ”

  ACT III, SCENE SIX

  We continue with the audio bridge of Katherine Kenton reading from the manuscript of Paragon, “ ‘… the glorious day I first met my dearest friend, Hazie Coogan …’ ”

  Once more we see the two girls from the casting office. In a soft-focus montage of quick cuts, the ugly girl combs the long auburn hair of the pretty girl. Using a file, the ugly girl shapes the fingernails of the pretty girl, painting them with pink lacquer. Pursing her lips, the ugly girl blows air to dry the painted nails as if she were about to kiss the back of the pretty girl’s hand.