Blonde

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The President’s handsome face turned ugly. The President cursed Castro in a way shocking to the Blond Actress: should she, an ordinary citizen though a loyal Democrat, be a witness to such remarks? Or were they being made partly for her benefit? The scene throbbed with sex. The Blond Actress had gradually ceased stroking the President out of a realization that he was distracted and not thinking of her at all. It’s Castro. His rival. With dismay she noticed the dirtied plates, the smears of plum lipstick on a pillow. Briskly she began to tidy up. The June Allyson of sexpots, was Marilyn. She set the tray aside, not wishing to examine the wineglasses closely. Moved the scotch bottle to the bedside table and before she knew what she did, though her head was buzzing from the combination of Dom Perignon and her medication, she took a swig of the whisky. How it burned going down! She hated the taste. She coughed, sputtered. She took a second swallow.

  Past three o’clock already!—the President would be leaving their rendezvous soon. How soon, the Blond Actress hadn’t been told. Still the conversation continued. The Blond Actress gathered that the Russians and the Cubans were conspiring together—“Payback for the Bay of Pigs, eh? We’ll see!” The Blond Actress began to tremble inwardly for the President was speaking of—nuclear missiles? Soviet missiles? In Cuba? She wanted to press her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to eavesdrop; she didn’t want to risk the President’s rage; she could see that the President was hot-tempered as the Ex-Athlete and of a similar masculine type. Anger aroused him sexually, and so anger was pleasure to him. He saw her staring at him, his penis bobbing like an angry head, and said, “Baby. C’mon.” The President tugged at her hair. Pulled her toward him to kiss her roughly even as he gripped the phone receiver in a practiced way between his neck and shoulder. Out of the receiver’s plastic interior a miniature male voice droned. The President whispered, “Don’t be shy.” As in a movie scene hastily rehearsed, the Blond Actress kissed him and fondled him and stroked his hair, knowing what she was expected to do, what the script demanded of her, but resisting.

  “Baby . . .?”

  Gently at first, but with the assurance of a man accustomed to getting his way, the President gripped the Blond Actress by the nape of her neck, guiding her head toward his groin. I won’t. I’m not a call girl. I’m—in fact, she was Norma Jeane, confused and frightened. She could not recall how she’d gotten to this place, who’d brought her here. Was it Marilyn? But why did Marilyn do such things? What did Marilyn want? Or was it a movie scene? A soft-porn film? She’d declined all offers but possibly it was 1948 again and she was unemployed, dropped by The Studio. She shut her eyes, trying to envision the very hotel room in which she’d found herself, a luxury room, she was playing the part of a famous blond actress meeting the boyishly handsome leader of the free world, the President of the United States, for a romantic rendezvous, The Girl Upstairs in a harmless soft-porn film, just once, why not? She fumbled for the whisky bottle another time and the President relented, allowed her a drink. The fiery liquid burned but comforted, too.

  Any scene (so long as it’s a scene and not life) can be played. Whether well or badly it can be played. And it won’t last more than a few minutes.

  No argument! These lovers were never to argue.

  There was the Blond Actress naked entwined in a man’s naked limbs. She could breathe now. She’d managed to overcome a powerful wave of nausea. She’d been in terror that she might vomit, gagging, no sensation worse than helpless gagging, in this bed of all places! in this man’s arms. She apologized for coughing but couldn’t seem to stop. Swallowing the male’s semen is in homage to the male, but was ever anything more disgusting; yes but if you love the male, the man, shouldn’t you? love his cock, his semen? Her jaws ached, and the nape of her neck where he’d gripped her, so hard at the end as his hips bucked she’d been in terror that he would break her neck. Dirty girl. Dirty cunt. Oh, baby. You’re fan-tas-tic. In soft-porn films the scenes are crudely spliced together, no one cares much for continuity or narrative logic, but in actual life a sex scene may shift to another mode quite naturally, and now the telephone conversation with the White House was over, now the receiver was back on the hook, now the President could speak to the Blond Actress there was the anticipation on her part that he would speak to her and when he did not, when he simply lay panting, a forearm flung over his sweaty forehead, she heard herself say, in desperation for lines, any lines, since she had no script, “C-castro? He’s a dictator? But, Pronto, should the Cuban people be punished? This embargo? Oh gosh won’t that make them hate us all the more? And then—” These startling words, uttered in the seismic upheaval of the king-sized canopied bed, were lost amid the ravaged sheets and pillows; the President no more acknowledged hearing them than he would have acknowledged the noise of antiquated plumbing elsewhere in the suite, a toilet flushing. Since his agitated climax, the President hadn’t touched the Blond Actress; his penis lay limp and spent amid the bristly groin, like an aged slug; his face had taken on the tone of a rueful maturity; he wasn’t an American boy any longer but a patrician patriarch; but, since she was still naked, she would remain The Girl.

  She tried to speak again, possibly to apologize for offering her uninformed opinion, or maybe in breathy Girl coquettishness she meant to reiterate it, and saw herself, on the escalator, suddenly falling. Or maybe he was pressing on her windpipe. A salty-tasting palm over her mouth and an elbow against her neck. She was too weak to protest. She lost consciousness and was wakened sometime later (she could gauge it was perhaps twenty minutes later, some of the stickiness in the bedclothes had coagulated) to another man, a stranger, vigorously mounting her; a man in a hurry, like a jockey on a filly; a man in a white shirt smelling of starch; a man naked below the waist, his penis thrusting blindly at her, and into her, the cut between her legs, the emptiness between her legs that hurt, and she pushed at him feebly trying to murmur No! no please! this isn’t fair. She loved the President and no other man, this was an unfair use of her love. A man pumping away inside her when she couldn’t wake up and (possibly it was the President clean-shaven now?) thrusting himself into her with the dogged and inexplicable air of a man kicking into hard-packed sand.

  Then it was later, and somebody was trying to revive her. Shaking her. Her head lolling on her shoulders. Bloodshot eyes rolled back into her skull. In the near distance her lover’s voice cold with fury For Christ’s sake get her out of here.

  It was later still. An ornate little bedside clock chimed the hour of four-thirty. Voices issued overhead. “Miss Monroe. This way. Ma’am, do you need assistance?” No she did not! God damn she was fine. Unsteady on her bare feet and haphazardly dressed, but she was fine, a little dizzy, but shook off unwanted hands on her. In the gilt-and-marble bathroom. In the mirror blazing with light that hurt her eyes. There was her Magic Friend sallow-skinned and exhausted, a crust of puke lining her lips. She stooped to rinse her face and started to pass out but the cold water revived her and she was able to pee into the toilet, a scalding flaming pee, she whimpered so loudly there came a swift rap on the door—“Ma’am?”—and hurriedly she said no, no, she was fine, no don’t come inside, no please.

  The lock had been removed from this door, and why?

  On the counter were her purse and overnight bag. With shaking hands she removed the stained clothing she’d hastily struggled into, thinking they would turn her directly out onto the street, and changed into a silk dress, this a rich royal purple of the hue the Brunette Actress from North Carolina had worn with such style. She wouldn’t trouble with stockings. Must’ve left her garter belt in the bedroom. As long as she had her expensive Italian pointy-toed shoes, what the hell. She slapped on makeup, smeared bright fuchsia lipstick on her swollen mouth, rummaged for her cloche hat and pulled it down to hide her matted hair. A girl dumb as Sugar Kane deserves a beating. As she was leaving the suite by a side entrance, Dick Tracy to her left, Bugs Bunny to her right, both men gripping her by the upper arm, she happened to see through a
part-opened door the President!—her lover!—she’d had reason to believe had already left the suite. He was wearing a beautifully fitted dark pinstripe suit, a white shirt, and a silver-checked tie; his jaws were freshly shaven and his hair was damp from the shower; he was talking and laughing with a red-haired young woman in what appeared to be jodhpurs; wasn’t that what you called a riding costume?—jodhpurs. The President and the red-haired girl spoke with an identical Boston-lockjaw accent and the Blond Actress stared at them, her heart beating hard. Oh, she wasn’t jealous! This girl might be a relative of his, a friend of the family. She called out softly, “Oh, excuse me?” meaning to slip into the room to say goodbye to the President and to be introduced to the red-haired girl, but Dick Tracy and Bugs Bunny yanked her away with such violence she worried her arms were loosened from their sockets. The President was staring at her. His face flushed with anger to the hue of rare-cooked beef. He strode to the door and shut it in her face.

  She tried to defend herself against her captors. One of them shook her and the other slapped her and her mouth was bleeding. “Oh! My new dress.” It was Dick Tracy with his grimacing razor jaw. “You’re not hurt, ma’am. That’s red grease from your mouth, ma’am.” She began to cry. She was bleeding through her fingers. One of them pressed upon her, in disgust, a wad of toilet paper. They were hurrying her along a corridor. She was crying, threatening she would tell how they’d treated her, she would tell the President, the President would have them fired, and there came doughy-faced Jiggs with eyes now fixed upon her, not blank and lacking pupils any longer, warning, in a mean voice, “Nobody threatens the President of the United States, lady. That’s treason.”

  She would awaken when the plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport. Her first thought was At least they didn’t shoot me. At least.

  WHITEY STORIES

  In the mirror, Whitey was crying!

  She stammered, “Whitey, what—is it?”

  Stricken with guilt, knowing it must be in pity of her. Her makeup man wept in pity of her.

  It was late. A morning in April, unless a morning in May. In the third week of the filming. No: it must be later, a week or two later. At first she’d believed this was her day off, then realizing her mistake when the intrepid Whitey arrived promptly at 7:30 A.M. as evidently they’d planned. The masseur Nico had left not long before. A coincidence, or maybe not a coincidence since they were both Geminis; Nico the masseur was an insomniac too. Nico at night, Whitey at daybreak. She would never plead with them Don’t tell my secrets oh please? They knew her naked, not nude.

  Now Whitey was crying, oh why?

  Oh she was to blame—was she? She knew.

  It was late! Always it was late. She knew without squinting at her watch that it was late. Though the drapes were drawn, grimly stapled to the windowsill, all sunshine banished. She would scream in agony if, having slipped at last into an approximation of sleep, she had to endure the thinnest sliver of sunshine entering her bedroom, piercing her eyelids like needles and returning her to heart-pounding wakefulness. Nico stumbled in the dark, good-natured if sometimes clumsy; Whitey, whose arrival signaled the end of night, was obliged to switch on a low-wattage bedside lamp and given permission by his mistress to do so. On extreme mornings, Whitey brought his kit to her bedside and gently began the preliminaries (deep-cleansing astringent, ointments, and moisturizer) while she lay flat on her back, eyes shut, floating in dreamy shadow. But this had not been one of the bad mornings, had it?

  Still, Whitey was crying. Though stoically, as a man will cry; trying not to wince or grimace, only tears streaking his cheeks and betraying his sorrow.

  “Whitey? What’s w-wrong?”

  “Miss Monroe, please. I am not crying.”

  “Oh, Whitey, that’s a—fib. You are too crying.”

  “No Miss Monroe I am not.”

  Whitey, so stubborn. Whitey the intrepid makeup man. How long ago that morning he’d begun his procedure, she couldn’t clearly recall except to know it must be two hours at a minimum for she’d consumed six cups of hot black coffee laced with painkiller and a little gin (a custom picked up in England during the filming of another jinxed movie), and Whitey himself had consumed a quart bottle of unsweetened grapefruit juice (drunk Whitey-style straight from the bottle, Adam’s apple bobbing). Whitey who would never say to his mistress Miss Monroe what has happened to you since your trip to New York in April, oh what has happened! Whitey so taciturn for others as for himself.

  Whitey’s deft fingers and cotton swabs soaked in astringent. His soothing ointments, his eyelash curlers and tweezers and tiny brushes and colored pencils, his pastes, rouges, powders working their magic, or almost working their magic. This morning he’d been laboring for hours and she was only partway MARILYN MONROE in the mirror. On such jinxed mornings she could not leave her house, she dared not leave the safety of her bedroom, until MARILYN MONROE was present. She did not require MARILYN MONROE to perfection, but a respectable and recognizable MARILYN MONROE. An individual of whom it could not be said by any stunned witness on the street, at The Studio, on the sound stage Oh my God is that Marilyn Monroe? I didn’t recognize her! The actress was running a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit, a viral infection raging in her blood. Her head felt as if it were filled with helium. So much powerful medication, and still the fever held. Maybe she had malaria? Maybe she’d contracted a rare disease from the President? (Maybe she was pregnant?) One of her Brentwood doctors told her she should be hospitalized, her white blood count was low, so she’d stopped seeing him. She preferred psychiatrists who never examined her but prescribed pills for her: their interpretation of her problem was theoretical, Freudian. Which is to say mythical, legendary. Anyone beautiful as you Miss Monroe has nothing to be unhappy about. And talented, too. I think you know this, yes? Two days the previous week and three days in succession this week Whitey had called The Studio to inform C, the director, that Miss Monroe was ill and could not come to work that day; other days she arrived hours late, coughing, with reddened eyes and runny nose, or, astonishingly, as the luminous-beauty MARILYN MONROE.

  The very sight of MARILYN MONROE on the set, sometimes the production crew burst into relieved cheers and applause. More recently, dead silence.

  C, the celebrated Hollywood hack. C, who despised and feared MARILYN MONROE. C, who’d signed onto the project in full knowledge of what might lie in store but who needed the work, the money. She would claim with some justice that C was punishing her by continually shifting her scenes, tossing out entire sections of the banal and hackneyed script of Something’s Got to Give and ordering overnight revisions. Each time MARILYN MONROE was prepared to do a scene she was greeted with new dialogue. Her character’s name had been changed from Roxanne to Phyllis to Queenie to Roxanne. She’d said to C with a shuddery little Marilyn laugh (they’d been on speaking terms at the time), “Oh, gosh! Know what this is too damned much like? Life.”

  That morning in the mirror MARILYN appeared only to retreat at once like a teasing child. She emerged, and she receded. She hovered and fled. Somewhere in the glassy depths of the mirror she resided, and had to be coaxed out. Norma Jeane’s Magic Friend in the Mirror she’d once adored but now knew she could not trust. Nor could poor Whitey trust her. Whitey who was far more patient than Norma Jeane and less easily discouraged. For suddenly, as Whitey inked her eyelashes, there might appear sly MARILYN, crystal-blue eyes sparkling with life; she winked and laughed at them both; yet minutes later, after a coughing fit, the MARILYN eyes had vanished, and in their place Norma Jeane stared in dismay and self-loathing. Saying, “Oh, Whitey. Let’s give up.”

  Whitey ignored such remarks as unworthy of her, and of him.

  Always, Norma Jeane kept her voice from betraying despair. It was the least she could do for Whitey, who adored her.

  Poor Whitey had grown stout and ashy-skinned and -haired in the arduous service of MARILYN MONROE. His epicene body was large and softly pear-shaped and his head, a h
andsome head with noble features, was disproportionately small, set upon massive sloping shoulders. His eyes had grown to resemble his mistress’s, the eyes of an aged child. One of the tribe of troll people, he was proud, stubborn, and loyal. If sometimes he stumbled on the cluttered bedroom floor (strewn with discarded clothing, towels, paper plates, food containers, books and newspapers, and unwanted scripts forwarded by her agent, like beach debris in the aftermath of a storm) she might hear him swear softly to himself, as a normal person would do, but he would never chide her, and she believed he didn’t judge her. (Norma Jeane had gradually wearied of cleaning up after Marilyn. Her messy habits were so clearly faults of character, irremediable! The Studio had arranged for a housekeeper to tend to Miss Monroe’s house, and to Miss Monroe their investment, but Norma Jeane asked the woman not to return after less than a week—“You can stay on salary. But I need to be alone.” She’d discovered the woman looking through her closets and drawers, reading her journal, examining the silver-foil rose on the piano.) Whitey was her friend, dearer to her than the nocturnal Nico. She was leaving Whitey a surprise in her will: a percentage of future royalties of Monroe films, if there were to be royalties in the future.