by Denise Dietz
Her monologue and conversation with Jonah took up most of the remaining show. Maybe there really is a God and I’ve been spared, thought Maryl, just before a stagehand ushered her to the wings, where she caught the end of Jonah’s introduction.
“And now it is my pleasure to present the Rosebud girl, Mary Bradley.”
Maryl walked downstage toward Jonah’s antique desk, shook his warm hand, then sat on a cushioned chair between the host and Huxley.
“That’s not my name,” she mumbled, placing her wrists in her lap, upside-down, hiding the rash.
“What did you say, darlin’?”
“My name is Maryl. It rhymes with Carol. The ‘y’ is silent.”
Ordinarily, Jonah would have apologized and corrected his pronunciation. But he was still annoyed at the wild ride to the studio, and his favorite writer had presented a multiple list of complaints directly before air time—an ultimatum. Jonah could almost feel the tiny red devil who perched on his shoulder.
“The why is silent?” he asked, winking at the audience.
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the what?”“
“What?”
The audience tittered, catching the pseudo Abbot and Costello exchange.
Jonah said, “Why is the why silent, Maryl-who-rhymes-with-Carol?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“Tell us, Maryl Bradley, why did you decide to become a model?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated, afraid to say something wrong. “I guess I was seduced by—”
“Seduced?” Pat Huxley smirked.
“Yes. Seduced by the promise of fame and fortune. But it’s not like that at all. I mean, I make money, of course I do, but it’s really very hard and—”
“Seduced. Hard. Umm . . . that’s good.” Pat smirked again.
“It just happened, I guess,” Maryl said.
Jonah swallowed a yawn, wondering why they had booked this too-tall mouse with the flaming mop of hair. Then he happened to catch her image in the television monitor. He blinked, looked at his guest, the monitor, his guest again.
As always, the camera emphasized each individual ingredient of Maryl’s face, creating a gourmet feast of charismatic appeal. The audience had caught the same image in banks of huge TV screens, set high above the stage. They gazed upwards, enjoying the beautiful vision, waiting expectantly.
“Models have to be so skinny,” said Pat, standing and stretching her short, heavy body. The camera shifted, catching her motion, and the audience laughed. “Models can’t eat very much, can they, dear?”
“Yes. No. I mean yes, they can’t eat very much,” Maryl said. “I have friends who exist solely on honey, for energy. I don’t think it’s healthy, but I’ve never had to worry. I’ve always been too thin.”
Shit, thought Jonah. The red-haired model was looking directly into the camera and had missed a certain gleam in Huxley’s eyes. Hadn’t the Python recently spent a week at an exclusive weight-reduction spa? Hadn’t she failed miserably and turned the experience into a comedy routine?
“I tried to be a model once,” said Pat, seated again but leaning into camera range. “Then I had this intimate talk with a model friend. She said she had met this gorgeous man, a famous singer. Then they, you know, did it. When they finished, the man turned to my model friend and said, ‘That was like a fast-food meal. A good roll, but where’s the meat?’ ”
After the laughter had died down, Pat continued. “My friend turned to her lover and said, ‘Speaking of meat, you lied about the size of your . . .’ ” She glanced toward Jonah. “Weenie.”
“Pat!”
Jonah’s admonishment was lost in the crescendo of applause.
“I know something that’s interesting,” Maryl said, somewhat desperately.
“What’s that, darlin’?” Jonah wondered if he should insert a commercial and tell Python to shut up. What the hell. The show was nearly over and if Pat became too raucous they could bleep her dialogue.
“Well, it’s my name again,” said Maryl. “I was born on the same day as Marilyn Monroe, and named for her. Maryl is my nickname. For the record, I don’t think Marilyn committed suicide. I believe she was mur—”
“You look remarkably well preserved to have been born on the same day as Marilyn Monroe.” Pat quirked an erratic eyebrow.
“I meant the same date, June first, only I was born on June first, 1954.”
Jesus, thought Jonah. He had never met a woman who would confess her true age before millions of TV viewers. Interesting.
“That reminds me of another story,” said Pat. “I had this intimate friend named Marilyn, and she met this gorgeous man, a famous politician.” Pat winked. “About a week after they had, you know, done it, my friend got a phone call. ‘When can I see you again?’ asked her politician. And she said—do you want to hear a secret?”
“Yes!” screamed the audience.
“Marilyn said, ‘I can’t see you, lover. I’ve got the seven year itch.’ ” Pat swiveled her chair toward Maryl. “Do you ever get it, dear?”
“Get what?”
“The seven year itch. Herpes. Stop scowling at me, Jonah. Can’t I say herpes on TV? It’s not weenie. Oh my God, look at the model!”
A miserable Maryl, her queasy stomach cramping more every moment, had reached from long habit to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Not finding the familiar frames, she began to scratch the rash on the back of her hands. The camera caught her confused face, her shoulders and upper arms moving. It looked as if she was scratching something in her lap.
The camera swiftly moved to Pat, who was shouting, “She does have an itch! Was it Bryan Edwards? He’s big now, and divorced. I’ve heard he’s dating Hugh Hefner’s ex-plaything. Tell us everything, Mary, or Marilyn, or whatever the fuck (bleep) your name is.” Humming the theme from the old Howdy Doody Show, Pat sang, “It’s true confessions time, it’s true confessions time.”
“I . . . I wasn’t . . . you . . . you horrible bitch,” cried Maryl, and fled.
She ran from the stage, found herself in a hallway, and opened the nearest door, lettered PRIVATE, stenciled with a huge star. Apparently, it was Jonah’s personal bathroom because blue-penciled monologue scripts lay scattered across a shelf above the sink.
Gasping for breath, she slumped on the floor, then realized that she wasn’t exactly gasping for breath. She was making horrid little sounds, not unlike the terrified bleats of a goat. She tried to stop the bleats, but couldn’t. She wanted to faint, but—for the first time in her life—she couldn’t.
After what seemed like hours, Maryl felt a hand clasp her shoulder. Looking up, she met Jonah’s worried gaze.
“I’ve been searching all over for you,” he said. “The studio guards insisted you were still in the building.”
“The show—”
“Forget the show. Are you sick, darlin’?”
“No. I’ve been bleating.”
“Bleeding?”
“No, bleating, like a goat. Oh, God. I lost my cool and sounded so stupid.”
“You didn’t sound stupid. The audience booed Huxley and started chanting ‘Maryl, Maryl.’ In any case, it was all my fault. Putting you on the same stage with Pat Python was like throwing an unarmed Christian to the lions. I should have stopped her. I’m not usually so insensitive, just ask my mother. Aw, don’t cry. The program’s taped. We’ll edit out . . . Maryl darlin’ . . . please don’t cry.” Jonah knelt, gathered her into his arms, and licked her tears away. Then he covered her quivering mouth with his.
Maryl kissed him back.
Jonah took her uptown for a late dinner, laughing while she ate everything on her plate. “Models have to be so skinny,” he teased.
They taxied to Jonah’s sumptuous apartment, and barely had time to enter the vestibule and kick the door shut before she was tearing at his shirt buttons. In turn, he ripped her favorite jumpsuit down the front, then her sheer bra, then her panties.
/> She caught her breath as Jonah’s lips traveled from the base of her throat to her taut nipples. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” she said. His tongue was a conductor, sending electric currents throughout her entire body. “Oh my God, Jonah, I can’t stand up. I’m going to fall—”
“Sweet,” he murmured.
“—in love with you.”
Three weeks later they were married.
One month later the network moved Jonah’s show to California.
Chapter Ten
Hollywood, California
Outside the Polka-Dot Unicorn, foggy mist impregnated sidewalk cracks, giving birth to shadows. Although most of the Cinderellas and Prince Charmings had established their astrological connections and flown the coop, a few celebrants lingered, their eyes glassy, their magic wands fragmented by roach clips. A cowboy named Francis, known as The Duke, was hunched over a curb-side trash can. A prostitute named Jane, known as Doe, watched dispassionately.
“What a way to make a living,” Doe muttered. “I shoulda stayed in Fort Wayne. C’mon, man, I ain’t got all night. Straighten up and let’s get the hell outta here.”
The Duke shut his eyes and sank to the pavement. The trash can followed, spewing its contents.
Doe knelt and retrieved The Duke’s wallet. “Empty, you bastard!” Holding her breath, she searched his puke-soiled clothes. Nada. Not one red cent. The cross ‘round his neck looked gold-plated, so she stood, yawned, and walked away.
Shadow-snakes slithered across The Duke’s prone body. A dog lifted his leg, peed on The Duke’s left boot, then barked at a Volkswagen whose bright round headlights pierced the fog.
Inside the Polka-Dot Unicorn, a cocktail waitress, recently transplanted from Denver, unhooked her padded bra, scratched the furrows beneath her breasts, and donned an orange and blue Denver Broncos T-shirt. Reaching into the pocket of her khaki shorts, she removed a wad of bills and handed the bartender his share.
“Thanks, Trish.” Adding the money to his tip-snifter, the bartender shot a worried glance toward the blonde woman whose head slumped a few inches above a booth’s table. Should he call Randy McNeal again? With relief, he watched the door open. Pointing to his watch, he mimed a pained expression.
“What happened, mate?”
“I don’t know, McNeal. She’s been like that all night. I told Trish to cut her off but Trish says she ain’t drinking booze, just club soda. Of course, Trish swears she once screwed Jack Nicholson so who can believe anything she says.”
“Thanks for ringing me up.” Randy slid a twenty across the bar’s polished surface, walked over to the booth, sat next to Anissa, and gently nudged her slack body. “Are you feeling a skerrick under the weather, darlin’?”
“Alfy question,” she said. “Of course I’m under the weather. If there was no weather there’d be a big void and we’d all die. I want to die.”
“What’s wrong, love?”
Unfocused gray eyes stared at him. “Kathleen . . . landlady. Told her I was leaving . . . big fight . . . pictures . . . said sell pictures to the Senator. What’s your word? Flog?”
“Kathleen plans to flog photos of you to your father?”
“Yes. With men. Or flog to me. Lots of money.” Long lashes fluttered across her pale cheeks. “Go ’way.”
“You’re not drunk.” He had a horrible thought and searched her purse, then all four denim pockets. Nothing. Frantic, he finally found an empty container of sleeping pills buried deep within the booth’s vinyl cushion crease. “Anissa, get up!” He shook her roughly. “Wake up, damn it!”
“Too late. Go ’way.”
Randy carried her to his Volkswagen and sped toward his apartment. Pinching her nose shut, he poured his cream-vinegar-eggs mixture down her throat. Then, despite her protestations, he walked her around his living room for eight hours straight.
Afterwards, he called an ex lover, a part-time nightclub bouncer and stunt man. Soon Randy held the photos and negatives in his hands. While Anissa watched, he shredded them.
“I once tore up a ten-thousand-dollar check and flushed it down the toilet,” she said.
Three days later she signed the lease on an empty apartment next door to Randy’s. Their duplex, in the middle of a steep hill, was converted from what had once been a flourishing Monastery. Other dwellings surrounded a life-sized statue of Jesus. Small animals wandered through the shrubbery. Squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks seemed to prey and pray at the base of Christ’s sculpted feet while only a few blocks away the famous HOLLYWOOD letters pierced the sky and Sunset Boulevard shone with irreverent glitz.
Randy introduced Anissa to his producer, Maxine Graham, who promised to keep her in mind for the next Children of the Night casting call. Even though, Maxine said, she was being wooed by Morning Star.
Anissa furnished her apartment with a used convertible couch, an old stuffed armchair, her black and white portable TV, and Tramp. Jacob had shipped the cat to L.A.
“What the bloody hell are you doing now?” asked Randy, one week after Anissa’s Maxine-Graham introduction.”
“Nothing.”
“Why do you lock your doors and draw the shades?”
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Men. They still look at me.”
“Most blokes admire a beautiful woman, Anissa. Kathleen’s washed her hands of you. She wouldn’t dare try anything naughty. What’s this?” Randy fingered a shapeless brown smock.
“A new dress. I sewed it myself.”
“You have a closet full of flash gear.”
“If I wear this, no one will notice me.”
“That’s true,” Randy said sarcastically. “Your dress is the same color as the bloody smog.”
The next day Anissa stood in front of the bathroom mirror, picked up a sharp scissors, and cut her hair close to the scalp.
“Holy shit,” Randy bellowed when he saw the result. “You look like Ingrid Bergman playing Saint Joan of Vista Del Mar Avenue.”
Yet he had to admit that the haircut made Anissa’s haunted gray eyes even larger and her face ethereal. Rather than the saintly Joan, she could have been cast as one of the Monks who, long ago, had silently shuffled toward the top of their hill.
I’m buggered, Randy thought. Anissa’s body looked transparent, the skin stretched tight, and she would only eat if he shared meals. She left the complex to buy groceries she never cooked, or to sit on a park bench and watch the children who swarmed over the playground.
Why am I bothering with that nit? Angry, stymied, Randy decided to try one last gambit. During a humid, storm-slurpy night, he knocked on her door.
Anissa wore her brown, ankle-length smock. Two new items adorned her stark white living room walls—a silk-screened angel and a framed newspaper review of a University of Wisconsin student production, including a grainy cast photo. An old western flickered on the TV screen, but she had turned the volume all the way down. Tramp slept, draped across the window sill.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to drink,” she said, gesturing toward Randy’s Cuervo Gold bottle.
“You’re not, but tonight we’re celebrating. A mate of mine is directing Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, and I’m playing Tom. Look, love, I brought a bag of chook and chips.”
“Chicken and fries,” Anissa translated, giving her friend a wan smile. “You know what? The only play I’ve ever acted in was by Tennessee Williams.”
“I’ll bet you were a beaut. Which one?”
“Streetcar.” She nodded toward the framed newspaper review.
Randy poured tequila into a plastic water tumbler. “Here, Anissa, down the hatch.”
It took only one drink.
“I don’t like this stuff any more,” she said, her voice catching on a sob. “I want to die.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to live.”
“That’s no answer. It’s like ‘because I said so.’ You’re not living
. You’re barely existing. What’s wrong, Anissa?”
“My heart’s broken,” she replied in a small, tired voice.
“That’s bloody bullshit!”
Randy wanted to cuddle the thin, shaking girl whose face, all eyes, reflected such pain. But he stifled that impulse. Sympathy wouldn’t cure her, not until he ascertained the reason for her recent regression.
“Talking about a broken heart is like emoting a line from my soap,” he continued. “It’s a speech from one of your old memory movies. Hearts don’t break, Anissa, not if they’re healthy, and your precious Joseph Weiss didn’t die.”
“He did for me!”
“Then you’ve fulfilled your period of mourning. You’ve punished yourself for whatever it is you think you’ve done. Shit! It’s not your brother, is it?”
“Half brother!”
“Why do you visit the playground every afternoon? Why do you watch the little tykes?”
“I don’t like you any more, Randy. Go home.”
Frustrated, he threw the tequila bottle at a wall. Glass shattered, sending the cat for cover. At the same time, thunder drummed the sky and rain snapped against the window panes.
Anissa scooped up Tramp. Holding him against her breasts, she smoothed the fur that had bristled like a white porcupine.
“Why do you watch the tykes?” Randy persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know.”
Still holding the cat, she turned the television’s volume all the way up. Unidentifiable music blended with the sounds of loud hoof beats.
Randy punched the off button.
Anissa curled her fingers into fists. Tramp responded by unsheathing his claws, but she didn’t even wince. “Go home, you Aussie bastard!” she screamed.
“Why, love? Why do you watch the little nippers?” Randy sank onto the couch and crossed his arms. “Why?”
“I watch the kids because . . . because . . . our . . . my baby would be there if he had been born. I wish . . .” She wept, unable to continue.
“Okay.” Randy pulled Anissa into his lap while Tramp wriggled free. “Hush. No. Don’t hush. Cry it all out. It’s not your fault. The abortion was not your fault. It happened, it’s over, there will always be an ache, a scar, but it’s over. That’s my good girl, my good sweet girl.”
