The Blonde

by Anna Godbersen

  “Okay, mister,” the driver replied disinterestedly. As the taxi pulled away she kept her head down and her hand protecting her face the way she did when the press was in a harassing mood. I’m in, she thought, as the car hurtled down the empty avenue and her smile flickered and grew, I’m in.

  THIRTEEN

  Reno, July 1960

  THE air coming off the high desert was over a hundred degrees, the kind of heat that melts the borders of a girl’s body. The girdle beneath her tight, low-backed, black wool dress was already damp with sweat, so she kept still under the shade of a parasol, held by a local boy, while she waited to do the scene for maybe the twentieth time. She didn’t focus her eyes on anything in particular, and held the little kernel she had of Roslyn, the character she was playing, in her mind. What Roslyn would feel going to the courthouse to get her Nevada divorce.

  Around her people hustled to get cameras in place, dragging thick black cords across the sidewalks. It was the second day of shooting, and already the proceedings had taken on a fractious quality. Huston was shouting at somebody, but she tried not to make out the words. Arthur was also nearby, no doubt waiting with proprietary intensity for her to muff his lines. At the top of the steps stood the man playing her husband Raymond, wearing a slick suit, watching her as though they were playing chess and it was her move. He had been at the Actors Studio when she was first working with Lee, so she was familiar with his disdain. They’d all regarded her with disdain—those handsome, pretentious boys in love with theater, resentful of fame’s intrusion in their erudite clubhouse, and yet unable to avert their gaze.

  So she didn’t look at him, and she put his real name out of mind. He had been gone, anyway, by the time she humbled herself enough that the other students forgot her special aura and realized she, too, just wanted to learn. And she did learn. The things she had learned with Lee she still used and would use every day in Reno. For instance, the way she was going to play the dance scene—the one in which she danced, drunk, alone under a tree. To get herself there she’d mainline a memory of Amagansett, the atmospherics of a night when she and Arthur had invited some fisherman over and she’d cooked spaghetti and they’d played gin rummy and drank bourbon until she’d swayed on the rag rug of the small shingled house they’d rented for the summer. The whiskey burning her tongue, the moldy smell off the cards, the salt wind. She had been happy and sad and luminous with mystery, and she knew she’d made them happy by dancing.

  But today, at the courthouse, she didn’t have a memory to go by. Instead she had a premonition of some future morning when it would be one too many silent breakfasts, and the sensation of orange juice going down her throat wrong as she realized that her marriage to Arthur was really over. That the house had been sacked before it burned down, and there was nothing to go back for. She was so fixated on the bitter orange juice that she didn’t know when they said “action,” only sensed when Thelma as Isabelle was ready beside her, and they walked up the steps toward Raymond.

  He blocked her way at the top of the steps, cajoling her, as she tried to pass. He spoke words, and she spoke words back.

  “You can’t have me now, so you want me, that’s all,” Roslyn said.

  Huston must have yelled “cut,” but she didn’t hear. She only knew they were done because the actor playing Raymond turned his back on her. The spell was broken, and her shoulders sank, and she looked around for an explanation.

  “What happened?” she asked Thelma, wearing her costume of housedress and sling.

  “They weren’t picking you up, honey,” she replied wearily and took a step in the direction of their first position marks. “Couldn’t hear you. We’re going to have to do it again.”

  But the sun was too bright in Marilyn’s eyes, and the emptiness of her life with Arthur too riotous in her rib cage. She followed Thelma in the general direction of the boy who held the parasol, but when she reached him she kept on walking.

  “Why is it that sexy women are never on time?”

  There were perhaps a thousand answers to this question, and Marilyn—reclined next to a small portable fan aimed at her swampy décolletage—would have liked nothing better than to talk it over with the cowboy leaning against the door of her trailer. Because everyone wants a piece of her, and how can a girl who’s been scattered to the four corners be mindful of a wristwatch? was the classic explanation. Because they may be inclined to prove their intelligence by marrying neurotic playwrights who bang on their fucking Smith-Corona all night long, and how’s she supposed to get a decent night’s rest under conditions like that? went another. There was also the matter of the juggled lovers, the constant debriefing by Alexei, not to mention the decade of lost sleep. But Clark, not yet wearing his Gay Langland costume of blue jeans and rancher hat, but with the movie cowboy flint already in his eye, was grinning at her with such canny sympathy that she didn’t want to risk a bitchy tone. “They can’t be ready for me again yet?”

  “They say you’re hiding out.”

  “They hate me, huh?” she murmured, removing the damp washcloth from her forehead.

  “Nah, just Huston.” The two slim arrows of his moustache twitched in amusement. “And don’t worry, he’s taking it out on that fancy-talking husband of yours.”

  “Oh, damn me.” Since her arrival in Reno, Arthur had been putting on grand displays of doting care. The traveling, and the hurly-burly of life lately, had not been kind—her abdomen was swollen and tetchy with indigestion, and her head split from lack of sleep and too many drinks. But she couldn’t lose the good will of the crew by letting him cast her in the role of his unreliable, self-important wife. Too much depended on The Misfits being filmed quickly and without the usual incident. That way, she could give herself over to getting Alexei what he wanted. Her marriage was almost nothing now; her loneliness was as searing as it had ever been. She was almost too tired to go on, and needed very badly to put her head against her father’s chest and hear that she belonged to someone after all. She scooted forward on the narrow daybed, and moved to fasten her costume—the tight-fitting black wool without much back—which she had half taken off during her break.

  “Let me help you with that, kid.”

  She stood and turned so that he could zip up her dress. They had talked often since the day she drove out to Encino to meet him, and were now close in the loose manner of two tough souls who don’t expect very much from people. He had never made a pass, and she liked him for it—liked that she could speak honestly of the men who came and went in her life, liked that he was always ready with some frank, salty, fatherly advice. And yet, when the long, lean body of Clark Gable was close enough behind her that she could smell his cigarettes and mouthwash, and her dress was hanging open, there was a little charge, wasn’t there? He had to tug at the zipper to close it over her hips, and she felt the tremor in his hands.

  They stepped down from her trailer into the heat. Behind them were the mountains, and in the bright, thin atmosphere she could almost see every rupture and rivulet of the Sierras. The Mapes Hotel, where they were staying, was tall enough to be seen for miles around, but it would not have registered on the skyline of a real city. Huston was sitting under a tent with Arthur, deep in discussion, and assorted crew members glanced up at her resentfully.

  Things had gone badly from the moment she landed. This had been on a later flight than the one the studio booked, for reasons she could explain to no one, and she hadn’t realized that a welcoming committee was sweltering on the tarmac while she desperately tried to wash out a stain on her skirt, and to dry the resulting dampness with a hair dryer. Jack had been the author of the stain, and she hadn’t noticed it at first because they had been in a hurry. When Arthur had gone early to Nevada, checking into the Mapes by himself for a few solitary days of writing before shooting began, she had left Jack a message that she was alone in her Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. But he must have been tied up in the business of the campaign until the day of her own departure, and h
ad not appeared until right after the concierge called to say that the limousine had arrived to take her to the airport.

  “I’m just leaving,” she’d told Jack with stage indignation, but he had grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her inside, against the wall, pulling up her skirt and whispering in her ear how he couldn’t stop thinking about her, that she’d made him crazy. All the usual lines. Afterward they had agreed to meet again soon, and gone separate ways along the garden walkways that twisted around Bungalow 21, and she hadn’t considered a stain until she was descending through the dust clouds. Then she disembarked from the little plane, and saw Arthur standing next to the first lady of Nevada, who wore a dour expression and a pillbox hat and carried a cone of white roses.

  Dourness had been the refrain of the past three days. She had seen it repeated in any number of faces. Now, shielding her complexion from the glare of the sun with her fingers, she tried not to recoil at the thought of doing the scene again, of being Roslyn, a character who embodied all of Arthur’s false notions about her, walking up the courthouse steps and spouting a lot of self-incriminating gibberish that would create the impression of a duplicitous woman with a child’s mind. She watched Huston, perched on his high canvas chair and deep in discussion with Arthur. The director’s oversized shoulders hunched, a predator waiting for movement in the bush, the cigar smoke wafting overhead, and she knew that when she went back in he would make her do the scene over and over again until her dress was soaked through with sweat, just so she’d know who was boss.

  Clark saw her staring, and draped his arm around her shoulders. “Play hooky with me, kid,” he said. “You know that speech you been given is too long, and until Mr. Miller writes it over so it sounds the least bit natural, there’s no point in wasting your time or any more of Huston’s film.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “How’s your luck these days?”

  She rolled her eyes, pushed her shoulder into his rib.

  “Well, I bet you make men feel lucky even when you don’t.”

  “I guess.”

  As they walked away from the movie encampment and into town, the script girl came running after. “They’re almost ready to shoot again,” she called.

  “Hello, sweetheart.” Clark kept his arm around Marilyn’s shoulder and only half turned to look at the girl. “Remind me your name?”

  “Angie,” she replied. Was she blushing, or was it just the desert heat?

  “Angie, sweetheart, you tell the men in charge that once they’ve figured out how they want their scene Miss Monroe will be ready for them. They’ll find her down at the casino. Got that?”

  The casino was dark inside and quiet at that hour except for the clank and whir of the slot machines. They chose the darkest corner of the bar, and Clark ordered them double bourbons, ice on the side. He took two quick sips and settled back into his chair, allowing the alcohol to take effect. When he raised his glass a third time, she saw that the tremor was gone. “Script’s a mess. I thought your husband had been working on this thing for years?”

  “Oh, well. You know writers. Sometimes more time is just more rope.”

  He was squinting into the casino’s gloom, whether because he was anticipating something more from the drink or because a card table had caught his eye, she wasn’t sure. “Damn, I’d like to get out of here, go out into the desert, ride some horses.”

  “You’re going to get your wish. I mean, if we ever make it past this scene.”

  “Come now, you know what I mean. Not with the whole goddamn cavalry, and not in our imaginations, either.” He spread his lips back over his teeth, but it wasn’t exactly a smile. “Kay’s pregnant.”

  “Oh? She looks well.” Marilyn had only seen her briefly, walking to the ice machine last night in curlers, and both women had pretended not to notice the other. If anything, she’d have said that Clark’s wife looked thinner than before, and jealousy burned in her chest, although she wasn’t sure if it was for his wife or the child they were going to have. “Congratulations, is what I mean.”

  “Thanks. Drink up, kid, you’re looking pale.”

  “Oh.” She laughed and raised her glass in his direction. “That’s on purpose, daddy. Do you know how long I sit in that makeup chair to look this white?”

  “Even so.”

  “Are you excited? To be a father, I mean.”

  “I’m old, honey,” he said, and while he spoke in the tone of plain truths, his frame deflated unexpectedly, as though the realization had punctured him. “But Kay’s happy, and I suppose she’ll worry less about what I do when I’m away from her. I love that woman, but she wears me down with her questions. I am a bastard, but she knew what I was when she married me.”

  Marilyn rested her chin on the heel of her palm and gazed at her whiskey as she slowly spun the glass. She’d fallen back into bed with Yves over the last few months, while shooting retakes of the last picture. She’d endured maudlin declarations of love and a lot of tiresome regrets, but that had seemed less trouble than ending the affair. Anyway, it was easier to play Jack the way she wanted when there was another party interested, desirous of her charms, and Yves had served his tactical purpose, too—there had been a few times, over the past months, when she was out late with Jack, and Arthur, assuming he knew what she was up to, had looked the other way. Anyway, when The Misfits wrapped, and Arthur had what he wanted from her, she suspected that he would be less mindful of her infidelities, and she would no longer need a decoy.

  “I’m sorry, kid. That’s no way for me to talk. Sometimes I forget that you’re just a girl.”

  Her brows, drawn in darker than usual for the cameras, lifted. She considered sharing with him the complicated shuffling of lovers and husbands upon which she had just been meditating, but instead said, “I wish that were true.”

  The bartender was approaching them again, carrying a tray with a telephone on it. He had an unsmiling face with low-hanging jowls, and he didn’t look up when he put the phone on the bar in front of them. “Are you Marilyn Monroe?” he asked.

  His lack of affect amused her—the name really might have signified nothing to him—and she tried to suppress a smile. Her eyes got big and rolled to Clark and back to the bartender. “That’s me, I guess,” she said finally.

  “Call for you. From the Los Angeles Biltmore.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll give you a little air, kid, but don’t talk long.” He patted her shoulder as he rose from the cushioned bar stool. “This afternoon belongs to me.”

  When she was alone, she picked up the receiver and put her bare back against the puckered maroon upholstery of the wall. “Yes?”

  “Hey, baby.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “How should I know? I have a girl for that. I told her there couldn’t be that many places in Reno classy enough to host you.”

  “Is she pretty? Your girl.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How is California without me?”

  “Lousy.”

  His directness surprised her, pleased her, especially after the morning’s humiliations, and she briefly indulged the illusion that this was like any affair, and she and Jack were simply two people who had more fun when they were alone together, in secret. “They must be keeping you busy.”

  “Yes, horrifically so. Listen, I’m sorry about last time—that was lewd of me, I know, I just kept trying to get to you and couldn’t, and I knew if I didn’t see you before you left I’d be agitated the whole convention.”

  “How is the convention?”

  “Terrible. Old lady Roosevelt is backing Stevenson, so she gave a little talk where she said my being a Catholic would be a problem in November, and that I won’t win the Negro vote. As if the Negroes want Stevenson, that damned vegetarian. Meanwhile, Johnson has decided to raise a stink even though he knows I have the delegates and he doesn’t, giving all kind of hammy speeches, saying that if I get the nomination it will be the fall
of Rome. He just loves saying Rome and Kennedy in the same sentence, that animal. Everybody knows I’m going to get the nomination, but they want to rap my knuckles and remind me that I’m junior, and I haven’t put in as many years of drudgery as they have, and meanwhile the Russians have shot down another of our recon planes, over the Arctic this time, and even though Ike is the one currently in the captain’s chair this somehow makes everyone nervous I haven’t lost my hair yet….”

  “But you’ll never lose your hair.”

  This seemed to make him happy, and he laughed a loud, flat laugh. “Can’t you come back? I need you.”

  “I’m making a movie.”

  “Sounds like you’re gambling and drinking to me.”

  “Well—”

  “Just think about it, all right?”

  “All right, but—”

  “There will be a party, and I’ll introduce you to lots of interesting people.”

  “You will?” The only witness to their affair, besides Alexei, was the man named Bill, and she was surprised that he would risk being with her publicly at a moment when so much attention was focused on him; but then he was probably just saying whatever he thought would make her do what he wanted.

  “Hell yes. I want to show off my new baby. Just get on the next plane, will you?”

  “Jack, I can’t—”

  “Tomorrow then,” he interrupted, suddenly formal and cold. Wherever he was, he was no longer alone. “Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

  Carefully she returned the receiver to its cradle. She stared at the shiny black handle a few seconds, as though it might tell her what to do. What would Alexei have her do? He’d told her to play her hand cautiously—for now, he said, the important thing was making sure the affair continued, keeping Jack comfortable in her presence, and observing whatever she could of his character and intentions along the way. Later her assignment could become more specific, he had implied, as though referencing a bill that might never come due. But she was another year older and less girlish every day, and she could no longer convince herself that she had infinite time, even when she was drunk. If she finished the movie quickly and painlessly she would be much freer to spy on Jack. However, she had fixed upon the notion that she might glean information of special importance if she went now, when the convention was on and candidate Kennedy was feeling reckless.