Marilyn's Ghost

by Lorena Franco

  “Someday, someone will make that face you’re making now when they find out they’re going to be working with Pam Miller,” Richard said, smiling.

  “It’s all happened so fast, Richard.”

  “That’s Hollywood. One day you’re nobody and the next, you’re a star.”

  “Or the opposite…”

  “That won’t happen to you, artist,” Richard answered with his usual confidence.

  They looked at each other fixedly again. In silence. Marilyn returned to sit under the willow tree. Pam, uncomfortable, took a sip of her lemonade.

  “Okay, I’m going home,” Richard announced, putting his agenda in a black leather briefcase.

  “Do you have a date with the model?” Pam asked and could not help but feel a little envious.

  “The woman you saw the other day? No, absolutely not. She’s just a friend.”

  “Sure…”

  “And Robert?”

  “Robert who?”

  “The vampire,” Richard laughed. “The other night in the club you looked very close.”

  Pam recalled the moment when Robert had invaded her personal space to take an eyelash from her cheek. Was that what had bothered Richard? Did he see it and choose to look for other set of arms for that reason?

  “Very close? Robert is very strange. Maybe you saw the moment he got close to take an eyelash off my cheek,” Pam explained, laughing.

  “He seriously did that? He didn’t kiss you?”

  “No, not even in dreamland. I had to put up with his bad breath during the filming.”

  “I thought that…” Richard murmured, pensive. In a way, he seemed relived. “Anyway, I’m leaving.”

  Richard stood up and so did Pam to take him to the gate. He thanked her for the meeting and they promised to keep in touch about upcoming filming. Meetings, rehearsals… Pam’s agenda was looking busy, but for the moment she could take a few days off to enjoy Los Angeles, her fabulous home and her enticing pool.

  When Pam went back to the yard, Marilyn shouted at her from the willow tree.

  “The two of you are stupid!”

  At least no one could hear her. At least only Pam could see her. At least…

  “Do you want to watch a Will Smith movie?” Pam suggested, so that Marilyn would not give her a headache over the ‘Richard thing’.

  “Always!”

  Pam hardly had time to breathe. Although her characters were not too important for the development of the storyline of the different movies Richard had got her in, they did require preparation. She had to be in meetings, rehearsals and study at home. She always did so in front of the mirror, as Marilyn recommended, who had become her inseparable shadow. She was always watching Pam, always had good advice to share about her expression or movements that made her look better in every scene that they prepared together, always guiding her.

  “What will I do when you leave?” Pam asked constantly, not wanting nor imagining that moment. It hurt her. She could not imagine her life without her pretty ghost. And yet, she knew that some day she would have to say goodbye…

  Marilyn smiled, shrugging her shoulders. She did not know when she would have to leave this young woman that had won her heart to her own devices. Actually, would Pam have made it to Hollywood at all if Marilyn had not crossed her path?

  “You are where you are for your own merits, not for me,” Marilyn told her.

  “No, Marilyn. If you hadn’t appeared, I wouldn’t have fought to change my agent. I wouldn’t have met Richard and as such, I would still be serving hamburgers and photographing landscapes. With luck I would have survived by putting all my photos online and with my salary as a waitress, but little more. My dream has been coming true since you appeared.”

  “You know what? I’ll go when you win an Oscar.”

  “That’s impossible Marilyn!”

  “And you’ve shown yourself that nothing is impossible, honey.” Marilyn answered fondly. Pam thought at that moment that she did not want to win a statuette. No, because she preferred to have Marilyn by her side than an Oscar in a cabinet. “I wish I’d had a daughter like you…” she said with longing. “Anyway, that’s life! Shall we watch a Will Smith movie?”

  “Are there any you haven’t seen?” Pam laughed. “I can’t, I have to study. Tomorrow I have a scene with Cameron Diaz and I don’t want her to think I’m stupid.”

  “Who is Cameron Diaz?”

  “The blonde with short hair. The tallest one that you saw today,” Pam explained, who had lived a surreal day with Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts and Adam Sandler. The three talked among themselves, ignoring the young actress completely, but when they rehearsed a few scenes together they helped her bring out the best in herself. Pam was thankful and resisted her urges to take a photo with them and put it on Facebook.

  “The one with the twisted nose!” Marilyn exclaimed. “Beauty nowadays is strange, you know?”

  “I always thought she was a very attractive actress,” Pam said. “She’s not Grace Kelly but..”

  “You’re much more beautiful Pam.”

  “You’re vision is clouded, Marilyn.”

  Pam conscientiously prepared her scenes in front of the mirror, while Marilyn watched attentively. The next day, everything went well and the stellar apparition of a young actress called Pam Miller, whose first big movie was yet to be screened, had been Toward the Light with Marion Cotillard, was very telling. Her first fan club had been created on Facebook and had over 50,000 likes. Richard had hired a webmaster to create a website for the new young actress of Los Angeles and had found a reliable publicist. In only a few days, Pam had to get used to sudden changes that were coming and enjoy her last days of anonymity.

  “Everything will soon be different,” Marilyn warned her. “Get used to being recognized, being stopped in the street and everyone wanting photos with you, wanting to talk to you. That won’t drive you crazy, will it?”

  “I won’t go crazy, Marilyn.”

  “I’m being serious, Pam. Hollywood is stressful and can turn out to be very dangerous.”

  “Marilyn, I’m not going to be sad like I was at the beginning. Remember the days we were filming with Marion Cotillard?”

  “The French woman?”

  “That one. Don’t take notice of that. You told me my dream was coming true and that I should be grateful and no be sad and angry with the world. You opened my eyes. Don’t close them now, don’t discourage me.”

  “It’s not my intention to discourage you, Pam. Continue on this path, remain enchanted with every detail and each project as small as it may be. I’m only warning you that as I said many times, it’s not a walk in the park. There are many jealous people, many…”

  “No, no, no!” Pam interrupted. “I don’t want to hear anything negative. Only positive, everything positive,” the young actress repeated, heading toward the pool to take a dip, to the envy of her ghost.

  “I liked the pool so much,” Marilyn murmured sadly, sitting under the willow tree in the yard, as she had become accustomed.

  It was a pleasure for Pam to see Karl again. She had left behind the small parts in several cinematographic projects with close screening dates, and over the next few months she would focus on the movie Story of Two Souls. Time had passed and Pam already imitated the big stars of Hollywood. She knew the rules of the game that directors and producers of the industry also played by. Richard no longer recognized the naive and hopeful young woman that had entered his office for the first tome a few months ago. Marilyn tried to keep Pam on the straight and narrow, so that she did not loose her essence. But the truth was that the agenda of the young actress was increasingly full of meetings and soon, very soon, screenings. These screenings would be attended by the best-dressed people by the best-designers, that had to be tried beforehand, with jewels lent from important companies for each of the occasions. For the first time, she would walk important carpets that would take her to a room of admirers and full of expectations, to see the
dramas and comedies in which the young Pam Miller had played. Finally, she would be the Hollywood star she had always wanted to be.

  Marilyn supposed that her sweet and innocent Pam had stopped being her sweet and innocent Pam on the day the young actress made use of a few free hours to go to the hamburger restaurant she used to work in. She entered the doors of Smashburger like it was a grand entrance in a movie. She stared at Lisa, who approached the young woman, smiling.

  “To what do I owe this honor?” Lisa asked, obligingly.

  “Now you’re nice, Lisa? Let me remind you that a few months ago, you fired me from this place. For a broken arm.”

  “Pam, I’m sorry, I…”

  “I hope the same happens to you,” Pam wished seriously. “I hope you go through everything I went through but without the good luck I had.”

  “Pam, please,” Lisa tried to say, without loosing her smile.

  “Go to hell.”

  Pam left by the same door, a huge smile on her pretty face. Marilyn was perplexed and at the same time, could not help but get angry with her ‘sweet’.

  “What do you think you just did, Pam? Who do you think you are?” the ghost asked furiously.

  Of course, she did not expect an immediate repose from Pam, who was walking through the streets with dark sunglasses, so as not to be recognized. Her face was beginning to be known, due to her appearances in many distinguished magazines that already announced her as the new promise of Hollywood. Pam took her cellphone and glanced at Marilyn.

  “What that harpy deserved. That’s what I did,” she answered, smiling maliciously.

  “Never, ever wish anyone harm, Pam. No matter how much they have to you in the past. Please! That you were fired at that bad moment in your life is the best thing that could have happened to you, Pam. Don’t you understand? Thanks to your past failures, you are living your dream.”

  Pam thought for a few seconds. Should she thank Lisa for her good luck? No, she did not see it that way.

  “I don’t care. You have no idea how she treated me, how she treats all her employees.”

  “That’s no reason to send her straight to hell. You’ve disappointed me, Pam.”

  Marilyn seemed even more disappointed when she realized Pam did not care that she had let her down with her latest action. Angry, she disappeared from Pam’s side to return home and rest under the willow tree. For that reason, Marilyn missed Pam’s first meeting with Adam Williams, anything promising young actor who would star in Story of Two Souls.

  Pam headed to the meeting she had with Karl and the other star of the movie that she did not yet know, in Silver Lake Hills. The director lived there, in a stunning house with views over Los Angeles. Sat on a large, white, leather sofa, the director and the actor were waiting for her, drinking martinis and chatting happily. The first time Pam saw Adam, she was dazzled. She was paralyzed by the tremendous physical attractiveness of the actor and the magnetic gaze of his green eyes. “Don’t fall in love…. Don’t fall in love…” a small voice said in her head, very similar to Marilyn’s advice. But Pam also seemed to dazzle Adam, who came over to her with a charming smile.

  “I really wanted to meet you,” Adam said. Karl winked at Pam.

  “I’ve spoken well of you, Pam. How are you? I’m happy to see you!” Karl told the young actress with a fraternal hug and gestured for her to sit with them.

  “The pleasure is mine, Adam. And yes, Karl. As I’ve already said, I’m looking forward to being a part of this project. I’m so excited!” Pam reminded him, with the confidence she had been displaying over the past few weeks. Imitating the big stars, lying, acting at all times. That’s what it was about… Those were the rules of the game.

  “Look at you, Pam. You know, Adam, when I met her only a few months ago she was an inexperienced actress, timid and insecure. Who would have thought this was the same person,” Karl reflected.

  “Hollywood changes people, right Pam? I started in the industry not long ago and even though I know that with Karl I can be myself, I have to be different with other people.” What Adam had just said sounded very sad.

  “No, no, well I’m like this, as I am,” Pam laughed.

  Lie. Who was this other person? Who was she becoming? The new Cameron Diaz? The new Scarlett Johansson? What would be next? Sucking up to Woody Allen? She thought about Marilyn again and how disappointed she was in her. As angry as she had been went she went to get revenge in the hamburger restaurant, she regretted it a lot.

  “Well you’re lucky to be so self-confident,” Adam answered, looking her up and down boldly.

  On that occasion, Pam had decided to take some worn sneakers from her closet and a gray t-shirt with a neckline that was much too low. Suddenly she felt her shyness reappear, seeing her cleavage on show more than usual which had without a doubt, caught Adam’s attention.

  “Okay, enough chit-chat,” said Karl, laughing. “Soon we will be going to Italy and we need to have the characters clearly defined. Where they come from, where they are going, their dreams, problems, disappointments. I want you to use the first version of the script I sent to tell me a bit about your characters as if they were yourselves.”

  Adam and Pam spent four hours speaking about their characters. Laughing, getting to know each other and going deeper on points they usually would on a fourth or fifth date, not the first time you meet someone. But of course, they were talking from the point of view of their characters. Karl was happy. There was chemistry between his two protagonists and he could see in their eyes that they were attracted to each other. It was obvious and Karl was an expert in emotions. His protagonists knew their characters well. They had studied them and had even come to be fond of them, even though they were very different to who they were. That was important for Karl, for his actors to like the characters he had developed. That filled them with emotion and made them feel more real, which was what he tried to find in every project he took on.

  The movie Story of Two Souls was about reincarnation but was sweet, sensitive and romantic. It was a special story between two people that met in the thirties at the Fontana Di Trevi in Rome. He was trying to take some good photographs of the monument and she, playful, showed him the perfect perspective to do so. They get to know each other, fall in love, want to run away and be together forever… but she is from an important and strict family, and will have many problems and face the tough reality that makes the love of the two young people impossible. Those two souls are born again after a fateful previous life in the twenty-first century. When they meet in Los Angeles, also accidentally and in circumstances very similar to the first time, they know and remember their past lives. From there, they want to discover what happened to Catherine and Edward, their past selves, and the question of the film is: will they be luckier the second time around?

  The film was expected to be profound and be a blockbuster, becoming the favorite film of any woman, such as The Notebook had. He could see the perfect couple in Pam and Adam, and a real-life romance between them would surely make sales increase. The romance would surely come… Karl could see it when he glanced at them without them noticing they had a prying spectator, observing each of their movements and indiscreet flirtations.

  When Adam and Pam said goodbye to Karl, it was already night, so they decided to go to dinner together.

  “You seem really nice, Pam,” Adam said.

  Pam looked at him, spellbound. He bore a certain resemblance to Brad, but he was taller and stronger, more manly. He had brown hair, a tailored beard of three days and prominent and pronounced Adam’s apple. All paired with an angelical green gaze, full lips and a perfect nose.

  “So do you, Adam,” Pam answered, giving one of her best smiles, her teeth already whitened and straightened by one of the best dentists in Los Angeles that she could finally afford. “Who represents you?”

  “Samantha Moore.”

  “Samantha?” Pam laughed. “I went to see her and even though she recommended me to Robert for my
first good photo book, she rejected me. Richard Simmons took me on. He’s been so great.” That made her shiver. How could she forget that not long ago, she had felt something very special and important for her agent.

  “Richard. I know him. They say he works miracles with his actors. He’s very influential in Hollywood, right?” Pam shrugged her shoulders, remembering the moment he had pulled strings to get the director of the movie Toward the Light fired. He had ruined young Matt Perry’s so far prestigious career for trying to sleep with her. And Richard had done so to protect her, to believe in justice, maybe for the memory of his unfortunate mother.

  “Yes, he’s really very good.”

  “And I can’t complain either,” Adam continued. “Not long ago I was a nobody with impossible aspirations serving hamburgers in a bar. But then,” Adam hesitated, just for a second. “I was lucky. Samantha believed in me and I’ve been in some great movies. I’m also in Toward the Light, but we never filmed on the same day. I was a beggar with powers that your nephew meets,” he laughed. “Karl is great and he offered me Story of Two Souls. I love the storyline, the script, our characters… everything. It’s going to go well for us, Pam. You’ll see.”

  “It seems like I’m listening to my own story. Doesn’t it scare you? I mean, going form being anonymous to a Hollywood star.”

  “I have a good advisor.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s secret…” Adam mumbled mysteriously.

  Pam glanced at him sideways. Were there more ghost actors around there, helping novice actors with impossible aspirations? Although she loved being with Adam, she yearned to see Marilyn and ask her.

  Pam liked the company of Paul Newman when Pam wasn’t home. They sat under the willow tree and laughed about their ‘novice’ actors, on whom luck had shone since they had met the two mythical ghosts.

  “The truth is, you seem very damaged, Paul, from what you were. You could go back to how you looked in your youth.”

  “Always so brutally honest, Marilyn,” Paul’s ghost answered, laughing. “My actor is so dull. He’s not as fun as Pam, but at least he likes to talk. He’s a great conversationist but, can ghosts get headaches, Marilyn?”