Tell-All

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Terry’s voice continues reading, “ ‘The pungent aroma of her most corporeal orifice drenched my senses. My ever-mounting admiration and professional respect boiling for release, I thrust deeper into the fragile, soiled petals of her fecund rose.…’ ”

  In the year preceding the French Revolution, according to Terrence Terry, the antiroyalists sought to undermine public respect for Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, by publishing drawings which depicted the monarchs engaged in degenerate sexual behavior. These cartoons, printed in Switzerland and Germany and smuggled into France, accused the queen of copulating with hordes of dogs, servants, clergymen. Before the storming of the Place de la Bastille, before the national razor and Jean-Paul Marat, these crude line drawings infiltrated citizens’ hearts as the vanguard for rebellion. Comic propaganda. Obscene little sketches and dirty stories marched as advance men, eroding respect, smoothing the path for the bloody massacre to come.

  That’s why the Webster specimen had written such filth.

  Continuing to read from the final chapter of Love Slave, the voice-over of Terrence Terry says, “ ‘Plunging my steely manhood, sounding the noble depths of Katherine’s succulent hindquarters, I couldn’t help but experience every one of her magnificent performances. Moaning and slobbering beneath me, here was Eleanor of Aquitaine. Squealing and clenching, here was Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her diminutive waist gripped between my insatiable, beastly paws, Zelda Fitzgerald tossed her head, howling with every breath.…’ ”

  In soft focus, the younger, idealized lovers loll, tangled in gauzy sheets. The voice of Terry reads, “ ‘The lovely thighs which gripped my tuberous lust had trodden the boards at Carnegie Hall. The London Palladium. The luxuriant flesh which rocked below me in synchronized bliss, the delicious symphony of our mutual devouring of each other, this delicate flower grunting at the brutal onslaught of my plunging invasion, she was Helen of Troy. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Mary Queen of Scots …’ ”

  Chirp, cluck, bark … Lady Macbeth.

  Growl, bray, tweet … Mary Todd Lincoln.

  “ ‘Abandoning the sodden glory of her puckered shelter,’ ” Terry continues reading, “ ‘I spewed my steaming tribute, gush upon jetting gush, the pearlescent globules of my adoration and profound admiration spattering Katherine’s unutterably beautiful visage.…’ ”

  The idealized lovers immediately vacate the bed and begin to dress. They towel off. Without speaking, Miss Kathie applies lipstick. The specimen shines his shoes, buffing them with a horsehair brush. In separate mirrors, each inspects their own teeth, checks their profile, snarls and uses a fingernail to pick a stray hair from within their respective cheeks. All of this physical business conducted in dreamy slow motion.

  Terry’s voice continues to read, “ ‘Perhaps it was Katherine’s primal nature which lured her to her doom. In retrospect, she felt at ease only among a wider variety of sentient beings, and this impulse once more prompted us to venture into society with the ravenous, imprisoned residents of the Central Park Zoo.…’ ”

  The two lovers stroll, leaving the town house, walking west toward Fifth Avenue. Sunlight streams down from a clear blue sky. Songbirds twitter a bright chorus, and dazzling geraniums bloom, red and pink, in window boxes. Liveried doorman tip their hats, their gold braid flashing, as Miss Kathie passes. The idealized Miss Kathie, her face smooth, her feet gliding, almost floats along the sidewalk.

  “ ‘To Katherine,’ ” continues the voice-over, “ ‘perhaps life itself occurred as a sort of prison she felt compelled to escape. A film star must feel akin to the beasts on display in any zoo.…’ ”

  In a tracking shot, we see the lovers wander down a path, wending their way into the park, past the pond filled with sea lions. Beside the colony of emperor penguins, the idealized Webster waddles, heels together, to mimic the comic seabirds. The idealized Miss Kathie laughs, revealing her brilliant teeth and arching her willowy, slender throat. Suddenly, impulsively, she dashes ahead, out of the shot.

  “ ‘Among the last endearments Katherine offered me, she confided that I was in possession of the most gifted, skilled male equipment that had ever existed in all recorded human history, ever.…’ ”

  The voice-over says, “ ‘Raspberries to those grouches who had branded her box-office poison …’ ”

  As Miss Kathie slowly sprints along the path, her movie-star hair streaming in the air, we hear the voice of Terrence Terry read, “ ‘I bounded in pursuit of my splendid beloved, declaring my devotion in a breathless public proclamation. In that instant of greatest joy, I threw open my arms in order to capture and embrace all the women she had been, Cinderella and Harriet Tubman and Mary Cassatt.…’ ”

  In soft-focus slow motion, the idealized Webb runs, his arms outstretched. As he reaches Miss Kathie, she tumbles backward, falling out of the shot.

  In real time, we see the flash of pointed teeth. We hear guttural roars and hear bones breaking. A scream rings out.

  “ ‘At that instant,’ ” the voice-over reads, “ ‘my everything, my reason for living, the idol of millions, Katherine Kenton, loses her footing and plummets into the grizzly bear enclosure.…’ ”

  Still reading from Love Slave, the voice of Terrence Terry says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

  ACT II, SCENE FIVE

  While my position is not that of a private detective or a bodyguard, for the present time my job tasks include plundering Webb’s suitcase in search of the latest revisions to Love Slave. Later, I must sneak the manuscript back to its hiding place between the laundered shirts and undershorts so the Webster specimen won’t realize we’re savvy to his ever-evolving plot.

  The fantasy murder scene dissolves into the current place and time. Once more we find ourselves in the hotel ballroom crowded with elegant guests previously seen in the awards ceremony with the senator. Here is an entirely different event, wherein my Miss Kathie is being awarded an honorary degree from Wasser College. On the same stage used earlier, in act one, scene nine, a distinguished man wears a tuxedo, standing at a microphone. The shot begins with the same swish pan as before, gradually slowing to a crane shot moving between the tables circled by seated guests.

  Used a second time, the effect will feel a touch clichéd, thus suggesting the tedium of even Miss Kathie’s seemingly glamorous life. How even lofty accolades become tiresome. Again, the upstage wall is filled with a shifting montage of vast black-and-white film clips which show my Miss Kathie as Mrs. Caesar Augustus, as Mrs. Napoleon Bonaparte, as Mrs. Alexander the Great. All the greatest roles of her illustrious career. Even this tribute montage is identical to the montage used in the previous scene, and as the same close-ups occur, her movie-star face begins to register as something abstract, no longer a person or even a human being, becoming a sort of trademark or logo. Symbolic and mythic as the full moon.

  Speaking at the microphone, the master of ceremonies says, “Although she left school in the sixth grade, Katherine Kenton has earned a master’s degree in life.…” Turning his head to one side, the speaker looks off stage right, saying, “She is a full tenured professor who has taught audiences worldwide about love and perseverance and faith.…”

  In an eye-line match, we reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing, hidden among the shadows in the stage-right wing. She stands frozen as a statue, shimmering in a beaded gown while I apply touches of powder to her neck, her décolletage, the point of her chin. At my feet, around me sit the bags and totes and vacuum bottles that all contribute to creating this moment. The hairpieces and makeup and prescription drugs.

  When Photoplay published the six-page pictorial showing Miss Kathie’s town house interior it was my hands that folded the sharp hospital corners on every bed. True, the photographs depicted Miss Kathie with an apron tied around her waist, kneeling to scrub the kitchen floor, but only after I’d cleaned and waxed that tile. My hands create her eyes and cheekbones. I pluck and pencil her famous eyebrows. What you see is collaboration. Only when we’re combined, to
gether, do Miss Kathie and I make one extraordinary person. Her body and my vision.

  “As a teacher,” says the master of ceremonies, “Katherine Kenton has reached innumerable pupils with her lessons of patience and hard work.…”

  Within this tedious monologue, we dissolve to flashback: a recent sunny day in the park. As in the earlier, soft-focus murder fantasy, Miss Kathie and Webster Carlton Westward III stroll hand in hand toward the zoo. In a medium shot, we see Miss Kathie and Webb step to the rail which surrounds a pit full of pacing grizzly bears. Miss Kathie’s hands grip the metal rail so tightly the knuckles glow white, her face frozen so near the bears, only a vein, surfacing beneath the skin of her neck, pulses and squirms to betray her terror. We hear the ambient noise of children singing. We hear lions and tigers roar. Hyenas laugh. Some jungle bird or howler monkey declares its existence, screeching a maniac’s gibberish. Our entire world, always doing battle against the silence and obscurity of death.

  Chirp, squawk, bray … George Gobel.

  Moo, meow, oink … Harold Lloyd.

  Instead of soft focus, this flashback occurs in grainy, echoing cinema verité. The only light source, the afternoon sun, flares in the camera lens, washing out the scene in brief flashes. The grizzlies stagger and bellow among the sharp rocks below. From off-camera, a peacock screams and screams with the hysterical voice of a woman being stabbed to death.

  On top of all these ambient animal sounds, we still faintly hear the master of ceremonies saying, “We bestow this honorary PhD in humanities not so much in recognition of what she’s learned, but in gratitude—in our most earnest gratitude—for what Katherine Kenton has taught us.…”

  Surfacing in the zoo sound track, we hear a faint heartbeat. The steady thump-thump, thump-thump matches the jumping pulse of the vein in Miss Kathie’s neck, immediately below her jawline. Even as the animal sounds and human chatter grow more faint, the heartbeat grows louder. The heart beats faster, more loud; the tendons surface in the skin of Miss Kathie’s neck, betraying her inner terror. Similar veins and tendons surface, twitching and jumping in the backs of each hand clamped to the bear pit railing.

  Standing beside Miss Kathie at the rail, the Webster specimen lifts one arm and drapes it around her shoulders. Her heartbeat racing. The peacock screaming. As the Webb’s arm settles over her shoulders Miss Kathie releases the rail. With both her hands, she seizes the Webb’s hand dangling beside her face, pulling down on the wrist and throwing Webster, judo-style, over her back. Over the railing. Into the pit.

  Dissolving back to the stage wings, the present moment, we hear a grizzly bear roar and a man’s faint scream. Miss Kathie stands in the dim light reflected off the speaker. The skin of her neck, smooth, not pulsing, moving only her lipstick, she says, “Have you found any new versions of the manuscript?”

  On the upstage wall, she appears as Mrs. Leonardo da Vinci, as Mrs. Stephen Foster, as Mrs. Robert Fulton.

  Any interview, actually any promotion campaign, is equivalent to a so-called “blind date” with a stranger, where you flirt and flutter your eyelashes and try very hard not to get fucked.

  In truth, the degree of anyone’s success depends on how often they can say the word yes and hear the word no. Those many times you’re thwarted yet persevere.

  By shooting this scene with the same audience and setting as the earlier one, we can imply how all awards ceremonies are merely lovely traps baited with some bright silver-plate piece of praise. Deadly traps baited with applause.

  Stooping, I twist the cap off one thermos, not the one full of black coffee, or the thermos full of chilled vodka, nor the vacuum bottle rattling with Valium like a Carmen Miranda maraca. I open another thermos bottle and pinch out the thin sheaf of pages which are rolled tight and stuffed inside. Printed along the heading of each sheet, words read Love Slave. A third draft. I give her the pages.

  My Miss Kathie squints at the typed words. Shaking her head, she says, “I can’t make heads or tails out of this. Not without my glasses.” And she hands the sheets back to me, saying, “You read them. I want you to tell me how I’m going to die.…”

  And from the audience, we hear a sudden rush of thunderous applause.

  ACT II, SCENE SIX

  “ ‘On the day she painfully fried to death,’ ” I read in voice-over, “ ‘my beloved Katherine Kenton enjoyed a luxuriant bubble bath.’ ”

  As with previous final-chapter sequences read aloud from Love Slave, we see the younger, idealized versions of Miss Kathie and the Webb, cavorting upon her bed, in a soft-focus, misty version of her boudoir. In voice-over, I continue reading as the fantasy couple leave their lovemaking and stride, slow, trancelike, long-legged into the bedroom’s adjoining bathroom.

  “ ‘As was her custom,’ ” reads my voice, “ ‘subsequent to strenuous oral contact with my romantic meat shaft, Katherine rinsed her delicate palate with a mouthful of eau de cologne and applied chips of glistening ice to her slender, traumatized throat.

  “ ‘As I opened the taps,’ ” continues the voice-over, “ ‘filling her sunken, pink-marble tub with frothy steaming water, I added the bath oil, and dense mounds of lather billowed. As I readied these luxuriant ablutions, my dearest Katherine said, “Webster, my darling, the pints of love essence you erupt at the peak of oral passion taste more intoxicating than gorging on even the richest European chocolate.” My beloved belched demurely into her fist, swallowed and said, “All women should taste your delicious emissions.” ’ ”

  The soft-focus, idealized Miss Kathie shuts her violet eyes and licks her lips.

  The fantasy couple kiss, then break their embrace.

  “ ‘Lowering her silken sensual legs with infinite care,’ ” I read in voice-over, “ ‘Katherine immersed her spattered thighs, her acclaimed pubis descending into the scalding clouds of iridescent white. The hot liquid lapped at her satiny buttocks, then splashed at her silken bustline. The misty vapors swirled, perfume filling the sultry bathroom air.’ ”

  My own voice continues, reading, “ ‘It was the year every other song on the radio was Mitzi Gaynor singing “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” and a large RCA radio sat conveniently near the edge of the pink-marble bathtub, its dial tuned to play romantic ballads, and its sturdy electrical cord plugged into a convenient wall socket.’ ”

  We get an insert shot of said radio, balanced on the tub’s rim, so close that steam condenses in sweaty droplets on the radio’s wooden case.

  “ ‘In addition,’ ” continues my voice, “ ‘an attractive assortment of electric lamps, each equipped with subdued, pink-tinted bulbs, their flattering light filtered by beaded shades, these also stood around the rim of the luxurious bubble bath.’ ”

  A slow panning shot reveals a forest of lamps, short and tall, balanced on the wide rim of the oversize tub. A black tangle of power cords snake from the lamps to wall outlets. Many of these thick cords, almost pulsing with electric current, look frayed.

  “ ‘Sinking up to her slender neck in the fragrant foaming bubbles,’ ” continues the voice-over, “ ‘Katherine released a contented moan. At that moment of our inestimable happiness, playing the lovely Grand Waltz Brilliant by Frédéric Chopin, the radio slipped from its perilous perch. Just by accident, all the various lamps also tumbled, plunging deep into the inviting waters, poaching my beloved alive like an agonized, screaming, tortured egg.…’ ”

  On camera the perfumed foam boils, billowing, rising to mask the flashing, sizzling death scene. My voice reads, “ ‘The end.’ ”

  ACT II, SCENE SEVEN

  We cut back to the auditorium of the lavish Broadway theater where a Japanese bomb explodes, blasting shrapnel into Yul Brynner in the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The USS Arizona lists starboard, threatening to capsize on Vera-Ellen singing the role of Eleanor Roosevelt. The USS West Virginia keels over on top of Neville Chamberlain and the League of Nations.

  As the Zeros strafe Ivor Novello, my Miss Kathie climbs to the foremas
t of the battleship, menaced by antiaircraft gunfire and Lionel Atwill, biting the pin of a hand grenade between her teeth. With a jerk of her head Miss Kathie pulls the pin, slingshotting her arm to fling the grenade, lobbing it too wide. The cast-iron pineapple narrowly misses Hirohito, and instead beans Romani Romani in the string section of the orchestra pit.

  From an audience seat, fifth row center, a voice screams, “Oh, stop, for fuck’s sake.” Lillian Hellman stands, brandishing a rolled copy of the score, slashing the air with it as if with a riding crop. Lilly screams, “Just stop!” She screams, “You’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy!”

  Onstage, the entire Japanese Imperial Army grinds to a silent halt. The dead sailors strewn across the deck of the USS Tennessee stand and twist their heads to stretch their stiff necks. Ensign Joe Taussig brings the USS Nevada back into port while Lilly hauls herself up onto the stage apron. Her spittle flashing in the footlights, she screams, “Fouetté en tournant when you throw the grenade, you stupid bitch!” To demonstrate, Hellman rises to stand, trembling on the point of one toe, then kicks her raised leg to rotate herself. Kicking and turning, she screams, “And go all the way around, not halfway.…”

  In the reverse angle, we see Terrence Terry and myself seated at the rear of the house, surrounded by an assortment of garment bags, hatboxes and unwanted infants. The house seats are otherwise empty. Terry speculates that Miss Kathie keeps botching the grenade throw intentionally. Her previous hand grenade slammed into Barbara Bel Geddes. The throw before that bounced off the thick skull of Hume Cronyn. If Webster plans to kill her at the peak of a new stage success, Terry explains, it hardly makes sense for Miss Kathie to defeat the evil Emperor Showa. Rave opening-night notices will only increase her danger.

  Onstage, Lilly Hellman executes a perfect pas de bourée step, at the same time putting a pistol shot between the eyes of Buddy Ebsen.