Tell-All

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Trailing a few steps in the wake of Miss Kathie, we see a figure dressed in all-black garments, his face concealed within a black ski mask. Black gloves cover his hands.

  “ ‘What actually occurred may always be one of film-land’s most enduring mysteries. No one could say who had paid for the gruesome attack,’ ” says Terry’s voice, “ ‘but it did exhibit all the earmarks of a professionally trained killer.…’ ”

  The happy couple saunter along, aware of only the glittering gems and their own happiness. They move in the slow-motion bubble of their own supreme bliss.

  “ ‘The weapon was an ordinary ice pick …’ ” reads Terry.

  We see the masked figure extricate a gleaming spike of needle-sharp steel from his jacket pocket.

  “ ‘The assailant has merely to step close to the victim’s back …’ ” reads Terry in voice-over.

  The masked figure sidles up immediately behind Miss Kathie. Shadowing her footsteps, he reaches toward her svelte neck with the cruelly sharpened ice pick.

  “ ‘Thereupon, the well-practiced assassin extends an arm over the victim’s shoulder and plunges the steely weapon’s point deep into the soft area above the clavicle,’ ” reads Terry. “ ‘A quick side-to-side jerk effectively severs the subclavian artery and phrenic nerve, causing fatal exsanguination and suffocation within an instant.…’ ”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, on-screen all this happens. Blood and gore spray an adjacent shopwindow filled with sparkling, glistening diamonds and sapphires. The clots and gobbets of gore slide streaks of brilliant crimson down the polished glass even as the masked assailant flees, his running footfalls echoing down Fifth Avenue. At the death scene, Webster Carlton Westward III kneels in the spreading pool of Miss Kathie’s scarlet blood, cradling her movie-star face in his massive, masculine hands. The light in her famous violet eyes fading, fading, fading.

  “ ‘With her final dying breath,’ ” reads Terrence Terry, “ ‘my beloved Katherine said, “Webb, please promise me …” She said, “Honor and remember me by sharing your incredibly talented penis with all the most beautiful but less fortunate women of this world.” ’ ”

  On-screen, the idealized Miss Kathie sags, limp, in the embrace of the soft-focus Webster. Tears stream down his face as his stand-in says, “I swear.” Shaking one bloody fist at the sky in frustrated rage, he shouts, “Oh, my dearest Katherine, I swear to perform your dying wish to my utmost.”

  From behind their thin scrim of red gore, the diamonds and sapphires watch, glinting coldly. Their multitude of polished, flashing facets reflect infinite versions of Miss Kathie’s demise and Webster’s unbearable heartbreak. The emeralds and rubies bear detached, timeless, eternal witness to the drama and folly of mere humankind. The Webster character looks down; seeing blood on his Rolex wristwatch, he hurriedly wipes the timepiece on Miss Kathie’s dress, then presses the dial to his ear to listen for a tick.

  Reading from the Love Slave manuscript, Terry says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

  ACT II, SCENE ELEVEN

  Professional gossip Elsa Maxwell once said, “All biographies are an assemblage of untruths.” A beat later, adding, “So are all autobiographies.”

  The critics were willing to forgive Lillian Hellman a few factual inaccuracies concerning the Second World War. As presented here, this was history—but better. It might not be the actual war, but this was the war we wished we’d fought. For that, it was brilliant, dense and meaty, with Maria Montez slitting the throat of Lou Costello. After that, Bob Hope tap-dancing his signature shim-sham step through a field of live land mines.

  Compared to the opening night of Unconditional Surrender, no doughboy crouched in the trenches nor GI in a tank turret ever shook with as much fear as my Miss Kathie felt stepping out on that stage. She made a ready target from every seat in the house. Dancing and singing, she was a sitting duck. Each note or kick step could easily be her last, and who would notice amidst the barrage of fake bullets and mortar shells that rocked the theater that night? Any wily assassin could squeeze off a fatal shot and make his escape while the theatergoers applauded Miss Kathie’s bursting skull or chest, thinking the death blow was merely a very effective special effect. Mistaking her spectacular public murder for simply a plot point in Lilly Hellman’s epic saga.

  So Miss Kathie danced. She occupied every inch of the set as if her life depended on it, constantly dodging and evading any single location on the stage, climbing to the forecastle of a battleship, then diving into the warm waves of the Pacific Ocean, the lyric of an Arthur Freed song bubbling up through the water, and Miss Kathie breaking the azure surface a moment later, still holding the same Harold Arlen note.

  It was terror that invested her performance with such energy, such verve, spurring the best Miss Kathie had given her audience in decades. Creating an evening which people would recall for the remainder of their lives. Imbuing Miss Kathie with a kinetic vitality which had been too long absent. Peppered throughout the audience we see Senator Phelps Russell Warner seated beside his latest wife. We see Paco Esposito in the company of industry sexpot Anita Page. Myself, I sit with Terrence Terry. In fact, the only empty seat in the house is beside the haggard Webster Carlton Westward III, where he’s lovingly placed the massive armload of red roses he, no doubt, intends to present during the curtain calls. A bouquet large enough to conceal a tommy gun or rifle. The barrel perhaps equipped with a silencer, although such a precaution would be wholly unnecessary as deafening Japanese Zeros dive-bomb the American forces at Pearl Harbor.

  Tonight’s performance amounted to nothing less than a battle for her identity. This, the constant creation of herself. This strutting and bellowing, a struggle to keep herself in the world, to not be replaced by another’s version, the way food is digested, the way a tree’s dead carcass becomes fuel or furniture. In her high stepping, Miss Kathie endlessly blared proof of her human existence. In her blurred Bombershay steps here was a fragile organism doing its most to effect the environment surrounding it and postponing decomposition as long as possible.

  Framed in that spotlight, we watched an infant shrieking for a breast to suckle. There was a zebra or rabbit screaming as wolves tore it to pieces.

  This wasn’t any mere song and dance; here was a bold, blaring declaration howling itself into the empty face of death.

  Before us strutted something more than Miss Kathie’s past characters: Mrs. Gunga Din or Mrs. Hunchback of Notre Dame or Mrs. Last of the Mohicans.

  No one except myself and Terrence Terry would take note of the sweat drenching my Miss Kathie. Or notice the twitching, nervous way her eyes rattled in their attempt to watch every seat in the orchestra and balcony. For once, the critics weren’t her worst fear, not Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times nor Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune nor Robert Garland of the New York American.

  Jack Grant of Screen Book, Gladys Hall and Katherine Albert of Modern Screen magazine, Harrison Carroll of the Los Angeles Herald Express, a legion of critics take rapturous notes, racking their brains for additional superlatives. Also, columnists Sheilah Graham and Earl Wilson, a group that any other show, any other night would constitute what Dorothy Kilgallen calls “a jury of her sneers,” this night those sourpusses would clamor with praise.

  In my seat, I jot my own notes, making a record of this triumph. Tonight, not only Miss Kathie’s triumph and Lilly Hellman’s, but my own personal victory; the sensation feels as if I’ve seen my own crippled child begin to walk.

  At my elbow, Terry whispers that producer Dick Castle telephoned, already angling for the film rights. Looking pointedly at my feet tapping along to the music, he smiles and whispers, “Who died and made you Eleanor Powell?” His own tense hands carry a constant stream of colorful Jordan almonds from a small paper sack to his mouth.

  Onstage, my Miss Kathie belts out another surefire gold-record hit, wrapping herself in the smoldering, snapping flag of the USS Arizona. Throwing herself from stage left to stage right she displays
the panicked, manic struggle of an animal caught in a trap. Or a butterfly snared in a spider’s web. Spangles flashing, vivid eye shadow, her hair colored and sculpted beyond the lurid dreams of any peacock, the smile she displays is nothing more than a jaws-open, teeth-snarling rictus spasming in outrage against the dying light. Bug-eyed in her forced enthusiasm, Miss Kathie thrashes through each production number, a frenzied, vicious, frenetic denial of impending death.

  Her every gesture wards away an unseen attacker, keeping the invisible at bay. Her every freeze, drop, drag and slide constitutes a fight, sidestep, evasion of her imminent doom. Pounding the boards, my Miss Kathie spins as a flapping, squawking, frantic dervish begging for another hour of life. So upbeat, so animated and alive in this moment because death looms so close.

  Backstage, desperate for an encore he knows the audience will demand, Dore Schary already plans to A-bomb Nagasaki. For a second and third encore, he’s chosen Tokyo and Yokohama.

  According to Walter Winchell, the entire Second World War was just an encore to the first.

  Onstage, Miss Kathie executes a violent, furious Buffalo step, transitioning to a Suzy Q even as Manchuria falls. Hong Kong and Malaysia topple. Mickey Rooney as Ho Chi Minh leads the Viet Minh into battle. The Doolittle Raid rains fire on Nora Bayes.

  And in the seat next to me, Terrence Terry clutches at his throat with both hands and slides, lifeless, to the floor.

  ACT III, SCENE ONE

  For this next scene, we open with a booming, thundering chord from a pipe organ. The chord continues, joining the melody of Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. As the scene takes shape, we see my Miss Kathie garbed in a wedding gown, standing in a small room dominated by a large stained-glass window. Beyond an open doorway, we can make out the arched, cavernous interior of a cathedral where row upon row of people line the pews.

  A small constellation of stylists orbit Miss Kathie. Sydney Guilaroff and M. La Barbe tuck away stray hairs, patting and smoothing the sides of Miss Kathie’s pristine updo. Max Factor dabs the finishing touches on her makeup. My position is not that of a bridesmaid or flower girl. I am not a formal member of the wedding party, but I shake out Miss Kathie’s train and spread its full length. At the back of the church I tell her to smile, and slip my finger between her lips to scratch a smear of lipstick off one upper incisor. I toss the veil over her head and ask if she’s certain she wants to do this.

  Her violet eyes gleaming behind the haze of Belgian lace, vivid as flowers under a layer of hoarfrost, Miss Kathie says, “C’est la vie.”

  She says, “That’s Russian talk for ‘I do.’ ”

  In an impulsive gesture I lift her veil and lean forward, putting my lips to her powdered cheek. There, the taste of Mitsouko perfume and the dust of talc meet my mouth. Ducking my head and twisting my face away, I sneeze.

  My darling Miss Kathie says, “Ich liebe dich.” Adding, “That’s how the French say, ‘Gesundheit.’ ”

  Standing near us, donning a dove gray morning coat, Lillian Hellman snaps her fingers—one snap, two snaps, three snaps—and jerks her head toward the pews filled with guests. Lilly offers her arm and links it through Miss Kathie’s, guiding her to the head of the church’s center aisle. My Miss Kathie’s arms, garbed in white, elbow-length gloves, her gloved hands clasp a bouquet of white roses, freesia and snowdrops. The Vienna Boys Choir sings “Some Enchanted Evening.” Marian Anderson sings “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.” The Sammy Kaye Orchestra plays “Green-sleeves” as the shining satin and white lace of Miss Kathie drifts a step, drifts a step, drifts another step away, leaving me. Arm in arm with Lilly, she stalks closer to the altar, where Fanny Brice stands as the matron of honor. Louis B. Mayer waits to officiate. A bower arches above them, twining with countless pink Nancy Reagan roses and yellow lilies. Among the flowers loom a thicket of newsreel cameras and boom microphones.

  Miss Kathie walks what Walter Winchell calls “the bridal mile” wearing what Sheilah Graham calls “very off-white” posing what Hedda Hopper calls a “veiled threat.”

  “Something old, something new, something borrowed,” Louella Parsons would write in her column, “and something extremely fishy.”

  Miss Kathie seems too ready to be placed under what Elsa Maxwell calls “spouse arrest.”

  At the altar Lon McCallister cools his heels as best man, standing next to a brown pair of eyes. This year’s groom, the harried, haggard, battle-scarred Webster Carlton Westward III.

  Crowding the bride’s side of the church, the guests include Kay Francis and Donald O’Connor, Deanna Durbin and Mildred Coles, George Bancroft and Bonita Granville and Alfred Hitchcock, Franchot Tone and Greta Garbo, all the people who failed to attend the funeral for little Loverboy.

  As Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would say, “More stars than there are in heaven …”

  On her trip to the altar, my Miss Kathie throws looks and kisses to Cary Grant and Theda Bara. She waves a white-gloved hand at Arthur Miller and Deborah Kerr and Danny Kaye. From behind her veil she smiles at Johnny Walker, Laurence Olivier, Randolph Scott and Freddie Bartholomew, Buddy Pepper, Billy Halop, Jackie Cooper and a tiny Sandra Dee.

  Her gaze wafting to a familiar mustache, Miss Kathie sighs, “Groucho!”

  It’s through a veil that my darling Miss Kathie most looks like her true self. Like someone who throws you a look from the window of a train, or from the opposite side of a busy street, blurred behind speeding traffic, a face whom you could wed in that moment and imagine yourself happy to live with forever. Her face, balanced and composed, so full of potential and possibility, she looks like the answer to everything wrong. Just to meet her violet eyes feels like a blessing.

  In the basement of this same building, within the crypt that holds her former “was-band” Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., alongside the ashes of Lothario and Romeo and Loverboy, amid the dead soldiers of empty champagne bottles, down there waits the mirror which contains her every secret. That defaced mirror of Dorian Gray, it forms a death mask even as the world kills her a little more each year. That scratched web of scars etched by myself wielding the same Harry Winston diamond that the Webster specimen now slips on her finger.

  But wrapped in the lace of a wedding veil my Miss Kathie always becomes a promising new future. The camera lights flare amidst the flowers, the heat wilting and scorching the roses and lilies. The smell of sweet smoke.

  This wedding scene reveals Webb as a brilliant actor, taking Miss Kathie in his arms he bends her backward, helpless, as his lips push her even further off balance. His bright brown eyes sparkle. His gleaming smile simply moons and beams.

  Miss Kathie hurtles her bouquet at a crowd that includes Lucille Ball, Janet Gaynor, Cora Witherspoon and Marjorie Main and Marie Dressler. A mad scramble ensues between June Allyson, Joan Fontaine and Margaret O’Brien. Out of the fray Ann Rutherford emerges clutching the flowers. We all throw rice supplied by Ciro’s.

  Zasu Pitts cuts the wedding cake. Mae Murray minds the guest book.

  In a quiet moment during which Miss Kathie has exited to change out of her wedding gown, I sidle up beside the groom. As my wedding gift to Webb, I slip him a few sheets of printed paper.

  Those dulled brown eyes look at the pages, reading the words Love Slave typed across the top margin, and he says, “What’s this?”

  Brushing rice from the shoulders of his coat, I say, “Don’t play coy.…”

  Those pages already belong to him, stolen from his suitcase, I’m merely returning them to their rightful owner. Saying this, I straighten his boutonniere, smoothing his lapels.

  Lifting the first page, scanning it, the Webb reads, “ ‘No one will ever know why Katherine Kenton committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion.…’ ” His bright brown eyes look at me, then back to the page, and he continues to read.

  ACT III, SCENE TWO

  We continue with the audio bridge of Webster Carlton Westward III reading, “ ‘… Katherine Kenton committed suicide on
what seemed like such a joyous occasion.’ ”

  The mise-en-scène shows my Miss Kathie in her dressing room, backstage, the soft-focus stand-in perfect and lovely as if filmed through a veil. We watch as she sits at her dressing table, leaning into her reflection in the mirror, fixing the final smears of blood and scars and crusted scabs for her upcoming Guadalcanal battle scene. From outside the closed dressing room door we hear a voice call, “Two minutes, Miss Kenton.”

  The voice-over continues reading, “ ‘It had long been rumored that Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., had taken his own life, after traces of cyanide were uncovered following his sudden death. Although no suicide note was ever found, and a subsequent inquest was unable to reach a conclusion, Drake was reported to be severely despondent, according to Katherine’s maid, Hazie Coogan. …’ ”

  On Miss Kathie’s dressing table, among the jars of greasepaint and hairbrushes, we see a small paper bag; the sides are rolled down to reveal its contents as a colorful array of Jordan almonds. Miss Kathie’s lithe movie-star hand carries the almonds, a red one, a green one, a white one, almond by almond, to her mouth. At the same time, her violet eyes never leave her own reflection in the mirror. A glass bottle, prominently labeled CYANIDE, sits next to the candied almonds. The bottle’s stopper removed.

  Webb’s voice-over continues, “ ‘It’s likely that my adored Katherine feared losing the happiness she’d struggled so long and hard to attain.’ ”

  We see the idealized, slender version of Miss Kathie stand and adjust her military costume, studying her reflection in the dressing room mirror.

  The voice of Webster reads, “ ‘After so many years, my beloved Katherine had regained her stardom in the lead of a Broadway hit. She’d triumphed over a decade of drug abuse and eating disorders. And most important, she’d found a sexual satisfaction beyond anything she’d ever dreamed possible.’ ”