The Blonde

by Anna Godbersen

  “No. He’s angry, but not about you.”

  “About what, then?”

  “Tomorrow the candidate for vice president will be decided, and he’s not going to like it. He thinks Symington looks right, but it’s not going to be Symington.”

  “No?”

  “Oh—I suppose everybody will know pretty soon, anyway.” He sighed and glanced out at the oyster sky. “Johnson’s going to get his way.”

  “But you called him an animal.”

  For the first time since he’d come out by the pool, he smiled. “You remembered that?”

  “I try to remember everything you say,” she replied, which was the truth, although not in the way her earnest, childlike delivery implied.

  “Well, he is—directly from the barnyard—but I don’t have a choice. I don’t like it, and I don’t trust him. But they got me in a corner this time.”

  He worked his palms together and glanced at her, his eyes vibrant with mystery. Was he wondering what it was safe to tell her, or how best to have his way with her? Or was she in his thoughts at all?

  “Should I go?” she said quickly, before he could think too much. “You must be t-tired,” she continued, as though disoriented by her own self-doubt. “Your family, I wouldn’t want them thinking that I—”

  “Never mind about them, you’re staying,” he interrupted, not harshly but as though this was the obvious way of things. He added, almost apologetically: “You aren’t the first, you know.”

  If she played wounded by this confession, perhaps he would go on talking, and other details would shake loose, and she could thus please Alexei with all the information she was capable of collecting just by appearing empty-headed. But he had already told her what mattered, and the rest she could piece together. Tomorrow—or later today, rather—when the fatigue had passed and he had regained his strength, he might regret what he had divulged, and punish her or himself by shutting her out. In her interior calculations, she invoked Alexei, philosophizing on the long game. There was nothing she might learn at that moment that was more important than holding Jack’s attention, so she let a giggle blow away on a gentle exhalation. She lifted her legs showily and stood to kiss him on the forehead. “Oh, Jack,” she gasped, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know what you are.”

  Then she darted toward the pool on mincing, barefoot tiptoes, unzipping her dress as she moved, pulling it over her head, revealing the surprise that she had planned for him twelve hours ago—that she wore no under-garments—and pausing just long enough to give him a backward glance that was equal parts mischief and apprehension, threw her arms over her head, and dove in. She was underwater a long time sailing through the dense, silken water, and when she came up for air she saw that he had already followed her lead. He was coming toward her, a dark shadow across the pool bottom’s moonlike surface. She took a few easy strokes to the corner, and when she surfaced again she pushed the damp strands of hair straight back from her face. Blinking water from her lashes, she experienced the tingling of being watched, and for a moment she was sure there had been a figure on the second-story balcony. But then a light went out in a bedroom, and she saw that the balcony was empty.

  Jack surfaced inches from her, his breath noisy and very close. They stared at each other for a few moments, and—curling her lower lip under her teeth—she wrapped one leg and then the other around his torso and pulled him the rest of the way to her. They had never been like this together—completely naked, their bodies as slick and warm as seals. Her breasts floated between them, almost touching his chest, which was smooth and hairless as a boy’s. Then he lowered his head and pushed her mouth open. She murmured when he pushed the rest of the way in, putting her fingernails into the nape of his neck and catching his ear between her teeth, bracing herself as his weight pressed her into the concrete deck, slow and strong at first and then much faster, again and again. They were, however briefly, rather small in that corner of the pool, hanging on to each other, while the glamour of the sunrise broke over the hills and painted the surface of the water a gleaming, peachy orange.

  FIFTEEN

  Los Angeles, July 1960

  FRIDAY morning was as balmy and pure blue as the day before, and the day before, and the day before that, and Marilyn knew that for once she could do almost anything—take her clothes off in the cake aisle of the supermarket, or shoot up on Hollywood Boulevard—and nobody would notice. Kennedy would be accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination that afternoon, in downtown Los Angeles, and even the movie stars, who ordinarily were the organizing principle of the place, had been transformed into giddy fans. She took advantage of this anonymity by borrowing one of the candidate’s white dress shirts, rolling the sleeves and tying it off at the waist, so it wouldn’t be quite so obvious that underneath was the same pink dress she’d been wearing when she left home two days ago.

  As her taxi ferried her back to Beverly Hills, she realized how little she’d slept over those days, how wired her mind was and how heavy her bones. She felt anxious and disoriented, the white light washing everything out, but then the car door opened, and she saw Sal, the concierge, and her stomach relaxed. “Miss Monroe,” he murmured, taking her hand to help her to her feet. It was a relief, after two days holding herself rigid, vigilant, observant, to see a true friend. He added, a little dejectedly, “We would have sent a car for you.”

  “I meant to, but I forgot, I guess,” she replied sorrowfully. “Next time.”

  As the concierge took her arm to escort her up the red-carpeted steps, he lowered his mouth to her ear. “Your husband returned this morning.”

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  “And another gentleman arrived, half an hour ago, looking for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Naturally I told him we had no guest registered under your name. He answered that he was perhaps confused about your lodgings, but that he’d most definitely arranged to meet with you here, this morning. Perhaps he is one of your colleagues in the film industry? In either case it is none of my business, but I put him by the pool until I could confer with you. If you want him removed from the property, I would be more than happy—”

  “No thank you, Sal. I think I know who it is, and he’s okay. Arthur didn’t see him, did he?”

  “Of course not.”

  She pressed onto her toes to kiss the concierge on the forehead, patted his hand, and went on by herself through the carpeted halls and garden pathways. A tiny alarm bell rang when she saw Alexei, poolside. He was wearing the usual brimmed hat and sitting very primly at a round table under a striped umbrella, his legs crossed, a teacup in one hand and its saucer in another. The sunglasses he used to conceal the direction of his gaze were white plastic. For the first time in their acquaintance he wore no socks, and the bare ankles more than anything else made it seem off for them to meet this way, in the California sunshine, as they had only once before, a decade ago.

  “Hello.” She dragged a chair away from the table and sat beside him.

  A few other people lunched around the pool, none within earshot. Nobody seemed particularly cognizant of the new arrival. For a few moments they were quiet, gazing out at the tranquil brightness. “It’s remarkable,” he observed presently.

  “What is?”

  “They don’t notice you.”

  “They’re used to pretty girls.”

  “Perhaps, but that’s not it. You know how to disguise yourself. ‘A fool tries to look different; a clever man looks the same and is different’—have you heard that one?”

  “Guess I didn’t need to.”

  “Apparently not. Tea, my dear?”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t fly cross country to buy me lunch and give me tips on how to go incognito, did you?”

  “Of course not. I heard you were absent without leave from the set, and I was worried about you.”

  “I see.” Perhaps it was sleeplessness, which always leaves the skin a little thin, that caused h
er to feel irritated, rather than protected, by this evidence of his constant supervision. After all, it was at his behest that she had spent those many hours on edge, manipulating the desires of the most sought-after man in the country. Her clothes were rumpled—a mellowed body smell clung to the threads—and she wanted badly to be alone, and naked. “You’re not the only one. Arthur arrived, this morning. Trying to find out why I’d disappeared from his movie, I guess. So if you want to talk, we’d better go elsewhere.”

  He nodded, left a bill under the saucer, and followed her away from the pool.

  “Where to?” she asked as she steered her rented white Thunderbird off the property.

  “Don’t you want to see what all the fuss is about? Let’s go to Pershing Square.”

  She shrugged indifferently, to hide her true curiosity, and without more discussion headed downtown.

  They emerged from the lot underneath the park into a hectic scene: loud and vividly colored as a Disney production, crowds forming in every direction, signs making grand demands in the humble handwriting of romantics and lunatics. The fluorescent-green rectangles of grass were framed by every variety of human: old men in fedoras on park benches with newspapers spread over their crossed legs; lurking teenage girls with greased pompadours and Cleopatra eyes; evangelicals prophesying end times; trim, youthful communists imploring passersby to join the cause of the workingman.

  “Did you know that young man?” she asked, as they walked east, away from the Coliseum where Kennedy was to give his speech, against the stream of bodies.

  “Which man?”

  “The crew-cut one.” She showed her annoyance at their drifting, not as she felt it, but as a little girl might, by pushing naïvely for explanations. “Passing out leaflets about the paradise of the proletariat.”

  “No, my dear. Our cause is great, and there are millions working, publicly and in obscurity—sometimes in total secrecy—to further our aims. It is necessary that many of our comrades remain mysterious to one another, although that mystery does not diminish our brotherhood.”

  “But you do know him?”

  He regarded her sidelong, his eyes patient and amused. “Know who?”

  “My father.”

  “Ah. Yes, we were—are—great friends.”

  “Then tell me something about him,” she demanded, as Alexei led them away from the center of things, past towering, futuristic skyscrapers, a landscape that was ready to be done with people. “Tell me where he came from.”

  “He was born here, in California.” Alexei picked up her arm, and his voice rose to a sweet, storytelling pitch. “On a farm, which he left at eighteen when he was drafted. He would have served, except that the Armistice came first. He’d developed a taste for adventure by then, and was no longer suited to rural life, so he took odd jobs around Los Angeles, working in motion pictures mostly. He was good-looking and charismatic, so he tried acting, but he froze whenever the camera was on him, and only managed to work as an extra. In his private life, he was a great seducer. He was floundering when he met your mother and, on a night of passion, conceived you. She was married already, and he had no money to support a wife and child, and so he set off to make his fortune elsewhere, thinking that he could get rich quick in one of the big Eastern cities, and return in time to see you grow up. But New York was crueler than Los Angeles—he got factory work there, which was how he came to understand the worker’s plight, and believe in our cause.”

  “When I was a teenager, I worked in a factory.”

  “Yes, I know. Funny, isn’t it? Our lives have so much resonance, we can scarcely perceive the whole scheme from a fixed point.”

  “But where did you meet him?”

  “Paris, in the thirties. We crossed paths many times—we were both couriers between Moscow and the various movements breaking out across Europe, carrying microfilm in the heels of our shoes across the old imperialist borders. Those were exciting times, my dear”—and she knew, by the way his eyes glazed, that they had been. “Like you, his charisma was his great asset. He was very effective against the Nazis because he was able to make love to some of the most high-born, well-connected women in Europe.”

  “But when did he tell you about the farm, and the—the factory?”

  “Ah. Well, my dear, every story has a low point that must be passed through to reach its happy conclusion—I expect you know that already, from your work in Hollywood. We were imprisoned together, at one of the German camps. All we had was time, and we talked about everything, and he told me about his youth. About you. We were freed by the Red Army in ’45, and returned to the same line we had been in before the war. When the order came that I was to go to the States, I went to visit him, and he told me that I should look for you. That he held you in his arms when you were a few days old, and knew you were a good girl, and that you would want to serve the people’s cause, too.”

  She was embarrassed by how this touched her, to hear that a man she could not remember had seen greatness in her infant self. How the phrase good girl opened up a well of emotion. “But does he know that I …?”

  “Yes. Eventually our cause brought him here as well. He knows you are doing important work for us, though not how, of course. Or what kind. He understands that it is better for him to remain in the dark. For now. But he is proud of you, my dear, of that I can assure you.”

  They were silent a while. She felt curiously privileged to be a part of this narrative of the brave doings of men across continents and at war, and the idea that she, too, was doing something of importance pleased her unexpectedly. She only wished there was a way for the columnists who ridiculed her intelligence, who claimed she did not read the books she brought to set, to know. For the first time in her life it seemed logical that she had not yet met her father—they were destined to meet later, when the work was done.

  Eventually they came upon a dim and unremarkable bar, the kind she liked best. All the patrons’ eyes were glued to the black-and-white proceedings on a small television set; the light was low, the air smoky, and the furnishings, such as they were, suggested somebody’s idea of a simpler time. She and Alexei sat down at a table where they could almost see the screen, and she told the waitress they’d both have Bloody Marys.

  He gave her time to take a sip and sink into the faux-rustic wooden chair before asking, “Where have you been, N.J.?”

  The drink, and the notion of her father the adventurer who, when they finally met, would have many wild stories to relate over cognacs by the fireplace, made her feel less tired, less irascible. After what Alexei had told her, she was pleased that she had something to tell him, too, and to keep herself from smiling, she bit off the bottom of her celery stalk. “With Hal.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes—I flew in Wednesday night, and met him out at his brother-in-law’s place in Santa Monica.”

  “How long did you stay …?”

  “Till just a few hours ago. I was with him this morning.”

  “You’ve been together the whole time?”

  “Of course not.” Marilyn sipped through her straw, and related the details of the past few days: the party Wednesday night, after he clinched the nomination, which had more or less continued unabated. How the candidate and his people, along with various movieland notables, came and went from the Lawfords’ beach house, and how she had blended in with them, reading magazines by the pool during the day and surreptitiously creeping into Kennedy’s bed at night. To whom the candidate talked out of obligation, and to whom he really paid attention. The manner in which he conversed with his brother Bobby, who appeared to act as a kind of consigliere—he was the one, Marilyn guessed, who did the tough stuff. How they seemed almost not to need words with one another.

  “They’re alike, then?” Alexei asked.

  “Not really. Hal is always joking. He’s intelligent but, you know, kinda profane. His brother doesn’t have any sense of humor that I saw. Real serious type. I suppose they must both be pretty serious,
but Hal doesn’t show it, not when he’s away from the cameras.”

  “Do you think he has it in him to win?”

  “How should I know? I’m no newspaperman.”

  “No …” Alexei paused, considering. “But does he seem to want it badly?”

  “Sometimes he seems exhausted, but he doesn’t show that to everybody. He feels relaxed when he’s with me, I think. He must. Yes, he’s very driven by something or other, and the strain—” Her eyes drifted from Alexei, to the television. The man they’d been discussing had ascended to his podium, was giving his big smile to an adoring crowd, raising his hands to them, basking in the massiveness of their adoration. “But in the end, the strain’ll just make him push harder.”

  Alexei nodded, lowered the brim of his hat, and went to the bar for fresh drinks. When he returned, the tinny, televised sounds of ecstatic applause had quieted, and the candidate was speaking. In shouted iambs that seemed to require all his effort, he was acknowledging the rival contenders arrayed behind him, interspersed with those thoroughbred sisters Marilyn had seen dancing in their panty hose out in Santa Monica, chatting with each other in their chummy patois.

  The man on the television was saying: “I am grateful that I can rely in the coming months on a distinguished running mate who brings unity and strength to our platform and our ticket, Lyndon Johnson …”

  The row of patrons at the bar was all male, their broad backs turned to the woman in sunglasses and her slim, unremarkable companion, and while some of these fellows watched transfixed, others had begun to grumble at the candidate’s lecturing, which was somehow slick and superior and also wooden at the same time. Marilyn’s eyes brightened, and her eyes went from the television to Alexei as she switched the cross of her legs.

  “I bet you’d like to know why Johnson,” she said.

  Alexei raised an eyebrow and fixed her with his gaze.

  She didn’t try to hide her pride as she gave him the information she’d been holding out. It was so much more than he had even asked for. Not just insight into the candidate’s thinking and state of mind, but a real secret. What Jack had more or less implied Wednesday night in the pool, and she’d had confirmed that morning, as she lay facedown on the mattress pretending to sleep off the previous night’s party. Bobby had come in and picked up a heated conversation that he and Jack seemed to have begun the day before, about Johnson and the director of the FBI being in league with one another and how they’d used it as leverage to control Kennedy’s selection for vice president.