The Blonde

by Anna Godbersen

“Yes, darling, in the credenza over there,” Pat said, in a tone that implied, Go ahead and write the title of a book Jack won’t have time to read. She had come around behind the bar, tossed the contents of the shaker, and gone about remaking the drinks.

  Marilyn winked at Jack and went to the credenza where she found a piece of paper that she ripped in half, writing on one Abraham Lincoln: The War Years by Carl Sandburg and on the other 882 Doheny off Santa Monica. She returned with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and she placed one piece of paper next to the cut-glass ashtray on the bar in front of Jack, and the other one inside it. “Care for a smoke, Mr. President?” She delivered the line Lauren Bacall style, so that he would know it was a ruse.

  He glanced up from the scrawled address in the ashtray. “Sure.”

  She inhaled, lighting the cigarette for him and dropping the match into the ashtray without blowing it out, so that the paper curled into flames. “There you go,” she said. “Oh!” she exclaimed, in her own persona, bending and blowing out the mini-conflagration. “Damn me!”

  Pat turned around, wrinkling her nose at the smell of burned paper. “See? That’s why we keep her out of the kitchen,” she said, lining up three glasses, pouring the drinks.

  “Oh, not for me.” Marilyn let her eyelids droop and smiled wistfully. “I’m exhausted—I think I must still be on New York time! I should probably head home.”

  “Don’t go. We’re only just getting started.”

  Marilyn was afraid that if she so much as looked at Jack she would reveal herself to Pat, so she only batted the request away with her hand and said, “You enjoy your brother, sug, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “All right.” Pat leaned across the bar, kissed her on either cheek, and then shouted: “Bobby, you ready for another daiquiri?” by which time Marilyn had already drifted to the margin of the room.

  She glanced back once, at those nicely tanned people arranged in clusters on the low, buff-colored furniture, the men with their collars open and the women with their hair down. Jack’s naked back was to her, but even that felt like a secret message, and she stepped out of her shoes and picked them up, so that she could exit quickly and quietly. The adrenaline was making her feel weightless in a different way, and as she darted through the hall into the interior courtyard, she wasn’t certain whether she was more excited that Jack had been thinking about her all this time—that he had thought it was she who had forgotten him—or because she finally had a way back in, and could stop being afraid that Alexei would arrive to punish her further. Anyway, Jack would be coming after her soon, she was sure of it, which was perhaps why she was not surprised by the footfalls that sounded behind her as she passed through the portico adjacent to the street. Trying not to smile, she asked the butler if he could bring her car around.

  Her chest was airy with expectation, and she could almost already feel Jack’s hands on her as she waited, watching the traffic zoom by on the highway. And then, almost as if she had conjured him, his fingers dug into her wrist and he dragged her backward, into the darkness of the portico.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She could smell his eagerness as he shoved her into the wall. “Home, where I was hoping you’d …” But she trailed off when she realized that she’d been fooled by this voice before, and experienced the dreadful current through the skull of apprehending a carnal embrace’s true violence. Bobby didn’t loosen his grip on her wrist, and with his other hand he grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her head back so that she could see a glint of reflected courtyard light on his eyeballs. His whole body tensed, pinning her against the brick. Her chest heaved, and his eyes traveled very slowly down, to the place where her blouse revealed the parting of her breasts.

  “I told you to stay away from my brother,” he hissed.

  Every attempt to break free only brought him more forcefully against her, his hipbone sharp at her belly and his breath hot on her face. The darkness was all around them, but she could see his fierce blue irises. She was caught, and for several seconds neither of them knew for sure what he was going to do. Then the headlights of her car swept over the gate, blinding them both long enough that she was able to break free. “I think Jack’s the one you need to talk to, if you want him to stay away from me,” she said over her shoulder, before he could grab her again. You better calm down, she told herself, or you won’t be able to drive away.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Los Angeles, May 1961

  AS she waited at the window she became alert to all the night sounds, a car engine blocks away, a drink being shaken in the next apartment, palm fronds brushing against each other. Every sweep of headlights was a kind of heaven and then a kind of hell. When Jack did come, she was relieved to see that he had Secret Service men with him, and she realized belatedly that Alexei could now use her in a different way, to put Jack in danger. The Secret Service men took up posts at the corners, and Jack stepped out of the car and came toward her apartment building and whistled, and she leaned out and pointed the way in.

  They didn’t speak, and she didn’t switch on the lamp. The room was full of lavender light from the street, and she brought him to bed and murmured as he put his mouth between her breasts. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and time passed before she unbuttoned his shirt and he pulled off her slip. For months she had moved through the world in a numbed, listless manner, doing just enough to avoid being locked up again, perhaps forever, but now she was glad that she had succeeded in working her way back into Jack’s arms. Even if Alexei came for her tomorrow for the last time, she thought, this night made it all worthwhile, and as long as Jack rocked her she forgot to worry.

  But morning broke with the usual acidic rush of anxiety. She wanted to slip back out of wakefulness, to be conscious only of the rumpled sheets and Jack next to her, to cling to him as though there were nothing else, two entwined bodies, pliant with sleep like newborn animals. But her mind wouldn’t shut up, and after a quarter hour trying to lie still—chasing away restless thoughts of Alexei, and how long she had before he came for her again; of Bobby and what he would do to separate her and his brother; of those fearsome, barrel-chested warlords, oceans and continents away, whom Jack was charged with keeping at bay; and inevitably of mushroom clouds unfurling over the Nevada Proving Grounds—she found her eyes irrevocably open. Quietly she withdrew from the bed, tiptoed to the window, and parted the blinds. The sidewalks down below were broad and empty, and the hedges artfully concealed the entrance to her two-story apartment complex. His guardians were in position—one across the street, and one perched on the fire hydrant on the corner, a newspaper spread over his knee.

  “I’ve missed that view.” She started to turn, but Jack went on: “Come on, stay that way. I want to look at you.”

  Over her shoulder she regarded him. In that barely furnished white box of a room—with nothing to obstruct the early light, just a mattress, boxspring, folding side table, lamp, and partially disemboweled suitcase—there was no sign of the puffiness she’d noticed last night. Only the tawny leanness, the indefatigable grin. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry, I was hoping you’d get some rest.”

  “Never been particularly gifted in that respect.” He reached for the gold cigarette case on the nightstand and lit a cigarette. “Anyway, why would I want to? I should just have your ass declared the Eighth Wonder of the World and stop worrying about my legacy so much.” He whistled low, and in an after-hours voice remarked, “I could spend all day watching you walk across the room.”

  “I would’ve thought the president of the United States has better things to do.”

  He shrugged, leaning over to tap his cigarette against the ashtray. “I guess that all depends upon your definition of better.”

  “Your friends are downstairs.”

  “Oh?”

  “Doesn’t it make you nervous?”

  “It would make me nervous if they weren’t there.”

  “Why?” Now she did revolve, pic
king up her halo of messy hair with two fists and pausing dramatically—knees kissing, feet arched, elbows up, breasts free, the hint of a smile telling him she was half in jest. “And here I thought everybody loved you, Mr. President.”

  He winced, revealing the worry lines between his brow and around his mouth, and toyed with his cigarette as smoke streamed from his nostrils. “Not everybody, baby,” he said after a while.

  She put her forearm over her nipples, her other hand in the fig leaf place, a burlesque of modesty, her mouth open in surprise. “Who could help loving you?”

  “Lots of people. The Cubans, for starters. That mess down there—it would be a mystery if Castro didn’t know how we wanted that caper to end. And if we can try to take out their leader, nobody should be surprised if they try to take out ours.”

  The force with which her own brows drew together almost shocked her. She’d meant to show concern, but the actual feeling was more than she could possibly have anticipated, dread spreading through her veins as she saw clearly that she’d never cared so much before. She wanted Jack to go on forever, just as he was, and the idea that he might not was too ugly to contemplate. “Don’t talk like that.” Her voice had gone dusky, and she wanted to feel his skin against hers. His gaze was steady on her as she made her way to the bed, walked on her knees across the mattress, hovered above him with a wing of wan hair shrouding half her face.

  “Why not talk about it? I’m not afraid. I’ve been read last rites four times, you know. Not to mention, it requires a whole damn pharmacy to keep me propped up all day. Anyway, those men down there know what they’re doing, and Castro can’t hold on to power forever—”

  “Don’t …,” she said again, lowering toward his chest, bringing her hungry mouth to his.

  “Don’t what?” Their lips parted briefly, which did nothing to cut the humidity.

  Meanwhile his fingers had begun a survey of the skin along her inner thighs, which was only one reason she didn’t want him to tell her anything more about Castro or the Secret Service or anything else to do with the office he now held. “Don’t bore me.”

  “All right. What are you doing today? I have the sudden notion to monopolize your time.”

  “I have a lunch.”

  “A lunch? Call and cancel.”

  “It’s with my publicist!”

  “All right, you have my permission. What else?”

  “I have an appointment with my shrink. Dr. Greenson. And I thought maybe I’d have my nails done. And then buy some flowers, get some color in this place.”

  “It could use it.” His teeth were grazing her neck now, making her breath short. “Looks like a bachelor lives here.”

  “It’s only temporary. I don’t have a home in Los Angeles anymore. I have the place in New York, but I can’t stand it now. Frankie knows the manager here—it’s where he always puts his girls.”

  “Oh?”

  With his hands on her, she was becoming a little stupid. “But I’m not, you know,” she said quickly. “One of his girls.”

  “I know.” His mouth was making a slow migration over her abdomen. “But I still don’t see why you don’t buy your own house.”

  Suddenly her nipple was between his teeth. She was still hovering over him, but her entire musculature had gotten so heated, melting almost, so that she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to hold herself up. “Would you come visit me there if I did?”

  “Yes.”

  As though sensing the pleasurable disintegration taking place above him, he took hold of her ribs with both hands, while her nipple swung to and away from his half-open mouth as she inhaled and exhaled.

  “What are you doing today?” she mumbled.

  “Spending time with Pat and her children.” He spoke straightforwardly, his voice brawny as usual with extra vowels, but his words were divorced from the happenings of his physical self. “Getting ready for a fund-raiser tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. You should come.”

  “Come with you?”

  “It’s a thousand dollars a plate. I’ll get ten thousand if people start thinking they might meet Marilyn Monroe every time I have a dinner. In fact, I got fund-raisers like this coming up all across the West. Why don’t you ask that publicist of yours if you don’t have a reason to be in Washington, D.C., or Houston, Texas, or Seattle …”

  “Enough talking.”

  By the time she rose above him and fixed him with her gaze her patience was gone, and it took everything she had to wait for him to respond in kind. “Enough talking.”

  “I must say, you are looking very well,” Alan Jacobs observed as their salads were cleared from their shady table on the Polo Lounge patio, and Marilyn waved off the suggestion of a second Chablis. His hair was as polished as a crook’s over his tanned forehead, and his collar was unbuttoned to the sternum.

  “Better than expected? That’s what you really mean, isn’t it, Al?” she asked with her singular quivering, brave candor. She didn’t mention the real reason she looked healthy, which was that her cheeks had the ecstatic color of a morning in bed.

  “Well.” Alan glanced at her pointedly over his black sunglasses. “Let’s not bullshit one another.”

  “A girl has to get away from everybody sometimes. That’s why I needed that hospital visit. And when I get back to work I’ll be able to give it my all.”

  “Which will be this project with Cukor.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that begins shooting in the fall?”

  “In the spring. They need to fix the script first—it’s kinda screwy now.”

  “Well”—Alan paused long enough to dispatch the check with his signature—“in the meantime we’ll get you a few appearances and magazine placements and such. Maybe sing the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium. You’re at fighting weight, I see, so we’ve got that going for us.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure …,” she whispered, smiling dreamily and rising to his arm. As they crossed the red patio she waved at a few of the others doing business over luncheon, and though she had a flash of encountering Alexei there a year ago, how disturbed she’d been at the sight of his bare ankles, now she saw nothing ominous, only names she knew, the taut, envious, admiring, gossiping faces of her friends and compatriots. “I think I might travel some this fall.”

  “Oh—where?”

  “Well, Peter Lawford’s doing the next Otto Preminger picture, which is filming in Washington, D.C., and you know Pat and I are thick as thieves these days, and I’ve never been to the capital. And then I thought—oh, I don’t know, maybe see a little bit of this great country. I’ve spent too much time in this sort of joint,” she said, indicating the white starched tablecloths, the floor-to-ceiling pink drapes, the swirling pattern of the carpets of the restaurant, which they were passing through on their way to the lobby. “Too much time with showbiz folks.”

  “Whatever you say, gorgeous,” Alan said, batting away the comment. Perhaps he had heard actors talk like this before, and knew to treat it as a phase. But her life, now that she’d let go of the fantasy of meeting her father, felt unreal, futureless, and she saw no reason not to spend her days as the president’s mistress. How many days did she have left, anyway? “I’ll send someone with you, make sure you have your picture taken on set, maybe get you an interview or two while you’re there. Look after you.”

  “Oh, please, I don’t need looking after.”

  “Sweetheart, listen to me. This is why you pay me. You are newly divorced. You spent three weeks in a psychiatric hospital. The press is in love with pictures of you in distress. Puffy, or worse. You should have someone with you, just to see that those sharks don’t take advantage. And see if we can’t get a little coverage of the opposite kind.”

  “Well, all right. But not Nan.” Marilyn briefly put aside her gentle mumbles and spoke sharply. Nan Pettycomb was one of Alan’s subordinates, and she had worked with Marilyn in the mid-fifties, when things had been chang
ing for her for the better. Nan had been good company, but she had clung too tight—she had wanted to be a real friend—and Marilyn had had to shake her loose. She certainly couldn’t have anyone that nosy around now. “I won’t do that again.”

  “As you wish.” They were out of the lobby, descending the carpeted steps under the porte cochere, and Alan handed a bill to one of the uniformed valets. “Bring Miss Monroe’s car around, would you? And let my man know I’m ready for him, please.”

  They stood silently posed, Al in his navy blazer with gold embroidered insignia, and Marilyn in her tight white linen and cat-eye sunglasses. Their cars arrived at the same time, and the man driving Al’s cream-colored Bentley was around the hood with his hand extended to Marilyn with a swiftness that struck her as comical. His light hair was slicked back, too, and his expression was so serious she wanted to laugh. Then she realized he must be nervous, and smiled instead.

  “Marilyn,” Alan said. “This is my new protégé. His mother sent him over. Mosey Moses? Surely you’ve been to her parties.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you …” Her voice trailed off with a question mark.

  “Doug Walls.” His sweaty palm encased hers, shook hard. “At your service.”

  “Thanks, honey. I think I’m gonna enjoy that service.”

  A grin spread over his face, and she saw that there was nothing to worry about with him. He was only a boy.

  “You resemble someone I knew once,” she went on, and though it was the kind of thing she said to make people feel special, she meant it, too.

  “That’s because we have met before. At one of Mother’s parties. I asked you to dance, in fact. I mean, we did dance, but I—it didn’t last long.”

  “Story of my life,” she laughed, and for a moment she was sure she’d made him blush.

  “Dougie, Miss Monroe is considering a trip to D.C. Don’t you have family there? Perhaps you could give her some tips.”

  “Yes—” For a moment she thought he might stutter, but he got a hold of himself and went on smoothly. “I’d be happy to. In fact, I know the town pretty well. If someone is escorting you, I’d like to recommend myself. It would be an honor.”