Then he stepped aside and reached for her coat; she moved toward him, so that the podium would not obstruct the audience’s view, and allowed him to disrobe her. They saw her dress, which concealed so little and attracted so much light, and she heard the sound of thousands of mouths sucking in smoky air. Someone laughed, and a cheer went up. Her hands shielded her brow, and she located Jack, whose smile and bow tie were askew. Nakedness had been her intention, as always. Over the years she had shaved layer after layer from her persona, until here she was, on this stage, where everything she felt, the current giddiness, the old sorrow, the places on her body where his hands had been, were on display without even a shadow for protection. The audience knew it—they were hooting; and the stage lights knew it—they illuminated every rise and fall of her figure, the vibrations of breath. There would be no hiding, so she drifted back, tapped the microphone, and opened her mouth.
Darkness enveloped her. Music surged from the orchestra. Now the spotlight was on the towering birthday cake, which was being carried into the crowd. She could hear whispering, and she knew what happened next, that the president would be coming to the stage, and that his people didn’t want him photographed with her. She felt nauseous over what she’d done. She wanted to move quickly, to accommodate their desire that she not say a personal happy birthday to the president—if she shook his hand up there, she would be able to conceal even less than she just had—but she couldn’t remember in which direction she was supposed to exit. A hiss cut at her eardrum, a voice called “Get her off !” and before she could move arms were underneath her, scooping her up and carrying her away.
They descended a staircase into the recesses of the arena, and she was obliged to hang from the man’s neck so as to not be jostled. They were coming into a harshly lit corridor, where long catering tables covered with red paper were laden with coffee urns and pastries. As the man put her down she began to coo her thanks, but the dress was too tight, it left her off-balance, and she had to fall against him for support. That was when she recognized Alexei, in a cheap tuxedo that created a glancing impression of any other stagehand.
“What are you doing here?” she managed.
Someone passed them briskly, paying no attention.
Jack was at the microphone, his voice amplified throughout the arena. “I can now retire from politics,” he was saying over the crowd’s laughter, “now that I’ve had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome manner …”
“We don’t have long.” Alexei’s gaze flicked about—the coming and going had not stopped, and he assisted her to the red table, where he made a show of pouring her a coffee. From his breast pocket he removed a flask, tilted it toward her cup. But he left the cap on, and afterward handed it to her. “Keep that, and whatever you do, don’t drink it.”
“But why—?” The flask was made of antique silver, and cold to the touch.
“Summer is coming. Slow months in Washington—you’ll be able to see a lot of Hal. Your affair will never be so regular as it is now. What you’ll need to do is get a few drops of that in his drink once a week. Ten or so. Twenty, if you are only able to manage it every other week.”
“I can’t,” she gasped.
“I thought you saw him clearly now.”
“So? I couldn’t kill a fly, much less—”
“My dear, it won’t kill him. No, no. Not unless you gave him the whole bottle at once. In little doses, it is designed to make the teeth rot, blacken, fall out.”
“But why go to all the trouble then?”
“Things have gone too far. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes he makes, how inconsistent he is. Despite everything he is a hero figure not just to Americans but to the whole world. Because of you, we know he is an invalid, unfaithful, materialistic. We have spread these stories widely. It makes no difference! His image is too strong. He is beloved, the whole world over. We are losing our best minds—they’re willing to die crossing that wall. You Americans worship perfect teeth, and you childishly associate dental decay with moral decay. They must be made to see his dereliction.”
“But he tells me what he’s thinking, isn’t that more important? What if I fail?” she went on wildly. “You’d lose all that.”
“Already he is giving you bad information, false information, lying to you,” Alexei hissed. “What you told me in Florida, none of it was true—”
“But maybe time will prove it is?” she interrupted. She felt desperate, she wasn’t even sure what she was saying. She didn’t remember what she’d said in Florida, only that she hadn’t wanted to repeat anything Jack had told her.
“We can’t wait that long.”
She shimmied goofily, indicating the tightness of her dress, a garment with no place for a hidden compartment. “But I’ve got no place to put it,” she tried to joke. But the joke was lame, and when she heard it out loud she knew she’d reached the end. She had just told the whole country she was in love with Jack, so Alexei must know, too, and she couldn’t pretend anymore she was seeing the president on his behalf.
He pursed his lips and paused, as though trying to decide what to do with her. She heard a shuffle, a mechanical click, and revolved to see Doug, high on the balcony above them. “Miss Monroe! There you are,” he called.
She glared at him as he jogged down the stairs. Of course—that was why Alexei had been so brazen, talking to her in public like this. He’d had a lookout the whole time, the man now descending to provide the one item missing from this latest plot. Once again Doug held the mink so she could slip under its silken wing, dropping the flask into the hidden interior pocket. Alexei was gone like a ghost, and she turned all her dread and fury on his underling. “Where’s Nan?” she demanded. “I’ve had enough. I want to go to the party now, be around people for once.”
The journey to the party, and the party itself, were as swirling and grotesque as a nightmare. Her spangled form floated through the elegant apartment detached from consciousness, wielding a champagne glass, laughing at jokes, blushing at compliments. Bobby was there, hovering around her, as though he might thus contain the memory of her carnal rendition of “Happy Birthday,” her unsubtle declaration that she’d made it with the president. Or maybe Bobby wanted only to be where she was. She could not seem to drink enough champagne to keep Alexei’s face from appearing in the windows, amongst the millionaires eating blue cheese in endive and leering at her. Occasionally a peculiar sensation would bring her back into her body, and she would see Jack across the room with a new quality in his gaze, something like possession.
Life had not been easy on her—it had pinned her to the mattress with a pillow, depriving her of oxygen, often enough—but she had never been so trapped as this. That she had already committed crimes for which she could be executed seemed the least of her predicament. They wanted her to poison Jack; the poison itself was in the pocket of the fur she now wore. She had few moves, all of them unspeakable, and still the worst outcome she could imagine was the one in which she was alive and couldn’t have Jack—couldn’t see him, feel his appreciative eyes on her, listen to him talking about the world. That, as Alexei had said, their affair would never be so regular as now.
“Hey, honey,” she said to the host, a movie producer who had the block-like head of a pugilist. “Where’s the ladies’?”
He indicated it with his fat finger, and she hurried in that direction, trying to conceal her distress as she made her way through the big men in their dark suits. Alone again with her reflection she was neither impressed nor astonished. She leaned heavily against the marble sink, and stared into a stranger’s face. It would be easy—Alexei had said only the whole flask would kill him. Surely that much would kill her quickly, end the game. She could escape, tonight, not just the impossible situation her relations with Jack had become, but the awful maze of her self. To die sounded sweet almost—a reprieve from wanting.
The door opened and closed in an instant. Jack did not look at the knob as he turned the
lock. She couldn’t smile as she watched him advance across the room in the mirror, couldn’t change her horrified expression. But he wasn’t smiling, either. In fact she had never seen him so serious. He jerked the fur down from her shoulders, apparently not noticing the clanking of the flask on the bathroom tile when the coat hit the floor. He tugged on her wrist, spinning her around so that she felt the heat of his breath on the tip of her nose.
“At the Garden,” he said. “When Peter took your coat. There was a moment—I was convinced you were nude underneath.”
The corners of her lips darted unhappily.
“I was so angry. Not because of the potential embarrassment. It didn’t even cross my mind what a clusterfuck that would have been. But because they’d all see you. And I was so relieved when I knew I was wrong.”
Her mouth softened open. When he heaved her onto the sink her dress split across the thighs, and he did not hesitate putting his fingers through the rift, tearing it completely. Rhinestones popped from the fabric, scattered on the floor, as he parted the legs that had been pressed together all evening, and wrapped them around his torso.
“They’ll hear …,” she protested, not forcefully, as she leaned against the mirror.
“I don’t care.” He was trying to undo the buttons of his shirt while burying his face in the skin below her ear. “I love you.”
The whole evening seemed imagined, and she almost couldn’t believe he’d said those words she’d thought so often while in his presence. He had. He must have. It was her only chance. He was saying it now with every gesture. So as she helped him with his shirt she arched her back, encouraging his mouth to move down along the neckline of her ruined dress, and said the phrase back.
THIRTY-FIVE
Brentwood, June 1962
MAYBE, just maybe, she had been born under a lucky star after all. Maybe the decades of struggling and confusion were necessary pieces of a grand scheme. So she tried to tell herself, in the final weeks of her thirty-fifth year, when the words I love you recurred in her thoughts every quarter hour. When her anxiety became too great, she’d close her eyes and conjure the ruination of that sparkling, skin-colored dress, and for a moment be flush with emotion. She began to think of the age she was about to become not as old but auspicious, so sweetly square and divisible by two. And she was lucky also to have work, which filled her days and blocked out fear and left her tired at night, without the energy to wonder what Jack was doing, or whether he’d really meant what he’d said to her in that penthouse bathroom.
Not that it was easy to be back on set. She hadn’t worked like this in a year and a half, and the script was flimsy, and she had no idea how she was going to make many of the lines sound the least bit natural. But she was looking good, everybody said so, and on Friday afternoon they had Dom Perignon, and the crew toasted her thirty-sixth birthday. Driving home, in the limousine the studio had hired for her during filming, she felt jittery with hope. If Jack loved her, then maybe she’d be saved after all. It was miracle enough to make her believe in more miracles. Anyway, Alexei had told her that the poison could be administered over several weeks, so there was time. She had a little time; maybe there was a way out.
“Rudy, will you wait until I lock the gate behind me?” She leaned in the window, smiling but with the gleam of fear in her eyes, too. Because she could not tell him what she was really afraid of—and because he would not believe her if she did—she added: “Never know what fan has gone bananas, you know?”
“Sure thing, Miss Monroe.” He grinned back at her and kept the limo idling in the cul-de-sac while she walked up the drive, and she rocked her hips extra, to reward him for protecting her in this way.
“See you Monday morning!” she called out, before locking the gate behind her.
The palms swayed in greeting, their shadows long across the grass at dusk, the smell of jasmine on the evening breeze, the flora thick and fortress-like around the property. The low, fat sun blazed on the windows of the small hacienda-style house, with its white brick walls and red tiled roof. It was the first house she’d ever owned by herself. That it was charming without being ostentatious, and that it had a fireplace, pleased her immeasurably, and she wondered at herself for having thought she needed more, or less, than this. She put her handbag down on the table by the door, and felt for the light switch.
“Hello, N.J.” He was leaning against the wall next to the fireplace. His arms were crossed tensely across his torso, and his eyes had that waiting quality.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” she replied, evenly as she could manage. His eyes followed her as she made her way across the terra-cotta tiled floor. She affected a sedate, unhurried manner, and when she reached the far side of the room, leaned her hip against the small, polished teak desk where she kept the telephone. “What can I do for you?”
“You haven’t been following orders,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The formula you were to give Hal—you haven’t done with it as I instructed.”
“What makes you think that?” She tipped her head back, showed him the point of her chin. “You said a few drops over several weeks. Nothing should’ve happened yet, right?”
For the first time since entering the room, Alexei took his eyes off her. His gaze fixed on the Moroccan carpet that spread out from the hearth, but his attention seemed to be on some long-ago event. He shook his head and cursed in a foreign language. “Why are you so useless?” he demanded with sudden rage.
“I know how you know I didn’t give him anything out of that flask,” she replied, stringing the words together with frightened precision. “If I’d done as you asked, he’d be dead. That was all a story—a few drops, the rotting teeth. Wasn’t it?”
She knew already Alexei was not shy of violence, that he had no scruples about the murders carried out on his orders. But she hadn’t witnessed it in him until he stepped away from the wall and his arms dropped from his torso so his hands could form fists. His shoulders seemed to grow and spread, and his mouth twitched with fury. “Why couldn’t you just do as you were told?” he barked.
The telephone was inches from her hand—she had been trying to get close without his noticing, and now wrapped her fingers around the receiver. Her movement was quiet, but her voice was loud: “But you’re the liar,” she shrieked. “I told you I couldn’t kill him.”
“You wouldn’t have killed him!” He advanced across the room with patient menace. “You would only have been following orders, nothing more.”
She plucked the phone from its cradle, her fingers trembling but strong as she dialed the police. A whole epoch of terror passed as she listened to the ringing, but the operator answered before Alexei reached her. “Hello, this is Marilyn Monroe,” she said quickly. “I’m at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood. There’s an intruder in my house.”
The operator sounded giddy with the notion that a movie star was on the line—a movie star in distress!—but she did her job, said a patrol car was on its way.
“Now why did you go and do that?” Alexei’s aspect had changed again. His voice was lower, but that only made him more frightening. The fact that she’d called the police didn’t seem to worry him—his posture suggested that he had already decided her fate.
Fear had her now—she wasn’t sure she’d be able to move, if indeed that was advisable. “I thought you might hurt me.” She managed to step away from him, and the realization that he still might, that he could kill her easily before the police arrived, sent a fresh dose of terror through her veins. She tried to back away as quickly as he was now advancing, get up the three steps into the next room, but instead stumbled on an umbrella stand, lurched haplessly, and cried out in shock and pain.
Then he was on her. He had her by the throat, pinned her against the wall, her head knocked against the plaster, his elbows shoved against her ribs. “You idiot!” he hissed. “You dumb fucking bitch.”
She couldn’t breathe. His hands gri
pped her neck, squeezing the air out, and her eyeballs bulged. Desperately she tried to get air into her lungs, kicking at his shins with the pointed toes of her high heels.
“It’s not as though you’ve changed anything. There will always be another pretty girl who can whore her way into state secrets. They’ll kill him anyway. Your replacement is already on his way. But now you’ll have to die, too. And I could have protected you! I, who was so proud of you. I’d have made sure you had a long life. But you—you had to be an idiot sentimentalist. You had to fall in love.” His words seemed to deplete him, and when his hold on her throat loosened they slumped against each other, he enfeebled with the apprehension of a great loss, she gasping for air. “Goddamn you,” he said, with profound regret. “Goddamn you.”
A distant siren rose over their noisy breathing, and she watched him, never believing in her safety, as he backed away, withdrew into the solarium. She heard him open the door onto the rear patio and followed, apprehensively at first, and then with greater urgency. She was still afraid of him, but more than that she wanted to know why he’d left her alive. What he meant by “her replacement.” The door stood open, but in the evening light she couldn’t see much. What she did make out seemed to be a figure skirting the swimming pool and pulling his weight up over the wall at the edge of the property. Then he merged with the gloaming.
THIRTY-SIX
Los Angeles, June 1962
TWILIGHT played its usual trick of reminding Walls that he would like a cigarette; it was at the intersection of day’s expectations and night’s anxieties that he most wanted to singe the delicate tissue of his lungs. He smoked one after another as he drove through the clotted streets of Los Angeles toward her house. The tie he’d worn for the flight from D.C. was thrown across the passenger seat, and he felt jittery and roguish. No one else in the world knew what he knew, nor could they do what he was about to do, and he felt justified in taking matters into his own hands, and about six foot ten. Only a man keeping his own hours, acting on his own instincts, and answering to his own conscience could take down as cleverly disguised a plant as Marilyn Monroe, and he found, in the event, that he was rather looking forward to forcing her confession.