Misfit (7 page)

“So let him kick the door down.”

Ruditsky pauses. He draws in a breath. He speaks, seemingly without exhaling. “Okay, we kick down the door. But just for effect . . . It's just for effect . . . Then it stops when I go for the pictures.”

“After we bust down the fucking door.”

 

It's at about this point that Florence Kotz's complaint against the defendants begins.

 

The front door is heavy; dark, solid wood. It'll take a tank to smash it down. Ruditsky doesn't want to go through the front. He tells DiMaggio that's a bullshit plan. They'll be glowing under the street lamps and porch lights, might as well smile for the mug shots. Already he's noticed some neighbors peeking out their windows.

He orders the group to the side of the house. DiMaggio goes reluctantly. From there, they snake into the backyard, each holding the gate for the next, until Sinatra, the last of the bunch, passes through. “All clear,” Sinatra announces, looking backward when he hears a cricket chirp.

Irwin whispers that the entrance doesn't look right. Maybe they ought to pause. Just to make sure. It feels funny going in this way.

“How about you not worry about plans,” Ruditsky says. “And how about I stay the boss.”

Sinatra smiles. “All clear,” he says again.

Irwin carries the camera. Sanicola and Karen carry police flashlights, gripped as though they're shaking hands. DiMaggio holds a bat, a fact not lost on anyone.

 

Virginia Blasgen thinks the two well-dressed men look familiar, but out of place in the neighborhood. She pulls the drapes open a little wider. Steals a quick glance when they walk toward the elm. She puts a finger beneath her nose to hold back a sneeze and almost suffocates swallowing it. It comes to her. The short one, she'd swear, is Frank Sinatra, and the tall one is the ballplayer, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe's husband.

Maybe Sheila Stewart's dedication has paid off.

 

Hold your breath, Ruditsky motions. Keep your voices down. And don't rattle the change in your pockets. Nobody needs the upstairs neighbors taking notice.

 

 

It's easy to picture Florence Kotz in her Murphy bed. With the closet door wide open and the frame pulled down, the mattress would take up the better part of the room. One can imagine a single end table pushed against the wall, holding an alarm clock with fluorescent hands, a small flexible reading light, and a glass half full of water. Covering her would be a brown cotton blanket that's snugly tucked beneath a rose-hemmed chenille bedspread; it
is
November. Sleeping soundly, long acclimated to the footsteps above her, maybe Florence stirs a
little with the rattling outside the back door, shifting and rolling over to face the other way. Her Murphy bed has a solid frame; the mesh supports are still tight. It doesn't sag or squeak. She'd hardly notice her own movements. Nor would she notice the usual night sounds: screens banging with the breeze, car doors slamming, or the alley cats rummaging through the garbage cans.

But with the crash she's instantly awake. There is no processing. No evaluation. She's sitting upright in her bed, frozen in place as though chilled mercury streams through her veins. And she can hear feet stamping through her kitchen, crunching over the broken glass. There are voices. Hushed to a whisper, but not as though they're trying to conceal themselves; it's more that they're startled by the magnitude of their own presence in such small quarters. She's paralyzed. Darkness gives the only sense of safety. She considers if there is some way to push the Murphy bed back into the wall, folding herself inside. Maybe the intruders will go away as quickly as they came in. A single glance should tell them there is nothing of value in this apartment. But the predominant thought, and she's vaguely aware it's the least rational, is that she wishes they would stop walking over the broken glass. It will be impossible to get it all up. She won't be able to walk barefoot for months.

Two flashlights beam on her. Already she knows she won't remember what she saw. Only that the sound of her scream started to form in front of her. A protective
wall that grew gigantic, pushing the intruders back and back and back, until there was nothing to see.

The apartment becomes still again, save for the familiar and expected noises. The footsteps above. The alley cats upsetting the trash can lids.

 

With the crash comes a shriek for help. Virginia Blasgen immediately dials the police and then instinctively rushes outside. It's dark. Damp. She just reacts, not even putting on her slippers. If she thought about it she would realize how cold her feet are against the dewed grass.

She assumes the shriek has come from Sheila Stewart's apartment. In this town, everyone understands that the starlet part of show business requires a good scandal, and Sheila probably has found herself in the middle of something that's too big for her. After this is settled, Virginia might have to ask her to leave. Her property is not the right stage for this kind of drama. She thinks this until another series of cries comes from Miss Kotz's bottom unit. And as Virginia starts to cross the street toward her rental unit, she hears men's voices.

She dashes back. Scampering across her lawn. Taking cover along the side of her house, under the shadows. The stucco is rough and raw against her back. Her feet numb. She tries not to breathe. Or make any sudden movements.

She hears the gate across the street rattle and slam. The men's whispers turn louder, and hurried.
With great care, she inches herself along the wall toward the corner of the house, bare heels aching from loose pebbles. From the corner she sees silhouettes. Long and cartoonish. Joe DiMaggio? Frank Sinatra? It's hard to make out anyone else. She closes her eyes, reciting all her options to herself, of which there seem to be few, if any. She's outnumbered, and hopelessly unprepared for this kind of situation. Stranded on the side of her building. Unable to get to Miss Kotz. Unable even to get back into her house. Where are the police? Her legs tremble, and though it isn't that cold, her teeth chatter. She squeezes her eyes tighter. Wishing all of them gone. That's the best option. Disappear off the block.

When Virginia opens her eyes, they are gone. Car doors slam several blocks away. She arches forward, peering across North Kilkea. Indeed, it's all over. As though they were never there.

All is normal again on this quiet West Hollywood street. Other than another piercing cry from Miss Kotz's apartment. And the distant sirens growing louder and louder.

 

Sinatra later denied he had anything to do with the matter. Said he'd come along for the ride, but then held back once he figured it was best to hold back. He never went through that gate on North Kilkea Drive. Never saw that woman screaming, upright in her bed. There are some lines you don't cross.

Virginia Blasgen's and Florence Kotz's memories contradict Sinatra's. But in the end the women's recollections amounted only to a reduced settlement and a new back door, presumably a little sturdier than the original.

 

While noted contextually in news accounts, rarely was it discussed that Marilyn, in fact, was upstairs in Sheila Stewart's apartment, drinking a cup of tea. One can imagine her there, taking refuge from the storm that has surged around her breakup with DiMaggio. Liberating and frightening all at once. But in this one little pause, over a steaming cup of mint tea, laughing with her friend, she can feel totally at ease, completely free to reinvent, without DiMaggio's hands sculpting her into postures she could never keep. It feels good. And she wants to savor the moment. She understands that the dread of aloneness will fill her in a matter of days.

In the early part of the evening, Sheila carries the teacups into the living room, pinching the saucers, walking deliberately so as not to spill. Just the smell of the mint tea is relaxing. Sheila hands Marilyn one cup, puts hers on the coffee table, and then falls into the couch.

Marilyn blows across the surface, pushing steam away. “You're lucky, Sheila,” she says.

“Lucky?”

“Well, maybe fortunate. Maybe that's more what I mean.”

Shelia laughs. “I'm not sure what you mean—fortunate or lucky.”

Marilyn stops herself. She doesn't try to explain. Because she knows that what she means is that Sheila is lucky (or fortunate) not to be her. How lucky to be a serious and struggling actor, living quietly in a modest West Hollywood apartment. To have her determination guided by a sense of self. Then she realizes how preposterous that might sound, a combination of pejorative arrogance and obliviousness. She turns a little red. “Oh, nothing,” Marilyn stumbles. “I don't even know what I mean half the time.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. That is to say,
I
don't know what
I
mean half the time.”

Leaning forward to sip her tea, Marilyn starts laughing. The tea spills onto the saucer. She balances the dish just enough to keep the hot water from dripping on her thigh.

Sheila looks at her. “See, you're lucky too.”

And then they hear the crash downstairs, where a man who had once cherished her as a vulnerable innocent but has now cast her as a selfish whore is ready to show her and the world that what he knows can't be wrong.

Cal Neva Lodge, Crystal Bay, NV

Near the end of the afternoon flight up to Reno from Los Angeles, Pat Lawford leans forward in her lounge chair to talk with Marilyn. Her mollifying smile is reminiscent of a ward nurse's, not the typical staid expression one expects from President Kennedy's sister. They're in Frank Sinatra's plane, a business jet he's christened
El Dago
and furnished like a living room, complete with the couch Marilyn is sitting on, a piano, and one of Frank's own paintings of a big-eyed kid framed in gold and hanging on the paneled wall nearest the cockpit, a long vertical piece. It's an easy flight up north, no more than an hour and a half, to be capped by an hour drive to Sinatra's casino, the Cal Neva Lodge in Crystal Bay, built smack-dab on the state line that divides California and Nevada.

Pat whispers just loudly enough to be heard over the plane's chopping engine but quietly enough not to disturb her sleeping husband, Peter Lawford, slumped in the chair next to her. She asks if Marilyn's all right, noting that she looks a little pale. “Or maybe,” Pat says, clarifying her thought, “you look a little in between.”

Marilyn says she was napping earlier. She shrugs. “Sometimes, you know, the dreams take a little while to dissolve. That's probably all. Waking up. It
can
leave you a little in between.”

Pat says, “I wanted to catch you early. Before it becomes public.”

“Public?”

“Listen to me, Marilyn.” Pat's voice drops further. “It's something I overheard right before we boarded. Something that concerns me.”

Whether it's the rumble of the plane or the travel fatigue, Marilyn is having trouble catching everything Pat says. She edges toward Pat. Just when she's close enough to hear, the pilot announces they're preparing to land.

Peter wakes, shaking his head and rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He groggily instructs both women to sit back. They sit back. Pat catches Marilyn's eye, glances at Peter, and then shakes her head. “It will have to wait until we're down and alone,” Pat says. “Until then. When we can talk.” And for that Marilyn's relieved. Why would she want more concerns? Isn't being free from them the main reason she's going away for the weekend?

She looks over Pat's shoulder at the cityscape of Reno abutting the treelined Sierra Nevadas. After the whole drama of working there on
The Misfits
, she'd like to reach down, pinch Virginia Street, and flick the whole city away.

 

Trying to push her voice across the aisle, Marilyn says to Pat, “You know, I really don't care for these landings. How it all closes in just so. Like going down a rabbit hole.”

The plane quickly dips.

The landing gear creaks, and a slight stink of jet fuel washes through the cabin. When the plane turns and dips, it's all sky out the window.

“Pat,” Marilyn says, loud enough to be heard. “Pat?”

“Yes, Marilyn.”

“I won't forget.”

“Forget?”

“That there's something you need to tell me. Your concern. I won't forget that. You'll tell me inside, Pat? When we reach the lodge?”

“When we reach the lodge.”

“I won't forget. I promise you I won't forget.” Although as she says this it occurs to her that she hopes she does.

The plane drops farther, and then goes into a brief holding pattern.

He watches from the hill, hands on his hips, as though waiting in the on-deck circle. He's always been vigilant. Patient. As she scoots out of the station wagon after the Lawfords, gathering up her purse and valise, she glances behind her, across Highway 28, and sees Joe there, on a crest among the pines, halfway up, on the Nevada side. Her outfit matches the clarity of the Tahoe light—a green silk Pucci blouse, with long sleeves and a boat neck, and matching forest green slacks and shoes. Tired eyes are hidden behind the dark lenses of her cat-eye glasses.