Naked in LA (29 page)
He was actually gone. His leaving was more eloquent than any words. He wouldn’t come back; this was the last time. There were to be no second chances.
But he had saved my life. I would be safe here, for now.
He had left me a note. Well, more a set of instructions.
1. It’s a Moslem country, cover your arms and legs, even when you’re swimming.
2. Don’t fuck the French pilot, and if you do, don’t fall in love with him, he has women everywhere.
3. I will let you know when it’s safe to return.
4. Watch out for snakes.
That was it.
The island was a paradise, and after a week I wanted to kill myself. If I’d known how long I was going to be there, perhaps I would have.
Every day Shofa brought me bananas for breakfast, rice and vegetables for lunch, crab and shrimp with a little local rice for dinner. He climbed palm trees and cut down coconuts for me so that I could drink the milk. His wife made me two
shiromeni
, the bright-colored skirts the local women wore. She let me use some of her sandalwood paste as a beauty mask. I swam in the lagoon and stayed out of the sun. Within a few weeks my complexion looked better than it ever had, my skin glowed. I was the most beautiful woman in the southern hemisphere and there was no one to appreciate it.
Except Jean-Luc. Every week he brought me newspapers and sometimes even a new book because I was quickly devouring the contents of the bookshelf. I hoped I would escape my island prison before I at last resorted to memorising the navigational charts. My dread was that I wouldn’t.
As Reyes had warned, Jean-Luc tried to seduce me, if you can call it that. He leaned on the doorjamb, put his thumbs in his belt and leered at me. I was supposed to swoon.
Reyes once told me that I had never loved anyone. Perhaps he was right. It seemed too cruel a joke to learn that lesson now, when it was too late to do anything about it. All I could do for the moment was remember to breathe, and try not to think, try not to remember, and tell Jean-Luc thanks but no thanks.
Months passed. I hiked through the jungle and found a waterfall. I spent an afternoon swimming with a Hawksbill turtle. I stopped running inside at night whenever I saw a fruit bat.
Shofa's wife taught me to weave baskets. I learned to love the
taarab
music they played in the village at night, played tag with her children outside the white-walled mosque.
One day I promised myself I would make a new start. I had done it once, I would do it again. Not in Hollywood, not in Miami, not in Havana, but somewhere. My childhood dream was in ruins, but I would find a new dream.
Then one day Jean-Luc arrived in a battered taxi with some American newspapers, most of them a week old. He threw them down in front of me and stood there, hands on hips, waiting for me to read them.
I picked up the
New York Times
and read the headline:
KENNEDY KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR IN DALLAS:
JOHNSON SWORN IN ON PLANE.
“Figure in pro Castro group is charged.”
It had been done, just as Reyes said it would be. Some pro-Castro nut, that’s what Reyes had said, and in the end that’s just what they did. No fake heart attacks, no affairs with movie actresses to cover up, as Reyes said, at the end of the day it was just another hit.
Jean-Luc handed me an envelope. I tore it open, hoping for much more than there was; a single sheet of plain white notepaper with one sentence typed on it:
Another month or two and you can come home.
There were three plane tickets with a final destination in Los Angeles, and an open reservation for three nights at the Beverley Hills Hotel.
Sometime in January, 1964 - I didn’t know the date or even what day of the week it was - I gathered my few things together, said goodbye to Shofa and his family and got into the back of a taxi with Jean-Luc. Even on the drive out to the airport he tried to put his hand on my knee.
I wondered if Reyes would be there to meet me when I got home. I could not accept that he was gone from my life forever. There had to be a way to get him back one day, and if there was, then
Dios mio
, I knew by all that was holy that I would find it.
END OF BOOK 2
AUTHOR”S NOTE
This is a work of fiction but I have tried, where possible, to adhere to historical fact. But it should be pointed out that Marilyn Monroe never made a film with Frank Sinatra called A Hot Day in Winter. Her last movie was the 1961 film
The Misfits
, with Clark Gable. She was working on
Something’s Got To Give
with Cyd Charisse and Dean Martin when she was fired from the project on June 4, 1962.
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