The Blonde (19 page)

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.

“They blackmailed him, you mean? Hoover had something? Evidence of an indiscretion?”

She shrugged elliptically, suggestively. “Why not? Hoover has something on everybody who’s anybody. That’s what Arthur told me, when he thought our phones were being tapped. He said it’s almost like a badge of honor.”

Alexei gazed out, his eyes losing their focus as he comprehended this.
“Remarkable, isn’t it? Already he is susceptible to blackmail. How did the conversation end?”

“Bobby wanted to talk to their father. He kept saying their father could fix it. Then Hal got angry, too, and he told him they wouldn’t be doing that, and that he’d better get out of there and stop wasting his time. That if he didn’t get some pussy before the day he was about to have, it was gonna spell trouble for everybody.”

“And then what happened?”

“Well.”

“Remarkable.” Alexei leaned back into his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Remarkable.”

The men at the bar continued in their appraisal of the candidate, and Marilyn and Alexei, coming to the end of their second round of drinks, each retreated into their own thoughts. Her handler seemed pleased, and she was, too, for a little while anyway, thinking about how he could now report to his superiors, whoever they were, that she was a success, that she was even more skilled at their game than they had hoped. That she’d procured intelligence beyond what they’d asked for, and how that might accelerate things, bring her into contact with her father even sooner than promised.

“He looks tired,” Alexei said doubtfully.

As though in response, the man on television acknowledged, “It has been a long road from that first snowy day in New Hampshire to this crowded convention city. Now begins another long journey, taking me into your cities and homes all over America.” His voice faltered, and she briefly feared it would fail him. That morning it had been scratchy, and like a sweet wife she had urged him to keep quiet. But it became forceful again when he went on: “Give me your help, your hand, your voice, your vote.” And the renewed vigor, and the word
your
pronounced by the man whose sweat she could still smell on her skin, made the hairs on her forearm stand on end. “Recall with me the words of Isaiah: ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary.’ ”

The speech was approaching its climax, but Alexei appeared to lose interest after the biblical reference. He smirked good-naturedly and said, “We should be celebrating; will you have another?”

“Yes.”

“You may learn a lot about Hal in the coming months—I will be watching you, and checking in on you, but if he tells you anything of special importance—anything useful, anything timely—call the Pilar Florist on Second Avenue, and order a large arrangement of purple irises for the children’s wing at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. I will get the message, and come to you as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” she said, pushing their empty glasses in his direction.

As Alexei went up to the bar again, she watched him, the unremarkable way he moved. It was unremarkable with purpose, of course, and she liked him for this ability to pretend, which was her ability, too.

The candidate had finished his speech, and a funny little boyish smile flickered on his face, like he was relieved it was over. The crowd began to cheer and the marching music picked up, and Marilyn smiled faintly at Alexei—who twisted at the bar to raise his glass in her direction, as though the applause from the television were for her—and she felt a spasm of regret over what she’d done. She had explained Jack’s weaknesses to an enemy she didn’t truly understand, but she must not feel sorry for him. He did not deserve her sympathy. No nation had ever done anything for her—she was, as ever, the only one looking out for herself, and so she would continue until she met the man whose job it really was. That was all there was to do, even if Jack, smiling from the television, was proving difficult to dislike.