The Blonde (22 page)

“Well, isn’t that charming?”

“Indeed it is.” He lowered his mouth to her ear, and a surge of volume from the orchestra gave him the excuse to jerk his pelvis against hers. “Of course I don’t believe one damn word of that.”

She had moved in the world of men, played the desire game, long enough—she had heard put-downs that were come-ons and come-ons that were put-downs, she’d had her hair pulled and her head slammed against
walls—so there was no chance that Joe’s snarling comment, as blunt and incestuous as it may have been, could rattle her. It did provide good cover, however, for the surprise she experienced a moment later, when she spotted a familiar but unexpected face at the edge of the crowd, and the rhythm of her heart became agitated. “Excuse me,” she said, and half ran from the dance floor, knocking Alexei’s shoulder with her own as she left the room.

Once she was in the halls of the resort, she relaxed her stricken expression and began to walk at a more controlled pace, her ears alert to any noise behind her, her breathing quiet and steady. She heard the footsteps in her wake, and matched her own to his, letting him almost catch up to her. She turned abruptly into the men’s room and walked down the aisle of stalls, where she positioned herself in front of the mirror on the far end. Although she kept her gaze steady on her own reflection, she noted from the corner of her eye how Alexei casually bent to see if there were any shoes beneath the stall doors as he approached. Satisfied, he placed himself at the sink next to her, turned the faucet, and let the water run.

“What are you doing here?” she said evenly.

“Why wouldn’t I be here?”

She lifted her chin and opened her mouth to laugh. “Everyone likes a little song and dance, you mean? Okay. But how am I supposed to make this whole scheme natural when there’s someone always watching me? He’s going to notice, you know, if you keep breathing down my neck. What’s next? You going to jump out from under the bed with a camera?”

“N.J., I am sorry if I’ve made you nervous. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then what?”

“Our girl in Giancana’s organization, she told us he’s meeting with the old man this weekend. There are all kinds of Mafia about—it could be dangerous. Not for you, perhaps, but—in a general kind of way. And I wanted to be here. To watch over you. To make sure you’re safe.”

“Oh.” She nodded, taking this in, experiencing in the same moment that
shivering comprehension of a danger she hadn’t known herself to be in, and the relief of learning that someone else was taking care of it. “Clark’s here,” she said sharply. “He looks after me.”

“N.J., he’s not a
real
cowboy.”

“You didn’t worry before. In Chicago, I mean—”

“Of course I did, N.J. Of course I did.” He sighed, shutting off the water and picking up a cloth. Once his hands were dry, he put them reassuringly on both her shoulders. “I always worry about you. But you were less involved then. And of course you are much more valuable to our operation now, to the Party. To the people …”

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of an object hitting the tiled floor, and they both turned to see one high heel under the door of the last stall. There were no feet visible—the woman must have been crouching on the toilet. A trill of feminine laughter followed, and Marilyn realized there were two people in hiding, because a man’s voice said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

A moment later the stall door was flung back, and by then Alexei had moved to shield Marilyn from view. Two people ran for the far side of the men’s room, and Marilyn glanced up in time to see the assistant makeup girl—wearing one high heel and holding the other, her crinoline bouncing as she pulled a man with light-colored hair in a black jacket into the hall—before quickly pointing her face in the opposite direction. The door sounded shut behind them, and Alexei moved to pursue the couple.

“Don’t worry,” Marilyn said. “That girl’s an airhead. She was so excited about seeing Frankie she couldn’t stop talking about it all week. She was probably caught unawares by the news she’d be sleeping in a bunk bed, and her boyfriend is trying to get what was promised him where he can.”

Alexei glanced in her direction. “Are you sure?” His blue eyes gleamed with urgency.

“Yeah.” Marilyn was calm now, and she took the opportunity to fix her lipstick with the tube she kept between her breasts. “I’ll make sure she gets
more drinks, and then she really won’t remember anything. Meantime, would you get lost? I appreciate your concern, daddy, but you can’t make love with three people in the room.”

Lipstick nestled back in place, she put a red kiss on Alexei’s forehead—it was going to take him a while to get
that
out—and swerved back toward the banquet hall, or wherever Jack was.

The telephone in cabin 3 tried to ring, but she answered before it got the sound out. In dreamland a private detective had been following her through the barracks of a dusty Southern California military compound—she had been wearing magenta, and holding the hand of an Iowan private first class—but she should’ve known that wasn’t real. Arthur would never send a detective, as Joe had, to prove what he could figure out on his own, a characteristic she knew she ought to admire. “Yes?” she whispered, curling away from the man who lay beside her.

“Mrs. Miller?” said a bright, inquisitive, female voice.

“Yes,” she answered, more tiredly this time.

“Your husband ordered a wake-up call. Good
morning
! Would you and Mr. Miller like breakfast in bed?”

She twisted, pushing a fistful of blonde fluff away from her eyes to glance at the sleeping man. “No.” She gripped the phone with both hands, becoming aware of the unease in her stomach, the drumbeat at her temples. Then she remembered the many drinks she’d had last night, which had obliterated several haphazard trains of thought and given her a clear picture of how to use Sunday morning. “No, but uh—could you fix us a picnic?”

“A picnic?”

“Yeah, you know, lunch in a basket. Sandwiches and coleslaw and potato chips and maybe a few cans of beer. My husband and I—we’re going canoeing today.”

“I’ll call the kitchen and see—”

“Good. Just have them leave it outside our cabin when it’s ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

If she were wise, she would have tried to rest a little more, but she knew sleep would only elude her, and anyway the pillows in that place were cheap. The agitation of her stomach, the discordant title
Mrs. Miller
ringing in her ears, the memory of the eyes on her last night—watchful Alexei, leering Joe Kennedy, menacing Giancana—kept her mind alive. She lit a cigarette and pulled a sheet over her nakedness, exposing the body beside her. Jack had not slept in the nude, as she had, but even so she could make out the morning wood through his striped boxer shorts, and she was not quick enough to banish the thought that he was rather beautiful in repose.

“What are you looking at?”

She tried not to seem surprised that he had been conscious all this time, and quickly put out the cigarette. Smoking did not fit with the girl she intended to play for Jack today, which was the sweet ingénue who shows up with a package full of good, simple things, and no thought in her head but how to make her man happy. A relaxing August interlude, before the campaign resumed its relentless pace. “At you.”

“You’re taking me canoeing, huh?”

“Well, I’d like to.” She put a hand on his tanned torso. “If you’ve got time.”

He leaned away to check his wristwatch on the nightstand, and disappointment rose in her, displacing the nausea. She reminded herself that it didn’t matter. If not today, there would be another day to coddle him into a chatty stupor, another day to impress the unknown men Alexei reported to. “Okay,” Jack said, putting down his watch and rolling over so that she was pinned and the mattress groaned, and she couldn’t lie to herself that she wasn’t relieved. “Take me canoeing. But we had better go before Bobby figures out where I am.”

So they went, with their wicker basket, across the deep brown forest floor,
fragrant with loam and pine, and out onto the placid sapphire surface of the lake glistening in the morning sun. She paddled lazily, and Jack lay down at the head of the canoe, removing the dress shirt he’d put on and closing his eyes to the sun. There were no other boats at that hour, and they glided away from shore, so that the lodge looked like the silly little toy that it was, and she could see a long way through the clear water to the lake bottom.

“Think I can touch the bottom?” she asked.

Jack glanced over the edge of the canoe. “Must be a hundred feet.”

She grinned and pulled her white cotton sundress over her head and dove in. The water was bracing, and as she plunged down she realized he was right, the bottom was much farther than she’d guessed. When she broke the surface again it was with a girlish “
Brrrrrr!
” of shock.

“Pretty cold, isn’t it?”

She swam back to the boat, and folded her arms against its edge, affecting a smile of unself-conscious delight. “Come on in, honey. Water’s fine.”

“No thanks—I’d rather watch you.”

“Don’t you remember last time we were in the water together?” she asked with a wink.

“I think about it all the time. But my back’s killing me. There’s no way I’d be able to get myself out again, and I’ll not have a woman pull me.”

“Oh, all right.” She threw a leg over the side, and hauled herself up. When she dove in she had not considered that they hadn’t brought towels, and for a moment she sat opposite him, shivering in the clear sunshine. Then she knew she’d miscalculated. She had thought he would follow her in, but now she was the only one naked, dripping, her skin chilled and her hair bedraggled. She had made herself too vulnerable, and could not play the geisha now.

Meanwhile Jack whistled, reached into the picnic basket, cracked a beer. Closing the lid, he saw the tag that read
Mr. and Mrs. Miller, Cabin 3
. “How’d you manage to get rid of your husband, anyway? If I were him, I wouldn’t let you out of my—”

But he broke off. She hadn’t meant to respond, but the truth must have been in her face briefly. How it had choked her to be called “Mrs. Miller” that morning when the name no longer meant anything, or how ugly it was to be replaced so quickly after four years of marriage. Alexei had warned her to keep Arthur, that Jack would grow leery if she was just another desperate, unattached actress, but she had no choice except to play the situation for sympathy now. “Oh, that didn’t take any doing,” she whispered, making her voice small and sad. “He doesn’t care anymore, you know. It’s over. Once we finish the picture, everyone else will know, too.”

The boat rocked under her, and for several seconds Jack said nothing. She wished she could take it back, erase any mention of her own troubles, but it was too late. In a little while he would make an excuse, and she would bring him back to shore, and that would be the end. Perhaps she had done enough already, and Alexei would not deprive her further of the man she’d waited so long to meet. Perhaps. A few seconds passed, and she saw how Jack was watching her. She watched him back. She watched him as the fragile woman she was pretending to be, and also as herself, and they briefly became one and the same.

He didn’t speak. Only pushed himself up, took the dress shirt from where it lay, and carefully drew its sleeves over her arms and buttoned its buttons over her chest. Then he pulled her to him, so that he lay again in the curved bottom of the canoe, her body nestled in the crook of his arm. “Don’t worry,” he said eventually. “You’ll find another husband. Any man would have you.”

The sun was strong against her eyelids, and her hair was half dried already. Jack placed a hand on her head protectively, and for the first time she was able to imagine him as the father of a little girl, and knew that he had experience reading a child to sleep.

NINETEEN

Up in the air, October 1960

FLYING no longer troubled Marilyn. Especially this morning, when she left her bungalow and went, not to the United Artists lot as she was scheduled to, for reshoots of the movie that ought to have been finished by now, but to the small airport in Burbank, where she paid cash for a seat on a New York–bound flight.

What did it matter now? The movie would not be finished on time, and everybody already blamed her, with some reason. At the end of August she’d claimed exhaustion, been flown from Reno to Los Angeles where she checked into the Westside Hospital for a rest, only to use the medevac helicopter to return to the airport and catch a flight to Bangor. A blissful week had followed of meeting Jack in fusty New England hotels while he campaigned throughout Maine and New Hampshire. Shooting was shut down for ten days, after which her only friends on set were Clark (who enjoyed his vacation) and the simple-minded makeup girl.

The country passed beneath her in all its rough, gaudy texture as she traveled away from the life that had come to seem like a dream and to the place, and the person, that absorbed her true attention. She was not, she knew, the only one—the networks had put the presidential debates on television this year, and so sixty million or so souls had now seen for themselves, and in the comfortable privacy of their own homes, how much better that handsome face made them feel than the bushy brows and sweating jowls of the vice president. But the necessary secrecy about who she was to the candidate, and her own private motivation for keeping close to him, electrified the whole
enterprise. As the airplane descended over the marshy, broken coast of the west end of Long Island she experienced the same thrill she had occasionally experienced at work, when her whole self meshed with the role, and she no longer had to strategize, or even to think.