Music for Chameleons (30 page)

TC:
Because one of the columnists, Kilgallen I think, ran a blind item that said something like: “Rumor hath it that Mrs. DiMaggio rendezvoused with television’s toppest tycoon and it wasn’t to discuss business.” Well, she read the item and she believes it.

MARILYN:
Believes
what
?

TC:
That her husband is having an affair with you. William S. Paley. TV’s toppest tycoon. He’s partial to shapely blondes. Brunettes, too.

MARILYN:
But that’s batty. I’ve never met the guy.

TC:
Ah, come on. You can level with me. This secret lover of yours—it’s William S. Paley,
n’est-ce pas
?

MARILYN:
No! It’s a writer. He’s a writer.

TC:
That’s more like it. Now we’re getting somewhere. So your lover is a writer. Must be a real hack, or you wouldn’t be ashamed to tell me his name.

MARILYN
(furious, frantic): What does the “S” stand for?

TC:
“S.” What “S”?

MARILYN:
The “S” in William S. Paley.

TC:
Oh,
that
“S.” It doesn’t stand for anything. He sort of tossed it in there for appearance sake.

MARILYN:
It’s just an initial with no name behind it? My goodness. Mr. Paley must be a little insecure.

TC:
He twitches a lot. But let’s get back to our mysterious scribe.

MARILYN:
Stop it! You don’t understand. I have so much to lose.

TC:
Waiter, we’ll have another Mumm’s, please.

MARILYN:
Are you trying to loosen my tongue?

TC:
Yes. Tell you what. We’ll make an exchange. I’ll tell you a story, and if you think it’s interesting, then perhaps we can discuss your writer friend.

MARILYN
(tempted, but reluctant): What’s your story about?

TC:
Errol Flynn.

MARILYN:
(Silence)

TC:
(Silence)

MARILYN
(hating herself): Well, go on.

TC:
Remember what you were saying about Errol? How pleased he was with his prick? I can vouch for that. We once spent a cozy evening together. If you follow me.

MARILYN:
You’re making this up. You’re trying to trick me.

TC:
Scout’s honor. I’m dealing from a clean deck. (Silence; but I can see that she’s hooked, so after lighting a cigarette …) Well, this happened when I was eighteen. Nineteen. It was during the war. The winter of 1943. That night Carol Marcus or maybe she was already Carol Saroyan, was giving a party for her best friend, Gloria Vanderbilt. She gave it in her mother’s apartment on Park Avenue. Big party. About fifty people. Around midnight Errol Flynn rolls in with his alter ego, a swashbuckling playboy named Freddie McEvoy. They were both pretty loaded. Anyway, Errol started yakking with me, and he was bright, we were making each other laugh, and suddenly he said he wanted
to go to El Morocco, and did I want to go with him and his buddy McEvoy. I said okay, but then McEvoy didn’t want to leave the party and all those debutantes, so in the end Errol and I left alone. Only we didn’t go to El Morocco. We took a taxi down to Gramercy Park, where I had a little one-room apartment. He stayed until noon the next day.

MARILYN:
And how would you rate it? On a scale of one to ten.

TC:
Frankly, if it hadn’t been Errol Flynn, I don’t think I would have remembered it.

MARILYN:
That’s not much of a story. Not worth mine—not by a long shot.

TC:
Waiter, where is our champagne? You’ve got two thirsty people here.

MARILYN:
And it’s not as if you’d told me anything new. I’ve always known Errol zigzagged. I have a masseur, he’s practically my sister, and he was Tyrone Power’s masseur, and he told me all about the thing Errol and Ty Power had going. No, you’ll have to do better than that.

TC:
You drive a hard bargain.

MARILYN:
I’m listening. So let’s hear your best experience. Along those lines.

TC:
The best? The most memorable? Suppose you answer the question first.

MARILYN:
And
I
drive hard bargains! Ha! (Swallowing champagne) Joe’s not bad. He can hit home runs. If that’s all it takes, we’d still be married. I still love him, though. He’s genuine.

TC:
Husbands don’t count. Not in this game.

MARILYN
(nibbling nail; really thinking): Well, I met a man, he’s related to Gary Cooper somehow. A stockbroker, and nothing much to look at—sixty-five, and he wears those very thick glasses. Thick as jellyfish. I can’t say what it was, but—

TC:
You can stop right there. I’ve heard all about him from
other girls. That old swordsman really scoots around. His name is Paul Shields. He’s Rocky Cooper’s stepfather. He’s supposed to be sensational.

MARILYN:
He is. Okay, smart-ass. Your turn.

TC:
Forget it. I don’t have to tell you damn nothing. Because I know who your masked marvel is: Arthur Miller. (She lowered her black glasses: Oh boy, if looks could kill, wow!) I guessed as soon as you said he was a writer.

MARILYN
(stammering): But how? I mean, nobody … I mean, hardly anybody—

TC:
At least three, maybe four years ago Irving Drutman—

MARILYN:
Irving
who
?

TC:
Drutman. He’s a writer on the
Herald Tribune
. He told me you were fooling around with Arthur Miller. Had a hang-up on him. I was too much of a gentleman to mention it before.

MARILYN:
Gentleman! You bastard. (Stammering again, but dark glasses in place) You don’t understand. That was long ago. That ended. But this is new. It’s all different now, and—

TC:
Just don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.

MARILYN:
If you talk about this, I’ll murder you. I’ll have you bumped off. I know a couple of men who’d gladly do me the favor.

TC:
I don’t question that for an instant.

(At last the waiter returned with the second bottle.)

MARILYN:
Tell him to take it back. I don’t want any. I want to get the hell out of here.

TC:
Sorry if I’ve upset you.

MARILYN:
I’m not upset.

(But she was. While I paid the check, she left for the powder room, and I wished I had a book to read: her visits to powder rooms sometimes lasted as long as an elephant’s pregnancy. Idly, as time ticked by, I wondered if she was popping uppers or downers. Downers,
no doubt. There was a newspaper on the bar, and I picked it up; it was written in Chinese. After twenty minutes had passed, I decided to investigate. Maybe she’d popped a lethal dose, or even cut her wrists. I found the ladies’ room, and knocked on the door. She said: “Come in.” Inside, she was confronting a dimly lit mirror. I said: “What are you doing?” She said: “Looking at Her.” In fact, she was coloring her lips with ruby lipstick. Also, she had removed the somber head scarf and combed out her glossy fine-as-cotton-candy hair.)

MARILYN:
I hope you have enough money left.

TC:
That depends. Not enough to buy pearls, if that’s your idea of making amends.

MARILYN
(giggling, returned to good spirits. I decided I wouldn’t mention Arthur Miller again): No. Only enough for a long taxi ride.

TC:
Where are we going—Hollywood?

MARILYN:
Hell, no. A place I like. You’ll find out when we get there.

(I didn’t have to wait that long, for as soon as we had flagged a taxi, I heard her instruct the cabby to drive to the South Street Pier, and I thought: Isn’t that where one takes the ferry to Staten Island? And my next conjecture was: She’s swallowed pills on top of that champagne and now she’s off her rocker.)

TC:
I hope we’re not going on any boat rides. I didn’t pack my Dramamine.

MARILYN
(happy, giggling): Just the pier.

TC:
May I ask why?

MARILYN:
I like it there. It smells foreign, and I can feed the seagulls.

TC:
With what? You haven’t anything to feed them.

MARILYN:
Yes, I do. My purse is full of fortune cookies. I swiped them from that restaurant.

TC
(kidding her): Uh-huh. While you were in the john I cracked one open. The slip inside was a dirty joke.

MARILYN:
Gosh. Dirty fortune cookies?

TC:
I’m sure the gulls won’t mind.

(Our route carried us through the Bowery. Tiny pawnshops and blood-donor stations and dormitories with fifty-cent cots and tiny grim hotels with dollar beds and bars for whites, bars for blacks, everywhere bums, bums, young, far from young, ancient, bums squatting curbside, squatting amid shattered glass and pukey debris, bums slanting in doorways and huddled like penguins at street corners. Once, when we paused for a red light, a purple-nosed scarecrow weaved toward us and began swabbing the taxi’s windshield with a wet rag clutched in a shaking hand. Our protesting driver shouted Italian obscenities.)

MARILYN:
What is it? What’s happening?

TC:
He wants a tip for cleaning the window.

MARILYN
(shielding her face with her purse): How horrible! I can’t stand it. Give him something. Hurry. Please!

(But the taxi had already zoomed ahead, damn near knocking down the old lush. Marilyn was crying.)

I’m sick.

TC:
You want to go home?

MARILYN:
Everything’s ruined.

TC:
I’ll take you home.

MARILYN:
Give me a minute. I’ll be okay.

(Thus we traveled on to South Street, and indeed the sight of a ferry moored there, with the Brooklyn skyline across the water and careening, cavorting seagulls
white against a marine horizon streaked with thin fleecy clouds fragile as lace—this tableau soon soothed her soul.

As we got out of the taxi we saw a man with a chow on a leash, a prospective passenger, walking toward the ferry, and as we passed them, my companion stopped to pat the dog’s head.)

THE MAN
(firm, but not unfriendly): You shouldn’t touch strange dogs. Especially chows. They might bite you.

MARILYN:
Dogs never bite me. Just humans. What’s his name?

THE MAN:
Fu Manchu.

MARILYN
(giggling): Oh, just like the movie. That’s cute.

THE MAN:
What’s yours?

MARILYN:
My name? Marilyn.

THE MAN:
That’s what I thought. My wife will never believe me. Can I have your autograph?

(He produced a business card and a pen; using her purse to write on, she wrote:
God Bless You—Marilyn Monroe
)

MARILYN:
Thank you.

THE MAN:
Thank
you
. Wait’ll I show this back at the office. (We continued to the edge of the pier, and listened to the water sloshing against it.)

MARILYN:
I used to ask for autographs. Sometimes I still do. Last year Clark Gable was sitting next to me in Chasen’s, and I asked him to sign my napkin.

(Leaning against a mooring stanchion, she presented a profile: Galatea surveying unconquered distances. Breezes fluffed her hair, and her head turned toward me with an ethereal ease, as though a breeze had swiveled it.)

TC:
So when do we feed the birds? I’m hungry, too. It’s late, and we never had lunch.

MARILYN:
Remember, I said if anybody ever asked you what I was like, what Marilyn Monroe was
really
like—well, how would you answer them? (Her tone was teaseful, mocking, yet earnest, too: she wanted an honest reply) I bet you’d tell them I was a slob. A banana split.

TC:
Of course. But I’d also say …

(The light was leaving. She seemed to fade with it, blend with the sky and clouds, recede beyond them. I wanted to lift my voice louder than the seagulls’ cries and call her back: Marilyn! Marilyn, why did everything have to turn out the way it did? Why does life have to be so fucking rotten?)

TC:
I’d say …

MARILYN:
I can’t hear you.

TC:
I’d say you are a beautiful child.

VII

Nocturnal Turnings, or
How Siamese Twins Have Sex

TC:
Shucks! Wide awake! Lawsamercy, we ain’t been dozed off a minute. How long we been dozed off, honey?

TC:
It’s two now. We tried to go to sleep around midnight, but we were too tense. So you said why don’t we jack off, and I said yes, that ought to relax us, it usually does, so we jacked off and went right to sleep. Sometimes I wonder: Whatever would we do without Mother Fist and her Five Daughters? They’ve certainly been a friendly bunch to us through the years. Real pals.

TC:
A lousy two hours. Lawd knows when we’ll shut our eyes agin. An’ cain’t do nothin’ ’bout it. Cain’t haf a lil old sip of sompin ’cause dats a naw-naw. Nor none of dem snoozy pills, dat bein’ also a naw-naw.

TC:
Come on. Knock off the Amos ’n’ Andy stuff. I’m not in the mood tonight.

TC:
You’re never in the mood. You didn’t even want to jack off.

TC:
Be fair. Have I ever denied you that? When you want to jack off, I always lie back and let you.