I think men will say a lot of things to impress a woman in bed. But the Kennedy boys had topped us all.
I said, “I think… you should come sit next to me.”
She did. She leaned across me to stab the cigarette out in a tray on the end table. I couldn’t see it there but apparently she could.
She snuggled against me again. “Someday he’s going to leave her.”
“Who is?”
“Bobby! He doesn’t love her. That Ethel. I don’t like her at all. Do you think she’s attractive? I certainly don’t.”
“Marilyn, stop.”
“What?”
“This afternoon-did you talk to your ex-husband about this?”
“Oh, Joe knew about Jack. I don’t know how, but he did. He also knew it was over, Jack and me. It was… I told you, it was hearing about Bobby that made him flip.”
I had no urge to hit her, but I got why DiMaggio had. The inside of his head must have gone redder than marinara.
“Marilyn, this is what I was trying to tell you earlier today-you need to focus on your professional life. You’re an actress, a gifted actress. And not just a movie star-they’re calling you a superstar. So popular they had to make up a new word to describe it. You need to make that be enough for you.”
But she was barely listening. “Nate, it’s so exciting, being with Bobby. It was exciting with Jack, but this is so much better. So much deeper. Can you imagine? Me in the White House?”
“No. That won’t happen, that can’t happen. Bobby won’t leave his wife and family for you, just like Jack wouldn’t. Not because they don’t want to, but because they are politicians who want votes and Catholics who want to go to heaven and a dozen other things that mean this is one dream, Marilyn, that you don’t get to have come true. They’re good men, in their way, but they use people. Hell, they’ve used me often enough.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“I don’t want to have to say it.”
She was looking away from me, staring into the dark.
I asked, “Mad at me?”
She shook her head, blondeness bouncing. “No. I called and you came.”
“That’s right.”
Something little girl came into her voice, possibly contrived, maybe not. “What if I promised you I’ll take your advice?”
“I’d be very pleased. These are dangerous waters, Marilyn-that Cuba stuff, you can’t ever talk about that again. To anybody. In these times of electronic eavesdropping, and with Bobby’s enemies including everybody from mobsters and the Teamsters to Soviet agents and the FBI, you have to grasp that these are treacherous fucking waters. Please, baby. Stick to make-believe.”
“You came.”
“Promise me you’ll take my advice.”
“Why can’t I love a guy like you? Just a normal everyday guy?”
That’s me-Nathan Heller, normal everyday guy.
“Go ahead and try,” I said. “I won’t stop you.”
She found a shaft of light coming in through the sheer curtains and when she stepped out of the skirt-she of course wore no panties-and got out of the blouse-no bra, either-she was naked as the day she was born. Of course, she hadn’t been born with that gallbladder scar, or the black-bruise circles under her eyes or the nasty purple bruise on her cheek. But she hadn’t been born with those perfect breasts, either, still full and pert despite her thirty-six years and God knew how much drug abuse and alcohol.
She was a creamy goddess who knelt before me, and unzipped me, and if you think the revelations about the Kennedys and their sexual trifling with her, and the dangers that were lurking out there, from Giancana to Hoffa to J. Fucking Edgar Hoover, if you figured all that would make it tough for me to get aroused, well, to paraphrase Bugs Bunny to Elmer Fudd, you don’t know me very well, do you?
On her knees, smiling up at me with innocent wickedness, she took me in her hands and fondled and kissed and sucked me and slid me into the famous face until it was almost too late. She knew it, too, laughing a little, waggling a scolding finger at me, and then she led me into the bedroom by the part of me extending from my fly and she undressed me, like she was stripping a department store dummy, and then pushed me onto the bed, onto my back.
She mounted me and she moved her hips slowly, the breasts swaying, the hair an abstraction of white, her face lovely in the dim dreamy light, the bruises hidden by darkness, and when her hips had accelerated until I was again at the edge of that wonderful cliff, she slipped off me and onto her back and that mouth whispered, “Love me,” and I got on top of her, pushing up on the heels of my hands so I could see her, and entered her and again it was slow, in rhythm with her continued pleading demand, “Love me… love me… love me…,” which gathered speed and so did I until finally she was saying “ Fuck me… fuck me… fuck me,” and I did, I did, I did, understanding now how the leaders of the free world might risk it all for this.
She’d said it before, hadn’t she?
She called.
And I came.
CHAPTER 10
Two weeks later, more or less, I was sitting in a booth at Sherry’s with my son, the occasion being I was heading back to Chicago tomorrow.
The restaurant had once been among the “in” nightspots on the Sunset Strip, especially after hours. But Ciro’s had closed in ’57, the Mocambo in ’59, making a dinosaur out of Sherry’s, its brightly lighted interior, glass-and-chrome decor, and Cole Porter-playing pianist suggesting a yesterday that seemed forever ago.
Nonetheless, my teenaged son loved to come here. It wasn’t the celebrities, a good number of whom had stayed loyal, though you were more likely to see Susan Hayward than Sandra Dee, Robert Taylor than Troy Donahue. For Sam the appeal of Sherry’s was simple-I always let him order the lobster tail. Apparently his big-shot producer stepfather was too cheap to spring for the four bucks.
You see, I had a piece of Sherry’s. Fred Rubinski was the restaurant’s principal owner, and had let me in on what had at the time been a good investment. It might still be a good investment, if Fred ever realized he needed to throw in the towel and sell this valuable hunk of real estate.
We’d had the soup and salad and were waiting for my son’s lobster and his father’s filet. Sam was in the required suit and tie, looking very Sunday school though this was a Thursday evening. I wore a blue plaid Palm Beach sport jacket with a pale blue shirt, navy tie, and navy slacks, cool in more than one sense of the word and suddenly out of place in my own restaurant.
“Tell me how Marilyn’s doing,” my son said.
Sam knew nothing of anything I’d done for her (much less with her), but like everybody in the world, he was aware of her woes from the papers and TV.
“She’s doing fine,” I said. “She’s renegotiated with Fox, and has been doing all sorts of photo shoots and interviews.”
Sam nodded, sipped his glass of iced Coke, and said, “That’s called a media blitz, Dad.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Actually I hadn’t seen Marilyn since that night at my Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow. We’d spoken on the phone a number of times, usually but not always initiated by me. Funny thing was, she didn’t make any reference, not even veiled, to that evening. This was a little troubling, since she’d indicated she would take my advice and close the chapter on the Kennedy brothers, and the last thing I wanted out of her right now was selective amnesia.
But, from our phone chats, I could tell her focus was her career, just as I’d suggested. So I felt all right about it. Not great, but all right. And, anyway, her phones were tapped, weren’t they? Naturally she would watch what she said.
Most of my time these past couple weeks had been taken up by agency work, Fred talking me into booking a number of client meetings, on matters ranging from divorce to home security. I even went out to several celebrity homes to check out possible security problems-these were people you’ve heard of, but as they have nothing to do with this narrative, we’ll respect their privacy.