Card Sharks

  I felt like I had come home at last.

  During the day, I escorted Marilyn around the set and played stand-in what little time I had to. And at night, back at her place, Marilyn told me her nightmares.

  Sometimes she woke up from them screaming like a little girl and begged me to hold her until they went away.

  Her nightmares ... How can I describe them? In one she was Mary Shelley, talking to her husband about the baby she'd lost. Then he'd console her, and say that she was the mother of far more, since hadn't she created Frankenstein and given her nightmares to a thousand people?

  And then there was the one where she was Cleopatra, and it was like the last scene of the movie, except the asp talked, and it said, "You are the Goddess. You are the Queen. And I am all men and I will have you. And I will kill you."

  And then, trapped in the motions of the story, she dropped the asp down the front of her dress. But instead of biting her, it crawled inside her.

  And she knew her body was not her own.

  Then she was Guenevere from Camelot, singing "The Simple Joys Of Maidenhood" just like Julie Andrews on Broadway. And as she did, the bodies of her admirers piled up around her feet, one after the other.

  There were a dozen others, sometimes as many as three a night. Sometimes I did nothing but hold her, and sometimes we did nothing but make love until the nightmares went away. And sometimes, during all that, I wondered if it were the LSD that had caused the nightmares, or perhaps something else.

  And every afternoon, she had a session with Dr. Rudo. I didn't like to think of what they did together, or the trysts she had every week or so with either of the Kennedy brothers, but whenever I raised the subject, she just laughed. "Nickie, you're so old-fashioned," she'd say. "We're all sexual creatures. If I make love to another man, it doesn't mean I don't love you. And anyway, it's part of the treatment."

  Dauerschlaf, that's what Rudo called it: The Long Sleep. Marilyn had first come to him for her insomnia, and then for her other problems. Sometimes she said she felt like a thousand women packed into one. Blythe was almost autobiographical.

  Schizophrenia ran in her family. It had claimed both her mother and grandmother. She didn't want it to claim her.

  Whatever the problem, I didn't believe that sex was a necessary part of any therapy. What did Dr. Rudo do with boys? But somehow, bastard that he was, Rudo's cure seemed to be working. Marilyn got better for all the bad dreams. She drank less, and slept more without tranquilizers.

  And her acting became hearthreakingly beautiful. I wasn't the only one to cry when I saw her do Blythe's final scene. And her last coherent words:

  "Tisianne, hold me. I can't bear them any longer."

  Seeing her in the straightjacket as she descended into Blythe Van Renssaeler's madness, I was reminded of Wally Fisk. While Marilyn and I had made love, he'd swallowed his tongue and died in the hospital.

  "A brilliant performance, no?" Pan Rudo stood next to me and lit another cigarette. The smoke curled lazily from his fingers. "You find it very beautiful, but very disturbing as well. Some personal meaning, perhaps?"

  He shook forward a cigarette from his case, but I got out one of my own and used my own lighter. "Do you always state the obvious, Dr. Rudo?"

  He tapped his unlit smokes back into line and snapped the case shut, slipping it into an inside pocket. "Frequently." He took a lazy pull from his cigarette as the scene broke down and Welles called it a wrap. "There are so many lies and self-deceits abounding, it's often useful to remind oneself of the facts. 'To thine own self be true,' as Shakespeare put it. Wouldn't you agree?"

  I blew some of my own smoke his direction. "I've always been more of a 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' man myself."

  He laughed. "I never cease to be amazed by you, Mr. Williams. I always keep thinking I've found your heart, but all I get is another matrushka doll. What's inside the last would you say? Pins and sawdust? Clockwork springs? Or is there really a lion's heart of flesh and blood?"

  I looked into his eyes, cold blue mirrors of my own. "Being that I don't wear it on my sleeve, Dr. Rudo, I don't think you'll ever have a chance to find out."

  He leaned back on one heel, regarding me. "Perhaps, Mr. Williams. Perhaps."

  He broke off the look abruptly. The witch had arrived, hat and all.

  Hedda was wearing a salmon pink linen skirt and jacket, with a matching hat: salmon felt decorated with silver applique waves and, I kid you not, an honest-to-God, life-size gold-lame fish lunging after the fly that dangled from the miniature rod stuck through the crown.

  "Pan, darling!" Hedda oooed. "And dearest Nicholas! What luck to find you both here!"

  Rudo paused and looked to me. "You know Hedda, Mr. Williams?"

  It was the first time I'd ever seen him taken off guard. Hedda breezed right in between us.

  "Oh pish, darling," Hedda said, "you know I have my little spies everywhere." She reached up and pinched his cheek, then linked arms with me and patted the back of my hand. "Nicholas and I go back a long way."

  Rudo took a long drag on his cigarette. "I should never be surprised by anything you know, Hedda."

  Hedda laughed and led me a ways off into the set. "So, Nick, what you got for me?"

  How should I put this? Hedda owned a lot of people in Hollywood. One of the ones she owned was me. She'd given me a couple breaks early in my career - back when I was nothing more than a frightened young actor - and she made sure I knew I owed her. I was part of her spy network, and that, more than anything, was what got me to turn pro at it.

  That press contact I'd phoned in the Wally Fisk story to? That was Hedda. The job for Welles had been a conflict of interests since the beginning.

  I wondered what Flattop would think. His hero, the ace Will-o'-Wisp, was a spy for Hedda the Hat.

  I sighed, recalling the list I'd prepared for her. "Well, Jeff Chandler has a new girlfriend. And I told you about Wally Fisk ... he died this morning."

  "Old news, dearest," she said, patting my hand. "I put it in this morning's column. Now, tell mother what she wants to know: What's the job you're doing for Orson? Wally's old case.

  "Now don't look so shocked, dearest," Hedda said as I struggled to keep my St. Elmo's from springing up and killing the old hag. "Mother knows lots of things, and who do you think it was who got you this lovely job? The moment I heard about poor Wally, all I had to do was have dearest Kimberly drop a word in Orson's pudgy pink ear and voila! Here you are.

  "So now, my little Nicholas, tell mother the dirt."

  Have you ever been caught so off guard you can't speak? That was me. I was so good at deceptions, I'm surprised I didn't come up with one immediately.

  "And no lies, Nicholas," Hedda said. "Mother can tell. And," she said significantly, "since I know Kimberly, if I find out you've lied to me, I'll be forced to tell the truth to Jack Braun. You know him - the glowing freak with the photogenic bottom and the hands that can punch through walls? You're considerably thinner than a wall, Nicholas, and I'm sure he'd have no trouble at all getting through you. And wouldn't that be a horrid scandal."

  She smiled, as if relishing the possibility, and I swallowed. Electric ace or not, there was no way I could stand up to Golden Boy.

  I wish I'd had the stomach for cold blooded murder. Hedda had her arm around mine, and all it would take was one jolt to send the old harpy to Hell. But I knew the nature of the beast I was dealing with - upon her death, Hedda's lawyers would send packets to various addresses, and there was no way of knowing whether a sheaf of photographs would be her bequest to Jack Braun.

  I settled for the simple truth and told Hedda the gist of Wally's investigation. All I said about my own work was that it had been fruitless - nothing about the little altercation under the pier, or the unprovable connections to Howard Hughes and Willie Hearst.

  Hedda clicked her tongue. "My, my, how very interesting. You've done well, my little Nicholas. But isn't there something you're not tellin
g mother?"

  I shook my head, smiling. It was hard, but I told myself that even if Hedda found out, I could hide behind J. Edgar. Golden Rat may have been the strongest man in the world, but the one thing he was frightened of was the Feds.

  Hedda pinched me on the cheek. "Oh come now, Nicholas, don't be so shy. I've heard the rumors. You've been seeing Marilyn, haven't you?"

  I blushed, feeling the strangest mixture of fear and relief. There was a reason why Hedda called her home "The House that Fear Built."

  She crowed with laughter. "You're so wonderfully ingenous, Nick. I think that's why you've always been one of my favorites." Hedda extended her hand to be kissed.

  I did it carefully, holding down my gorge and my ace.

  "Thanks, Nicholas," she said. "You're a dear. But as they say at Disney, TTFN, ta-ta for now!"

  Hedda left, the fishing fly on her hat bobbing like some Satanic sound boom, and I slumped back against a piece of scenery. My life was swiftly becoming a nightmare.

  But there's never bad without some good. That evening I lay in bed with Marilyn, just holding on. There was so much I wanted to tell her, but couldn't.

  "Shh, Nickie," she said, stroking my hair. "Shh. You can tell me when you feel its time. But I have something to tell you."

  "What, Marilyn?"

  "I talked with Dr. Rudo this afternoon. He's interpreted my nightmares, and says I have a choice: I can be all women to all men, or one woman to one man." She paused and I looked up into her blue eyes. "Will you be my one man, Nickie?"

  I began to cry, hugging her, holding her. "Yes."

  She kissed me and we made love.

  "There's one other thing, Nickie," she said once we were done. "I'll never be whole until I have a child. I hope you like children."

  "I love children, Marilyn."

  A few days later, she told me she thought she was pregnant.

  "And it has to be yours, Nickie," Marilyn said. "I've counted, and Jack and Bobby always use condoms, and Pan's had a vasectomy."

  That satyr had an appropriate name, at least. I asked about Jack Braun and Tom Quincey.

  Marilyn shook her head. "I gave Jack a blowjob and he passed out. And Tommy's sweet, but we were through months ago. It has to be you."

  It was then that I realized that with all the pills she'd been taking, none of them had been birth control. And I'd never used a condom.

  She begged me to keep it a secret. With as many as I had, one more wasn't any trouble.

  But, oh God, what a dilemma. If Marilyn had a child conceived out of wedlock, the controversy would wreck the movie. Possibly her career.

  "It's my career, Nickie. I can wreck it if I like, she told me. "I can do anything I want."

  But I'd heard Marilyn's nightmares and her whispered confidences. She'd had abortions before, and I knew one more would destroy her.

  There's an old legend that will-o'-wisps are the souls of unbaptized children. In Marilyn s dream, they were the souls of her abortions. They haunted her night by night, saying, "We are the dead and we are secrets and you will never know who we are. That is our vengeance and that is how we will haunt you."

  She loved me, she said, but she could never marry a man who couldn't tell her his secrets. One more secret and she would die.

  I didn't tell her any of mine, let alone my nickname for my little ball lightning charges. But I held her in my arms all that night and told her that the ghosts would go away if she would just name them. And one by one Marilyn named them, all seven, until she fell asleep in my arms.

  I didn't sleep well at all, knowing all that. But we all make sacrifices for our careers, and Marilyn's had been her children. I know that the law makes her a murderess, but I couldn't bring myself to hate her for that. Maybe it sounds crazy, but as she fell asleep against my chest, I think I loved her all the more.

  The weeks flew by and March passed to April. Marilyn was Blythe as she had never been and I was alternately stand-in or spy, but my heart wasn't in either. It was with Marilyn. Welles had hired me to save his movie, but I knew the greatest threat to Blythe was our love, and I wouldn't kill our child or destroy the woman I loved to save a strip of cellulose. It was none of his business anyway.

  Hedda wasn't even a consideration. She'd discover everything in due time through her other spies. I'd even give her a refund if she complained.

  Otherwise, everything was perfect. The conspiracy of silence had broken down of its own accord and there was some grudging press and commentary, spiced with Hedda's venom and Louella Parson's treacle.

  And then there was another party at the Lawfords's, grander than the rest since it had a theme: Walpurgis Night.

  It was the brainchild of Rudo and Quincey, a dress rehearsal for the May Day celebration they planned to hold on May second, a day late, when both Bobby and Jack Kennedy would be in town. Marilyn planned to spend the night with them. I wasn't pleased, but I knew that if you tried to hold a butterfly, you'd crush it.

  Marilyn said it was one last fling, and I had to take that on faith. I tried to be open-minded.

  But April Thirtieth, Rudo explained, was a traditional time for the opening of the gateways of perception, and beyond that, a good excuse for a masked ball.

  Nobody took it seriously aside from a few domino masks, with the exception of Tom Quincey. He'd got himself up in drag as Guenevere from Camelot and did an a cappella version of "The Lusty Month of May" as the Lawfords' grandfather clock struck midnight. Everyone thought it was amusing except Marilyn and myself.

  Tommy danced around handing out Sandoz tablets like candy and Dr. Rudo had brewed up an Indian punch using peyote buttons. Marilyn wanted me to take some, but vomiting until you hallucinate wasn't my idea of fun, even if I weren't an ace.

  She got me a Coke instead, and I nursed it along as everyone around me drank every variety of alcohol along with Rudo's mescaline punch. I hadn't gotten drunk since college. You don't know what it's like being a teetotaler in a fraternity.

  The pool lights sparkled as they came on, and it was then that I noticed that I was glowing. My St. Elmo'S fire was out, a crackling blue aura around me, sparking and making the lights flicker as I fed on the power.

  I tried to damp it. I really did, but then I saw everyone looking at me.

  No one said anything for a long while, then finally Tom Quincey went, "Wow, man! Colors!"

  I ran off down the beach, trying to get away. My whole world had suddenly fallen apart. I had suppressed the power for so long, it had finally struck back. The wild card had played its cruelest trick on me and I knew I was going to die, I was getting so dizzy, and I fell down on the shoreline.

  Then all my nightmares were around me. Everything I'd always feared would happen. Iack Braun standing over me, glowing gold to my blue: "You bastard. You think you're so much better than me. I only hurt people because I was scared and stupid. You did it out of spite. nothing else. Traitor ace." Then Hedda Hopper: "I always knew you were a joker, Nicholas darling. But now that you know I know, I own you - unless you want everyone else to know." And I saw her smile. Then there was the Olympic committee taking away medals I'd never won, and J. Edgar Hoover with draft papers, a choice between prison or disappearing somewhere where I'd never see anyone I loved again.

  And Marilyn: "Sony, Nickie. I could never love a sparking electrical freak, so you might as well go anyway."

  Then she was slapping my face and shaking me. "Nickie! Nickie! What's wrong?"

  "I'm an ace." I'd finally said it, admitted it to her, to myself, to everyone. "I was glowing. Everybody saw."

  She splashed some water over me and I came to a bit more. "Nickie, nobody saw anything except you screaming and running off down the beach. Pan said you needed to loosen up, so I slipped some of Tommy's pills in your drink. I'm sorry. I didn't think you would have a bad trip." She paused and a look passed through her eyes. I still don't know how to describe it. "What do mean about being an ace?"

  I broke down then and I really d
id start to glow, and Marilyn did notice this time. Tears poured out of my eyes, glowing with foxfire, and I forced the charge out of myself and down the wet sand and into the ocean. For a moment, I think the sea glowed, though that may have just been my imagination.

  Then I told it all to Marilyn. Everything I've just told you and more. All my nightmares and my tears.

  I must have passed out at the end, since I didn't know where I was until I woke up on somebody's couch the next morning.

  Marilyn was there. She said that after I'd passed out, I was still sparking, so she couldn't touch me. She'd run and got Jack Braun and he'd carried me up to his house, and his glow had probably covered mine, so she didn't think anyone else would know. Know that I was an ace.

  Nobody but Marilyn and the greatest betrayer in the history of wild cards.

  She was crying. I could never stand it when she did that. I think her tears were why I first fell in love with her. She said she was sorry she'd given me the pills, but she hadn't known I was an ace, and she said she never would tell. She said Jack promised not to either.

  Marilyn called in sick to the studio for both of us. I was so raw with nerves I could hardly move, so she drove me back to her house.

  She left me by the pool while she went to fix lunch. But I had the beginnings of an idea, the product of nightmares and panic: LSD, whatever the stuff was, caused nightmares. I knew it. Mine had been living and waking. Marilyn's came at night.

  And Wally Fisk? His had driven him mad.

  But doctors know ways to determine the effects of drugs. Marilyn, though it was awful, was slowly getting over her problems. Maybe I would have too if they hadn't been so big, or if the LSD hadn't made me lose control of my ace. But Rudo, I was convinced, could make a far nastier mixture if he had a mind to. The connection was firm, if circumstantial.

  And the motive? Rudo may not have hated wild cards, but there was someone who did. And there was Rudo's comment: "You know Hedda?"