The cigarette stopped bobbing.
“You’ve heard about that?”
“Yeah.” Suddenly I felt defensive. “You’re not the only one around here friendly with Pat and Peter Lawford. And, you know, I worked for Bobby, back when he was on the Rackets Committee-”
“You know about Bobby, too?”
That hit me in the gut.
Suddenly I recalled Lawford responding to my question about his brother-in-law and Marilyn, and he’d said, “Jack, you mean?” Because I could also have been referring to Bobby.
And Bobby telling me he was handling the Marilyn problem “personally.” Personally was right.
And Jimmy Hoffa making what seemed a crazy statement about both brothers fucking Marilyn. Not so crazy, after all.
I worked to keep my voice calm, not accusatory: “Marilyn, what is going on with the Kennedys?”
Not what the hell is going on… just “what.”
The amber eye began to bob again.
“The thing with Jack is over. He really is kind of a louse. I mean, a great man, but a lousy guy. I’m really disappointed in him. Do you know that he changed his phone number, just so I wouldn’t call him?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Anyway, Bobby is much nicer. Much smarter. His intellect is… really quite incredible. He’s going to make a much better president than his brother someday.”
“But you were with Jack…”
Her silhouette shrugged and she paced and the amber eye floated as she gestured. “I go way back with Jack. First time Joe got jealous of him was, oh…’54? He was a lot of fun, Jack. Not much of a lover, no romance, just in and out. But fun, funny, charming, smart. And then he sort of sent Bobby to see me and do his… dirty work. But Bobby felt really bad about it. Very sweet, really sweet. When I was angry and saying how Jack changed his phone number, what did Bobby do? Gave me his! Such a wonderful listener. He and I get along really well. I think it surprises him, how much I know about things. The questions I ask. It’s funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“The things they tell me. In the dark. In bed? Both of them. I know such crazy things, things I really shouldn’t. Some of it I have to admit I really don’t approve of-like trying to kill Castro. I mean, that isn’t right! They don’t call it assassination, they call… what did Jack call it? ‘Executive action.’ That’s wrong, killing the head of state of another country, just because you don’t agree with them. What do you think, Nate?”
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.
