Card Sharks

his psychiatrist's couch.

It was a spout of venom worthy of Hedda. Budo glared at me the Whole time, but I didn't say a word.

That evening I got a call from Marilyn. She wondered if I could come home a bit early. I didn't even question the reason; I knew how much pressure she was under. I think the only thing that held us together that week was holding each other in our arms at night. I hadn't gone to my own place except to pick up clothes.

I slipped into Marilyn's house, under the portico with its strange little inscription: My journey ends here. I never thought of it as an epitaph. It sort of fits, you know.

I went inside the house and called Marilyn's name. Then I heard her voice from the back yard, stuttering like she always did when she was scared 'N-Nickie, could you come out here?'

I didn't suspect anything. I really didn't. When your nerves are that raw, it's either suspect nothing at all, or suspect everything and go mad. And I'd already seen enough of madness.

I Stepped outside the house, and in the late afternoon light I saw the impossibly high hat stacked with a florist's shop of silk begonias, Hedda and a chromed pistol resting in the shade beneath. She sat in the deck chair as if she were a countess holding court, one leg crossed over the other.

Marilyn sat to one side in another chair, clutching the toy tiger, while Dr. Rudo sat a bit behind and kept a businesslike Luger pointed at her back.

'You see,' Marilyn said then. 'There's n-nothing to be shocked about. He'll do whatever I want.'

I came closer, taking Marilyn's signal, and put my hands in the air where both Hedda and Rudo could see them and where I could throw my will-o'-wisps.

'Hello, Nick,' Hedda said as if it were nothing more important than one of her afternoon teas. 'You've always been practical, so please don't play the hero. You'll just get both yourselves killed.'

She pulled back the hammer of her gun. 'Stand by the edge of the pool please.'

'Your scheme's ruined, you know,' Marilyn said.

Hedda bowed her impossible hat slightly. I know, darling. You've really fucked things to a turn.'

'I'm pregnant,' Marilyn said.

There was a moment of dead silence. At last Hedda licked her lips. 'Could you repeat what you just Said, dearest?'

'I'm Pregnant,' Marilyn said it with the exact same tone and inflection. 'Do you W-want to know who the father is?'

Hedda paused, the nature of her profession plain on her face. 'Does it have any bearing on the present situation?'

'Most l-l-likely, since the father is either J-Jack or Bobby Kennedy. I f-found out last week.'

'Are you considering an abortion, dearest?'

'No.' Marilyn said it definitely, with force. 'I'd decided I was going to h-have it, both for myself, and to spite all the m-men who've u-used me.'

There was a look on Rudo's face I couldn't quite make out 'Which men, Marilyn?'

'Jack. Bobby,' she said, and her voice became harder, clearer. 'Zanuck. It would serve them all right. It was going to be the one thing I was going to do for myself. Darryl Zanuck stuck me on this lousy jokers pic for the last spot on my contract and there was nothing I could do about it. Except this.'

She gripped the toy tiger in her lap, her knuckles turning white on the plush fur. 'If I puff up without a husband, the protests will wreck any pic I work on. It'd serve Zanuck right to have to swallow the entire budget for gyping me on my contract. And the scandal would toss Jack and Bobby out on the street with the jokers they love so much. I planned to sink this filthy jokers pic myself.'

Marilyn turned towards Hedda, slowly. 'You don't believe me. But there's a lot about me you don't know, Mrs. Hopper. You want the exclusive? When I was nine, I was raped. By a joker.' Her face contorted and tears began to run down her cheeks, smearing her mascara. 'It was at my foster parents' house. One of them — you know I had four different sets. These ones rented out rooms, and one of their boarders was a joker. He had these furry green eyebrows that moved when you talked to him, but I'd been told he was a nice man, and I was too young to know what sort of monsters jokers were. So I went into his room and he took out his penis and it was all spiky. Sharp, green spikes, curving backwards, like a foxtail, and he … he … stuck it into me.'

She let go of the tiger and her head collapsed into her hands. 'He r-raped me,' she blubbered between her fingers, her voice quaking like a little girl's. 'I bled for days. And I was so ashamed I never told anyone.

'It was years before I learned that normal men weren't like that. All green and spiky.' She shook with sobs. 'You know some of it, Dr. Rudo. I told you about Flattop following me around. I'm afraid of him. His penis is probably as stretched out and spiky as the rest of him. His diseased body makes me sick.'

Hedda and Rudo looked as if they didn't know if they were hearing the truth or a method actress giving the performance of her life. But I knew from Hedda's expression that Marilyn was offering a scandal that would both kill the movie and hang the Kennedys with rope to spare.

'Darling,' said Hedda, testing, 'I know you've spent the night with Jack Braun.'

Marilyn shrugged, straightening back up and wiping some of the tears from her cheeks. 'That was business. I've done a lot worse on the casting couch than just give a joker a blowjob to get help with a script. His dick's normal enough. And,' she said, 'a girl does what she has to.'

I was the only wrinkle in the plan, but Marilyn was working to take that out.

'N-Nickie always wore a condom,' she said 'I m-may be a little tramp, but I'm not going to have a love child by a nobody.' Marilyn looked at me. 'Sorry, Nickie,' she said, 'but you're nobody special.'

I think that was a signal for me to use my ace, but God, I don't know. Hedda and Rudo had guns. And I knew from the encounter under the pier what happened when you ran a charge through one of those. The shrapnel from Rudo's Luger would kill Marilyn if the bullet didn't first.

But Marilyn looked at me, the tears running down her face. I never could bear to see her cry.

I focused my ace as hard as I could, large charges, killers, but tightly bound so they'd go straight for Hedda and Rudo's heads and avoid the guns. I hoped, I prayed.

My will-o'-wisps may have been lightning springing from my hands, but they didn't move that fast.

And Hedda's trigger finger was faster.

The shot hit me in the chest and the pain made me lose control as I fell back into the water. My will-o'-wisps lost cohesion, dissipating harmlessly. And the blood flowed out of me along with the electricity, my ace sparking around me, grounding into the pool.

I struggled to keep my head above water and then I saw Hedda and Marilyn and Rudo standing there, looking at me.

'Oh my God,' Marilyn breathed then in the most horror-struck voice I've ever heard, 'he's a j-joker.'

'Didn't you know, my dear?' Hedda asked.

Marilyn slowly shook her head, dropping the toy tiger. 'N-no.'

'Well,' said Hedda, 'then you shouldn't have any trouble killing him.'

Hedda passed Marilyn the pistol. She looked at it for a second as if she didn't know what it was, but then she seemed to reach some sort of decision and slipped her fingers around it. I know Rudo must have had his Luger pressed into the small of her back, but I couldn't see, and Cod, she did it so fast and so easily.

Marilyn raised the gun, and one by one her tears fell into the pool. But I don't know whether they were tears of pain or hatred.

I can still hear her last Words to me: 'Goodbye, Nickie.'

And then … there was an explosion and I felt the water close around me. And then I don't remember anything until I woke up here, with Ellen.

And I don't know. Don't you understand, I don't know. Ellen says Marilyn had our child, a son, but I don't know him, and I don't know if he knows about me.

And I don't know if his mother still loves me, or even if she ever loved me at all. She said she didn't care that I was an ace, but she never did like jokers, and then there was that story from her childhood. She made things up and you could never tell the truth from the fiction. You just had to trust her. She was so many women. You never knew who was the real one.

She killed me, you know. It kind of makes you wonder.