Misfit (15 page)

“It was a long day. Hot as hell out there.”

“No. I don't know how to . . . I knew his name. I know all my lines. All of them. I know everybody's lines. I just can't remember them. It all goes funny, and then blank. A mean streak of white.”

“The picture's been rough, is all. A tough shoot.”

She pours another glass for herself. Puts the bottle in the middle of the table. It blocks off part of his face. “No. That's too easy. It's got to be something more.”

“Such as?”

“That's what I'm asking you.”

“Look. There are only about two pages of the script where you don't have a line. There's a lot going on. It's understandable to confuse things. Not to mention, as I just mentioned, that the heat is unforgiving. It's a wonder any of us still know our own names by the end of the day.”

She nods. “You don't think I thought all about that?”

“Of course you've thought about that.”

“And I don't buy it. You know how you always want to tell me what the
thing
about me is?
The thing about you, Marilyn . . .
”

“I guess this is the part where you tell me the thing about me?”

And she tells him no, that that
thing
belongs to her. She looks him square in the eye, and she wills all her focus on him, careful not to break the eye contact, because she needs all the strength that can possibly be summoned to say what she needs to say. The
thing
about her is him. Look at his script. He's written her to be the version he romanticizes. Her knees tremble. It's no longer his intentions at stake—it's his writing. She wills the pill to dissolve and expand into her veins faster. It's about the script, she says again. She's memorized the lines, held them like something you grip, but she hasn't been able to take them inside. She's afraid she'll never be able to be Roslyn until Arthur allows her not to be
his
re-creation.

“So what are you saying?” he says.

“I don't know how to say it any other way.”

She finishes her champagne, letting her stare fall away, as though loosing a giant exhalation. Outside, the waiter crouches down with a bowl of water for the dog. He taps the edge, in order to draw the dog's attention. He just looks at the waiter, cocking his head, and then trots off without sipping, neck slightly bowed. She thinks of how natural gas really has no odor, that the companies add the sulfur smell purely as a warning. For one's own safety.

Arthur pushes his plate away. “Now what?” he asks. “I've got a lot of revising to do. I'll be up all night. Again.”

 

The next morning she complains of fatigue and a general sense of malaise. Phone calls are made back and forth. Between Arthur and Huston. Huston and the producers. The producers and her doctors. By that point she isn't involved. She can't make sense of anything. They discuss her as though she's someone else.

Finally, Marilyn is driven to the airport. In record-breaking temperature, she crosses the tarmac wrapped in a wet sheet and then is flown to Westside Hospital in Los Angeles. Thoughts swirl through her head, none of which are comprehensible, bombarding her like random lines from the script. And she can hear the rest of the crew holding her responsible for further setbacks, and saying how they had figured it would've been Monty who'd screw them up. Such thoughts make her more worn. She just hopes Gable doesn't think any less of her.
That would really get to her. Even before she arrives in LA, her doctor, Hyman Engleberg, indicates she'll likely need to stay at least ten days in order to recuperate. Even from afar he can tell she's that wrecked, both physically and emotionally. Dr. Engleberg insists that he isn't saying whether or not filming needs to be suspended, only that Marilyn likely will not be available during her recovery. She can already hear the producers and crew milling around the Mapes. Already giving up on her, and demanding that Huston send Arthur back to salvage the script so they can continue shooting in her absence.

Once at the hospital, safely dressed in a johnny and a robe, she sees in the mirror how terrible she looks. What has been eating away at the inside now shows itself on her face. It isn't really ugliness, as she's first prone to believe. It's resignation. As if the muscles have given up and the bones have gone flaccid. Everything collapsed.

From a distance it doesn't look that powerful. The nose of the train fans down on the tracks, cutting a straight edge across the desert. It hardly looks as though it's moving at all. An almost perfect curl of smoke rises from the stack, never breaking, maintaining perfect form, keeping pace with the charging locomotive. And as you
stand by the edge of the track, half looking out across the plains where, in the distance, they're setting up the shoot, you can make out the second-unit guys talking with Huston, who is barely looking up; and the makeup boys sit in the makeup chairs, while Agnes stands over Evelyn, teasing her hair, and the gaffer gauges the light against Evelyn's dress. The sun has barely risen. They've given up on makeup, most of it sweated off as soon as it's applied. So they're just waiting on the shoot. They don't look like much out there, specks in a Nevada desert, but you know the expressions on the faces of every single one of them. As if they're staring you down.

You're on the way. That's what they've been told. The driver has been instructed to tell them you are on the way. That you just wanted a little fresh air. That you are walking the rest of the way in. Walking it off, both the night and the morning. And you know Huston will say,
In the fucking desert?
and maybe some smart-ass will add,
She thinks she's Moses
, and Gable will just shake his head, while Monty closes his eyes, thankful for the extra time, willing a hangover away.

And your husband will stand with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on his feet. On occasion he'll lick the sweat off his lips and push his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose, holding them in place, believing they won't slip down again. He'll think of the pills, but won't talk of the pills, because he doesn't really understand—despite all that seriousness and intellect, he doesn't understand.
They're needed for
sleep? For waking up?
But his biggest fear is that you won't show up. Because he's created
The Misfits
for you. Put his playwriting career on hold, in order that you can be seen as you really are. He's thought up the plot, and the characters' internal struggles, and the way they symbolize the modern world. He knows the way it's supposed to go. He rewrites the lines every day. Throughout the night too. Argues with Huston about his vision being captured just right. He wants to make sure you're taken seriously, just as you want to be, but every day and night seem to be another battle about why you won't be seen as serious or smart. And he makes like he's supportive, but you want to call bullshit on him because you know what he really thinks, because you went up to the hotel room for a forgotten call sheet when he wasn't there, and you saw a bound notebook on the desk by his papers, and you opened it to find it was his diary, and though you knew it was wrong, you still turned the pages, looking at each one with half-squinting eyes like you might look at a car accident, and most of it was boring, mundane steam-blowing about issues of the filming and the script changes, but near the most recent entries you noticed your name, and you read the same passage over and over—the one he wrote about how easily you can embarrass him when you try to engage in anything intellectual. And you wanted to rip the page out and tear it up a hundred different ways, but then you figured that would be just what he'd expect
from you (the subject for the follow-up entry), and so you closed the diary, carefully placed it back so it was just the way you found it, and swore to yourself that you would never forget what this felt like. This was more real than any declarations of support.

The ground starts to tremble as the train moves closer, a bit larger though still slight. It smells. The coal cooking. An oil perfume on the wood cross-tracks. And you wish you had a penny to lay down on the rail. Place it with precision, pulling your hand away quickly. You'd watch the coin tremble, dancing for balance, trying to steady itself until the train wheels rolled over it, stretching and elongating Lincoln and changing the penny from something of value into an oddity.

You really should've been on set by now. You've promised that
from this day onward . . .
But you like being a speck in the desert. The location hasn't scared you the way they thought it might. In a strange way it's made you feel more special, as if you stand apart, not by lights or sex or power or money, but by being clearly defined against the barren backdrop. It makes you feel more alive.

Your husband seems to notice you. He says something to Huston, then raises his arms up like a castaway, waving and crossing them to get your attention. Maybe if you stay perfectly still, don't move an arm or break your stare, then he'll think you haven't seen him. He turns to Huston, and Huston knocks his boot into the ground and then spits into the dust cloud he's just made. Your
husband's arms still wave, and then he walks toward you, and he seems to be moving faster than the train. You try to keep still, looking past him, so that he's no longer in your sights. If you don't see him, he doesn't see you.

The ground shakes harder. And you hear the groan of the train. It swells inside you, almost making you sick in the stomach. Almost too sick to work.

She notices the mustang bleeding, a cut across his chest. He's bound on the desert floor, beside the pickup where he's kept before he's needed for filming. They're prepping the scene in which, after being moved by Roslyn's distress, Monty's character hijacks the truck, drives out to the horse, jumps from the cab, and cuts the stallion free. But the horse already has a gash. And she stares at the thin strip of blood, trying to get a closer look, while Monty's stunt double, Dick Pascoe, tells her not to get too close, that this one is a real fighter. Marilyn, in her white dress shirt and blue dungarees, stamps around the back of the truck, unsure of where to turn. Dust from the dry lake bed follows her. It's as though nobody notices the wound. And she begins to believe she's the only one who cares.

She catches Arthur's eye. “He's injured,” she says. “Right there.” She points. “Right there.”

Arthur squints, looking over at the truck. He's wearing a Western jacket that looks out of place on him. Hanging off his frame, it makes him look boyish, costumed. He keeps a steady composure. One that has become his constant manner when talking with her. And it only enrages her; she sees it as a management technique that seems forced and modulated, as ill-fitting as his Western jacket with its dark suede and cowboy swirls. “The horse is fine, Marilyn,” he says. “He just scraped himself a little on the wire over there.” He glances at the temporary corral, where thin slats of wood stand to form a mushroom-shaped pen held together by three parallel rows of wires. At least a dozen horses crowd the open end, while the narrower mouth feeds into a large animal trailer. “It's just a scrape,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“No.” She shakes her head. Hands opening and closing into fists. “Can't you see he's injured?”

“Marilyn, I'm telling you the horse is fine. It's what they do. Sometimes animals get hurt. And then they heal. It's what they do.”

Behind the truck, a dolly rolls on a sheet of plywood, steadying for the shot. Huston stands beside it, reviewing the sequence with Pascoe, who will rush out with the knife to cut the ropes and set the mustang free. And then he'll shoo it away and run like hell back into the cab. The horse is just too unpredictable to send in Monty. Huston says they need to do it quickly and they need to do it right. This is a one-chance shot.

She goes over to Huston, leaving Arthur behind. She walks in a heavy patter that breaks into a jog. “John,” she says. “John. No.”

He waves her back, not turning around.

“No, John,” she says, but her voice can't seem to rise above a whisper. “Let him go. Cut the scene. Let him go. He's hurt. We can't make him continue. Can we forget this take? For now?”

Huston motions to Pascoe to go. In the single take, Pascoe is able to jump out, dash around the truck, brandish his knife, and cut loose the trussed horse. The mustang squirms and twists upright, then leaps up, making straight for the corral, where it runs a series of quick circles, darting in and out among the other horses, in and out of the horse trailer, and then finally settles down, rubbing up against the temporary planks of the very fence that brought on the injury.

It's hard to read Huston's expression, between the sunglasses and his long-brimmed cap; it's sometimes hard to tell if he has any at all. Marilyn waits, shoulders drooped, her arms hanging, as if they might pull her straight into the ground. She's positioned almost exactly between Huston and Arthur. Huston finally looks at her. His head cocked. “Well?” he says, a yellowed smile rising. “What was it you wanted?”

 

She knows they're waiting. She's already missed the call.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, she fiddles with the wire hood from a champagne bottle, pushing her
index finger in and out of the tiny cage. She's phoned down once to the front desk to say she's ready and to ask if the driver is there yet. They've assured her they'll send him up immediately, once he arrives. She said it's just that he might be out front idling, and the desk clerk repeated that he'd send the driver right up, his manly voice turning boylike in its irritation. She pushes her finger deeper into the opening and twists the wire, tightening it until the tip of her finger turns red, and then a puffy white.