Misfit (19 page)

When the lights come up, she turns to see Pat squirming, looking to the sides of the stage in concern, and the crowd is rising and she feels like she's in the spotlight, and she realizes that her going away has all been temporary, it was only as good as Frank's act. And she can feel herself start to wilt, and she's parched, and she reaches for water but the glass is still empty, and she's afraid that Pat will say one more thing about Giancana, and she can't take one more thing that will remotely suggest the world of Marilyn Monroe. She's that fragile.

People stream up the aisles, and they're almost all looking at her. She slouches a little, hiding behind the wall of bottles and barware.

Pat looks at Marilyn, and she says, “Well?”

“I think I'm just going to go back to my cabin.” Her mouth is still gummy.

“Without even a nightcap?”

“Vigilance,” Marilyn says. “Frank will understand.”

A Count Basie recording pumps through the speakers, its rhythms controlling the hurried pace of the floor; the chatter rises and falls in tandem with the horn section. She moves quickly between rows of green felt tables, en route to the tunnel. Pushing around people who step in front of her to get to the slots. Turning sideways, she squeezes through the crowd at the roulette wheel.

Passing in front of the craps table where she swore she'd seen Joe, she slows down for a quick look, checking to see if he might still be there.

Through the yellowed smoke pall, Sam Giancana catches her eye. She'd know him anywhere: heavyset, gray suit, receding hairline. He winks; his black horn-rims magnify his eyeballs. He's charming in a raw kind of way. Like a magnificent accident that draws all the attention. But he's always reeked of cruelty, even when he's thrown on the charm. It stinks from the sweat in the creases of his forehead, pooling and glistening, to the breath leaking out the permanent snarl at the corners of his lips.

He waves her over, his hand turning rapidly.

She's unable to break his stare. Forcing a polite smile, she shrugs and keeps moving, holding the backs of occupied chairs at the blackjack tables for balance.

His voice stabs out in a burst across the table, “You can't come over and just say hello?”

She shakes her head, mouthing the word
sorry
, and continues to walk.

He stands, now motioning with both hands. “You already forget you know me, or something?” he says. “For just a moment. Don't be such a stuck-up. Now, come over and bring me a little luck.”

Her foot catches under the leg of an empty slot machine stool, halting her in place.

“Ain't that a pip!” she hears, floating slow motion against the pace of the room. “Ain't that a pip!”

Across the room a noise rises, and she glances that way, and she sees a crowd of people pushing through the casino toward the bar, and leading the pack is Frank, and he walks like the grand marshal with a champagne glass as a baton, and she bows her head slowly, because she doesn't want to be noticed, and that stool keeps blocking her way, and she tries to kick it to the side but instead flips it over, startling the people around it, who fan backward, and she doesn't know where to go, only that she has to go somewhere other than here, and fast, and there's Giancana's threatening bellow that she better not just walk away, and from the other side of the floor a poof of laughter from Sinatra's gaggle, and she resists the urge to look, because she can't look: she can't become involved. And it's all at a standstill. Like a frequency that's been jammed.

“Yes,” she says. She keeps saying
yes
, agreeing with ideas she doesn't quite understand. It isn't that she's afraid to admit her ignorance to him; she just doesn't want him to stop talking or, at least, to change course on her account. “Yes,” she says, nodding with a firm expression. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

She's coiled up delicately on the carpet, with her feet tucked under her thighs, a rapt and well-mannered schoolgirl. He sits on the couch, slightly out of place, adding a rustic edge to the finely polished Beverly Hills veneer. His feet, covered by old black boots, the leather scuffed and aged, heels nearly touching, rest by her side. Toes pointing in contradictory directions. Among this Hollywood gathering at Henry Weinstein's residence, he
might be mistaken for a character actor, or a displaced avuncular sort. But with Marilyn Monroe at his feet, holding his hand as they talk, her hair dyed to an albino white that matches his, there's no doubt that the great poet, the eighty-four-year-old Carl Sandburg, is the wonder of the party.

She stays by his side for most of the evening. There's something she needs from him. It presses. She's not quite sure what it is yet. Or how to find it. And so she keeps trying at different topics and subjects, telling him about the books she's reading, the ideas they bring up, and though none is quite right, it doesn't make a difference because no matter what he says, and no matter what she can't thoroughly understand, he is talking to her, and looking in her eyes, as though
he
understands, as though they're the only two people in the room. The only two people left on earth.

She sips the last of her champagne. When she places the empty flute on the carpet, it falls over, weightless. One last drop trails toward the lip but doesn't spill out. She asks a server for another, then smiles up at Mr. Sandburg, saying it's best to get a little alcohol in her system now, as she finds trying to get to sleep from scratch just impossible. (Even though he's said to call him Carl, as with Clark Gable, it's hard to think of him in any way other than Mr. Sandburg.)

He says, “Well, gosh, I hope I'm not keeping you up past your bedtime. I always forget about manners.”

She laughs. “No. No,” she says. “A girl just needs to prepare herself, is all. That's all I'm saying.”

“I once read about something called
sleep debt
. A wonderful term, don't you think? Both lyrical and literal.” His voice has the melodious cadence of his western North Carolina home, but still preserved around the corners is the harder midwestern clip that blunts the ends of occasional words. “Some say it's modern times that keep us building up the debt of unused sleep. Maybe cutting out a stage or two of the sleep cycle. The
non-rapid-eye movement
.” He says it as if it were a new political party.

“I
am
the modern girl. Or so they say.”

“That you are. But even the modern girl needs exercise. The best remedy for sleepless nights. Other than, perhaps, a steady, reliable companion.”

“Please don't make me talk about that. I was just feeling good.”

“A good exercise routine will take you through the sleep phases. And a tired body makes for a sounder rest. Buy out your sleep debt with a little exercise, my darling. That's the key.”

One of the servers, an older man of stern expression, hands her a fresh glass of champagne. He glances at the spent flute on its side; she tells him not to worry about it. To save his back from bending, she'll wash the glass later. But he insists on taking it, leaning over to get the flute. She lifts her new glass up toward Mr. Sandburg. “To exercise,” she says. “And to a good night's sleep.”

Sandburg asks her to put the champagne down for a minute. He rises from the couch. Lifts her by the elbows. They stand inches from each other. The green in his eyes might swallow her. He says, “One can't do what one doesn't know how to do.”

 

At a glance, they seem an oddly familiar sight. He's dressed all in black, with a tie so dark and flat against his chest that it's barely distinguishable. In the way that some aging women begin to take on the hardened faces of old men, his features, conversely, have taken on a feminine softness. Although still in good shape, his body has filled out, shoulders pushed up past the neck, his torso and legs grown more solid. It's as though a certain gravitas has mutated the physical form, drawing him closer to the ground. Meanwhile, Marilyn is ever aware that her body is changing. She no longer has a sassy innocence and youthful hubris. This is not the same woman who pushed snuggly against DiMaggio in New York doorways, blushing in the novelty of her newly created world. Nor is she Miller's apprentice intellectual weaving among the East Coast literati. Her dress, which now falls just below the knee, is conservatively colored tan, with a subversive gabardine weave that makes her shine when it catches the light. It connotes a sophistication achieved only with a certain maturity, yet it still manages to reveal a body holding on to its youth. She came into the party wearing dark glasses, but midway through she replaced
them with a dark scarf over her head, like a babushka. A necessity to be partially covered, as though having all her head exposed leaves her vulnerable. Maybe it's the weariness in her eyes. Or how easily her body turns limp when she sits down. But the similarity between Sandburg and Marilyn is not in their appearance, or difference of appearance. It's in the way they look at each other. As though they exist in a world that's familiar only to them. Where the weight of age is not a factor, where the body and the mind do not battle for dominance, and where confessions are not secrets.

 

Standing with her in the corner of the room, he takes her hands, then drops them. “Now I want you to follow me,” he says. “Just do as I do.”

She smiles at him. Anticipating.

“You need to take in a deep breath,” he says. His voice weakens with the inhalation. “And then put your arms out while you gently squat.”

“Gently squat,” she repeats.

“With your arms out.”

“With my arms out.”

The guests at the party stop to watch. Sandburg and Marilyn don't notice. She follows his lead. Out of sync. Up and down. Down and up. Like alternating pistons. “Feel your legs stretch,” he says, as he rises.

She crouches; her hemline creeps halfway up her thighs. “Oh, it burns,” she says. “But in the good way.” She stretches her arms out, trying to keep her balance.

“You're pushing the blood all through you. Reminding your body of the life it has, and its need for rest and replenishment. That knowledge alone should be enough for your body to know it has to go to sleep. You just need to remind it to listen.”

She laughs. “I don't know about that. A stiff drink does just fine.”

A group of party guests encircles them, smiling, as though cheering someone on in the last stage of a superhuman feat. One woman joins in, trying to time her squats between Sandburg's and Marilyn's. Mr. Weinstein, in the corner, puts on a bossa nova record. Some clap their hands, sloshing gin and ice over the lips of their tumblers. More guests join the exercise routine, dropping up and down with the beat.

As Mr. Sandburg rises, Marilyn drapes her arms over his shoulders. Other than hearing the rhythm of the song, she's unaware of what's going on around her. And while she's tempted to collapse into him, instead she leads him in a dance toward the center of the living room.

From afar Sandburg appears to move with grace, an effortless sway of the hips, guided by the smooth lead of the shoulders. His steps look light, almost skating. But in fact his moves are unsure and awkward. His body struggles for a center balance, and he doesn't really move into the dance as much as he falls into it. Yet he looks completely at ease. Seeing himself as Astaire, Nijinsky, and Chaplin rolled into one. The illusion is only possible because of Marilyn. In her arms
he gets to appropriate her grace. And with each beat, each movement, he begins to understand living a life of the body, beyond just nourishing it. Existing almost entirely free from the calculus of intellect.

“You could lull me to sleep,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder.

“The last role for an old man.”

“No,” she whispers, then lifts her head. “No. You misunderstand me.”

People dance around them. Some whirl in circles alone, cocktails in hand. Others face each other.

Mr. Sandburg asks, “I don't understand?” and she says, “No. You don't understand.”

He rests one hand on her shoulder. The other on her hip. “In that case,” he says, “perhaps you can help me understand.”

“I don't mean to be insulting.”

“That could only be if I heard it that way.”

“It's just rare to be at peace with someone at peace with himself. That's all I'm saying. And when you feel that peace . . . Well, you know what I'm saying.”

“That it just lulls you.”

“But I'm always so tired . . .
Tired
. Not sleepy. I just want a good night's sleep, so I can wake up and start all over again.”

He follows her around in a box step, pulling her in. She fits against his body. Almost as though she might've come from it. And she tells him she can't picture it. That all her life she's been able to close her eyes
and see herself at another point in the future. She's been able to imagine everything that has come to be. But she can't see herself growing old. She just draws a blank. And isn't that where wisdom comes from? It's just that for the first time in her life she can't picture the future. Or picture how to make it. As Sandburg pauses, thinking before he talks, Weinstein dances up to them, his feet moving in place, and asks Sandburg and Marilyn, “May I?”

Sandburg backs away, saying he assumes Weinstein isn't asking for his hand. Then he nods to her it's okay and mouths, “Just keep dancing.” He falls back onto the couch. Reaches for Marilyn's half-filled glass and sips it down in one gulp. He's tired, and his legs are sore, and he's slightly winded. And as he watches Marilyn dancing across the living room in the arms of Mr. Weinstein, a smile on her face as though the cameras have started rolling, Sandburg is envious of her youth. But also slightly saddened. What he has always valued, what has always allowed him to look in the mirror and see himself without the wear that shows in photographs, is the idea that there's still something to imagine. Even though, if pressed, he could never quite tell you what he hopes for, or expects to find, still, it's the possibility that there's something to slow down for, to reach for. And now, looking at her as she shimmies in performance for Mr. Weinstein, it's as though she's become that chicken in the slaughterhouse whose body still runs at full speed long after it's been decapitated.