The Blonde (23 page)

She crossed the East River in a taxi and found Bill, as promised, at the far end of the bar at the Joy Tavern. His eyes scanned her from head to toe, and she was gratified to see that he approved of her appearance, even though her simple black crewneck sweater and slightly A-line skirt covered more skin than usual.

“Allow me,” he said. She handed him her suitcase and followed him underground.

The Carlyle suite was changed from May. The smoke of many cigarettes, the volume of competing conversations, obscured the Victorian opulence, and the Oak Room atmospherics were further effaced by the extreme youth of the men who occupied the couches, clustered in corners, worked the phones. Bill disappeared into the crowd, leaving her alone amidst the hubbub. She clutched the wrist of one arm behind her back with the opposite hand, until one of the young men drinking Schlitz came to her rescue.

“You can’t really be Marilyn Monroe?”

She glanced over her shoulder, as though he might’ve been talking to someone else. “Oh, yes,” she said after a moment, letting the blush highlight her cheekbones.

“Will you have a seat?” He shooed another young man from one of the leather armchairs by the fireplace. He was long and gangling as a farm boy, and his lips and nose seemed too large for his face, even in dress shirt and suit pants. Despite his slender arms, he exhibited sudden, unexpected strength as he maneuvered the ponderous chair.

“Thank you.” She beamed at him as she arranged her legs, knees close together, one bare calf draped over the other, high heels crossed.

He stared at her quite openly until embarrassment got the better of
him and reddened that funny face. “Can I get you anything? A beer, or a sandwich?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I—” Her lips were painted deep fuchsia, and she let them quaver over the words as she considered her reply. “Ordinarily I don’t drink beer, but—if that’s what everybody else is drinking, I guess it sounds kind of nice.”

By the time he returned he was only one of many young campaign workers surrounding her, some sitting on pilfered couch cushions, others crouching excitedly nearby. “Yes,” she said, as the farm boy worked the can of Schlitz with a church key. “Isn’t it really exciting? That somebody so young and attractive and full of energy is going to be president?”

All around, heads bobbed in agreement.

“Thank you,” she whispered, giving the farm boy a private, bashful smile for having procured her beer.

“But what are
you
doing here?” he asked, emboldened by the smile.

“Oh, well, we’re old friends, Jack and I,” she improvised. “We met through Frankie—Frank Sinatra? My home is here in New York, and I’m just back from the Coast, and I got a call from somebody in Jack’s organization asking if I could give him a few tips for his debate. You know, like acting tips. Not that he needs it. He was wonderful in the first three. Don’t you think?”

They all nodded.

“Yes, I thought so, too. But maybe I can help a little. I
do
work in a business where appearance is everything. And like it or not, that’s true in the rest of America, too—appearances, I mean, they’re so much more important than we like to think.”

Hours passed without a sign of the candidate, and the boys explained various political matters to her—about the electoral college, and what genius it was that Kennedy had chosen Johnson, who would deliver Texas, about how their man didn’t need makeup but Nixon did, and other political details to which she nodded along, assuming an expression of grave concentration
even while seeming slightly mystified by their fast speech and rapid recitation of facts. When Jack walked in, the whole room sighed in happy relief, and as she watched him, walking amongst his acolytes with a blazing smile and focused eyes, his light blue shirt in high contrast to his sun-darkened skin, she found herself wondering why she’d been so silly as to think that she could be with a man because he was merely very intelligent, or merely very strong. That any of her husbands could possibly have been enough for her. Of course, Kennedy was both intelligent and strong, but he was so hungrily alive besides, and she thought that if she ever remarried, it would be to someone as restless as she.

“You should have seen the parade yesterday,” the farm boy said. He wasn’t looking at Marilyn anymore, and she didn’t care.

“Must’ve been something, huh?”

“Hundreds of thousands of them. In downtown Manhattan, all the way to Yonkers. Oh, boy, did the women swoon …” He cut himself short, and perhaps it occurred to him that this was not a dignified observation of a presidential candidate.

“I’ll bet.” She winked to show him it was all right.

Beyond the fortress of shoulders surrounding the candidate, Marilyn saw Bobby, how his eyes roved over the scene, how he barked orders. After that the crowd thinned—the young men were ushered out the door, sent home or wherever they were staying, until only ten or so lingered on the stuffed furniture, drinking scotch out of cut-glass tumblers. Bobby was among them, and she kept overhearing little snippets of conversation, the word
revolution
a refrain in his conversation. She tried to look sleepy while she wondered if he were referring to Cuba, but then she realized that he was actually talking about television. The candidate was nowhere in sight, and none of the men in the room seemed particularly interested in her presence, and she was beginning to wonder if it was going to be another long night of waiting when the man named Bill appeared at her shoulder.

“Miss Monroe, the candidate is ready for your little seminar.” His voice was glazed with a formality that might have been Southern, or might have meant to mock; and if he was being cute, she couldn’t be certain whether it was to her, or the other men in the room. She collected her stole around her shoulders and stood up, proud and blank. To the rest of the company she may have seemed like a woman about to be led to a married man’s bedroom, but she knew from long experience that when she appeared clueless, that made it difficult for others to sit in judgment. Yet as she passed out of the room, the quality in Bobby’s eyes was like fire on a lake.

“Here,” Bill said at the door of the bedroom, handing her a stack of pink index cards that had been softened by much shuffling. “These are prompts for the debate tomorrow. See he does some work, too.”

She took the cards and slipped into a spare, masculine bedroom. The low rectangle of the bed was the main attraction, and adorning that was Jack, who held a newspaper over his face and wore nothing but checked blue boxers and a strange white contraption over his midsection. His clothes were in a pile on the floor, a navy suit jacket laying on top with its yellow silk lining exposed, so that she could see its print of tiny golden chevaliers.

“What is that,” she asked, “some kind of corset?”

He put aside the paper and folded his arms behind his head. A lit cigarette wagged between his teeth. “Let’s have a look at you,” he said.

“Because I saw you on television. If you ask me, you’re perfectly trim already.”

“It’s for my lousy back,” he said, and when she raised an eyebrow, he waved away her concern with an open hand. “You didn’t know? I’m the sickly second son, the understudy who got lucky.” She must have appeared stricken by the gallows humor, because he laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I have more fun than Joe Jr. ever did, god rest his soul. But don’t you go gossiping about it with your hairdresser—if the Republicans find out, they’ll smear me as a crip. Anyway, never you mind. Seems a lifetime since I saw you. Where was it? Houston, Miami? Come here to me.”

“Oh, no.” Her painted index finger tick-tocked. “You have work to do, and I’ll not be the reason America has to be lectured by Nixon’s grim mug for four more years.”

“You’re worse than Bobby. But at least I get to look at something pretty while I answer the same damn questions. I’ll do whatever you say, baby, only take those clothes off first. You’re dressed enough for Georgetown.”

Her lips pressed together and her eyes shone and she did as he said. The sweater came over her head, the skirt down her ankles, and then, wearing only her black slip, she perched on the edge of the bed. Close to him, but not close enough to touch. She made a show of getting comfortable, summoning seriousness, and cleared her throat. “Quemoy and Matsu.” She pronounced the two words unsteadily before breaking into giggles. “What are those, Mrs. Nixon’s lapdogs?”

Jack laughed and collected himself, made his face unsmiling and presidential and adopted the clipped diction he used when giving speeches. “As I have stated several times, this is not an issue in the campaign. My view is in line with the administration’s policy, and differs from the vice president’s only in regard to his assertion that he would defend these islands, only two miles off China, from a threat even if the threat did not include Formosa and the Pescadores …” She nodded, seeming not to understand, as he listed with bland confidence his congressional voting record on the matter. “How was that?” he asked, breaking character.

“Oh! Well …” She bit her lip to summon the blush and turned the card over. “It says:
Nonissue
and also
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and also
1958
, whatever that means. Anyway, you sounded convincing to me, and I can tell you from experience that half your audience will just hear a confident man saying big words.”

He grinned. “Good. Next?”

“Fi-del Ca-stro,” she enunciated carefully. She had meant to seem not quite sure of the name, but in fact her unsteadiness was more a hesitation
to prompt him on a matter of such international intrigue. Any casual reader of the newspaper knew that Khrushchev had taken an interest in the Cuban revolutionary’s nascent government—but then Jack’s answer would also be pitched to that casual reader, to anyone with a television.

“Castro,” Jack repeated, switching to his speechmaking timbre. “Castro is not just another dictator, another petty tyrant bent merely on enriching himself and a few cronies. He represents nothing less than a threat to the whole Western Hemisphere!” He increased his volume as he went on: “Why, the administration has allowed a communist satellite to gain unprecedented power a mere ninety miles from our shores. Cuba under his control is not only a potential site for enemy missiles or submarines but a base from which Marxism may spread like a contagion through all of Latin America. The current administration did nothing to combat the bloody and corrupt regime that ruled the island previously, and they have done nothing to support those freedom fighters who even now are ready and waiting to take their country back and make it safe for democracy!” He unclenched his fist, and a dimple appeared in his cheek. “What are you smiling about?” he asked in his own voice.

“Oh … it all just sounds so
serious
.”

“Don’t tell me you like Castro.”

She lifted her shoulders toward her ears. “He’s kinda cute, don’t you think?”

Jack pushed himself up on his elbows, and with mock jealousy exclaimed, “I certainly do not. You’d better not, either. Not while you’re with this fellow. You made me sweat enough with Khrushchev.”

She lowered her lashes. “You read about that?”

“Of course. That old peasant! Why’d you say that stuff anyway, about your husband sending greetings and so forth?”

She laughed. “He was on a tour of the United States, and wanted to see a film studio, and I guess I happened to be there that day, so the publicity
girl had us take a picture together. And he was looking at me the way a man looks at a woman, you know? And I felt sorry for him with that big, bald head of his. I could tell he’d suffered in this life, and I thought he probably deserved to have a pretty woman flirt with him, just for a minute. And I don’t know, Arthur was being a bastard probably, and I figured maybe the FBI would shuffle things around in his office if I said something like that. Anyway, my name ended up in the paper, didn’t it? You’re not the only one who knows how to get headlines, you know.”

“I do know.”

“Anyway,” she went on, trying to strike the naïve chord again, “don’t you think there ought to be more understanding between our countries? I thought you were the candidate who stood for peace and all that.”

“Sure, of course I am.”

“Then why all this big macho talk?”

The grin was back, and she could see that he was pleased about something and couldn’t help himself. “It’s a trap, baby.”

“A trap?” she repeated innocently.

His eyes shone as he explained it to her. How the current administration had planned a secret operation to take Castro out and save the island from communism, and since it wasn’t strictly legal they’d hired the boss of Chicago for the job. But the boss of Chicago was Sam Giancana, and he’d told Jack all about it, and Jack as a candidate was free to call for just such a strike, while Nixon, who had been officially briefed, was forced to remain silent on the subject. The end result (Jack told her with boyish glee) was that Nixon would come off soft on communism, while he looked tough, and meanwhile Giancana had delayed the operation until after the election.

“And then,” she asked, eyes wide, “once you’re elected, you’ll call it off ?”

The joking light had disappeared from Jack’s eyes, and they became miserable as he said, “Well, one way or another, Castro’s got to go.” The quality in his face just then was as complex and inscrutable as a sky threatening to
storm, and her stomach dropped when she realized that, for the first time, he had told her something Alexei might truly value. Not something that he would have found out sooner or later from another source, or in the news, and not just insight into the candidate’s character. This was what he’d meant by
timely
, when he told her about Pilar Florist, the arrangement of irises, the children’s wing at Sloan-Kettering. What Jack had just told her was crucial to the cause Alexei had given his life to, the cause his masters waged war for, and she felt crushed by the weight of this knowledge. But Jack, meanwhile, had brightened. He reached for her ankle, encircled it with his fingers. “So don’t get attached—that bearded oaf can’t be your boyfriend long.”