As our twin pinprick figures cross the wide shot, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “We can’t go to the police.”

In response, my voice asks, Why not?

“And we mustn’t mention this to anyone in the press, either,” says Miss Kathie.

Her voice continues, “I will not be humiliated by a scandal.”

It’s not a crime to write a story about someone’s demise, she says, especially not a movie star, a public figure. Of course, Miss Kathie could file a restraining order alleging Webb had abused her or made threats, but that would make this sordid episode a matter of public record. An aging film queen suckered into dyeing her hair, dieting and nightclub hopping, she’d look like the doddering fool from the Thomas Mann novella.

Even if Webb didn’t, the tabloids would slay her.

She and I, almost invisible in the distance, continue to move through the width of this long, long shot. Around us the park drops into twilight. Still, the paired specks of us move at the same steady speed, no more fast or more slow. As we walk, the camera tracks, always keeping us at the very center of the shot.

A clock chimes seven times. The clock tower in the park zoo.

The dinner reservations are for eight o’clock.

“Webb has written the whole dreadful book,” says the voice of Miss Kathie. “Even if I confront him, even if I avoid tonight’s conspiracy, his plot might not end here.”

Among the ambient background sounds, we hear a passing bus, a roaring reminder of my Miss Kathie being crushed to bloody sequins. Possibly only an hour or two from now. Her movie-star auburn hair and perfect teeth, white and gleaming as the dentures of Clark Gable, would be lodged in a grinning chrome radiator grille. Her violet eyes would burst from their painted sockets and stare up from the gutter at a mob of her appalled fans.

The evening grows darker as our tiny figures move toward the edge of the park, nearing Fifth Avenue. At one instant, all the streetlights blink on, bright.

In that same instant, one tiny figure stops walking while the second figure takes a few more steps, moving ahead.

The voice of Miss Kathie says, “Wait.” She says, “We have to see where this is going. We’ll have to read the second draft and the third and the fourth drafts, to see how far Webb will go to complete his awful book.”

I must sneak this draft back into his suitcase, and every day, as Miss Kathie foils each subsequent murder attempt, we need to look for the next draft so we can anticipate the next plot. Until we can think of a solution.

As the traffic light changes, we cross Fifth.

Cut to the pair of us approaching Miss Kathie’s town house, a medium shot as we ascend the front steps to the door. From the street, in the second-floor window of her boudoir, we see that a hairy hand holds the curtains open a crack and bright brown eyes watch us arrive. From within the house, we hear footsteps thunder down the stairs. The front door swings open, and Mr. Westward stands in the light of the foyer. He wears the double-breasted Brooks Brothers tuxedo cited in the last chapter of Love Slave. An orchid in his lapel buttonhole. The two ends of a white bow tie hang, looped and loose around his collar, and Webster Carlton Westward III says, “We’ll need to hurry to stay on schedule.” Looking down on us, he holds each end of his tie and leans forward, saying, “Would it kill you to help me with this?”

Those hands, the soft tools he would use to commit murder. Behind that smile, the cunning mind that had planned this betrayal. To add insult to injury, the lies he’d written about my Miss Kathie and her sexual adventures, they would eventually be cherry-picked by Frazier Hunt of Photoplay, Katherine Albert of Modern Screen magazine, Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, Jack Grant of Screen Book, Sheilah Graham, all the various low-life bottom feeders of Confidential and every succeeding biographer of the future. These tawdry, soft, sordid fictions would petrify and fossilize to become diamond-hard, carved-stone facts for all perpetuity. A salacious lie will always trump a noble truth.

Miss Kathie’s violet eyes waft to meet my eyes.

A bus roars past in the street, shaking the ground with its weight and trailing the stink of diesel exhaust. Around us the air swirls, gritty with dust and heavy with the threat of imminent death.

Then Miss Kathie steps up to the stoop where the Webster specimen waits. Standing on her tiptoes, she begins to knot the white bow tie. Her movie-star face a mere breath from his own. For this moment and for the immediate future, placing herself as far as possible from the constant, marauding stream of omnibuses.

And Webb, the evil, lying bastard, looks down and plants a kiss on her forehead.

ACT II, SCENE THREE

We cut to the interior of a lavish Broadway theater. The opening mise-en-scène includes the proscenium arch, the stage curtain rising within the arch, below that the combed heads and brass instruments of musicians within the orchestra pit. The conductor, Woody Herman, raises his baton, and the air fills with a rousing overture by Oscar Levant, arrangements by André Previn. Additional musical numbers by Sigmund Romberg and Victor Herbert. On the piano, Vladimir Horowitz. As the curtain rises, we see a chorus line which includes Ruth Donnelly, Barbara Merrill, Alma Rubens, Zachary Scott and Kent Smith doing fan kicks aboard the deck of the battleship USS Arizona, designed by Romain de Tirtoff and moored center stage. The Japanese admirals Isoroku Yamamoto and Hara Tadaichi are danced by Kinuyo Tanaka and Tora Teje, respectively. Andy Clyde does a furious buck-and-wing as Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, the official first Japanese prisoner of war. Anna May Wong tap-dances a solo in the part of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, and Tex Ritter fills in for General Douglas MacArthur. With Emiko Yakumo and Tia Xeo as Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and Captain Minoru Genda, the principal dancers among the Japanese junior officers.

Choreography by moo, cluck, bark… Léonide Massine.

Staging by tweet, bray, meow… W. MacQueen Pope.

As the orchestra pounds away, the USS Oklahoma explodes near the waterline and begins to sink stage right. Burning fuel oil races stage left, moving upstage to ignite the USS West Virginia. Downstage, a Japanese Nakajima torpedo lances into the hull of the USS California.

Japanese Zeros strafe the production number, riddling the chorus line with bullets. Aichi dive bombers plunge into Pearl White and Tony Curtis, prompting an explosion of red corn syrup, while the cruising periscopes of Japanese midget submarines cut back and forth behind the footlights.

As the Arizona begins to keel over, we see Katherine Kenton clamber to the position of port-side gun, wrestling the body of a dead gunner’s mate away from the seat. Embroidered across one side of her chest, the olive-drab fabric reads: PFC HELLMAN. My Miss Kathie drags the dead hero aside, laying both her palms open against his chest. As grenades explode shrapnel around her, Miss Kathie’s lips mutter a silent prayer. The eyelids of the dead sailor, played by Jackie Coogan, the eyelashes flutter. The young man opens his eyes, blinking; cradled now in Miss Kathie’s arms, he looks up into her famous violet eyes and says, “Am I in heaven?” He says, “Are you… God?”

The Zeros screaming past, the Arizona sinking beneath them into the oily, fiery water of Pearl Harbor, Miss Kathie laughs. Kissing the boy on his lips, she says, “Close but no cigar… I’m Lillian Hellman.”

Before another note from the orchestra, Miss Kathie leaps to slam an artillery round into the massive deck gun. Wheeling the enormous barrel, she tracks a diving Aichi bomber, aligning the crosshairs of her gun sight. Her sailor whites artfully stained and shredded by Adrian Adolph Greenberg, her bleeding wounds suggested by sparkling patches of crimson sequins and rhinestones sewn around each bullet hole. Singing the opening bars of her big song, Miss Kathie fires the shell, blasting the enemy aircraft into a blinding burst of papier-mâché.