Onstage, the entire Japanese Imperial Army grinds to a silent halt. The dead sailors strewn across the deck of the USS Tennessee stand and twist their heads to stretch their stiff necks. Ensign Joe Taussig brings the USS Nevada back into port while Lilly hauls herself up onto the stage apron. Her spittle flashing in the footlights, she screams, “Fouetté en tournant when you throw the grenade, you stupid bitch!” To demonstrate, Hellman rises to stand, trembling on the point of one toe, then kicks her raised leg to rotate herself. Kicking and turning, she screams, “And go all the way around, not halfway…”
In the reverse angle, we see Terrence Terry and myself seated at the rear of the house, surrounded by an assortment of garment bags, hatboxes and unwanted infants. The house seats are otherwise empty. Terry speculates that Miss Kathie keeps botching the grenade throw intentionally. Her previous hand grenade slammed into Barbara Bel Geddes. The throw before that bounced off the thick skull of Hume Cronyn. If Webster plans to kill her at the peak of a new stage success, Terry explains, it hardly makes sense for Miss Kathie to defeat the evil Emperor Showa. Rave opening-night notices will only increase her danger.
Onstage, Lilly Hellman executes a perfect pas de bourée step, at the same time putting a pistol shot between the eyes of Buddy Ebsen.
Handing the pistol to Miss Kathie, Hellman says, “Now, you try it…”
The pistol misfires, killing Jack Elam. Another shot ricochets off of the USS New Jersey and wounds Cyd Charisse.
In my lap, I scribble into a notebook. My head bowed over my work. Tucked beneath the notebook I conceal the latest revision to Love Slave, a fourth draft of the final chapter. A scenario beyond the omnibus crash, the grizzly bear pit, the bubble-bath electrocution.
Onstage, Lilly Hellman performs a series of jetés while leveling a flamethrower on the Flying Escalantes.
Across an aisle from Terry, I sit writing, the notebook pages open across my lap in the dim light. The nib of my fountain pen scratching, looping, dotting lines and sentences across each page, I say that no memory is anything more than a personal choice. A very deliberate choice. When we recall someone-a parent, a spouse, a friend-as better than they perhaps were, we do so to create an ideal, something to which we, ourselves, can aspire. But when we remember someone as a drunk, a liar, a bully, we’re only creating an excuse for our own poor behavior.
Still writing, I say how the same can be said for the people who read such books. The best people look for lofty role models such as the Katherine Kenton I’ve given my life to create. Other readers will seek out the tawdry strumpet depicted in Webster Carlton Westward III ’s book, for comfort and license in their own tawdry, disordered lives.
All human beings search for either reasons to be good, or excuses to be bad.
Call me an elitist, but I’m no patch on Mary Pickford.
Onstage, Lilly claps her hands together twice and says, “Okay, let’s take it from the point where shards of bomb casing shred Captain Mervyn Bennion.”
In silence, everyone present, from Ricardo Cortez to Hope Lange, says fervent prayers to live beyond Miss Hellman, and thus to avoid being posthumously absorbed into her hideous self-mythology. Her name-dropping Tourette’s syndrome, set to music by Otto Harbach. In the presence of Miss Hellman, there are no atheists.
Lilly Hellman screams, “Katherine!”
Miss Kathie screams, “Hazie!”
Hiss, bray, bark… Jesus Christ.
We all have some proper noun to blame.
The truth about Miss Kathie’s poor performance is that she’s always looking for the stray mortar shell or rifle round intended to end her life. She can’t concentrate for fear she’s missed reading any new draft of Love Slave and might be killed at any moment. An exploding battleship. A stage light plummeting from the flies. Any prop collapsible stage knife might be replaced with an actual dagger, wielded by some unknowing Japanese soldier or Allan Dwan. As we sit here, Webster Carlton Westward III could be planting a bomb or pumping poison gas into Miss Kathie’s backstage dressing room. Under such circumstances, of course she can’t manage an adequate pas de deux.
Terry says, “Why do you stay with her?” He asks me, “Why have you stayed with her for all these years?”
Because, I say, the life of Katherine Kenton is my work-in-progress. Mrs. Lord Byron, Mrs. Pope Innocent VI and Mrs. Kaiser von Hindenburg might be Miss Kathie’s best work, but she is mine. Still writing, still scribbling away, I say that Miss Katie is my unfinished masterpiece, and an artist does not abandon the work when it becomes difficult. Or when the artwork chooses to become involved with inappropriate men. My job title is not that of nanny or guardian angel, but I perform duties of both. My full-time profession is what Walter Winchell calls a “star sitter.” A “celebrity curator,” according to Elsa Maxwell.
I retrieve the most recent draft of Webster’s torrid tell-all and offer it across the aisle to Terry.
From his seat, Terry asks, “How come she’s not electrocuted?”
Miss Kathie hasn’t taken a bath in days, I tell him. She reeks of what Louella Parsons would call “aroma d’amore.”
Terry reaches across, taking the pages from my outstretched hand. Scanning the top sheet, he reads, “ ‘No one could’ve anticipated that by the end of this day my most beloved Katherine would shatter every single, solitary bone in her alluring body, and her glamorous Hollywood blood would be spattered over half of Midtown Manhattan…’ ”
ACT II, SCENE EIGHT
The voice of Terrence Terry continues as an audio bridge from the previous scene, reading, “ ‘… my most beloved Katherine would shatter every single, solitary bone in her alluring body, and her glamorous Hollywood blood would be spattered over half of Midtown Manhattan…’ ” as we dissolve once more into a fantasy sequence. Here, the lithe, idealized Webster and Miss Kathie cavort about the open-air observation deck on the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building.
In voice-over Terry reads, “ ‘In celebration of the six-month anniversary of our first introduction, I’d rented the loftiest aerie on the fabled isle of Manahatta.’ ” He reads aloud, “ ‘There, I’d staged a romantic dinner for two catered from three thousand miles away by Perino’s.’ ”
The mise-en-scène includes a table set for two, draped with a white cloth, and crowded with crystal stemware, silver and china. Julian Eltinge tinkles the ivories of a grand piano which has been winched up for the evening. Judy Holliday sings a program of Marc Blitzstein and Marc Connelly songs, backed by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia and Myrna Loy. In every direction, the spires of New York City blaze with lights.
The voice of Terrence Terry reads, “ ‘Only the crème de la crème of waiters and entertainers were present, all of them snugly blindfolded as in the Erich von Stroheim masterpiece The Wedding March, so Katherine and I would not feel self-conscious as we indulged our carnal assaults upon each other.’ ”
To highlight the fact that this constitutes their umpteenth sex scene, the willowy, soft-focus Miss Kathie and Webster copulate perfunctorily, as if robots, not looking at one another. With their eyes rolled back within their heads, their tongues hanging out the corners of their mouths, panting like beasts, the pair change position without speaking, the wet slap of their colliding genitals threatening to drown out the live music.
“ ‘We made love beneath a billion stars and above a sea of ten million electric lights. There, between heaven and earth, blindfolded waiters tipped bottles of Moët champagne directly into our greedy, guzzling mouths, splashing bubbly upon Katherine’s savory bosoms, even as I continued to pleasure her insatiable loins and oblivious waiters slid a succession of chilled, raw oysters down the slippery chute of her regal throat…’ ”