The homely girl might coach the pretty one, steer her into the best parts, protect her from dangerous shoals and entanglements of business and romance. The beastly girl can boast of no prominent cheekbones or Cupid’s-bow mouth; still, such a bland face nurtures a nimble mind.
In contrast, beauty which evokes special favors and opens doors, such astounding eyes can cripple the brain behind them.
Counting backward, before the Webster was Paco, before him the senator. Before him the faggot chorus boy. Before that came the suicidal business tycoon, but even he wasn’t her first husband. The first “was-band” was her high school sweetheart-Allan… somebody-some nobody. Her second was the sleazy photographer who snapped her picture and took it to a casting director; good riddance to him. Her third husband was an aspiring actor who’s now selling real estate. None of those first three posed a threat.
While my position was never that of husband or spouse or partner, I was always far more important.
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., was another story. The founder of a steel smelting empire, only he possessed the resources to marry my Miss Kathie and give her a life at home, a passel of children, reduce her to the status of a Gene Tierney hausfrau… which is the Italian word for loser. Steel would buy her away from the larger world the way the Grimaldi family bought Grace Kelly, and I would be left with nothing to show for my effort.
Every husband had been a step forward in her career, but Oliver Drake represented a step forward in her personal life. By the time they’d met, Miss Kathie could no longer play the ingénue, which is Spanish for slut. The future meant scratching for character roles, featured cameos shot on location in obscure places. Instead of the glory of playing Mrs. Little Lord Fauntleroy or Mrs. Wizard of Oz, Miss Kathie would take billing in third place as the mother of Captain Ahab or the maiden aunt of John the Baptist.
Poised at that difficult fork in life, Miss Kathie was looking for an easier path.
It was so enormously selfish of her. The life’s work of writers and directors, artists and press agents had built this pedestal she was tempted to abandon. There were larger things at stake than love and peace. The independent, pioneering role model for millions was leaving the stage. A legend seemed about to retire. Thus the tycoon’s apparent death by suicide would preserve a cultural icon.
It was no difficult task to persuade several top film executives and directors to testify to Mr. Drake’s depressed state of mind. Some of Hollywood ’s biggest names swore that Drake often spoke of ending his own life by cyanide. In that manner, the film community was able to retain one of its brightest investments.
In the flashback, we see the ugly girl wend her way closer to the pretty one. With a studied, rehearsed nonchalance the homely girl stumbles into contact with the beauty. Jostling her, the clumsy beast says, “Gosh, I’m sorry…”
The mob mills around them, that crowd of pretty anonymous faces. The Hay Bale Queen. The Sweet Onion Princess. Lovely, forgettable faces, born to flirt and fuck and die.
All those years and decades ago, the beauty smiles that astonishing smile, saying, “My name’s Kathie.” She says, “Really it’s Katherine.” Offering her hand, she says, “Katherine Kenton.”
Every movie star is a slave to someone.
Even the masters serve their own masters.
As if in friendly greeting, the beast offers her own hand in return, saying, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Hazie Coogan.”
And the two young women join hands.
ACT III, SCENE FIVE
We slowly dissolve back to the present. The mise-en-scène: the daytime interior of a basement kitchen in the town house of Katherine Kenton; arranged along the upstage wall: an electric stove, an icebox, a door to the alleyway, a dusty window in said door. A narrow stairway leads up to the second floor. Still carved in the window glass, we see the heart from Loverboy’s arrival as a puppy, oh, scenes and scenes ago.
In the foreground, I sit on a white-painted kitchen chair with my feet propped on a similar white-painted table, my legs crossed at the ankle; my hands turn the pages of yet another screenplay. Open across my lap is a screenplay about Lillian Hellman starring Lillian Hellman written by Lillian Hellman.
Upstage, Miss Kathie’s feet appear on the steps which descend from the second floor. Her pink slippers. The hem of her pink dressing gown. The gown flutters, revealing a flash of smooth thigh. Her hands appear, one clutching a ream of paper, her other hand clutching a wad of black fabric. Even before her face appears in the doorway, her voice calls, “Hazie…” Almost a shout, her voice says, “Someone telephoned me, just now, from the animal hospital.”
On the page, Lilly Hellman runs faster than a speeding bullet. She’s more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
Standing in the doorway, Miss Kathie holds the black fabric, the ream of papers. She says, “Loverboy did not die from eating chocolates…” and she throws the black fabric onto the kitchen table. There the fabric lies, creating a face of two empty eyes and an open mouth. It’s a ski mask, identical to the one described in Love Slave, worn by the Yakuza assassin wielding the ice pick.
Miss Kathie says, “The very nice veterinarian explained to me that Loverboy was poisoned with cyanide…”
Like so many others around here…
On the scripted page, Lilly Hellman parts the Red Sea and raises Lazarus from the dead.
“After that,” she says, “I telephoned Groucho Marx and he says you never invited him to the funeral…” Her violet eyes flashing, she says, “Neither did you invite Joan Fontaine, Sterling Hayden or Frank Borzage.” Her dulcet voice rising, Miss Kathie says, “The only person you did invite was Webster Carlton Westward III.”
She swings the ream of paper she holds rolled in her fist, swatting the pages against the black ski mask, making the kitchen table jump. Miss Kathie screams, “I found this mask, tucked away-in your room.”
Such an accusation. My Miss Kathie says that I poisoned the Pekingese, then invited only the bright-eyed Webster to join us in the crypt so he could arrive bearing flowers at her moment of greatest emotional need. Throughout the past few months, while I’ve seemed to be warning her against the Webster, she insists that I’ve actually been aiding and abetting him. She claims I’ve been telling him when to arrive and how best to court her. After that, the Webster and myself, the two of us poisoned Terry by accident. She says the Webster and myself are plotting to kill her.
Bark, honk, cluck… conspiracy.
Oink, bray, tweet… treachery.
Moo, meow, whinny… collusion most foul.
On the screenplay page, Lilly Hellman turns water to wine. She heals the lepers. She spins filthy straw into the purest gold.
When my Miss Kathie pauses to take a breath, I tell her not to be ridiculous. Clearly, she’s mistaken. I am not scheming with the Webster to murder her.
“Then how do you explain this?” she says, offering the pages in her hand. Printed along the top margin of each, a title. Typed there, it says, Paragon: An Autobiography. Authored by Katherine Kenton. As told to Hazie Coogan. Shaking her head, she says, “I did not write this. In fact, I found it tucked under your mattress…”
The story of her life. Written in her name. By someone else.
Flipping past the title page, she looks at me, her violet eyes twitching between me and the manuscript she holds. Her pink dressing gown trembles. From the kitchen table, the empty ski mask stares up at the ceiling. “ ‘Chapter one,’ ” my Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘My life began in the truest and fullest sense the glorious day I first met my dearest friend, Hazie Coogan…’ ”