Tell-All Read Free Page A

the white card, Webster Carlton Westward III , twisting him in the chimney draft, I watch a flame eat the name and telephone number. The scent of vanilla. The ash falls to the cold hearth.
    On the television, Preston Sturges and Harpo Marx enter as Tycho Brahe and Copernicus . The first arguing that the earth goes around the sun, the latter insisting the world actually orbits Rita Hayworth . The picture is called
Armada of Love
, and David O. Selznick shot it on the Universal back lot the year when every other song on the radio was Helen O’Connell singing “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” backed by the Jimmy Dorsey band.
    The bathroom door swings open, Miss Kathie’s voice saying:
bark, yip, cluck-cluck
… Maxwell Anderson . Her Katherine Kenton hair turbaned in a white bath towel. Her face layered with a mask of pulped avocado and royal jelly. Pulling the belt of her robe tight around her waist, my Miss Kathie looks at the lipstick dumped on her bed. The scattered cigarette lighter and keys and charge cards. The empty evening bag. Her gaze wafts to me standing before the fireplace, the tongues of candle flame licking below herportrait, her lineup of “was-bands,” the invitations, all those future obligations to enjoy herself, and—of course—the flowers.
    Perched on the mantel, that altar, always enough flowers for a honeymoon suite or a funeral. Tonight features a tall arrangement of white spider chrysanthemums, white lilies and sprays of yellow orchids, bright and frilly as a cloud of butterflies.
    With one hand, Miss Kathie sweeps aside the lipstick and keys, the cigarette pack, and she settles herself on the satin bed, amid the candy wrappers, saying, “Did you burn something just now?”
    Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection. Nowadays, I tell her that erections are less likely a compliment than they are the result of some medical breakthrough. Transplanted monkey glands, or one of those new miracle pills.
    As if human beings—men in particular—need yet another way to lie.
    I ask, Did she misplace something?
    Her violet eyes waft to my hands. Petting her Pekingese, Loverboy , dragging one hand through the dog’s long fur, Miss Kathie says, “I do get so tired of buying my own flowers.…”
    My hands, smeared black and filthy from the handle of the fireplace damper. Smudged with soot from the burned place card. I wipe them in the folds of my tweed skirt. I tell her I was merely disposing of some trash. Only incinerating a random piece of worthless trash.
    On television, Leo G. Carroll kneels while Betty Grable crowns him Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Pope Paul IV is Robert Young. Barbara Stanwyck plays a gum-chewing Joan of Arc .
    My Miss Kathie watches herself, seven divorces ago—what Winchell would call “Reno-vations”—and three face-lifts ago, as she grinds her lips against Novarro’s lips. A specimen Winchell would call a “Wildeman.” Like Dorothy Parker ’s husband, Alan Campbell , a man Lillian Hellman would call a “fairy shit.” Petting her Pekingese with long licks of her hand, Miss Kathie says, “His saliva tasted like the wet dicks of ten thousand lonely truck drivers.”
    Next to her bed, the night table built from a thousand hopeful dreams, those balanced screenplays, it supports two barbiturates and a double whiskey. Miss Kathie’s hand stops petting and scratching the dog’s muzzle; there the fur looks dark and matted. She pulls back her arm, and the towel slips from her head, her hair tumbling out, limp and gray, pink scalp showing between the roots. The green mask of her avocado face cracking with her surprise.
    Miss Kathie looks at her hand, and the fingers and palm are smeared and dripping with dark red.

ACT I, SCENE THREE
    Katherine Kenton lived as a Houdini . An escape artist. It didn’t matter … marriages, funny farms, airtight Pandro Berman studio contracts … My Miss