Tell All

ACT II, SCENE TWO

Webb planned to kill her on this night.Tonight they had dinner reservations at the Cub Roomwith Alla Nazimova, Omar Sharif, Paul Robesonand … Lillian Hellman. Their plans had beento spend the afternoon together, dress late and catch a taxicab to therestaurant. Miss Kathie hands me the manuscript, telling me to sneak itback to its hiding place in Webb’s suitcase, under his shirts, but ontop of his shoes, tucked tight into one corner.

This scene begins with a very long shot ofthe chess pavilion atop the Kinderberg rocks.From this distance my Miss Kathie and I appear as two minute figureswandering down a path from the pavilion, dwarfed by the background ofskyscrapers, lost in the huge landscape, but our voices soundingdistinct and clear. Around us, a hush has fallen over the din and sirensof the city.

Walking in the distance, the pair of us aredistinct as the only two figures that remain together. Always in thecenter of this very, very long shot. Around us, single, distant figuresjog, skate, stroll, but Miss Kathie and I move across the visual fieldat the same even pace, two dots traveling in a straight line as if wewere a single entity, walking in identical slow strides. In tandem. Oursteps the same length.

As our twin pinprick figures cross the wideshot, 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 thepress, either,” says Miss Kathie. Her voice continues, “I will not behumiliated by a scandal.”

It’s not a crime to write a story aboutsomeone’s demise, she says, especially not a movie star, a publicfigure. Of course, Miss Kathie could file a restraining order allegingWebb had abused her or made threats, but that would make this sordidepisode a matter of public record. An aging film queen suckered intodyeing her hair, dieting and nightclub hopping, she’d look like thedoddering fool from the Thomas Mann novella.

Even if Webb didn’t, the tabloids would slayher.

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

A clock chimes seven times. The clock towerin the park zoo. The dinner reservations are for eighto’clock.

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

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

The evening grows darker as our tiny figuresmove 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 stopswalking while the second figure takes a few more steps, moving ahead.

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

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

As the traffic light changes, we cross Fifth.

Cut to the pair of us approaching MissKathie’s town house, a medium shot as we ascend the front steps to thedoor. From the street, in the second-floor window of her boudoir, we seethat a hairy hand holds the curtains open a crack and bright brown eyeswatch us arrive. From within the house, we hear footsteps thunder downthe stairs. The front door swings open, and Mr. Westward stands in thelight of the foyer. He wears the double-breasted BrooksBrothers tuxedo cited in the last chapter of Love Slave. An orchidin his lapel buttonhole. The two ends of a white bow tie hang, loopedand loose around his collar, and Webster CarltonWestward 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 tocommit murder. Behind that smile, the cunning mind that had planned thisbetrayal. To add insult to injury, the lies he’d written about my MissKathie and her sexual adventures, they would eventually be cherry-pickedby Frazier Hunt of Photoplay,Katherine Albert of ModernScreen magazine, Howard Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, JackGrant of Screen Book, Sheilah Graham, all the various low-life bottomfeeders of Confidential and every succeedingbiographer of the future. These tawdry, soft, sordid fictions wouldpetrify and fossilize to become diamond-hard, carved-stone facts for allperpetuity. A salacious lie will always trump a noble truth.

Miss Kathie’s violet eyes waft to meet myeyes.

A bus roars past in the street, shaking theground with its weight and trailing the stink of diesel exhaust. Aroundus the air swirls, gritty with dust and heavy with the threat ofimminent death.

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

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