Tell All

ACT III, SCENE THREE

We open with the distinct pop of a champagnecork, dissolving to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the familycrypt. Froth spills from the bottle she holds, splashing on the stonefloor as Miss Kathie hurries to pour wine into the two dusty champagneglasses I hold. Here, in the depths of stone beneath the cathedral whereshe was so recently wed, Miss Kathie takes a glass and lifts it,toasting a new urn which rests on the stone shelf beside the urnsengraved Oliver “Red” Drake,Esq., Loverboy, Lothario. All of her long-dead loved ones.

The new urn of shining, polished silver sitsengraved with the name Terrence Terry, andincludes a smudged lipstick kiss identical to the old kisses dried tothe magenta of ancient blood, almost black on the urns now rusted andtarnished with age.

Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a toast tothis newest silver urn, saying, “Bonne nuit,Terrence.” She sips the champagne, adding, “That’s Spanish for bonvoyage.”

Around us a few flickering candles light thedusty, cold crypt, shimmering amid the clutter of empty wine bottles.Dirty champagne glasses hold dead spiders, each spider curled like abony fist. Abandoned ashtrays hold stubbed cigarettes smudged with along history of lipstick shades, the cigarettes yellowed, the lipstickfaded from red to pink. Ashes and dust. The mirror of Miss Kathie’s realface, scratched and scarred with her past, lies facedown among thesouvenirs and sacrifices of everything she’s left behind. The pillbottles half-full of Tuinal and Dexamyl. Nembutal, Seconal and Demerol.

Tossing back her champagne and pouringherself another glass, Miss Kathie says, “I think we ought to recordthis occasion, don’t you?”

She means for me to prop the mirror in itsupright position while she stands on the lipstick X marked on the floor.Miss Kathie holds out her left hand to me, her fingers spread so I canremove her Harry Winston diamond solitaire.When her face aligns with the mirror, her eyes perfectly bracketed bythe crow’s-feet, her lips centered between the scratched hollows andsagging cheeks, only when she’s exactly superimposed on the record ofher past … do I take the diamond and begin to draw.

On the opening night of UnconditionalSurrender, she says Terry had paid her a visit backstage, in herdressing room before the first curtain. In the chaos of telegrams andflowers, it’s likely Terry purloined the Jordanalmonds. He’d stopped to convey his best wishes and inadvertentlymade off with the poisoned candy, saving her life. Poor Terrence. Theaccidental martyr.

As Miss Kathie speculates, I plow the diamondalong the soft surface of the mirror, gouging her new wrinkles andworry lines into our cumulative written record.

Since then, Miss Kathie says she’s ransackedWebster’s luggage. We can’t risk overlooking any new murder schemes.She’s discovered yet another final chapter, a seventh draft of the Love Slave finale. “Itwould seem that I’m to be shot by an intruder next,” she says, “when Iinterrupt him in the process of burgling my home.”

But at last she’s managed a counterattack:she’s mailed this newest final chapter to her lawyer, sealed within amanila envelope, with the instructions that he should open it and readthe contents should she meet a sudden, suspicious death. After that sheinformed the Webster of her actions. Of course he vehemently denied anyplot; he protested and railed that he’d never written such a book. Heinsisted that he’d only ever loved her and had no intention to cause herharm. “But that’s exactly,” Miss Kathie says, “what I’d expected him tosay, the evil cad.”

Now, in the event Miss Kathie falls under anomnibus, bathes with an electric radio, feeds herself to grizzly bears,tumbles from a tall building, sheathes an assassin’s sharp dagger withher heart or ingests cyanide—then Webster CarltonWestward III will never get to publish his terrible“lie-ography.” Her lawyers will expose his ongoing plot. Instead ofhitting any best-seller list, the Webster will go sit in the electricchair.

All the while, I drag the diamond’s point todraw Miss Kathie’s new gray hairs onto the mirror. I tap the glass tomark any new liver spots.

“I should be safe,” Miss Kathie says, “fromany homicidal burglars.”

Under pressure, the mirror bends anddistorts, stretching and warping my Miss Kathie’s reflection. The glassfeels that fragile, crisscrossed with so many flaws and scars.

Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a champagnetoast to her reflected self, saying, “As Webb’s ultimate punishment, Imade him marry me.…”

The would-be assassin has now become herfull-time, live-in love slave.

The bright-brown-eyed wonder will do herbidding, collect her dry cleaning, chauffeur her, scour her bathroom,run errands, wash her dishes, massage her feet and provide any specificoral- genital pleasure Miss Kathie deems necessary, until death do theypart. And even then, it had best not be her death or the Webster willlikely find himself arrested.

“But just to be on the safe side …” she says,and reaches to retrieve something off the stone shelf. From among theabandoned pill bottles and outdated cosmetics and contraceptives, MissKathie’s hand closes around something she carries back to her fur coatpocket. She says, “Just in case …” and slips this new item, tinted redwith rust, blue with oil, into her coat pocket.

It’s a revolver.