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ACT I, SCENE FOUR

The career of a movie star consists ofhelping everyone else forget their troubles. Using charm and beauty andgood cheer to make life look easy. “The problem is,” GloriaSwanson once said, “if you never weep in public … well, thepublic assumes you never weep.”

Act one, scene four opens with Katherine Kenton cradling an urn in her arms. Thesetting: the dimly lit interior of the Kenton crypt, deep underground,below the stony pile of St. Patrick’s Cathedral,dressed with cobwebs. We see the ornate bronze door unlocked and swungopen to welcome mourners. A stone shelf at the rear of the crypt, indeep shadow, holds various urns crafted from a variety of polishedmetals, bronze, copper, nickel, one engraved, Casanova, another engraved, Darling, another, Romeo.

My Miss Kathie hugs the urn she’s holding,lifting it to meet her lips. She plants a puckered lipstick kiss on theengraved name Loverboy,then places this new urn on the dusty shelf among the others.

Kay Francis hasn’tarrived. Humphrey Bogart didn’t send hisregards. Neither did Deanna Durbin or Mildred Coles. Also missing are GeorgeBancroft and Bonita Granville and Frank Morgan. None of them sent flowers.

The engraved names Sweetie Pie and Honey Bun and Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., what Hedda Hopper would call “dust buddies.” Her beagle,her Chihuahua, her fourth husband—the majority stockholder and chairmanof the board for International Steel Manufacturing.Scattered amongst the other urns, engraved: Pookie, and Fantasy Man, and Lothario, the ashen remains of her toy poodleand miniature pinscher, there also sits an orange plastic prescriptionbottle of Valium, tethered to the stone shelfby a net of spiderwebs. Mold and dust mottle the label on a bottle of Napoleon brandy. A pharmacy prescription bottle of Luminal.

What Louella Parsonswould call “moping mechanisms.”

My Miss Kathie leans forward to blow the dustfrom a pill bottle. She lifts the bottle and wrestles the trickychild-guard cap, soiling her black gloves, pressing the cap as shetwists, the pills inside rattling. Echoing loud as machine-gun fire inthe cold stone room. My Miss Kathie shakes a few pills into one glovedpalm. With the opposite hand, she lifts her black veil. She tosses thepillsinto her mouth and reaches for the crusted bottle of brandy.

Among the urns, a silver picture frame liesfacedown on the shelf. Next to it, a tarnished tube of Helena Rubinstein lipstick. A slow panning shotreveals an atomizer of Mitsouko, the crystalbottle clouded and smudged with fingerprints. A dusty box spoutsyellowed Kleenex tissues.

In the dim light, we see a bottle of vintage1851 Château Lafite. A magnum of Huet calvados, circa 1865, and Croizetcognac bottled in 1906. Campbell Bowden &Taylor port, vintage 1825.

Stacked against the stone walls are cases of Dom Pérignon and Moët &Chandon and Bollinger champagne inbottles of every size … Jeroboam bottles,named for the biblical king, son of Nebat and Zeruah, which hold as much as four typical winebottles. Here are Nebuchadnezzar bottles,twenty times the size of a typical bottle, named for a king of Babylon. Among those tower Melchiorbottles, which hold the equivalent of twenty-four bottles of champagne,named for one of the Three Wise Men whogreeted the birth of Jesus Christ. As manybottles stand empty as still corked. Empty wineglasses litter the coldshadows, long ago abandoned, smudged by the lips of ConradNagel, Alan Hale, Cheeta the chimp and BillDemarest.

Miss Kathie’s mourning veil falls back,covering her face, and she drinks through the black netting, holdingeach bottle to her lips and swigging, leaving a new layer of lipstickcaked around each new bottle’s glistening neck. Each bottle’s mouth asred as her own.

Sydney Greenstreet,another no-show at today’s funeral. Greta Garbodid not send her sympathies.

What Walter Winchellcalls “stiff standing up.”

Here we are, just Miss Katherine and myself,yet again.

Brushing aside the black rice of mousefeces—in this strange negative image of a wedding— my Miss Kathie liftsthe silver picture frame and props it to stand on the shelf, leaning theframe against the tomb’s wall. Instead of a picture, the framesurrounds a mirror. Within the mirror, within the reflection of thestone walls, the cobwebs, poses Miss Kathie wearing her black hat andveil. She pinches the fingertips of one glove, pulling the glove free ofher left hand. Twisting the diamond solitaire off her ring finger, shehands the six-carat, marquise-cut Harry Winstonto me. Miss Kathie says, “I guess we ought to record the moment.”

The mirror, old scratches scar and etch itssurface. The glass marred by a wide array of old scores.

I tell her, Hit your mark, please.

“Are you absolutely certain you phoned Cary Grant?” says Miss Kathie as she steps backwardand stands on a faded X, long ago marked in lipstick on the stone floor.At that precise point her movie-star face aligns perfectly with thescratches on the mirror. At that perfect angle and distance, those oldscores become the wrinkles she had three, four, five dogs ago, the bagsand sumps her face fell into before each was repaired with a newface-lift or an injection of sheep embryo serum. Some radical procedureadministered in a secret Swiss clinic. The expensive creams and salves,the operations to pull and tighten. On the mirror linger the pits andliver spots she has erased every few months, etched there—the record ofhow she ought to look. Again, she lifts her veil, and her reflectedcheeks and chin align with the ancient record of sags and moles andstray hairs my Miss Kathie has rightfully earned.

The war wounds left by PacoEsposito and Romeo, every stray dogand “was-band.” Miss Kathie makes the face she makes whenshe’s not making a face, her features, her famous mouth and eyesbecoming a Theda Bara negligee draped over apadded hanger in the back of the Monogram Pictureswardrobe department, wrapped in plastic in the dark. Her muscles slackand relaxed. The audience forgotten.

And wielding the diamond, I get to work,drawing. I trace any new wrinkles, adding any new liver spots to thislong-term record. Creating something more cumulative than anyphotograph, I

document Miss Kathie’s misery before the plastic surgeonscan once more wipe the slate clean. Dragging the diamond, digging intothe glass, I etch her gray hairs. Updating the topography of this, hersecret face. Cutting the latest worry lines across her forehead. I gougethe new crow’s-feet around her eyes, eclipsing the false smile of herpublic image, the diamond defacing Miss Kathie. Me mutilating her.

After a lifetime of such abuse the mirrorbows, curved, so sectioned, so cut and etched so deep, that any newpressure could collapse the glass into a shattered, jagged pile offragments. Another duty of my job is to never press too hard. Myposition included mopping up Paco’s piss from around the commode, thentaking the dog to a veterinarian for gelding. Every day, I was compelledto tear a page from some history book—the saga of Hiawatha,written by Arthur Miller as a screenplay for Deborah Kerr, or the RobertFulton story, as a vehicle for Danny Kaye— topick up yet another steaming handful of feces.

I drag the diamond in straight lines to mimicthe tears running down Miss Kathie’s face. The diamond shrieks against the glass. Thesound of an instant migraine headache.

The mirror of Dorian Gray.

Then footsteps echo from offscreen. Theheartbeat of a man’s leather shoes approach from down the corridor, eachstep louder against the stone. Van Heflin orperhaps Laurence Olivier. Randolph Scott ormaybe Sid Luft.

In the silence between one footfall and thenext, between heartbeats, I place the mirror facedown on the shelf. Ireturn the diamond ring to my Miss Kathie.

A man’s silhouette fills the doorway to thecrypt, tall and slender, his shoulders straight, outlined against thelight of the corridor.

Miss Kathie turns, one hand already reachingfor the tarnished tube of lipstick. She peers at the man, saying, “Couldthat be you, Groucho?”

A bouquet of flowers emerges out of thegloom, the man’s hands offering them. Pink NancyReagan roses and yellow lilies, a smell bright as sunlight. Theman’s voice says, “I’m so sorry about your loss.…” The smooth knucklesand clear skin of a young man’s hands, the fingernails shining andpolished.

What Hedda Hoppercalls a “funeral flirtation.” Louella Parsons a“graveside groom.” Walter Winchell a “casketcrasher.”

Webster Carlton WestwardIII steps forward. The young man from the dinner party. The nameand phone number on the burned place card.

Those eyes bright brown as summer root beer.

I shake my head, Don’t. Don’t repeat thistorture. Don’t trust another one.

But already my Miss Kathie wipes a fresh coatof red around her mouth. Then tosses the old lipstick to rattle amongthe tarnished urns. Among the empty wine bottles that people call “deadsoldiers.” My Miss Kathie lowers the black mesh of her veil and reachesone gloved hand toward something coated with dust, something abandonedand long forgotten among her dead loves. She lifts this ancient item,her red lips whispering, “Guten essen.”Adding, “That’s French for ‘never say never.’ ” Her violet eyes milkyand vague with the drugs and brandy, Miss Kathie turns to accept theflowers, in the same gesture slipping the dusty item—her diaphragm—deepinto the sagging slit of her old mink coat pocket.