Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

"Marilyn …" I leaned over, holding out the bra, but next thing I knew she pulled me over into the pool on top of her.

I came up sputtering, and she dunked me a second time, then swam away, laughing. But it's a mistake to turn your back on a would-be Olympic swimmer. I kicked off my shoes and followed.

Marilyn got to the edge of the pool and started to pull herself up on one of the dolphins, but I pulled her back in. We wrestled, and somewhere in there her panties slipped off.

"Ooh, Nickie, you are wicked …" Marilyn screamed with laughter and pounced on me. The panties Went flying out of my hand.

I let her get her revenge and we played strip water polo, my shirt and socks and the rest drifting down to the bottom of the pool. It was one of the craziest and most wonderful moments of my life. We played tag, ducking and bobbing under the water, then came close, our arms around each other. Marilyn gave me a long, slow kiss.

"Nickie," she said, drawing back. "You're always so tense. Dr. Rudo says you're keeping secrets. Lots of them."

It was that obvious then.

"Tell me a secret," Marilyn said.

I was tempted to tell her then and there. I mean, she'd slept with Jack Braun. She wouldn't care if I were an ace or a joker or whatever I was.

But it was my life, and it was all I had. And no woman could ever love a murderer.

I gave her the old line: "If I told, then it wouldn't be a secret."

"You're crying, Nickie," she said. "Dr. Rudo says that tears are secrets trying to come out."

It was just the chlorine, but I held her then, her skin against mine, naked in the pool. I could feel the electricity flowing inside her body, and the tight core of energy coiled inside mine, wanting to come out. I knew if I said anything more, I'd lose control, so I kissed her.

She was the first woman I'd kissed in years, and I think I really did start to cry. I never let myself open to another person. Secrets are like that. Lies are like that.

And a relationship built on lies would never last. I knew that from experience.

And I knew it would be the same with her, and I think that was most of why I cried, but God she was beautiful. I wanted her so much, but the energy was boiling up inside me and I knew if I gave off a pulse too close, I would shock her to death.

I broke away and swam off, fast as I could, to the other end of the pool. I let my entire charge flow out and forced it through the bolts of the underwater light to ground itself in the wiring. The bulb popped like a strobe and all the lights in the hall went dark, but the charge was gone and I was safe and drained and crying like a baby.

Marilyn swam up beside me in the dark pool as I babbled something about faulty wiring and electrical danger.

"Shh, Nickie," she said. "Sometimes you've just got to let things happen. I want you, and if you want me, I'm here."

She floated there like some water nymph from an old tale, Lorelie or Calypso or Nimue. I reached out to touch her breasts and she drew back, then laughed and grabbed my arms, drawing me towards her. We fit together, mouth to mouth and body to body, and her legs folded around me as my arms went around her.

We did it right there, in the pool, in the dark, with the shadows dancing off the ceiling and the echoes calling back to us from the corners of the gymnasium.

If there was anyone who saw, they never interrupted.

When it was over, we were both giggling with nervous laughter, Marilyn's intoxicated, mine drunk on fear and sobriety. And love.

She'd wanted me for me. And she knew I kept secrets and didn't care.

I think I could have loved her just for that.

I was in love, for the first time, really, and so, I think … at least I'd like to think … was Marilyn.

I was like a giddy teenager. It was like nothing I'd ever had, even before the wild card.

But you're probably wanting to know what happened with bombs and all that. The next day Flattop and I went through the larger snippets, but had trouble placing them. The breakthrough came from Marilyn.

Marilyn had been friends with Jane Russell ever since Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , and she identified the first clip I'd found. "Oh sure, Nickie," she said. "That's from The Outlaw Jane did for Howard Hughes. But don't show Jane. The film was an absolute bomb ."

I gave Marilyn a kiss and she forgot about it, but I didn't. The rest of the snippets came from The Outlaw and other bad adventure flicks, all from RKO, owned and operated by one Howard Hughes. Hughes' paranoia about disease was legendary, so it was likely he'd been behind the bomb attempt, not that there was anything you could prove.

The Hearst papers carried an article about a Japanese mine from World War II drifting into the Santa Monica pier. How it managed to hit six feet above the water line was never explained.

The pier was closed for "structural damage" and the Menagerie was shut down, though in a much less bloody fashion than was no doubt planned. A check of public records showed the long arms of Howard Hughes and Willie Hearst pulling the strings. Hopper's column raved about the planned renovation, during which no doubt the Menagerie would lose its liquor license.

In an unrelated piece, the bodies of three men were found Washed up on the beach. The corpses were identified the next day as belonging to three of RKO's special effects men. The obituary listed the cause of death as a "boating accident." Their names correlated with Wally's suspects for several sabotaged pics.

I had evidence, but nothing I could present to anyone, Welles included. And it was just more conspiracy work for the files — nothing about any particular plot against Blythe .

But Marilyn was the key to the whole house of cards. If she fell, the whole thing would collapse. I stayed close by her during the day, and at her house at night. There really wasn't anything else I could do.

She had a small place in Brentwood, with an inscription above the portico that read Cursum Perficio , "My journey ends here." Sometimes we dallied in the house, and sometimes in the pool in the back yard, memories of our first time together.

I felt like I had come home at last.

During the day, I escorted Marilyn around the set and played stand-in what little time I had to. And at night, back at her place, Marilyn told me her nightmares.

Sometimes she woke up from them screaming like a little girl and begged me to hold her until they went away.

Her nightmares … How can I describe them? In one she was Mary Shelley, talking to her husband about the baby she'd lost. Then he'd console her, and say that she was the mother of far more, since hadn't she created Frankenstein and given her nightmares to a thousand people?

And then there was the one where she was Cleopatra, and it was like the last scene of the movie, except the asp talked, and it said, "You are the Goddess. You are the Queen. And I am all men and I will have you. And I will kill you."

And then, trapped in the motions of the story, she dropped the asp down the front of her dress. But instead of biting her, it crawled inside her.

And she knew her body was not her own.

Then she was Guenevere from Camelot , singing "The Simple Joys Of Maidenhood" just like Julie Andrews on Broadway. And as she did, the bodies of her admirers piled up around her feet, one after the other.

There were a dozen others, sometimes as many as three a night. Sometimes I did nothing but hold her, and sometimes we did nothing but make love until the nightmares went away. And sometimes, during all that, I wondered if it were the LSD that had caused the nightmares, or perhaps something else.

And every afternoon, she had a session with Dr. Rudo. I didn't like to think of what they did together, or the trysts she had every week or so with either of the Kennedy brothers, but whenever I raised the subject, she just laughed. "Nickie, you're so old-fashioned," she'd say. "We're all sexual creatures. If I make love to another man, it doesn't mean I don't love you. And anyway, it's part of the treatment."