Chuck Palahniuk - Tell All

In her own kitchen, my Miss Kathie sinks bothhands into the shopping bag and lifts out a hairy chunk of her furcoat. The ragged pile of hair seems to tremble as she places it atop theHellman screenplay. Two black button eyes blink open. On the table, thedamp, hairy wad shrinks, then explodes in a hah-choo sneeze. Between the two button eyes, the fur parts to reveal a doublerow of needle teeth. A panting sliver of pink tongue. A puppy.

Around the new diamond ring, her movie starhands appear nicked and scabbed with dried red, smudged with old blood.Spreading her fingers to show me the backs of both hands, Miss Kathiesays, “This hospital had barbed wire.”

Her barbed wire scars as gruesome as anywounds Lillian shows off from the Abraham Lincolnbrigade. Not as bad as Ava Gardner’s scarsfrom bullfighting with Ernest Hemingway. Or Gore Vidal’s scars from TrumanCapote.

“I picked up a stray,” says Miss Kathie. I ask, Which one? The dog or the man?

“It’s a Pekingese,” says Miss Kathie. “I’vechristened him Loverboy.”

The most recent of the “was-bands,” Pacoarrives after the senator who arrived after the faggot chorus boy whoarrived after the steel-smelting tycoon who arrived after the failedactor who arrived after the sleazy freelance photographer who arrivedafter the high school sweetheart. These, all of the stray dogs whosephotographs line the mantel in her lavish upstairs boudoir.

A rogues’ gallery of what WalterWinchellwould call “happily-never-afters.”

Each romance, the type of self-destructivegesture Hedda Hopperwould call “marry- kiri.”Instead of plunging a sword into one’s stomach, you repeatedly throwyourself on the most inappropriate erect penis.

The men Miss Katherine marries, they’re lesshusbands than they are costars. Souvenirs. Each one merely a witness toattest to her latest daring adventure, so much like RaymondMasseyor Fredric March, any leadingman she might fight beside in the Hundred Years War.Playing Amelia Earhartstowed away withchampagne and beluga caviarin the romanticcockpit of Charles Lindberghduring his longflight over the Atlantic. Cleopatrakidnappedduring the Crusades and wed to King Henry VIII.

Each wedding picture was less of a mementothan a scar. Proof of some horror movie scenario KatherineKentonhas survived.

Miss Kathie places the puppy on the Hellmanscreenplay, smack-dab on the scene where Lilly Hellman and John Wayneraise the American flag over Iwo Jima. Dipping one scabbed hand into the pocketof her silver fox coat, Miss Kathie extracts a tablet of bound papers,each page printed with the letterhead White Mountain Hospital and Residential Treatment Facility .

A purloined pad of prescription blanks.

Miss Kathie wets the point of an Estée Laudereyebrow pencil, touching it against thepink tip of her tongue. Writing a few words under the letterhead, shestops, looks up and says, “How many Ss in Darvocet?”

The young man holding her baggage says, “Howsoon do we get to Hollywood?”

Los Angeles, thecity Louella Parsonswould call theapproximately three hundred square miles and twelve million peoplecentered around Irene Mayer Selznick.

In that same beat, we cut to a close-up of Loverboy, as the tiny Pekingese drops its own hot,stinking A-bomb all over General Douglas MacArthur.

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,” GloriaSwansononce said, “if you never weep in public … well, thepublic assumes you never weep.”

Act one, scene four opens with Katherine Kentoncradling 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 Francishasn’tarrived. Humphrey Bogartdidn’t send hisregards. Neither did Deanna Durbinor Mildred Coles. Also missing are GeorgeBancroftand Bonita Granvilleand Frank Morgan. None of them sent flowers.

The engraved names Sweetie Pie and Honey Bun and Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq. , what Hedda Hopperwould 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 Rubinsteinlipstick. A slow panning shotreveals an atomizer of Mitsouko, the crystalbottle clouded and smudged with fingerprints. A dusty box spoutsyellowed Kleenextissues.

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

Stacked against the stone walls are cases of Dom Pérignonand Moët &Chandonand Bollingerchampagne inbottles of every size … Jeroboambottles,named for the biblical king, son of Nebatand Zeruah, which hold as much as four typical winebottles. Here are Nebuchadnezzarbottles,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 Menwhogreeted 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 chimpand BillDemarest.