Leda and the Swan and Other Stories

LEDA AND THE SWAN And Other Stories

Mike Kennedy

Copyright 2014 by Mike Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

The Stories

Once Upon A Midnight Dreary

The Mendacium Institute

West of West Texas

Reshuffled

Evan Donevan Must Die

Point of View

The Illusion of Missing Flight 737

Leda and the Swan

End Matter

About the Author

Other Fiction by the Author

ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY

Scrivener House is located in the ancient Dutch section of Manhattan Island. The building consists of three adjoining houses, each of four stories, and renovated with connecting doors until it became a warren of dark halls and unlikely passageways. I would return home only to sleep, to shower, and to change my suit. I had spent all of my life in books until, finally, that was all that remained for me.

No matter. They all came to me, the great ones, the celebrated geniuses of our time. If there was a great mind at work, it required my imprimatur before it was believed. It is well that my rooms in the publishing house were so inaccessible, because it kept the supplicants at bay and the mendicants nearer the front door.

I would sometimes walk to The Strand, to peruse the aisles for my titles. Beneath the author’s name, I would find my own, harbored in the phrase, personally edited by Raymond Cathcarte Ravenswood. The phrase was looked for, no matter whom the author might be. It added value and we marked-up the price as such. There was no one else of stature to prune the rank sedges of an author’s vanity.

On the night of June 1, in the year 2000, I was working late, pondering weak and weary over a quaint and curious volume of the forgotten lore of Marilyn Monroe. I was forcing the author to re-write it again and again, over and over. There were now fifteen versions of the night she died and I had rejected them all. He was nearly frantic. I encouraged him by saying that he was too near the end to quit now. I believed nothing of what he said. I was waiting for the truth to emerge, exhausted and malleable. Then, I would form it into a shape worthy of our imprint. Merely this and nothing more.

She had come in with the cleaning people as might a draft breathe its way past a closing door, or through the frame of an ancient, rattling window. She seemed the condensation of an alabaster mist arising from an English moor. She was a sediment of sunlight collected in a canopic jar for release upon an evening judged prone to madness.

I was startled, as if an intemperate wind had buffeted the building. The floorboards exhaled their sound beneath her weight, confessing to me that she was real.

I poised my beating heart upon the moment. My office became as still as a painting of itself. Someone was in the hall. There came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping upon the post of my chamber door.

Finally, she flung it open, when with many a flirt and flutter, toward me stepped a stately figure, as of saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made she, but with mien of regal lady, she stepped through my chamber door, stepped and sat, and nothing more.

Her face was alive with spontaneous creations. Her expression was a swiftly changing tableau of reaction and expectation. It roused me, recalling every feeling. Her face searched my soul to coax forgotten powers, as lightning might be drawn from a cloud. The atmosphere in my office crackled with a surcharge of energy. Instantly, I became lost.

As she sat and crossed her legs, I could hear the coy, intimate scratch of her charcoal hose within her sheath of little black dress, sleeveless, strapless, engagingly décolleté, and confidently worn.

After some minutes, when her face floated to rest, she resembled other attractive older women. But when she might react to something, she would slip the shackles of her years to rise again as Prometheus rose again. I could not have looked away.

I could see some pounds had accumulated, but these softened contours seemed only to accentuate her original underlying proportions. The time had come to state the obvious. How could mortals refrain?

You know, you do have a certain resemblance.

Her smile slowly widened as her chin drifted up. Her lips played upon her face. Then her chin cycled downward, draping her hooded eyes with dense lashes. Shall I guess who? She asked, enjoying the moment immensely.

Is there a common family tree?

The family tree was stunted second growth. It is better that it ends with me. The smile now sagged unhappily.

My dear, we’re fencing. I sighed. Why should I not simply state the obvious?

Because you will sound like a romantic schoolboy, and you know it. Her face became alive again, and seemed to come as close to kissing mine as any face could, while remaining seven feet away. This was an intimacy projected.

She continued. "Do you know how hard I have to work to keep from being her? This is a performance requiring a consummate character actress. I once trained at the Actor’s Studio. Did you know?

You might be inclined to say that this is the role of a lifetime. She spoke breathlessly, wide-eyed, open, eager and importunate.

Or, then again… She lifted her chin with careful reserve to look down her nose beneath the visor of heavy lids. …you might not say that at all. Do you think? She finished, imperiously.

I wonder now if my voice was shaking. I asked her age, hoping that it would not add up. I knew that it could not—must not—and yet some strange part of me silently whispered that it would, that it must, that this was her.

Today is my birthday. I’m spending part of it with you. Once again, earnestly leaning forward, she spoke breathlessly and with great enthusiasm, but then, all at once, she withdrew, as though singed.

She startled me with a deep voice. You should feel flattered. Not too bad for seventy-four, don’t you think? She turned her bare shoulders toward me, first one, then the other, back and forth in a show of great pride.

It was easy to subtract 74 from the year 2000. The answer was 1926. Regretfully, I turned away to my computer. I brought up Google. I held my breath as I spelled it out. She knew what I was doing. She laughed each time that I nervously missed a keystroke.

This happened late in those days before the advent of the smart-phone and the ubiquitous security camera. America still reveled in the ending of the cold war. The world behaved itself. Nine-eleven remained a year away.

When Marilyn’s tale began, the years rushed past as if I had been caught between sets of tracks, between the blur of speeding trains. Suddenly, it was Saturday night, August 4, 1962. It was 7:00 P.M.

There was a strange man in my living room, Mr. Ravenswood, but, at first, I did not know that. He had entered while I was on the telephone with Joe, Jr.

Joe DiMaggio’s son? I asked.

"Yes, he was calling from down the coast at a Marine base. It was during the 7th inning of a ball game. We were on the line about twenty minutes, give or take. After we had finished, I stood there thinking, feeling good about what he had told me. He had broken his engagement. I was glad. He was too young.

"It was then that I heard my name from the living room. Someone said, ‘Marilyn’. What a nice surprise. I wondered who had let themselves in. I could not place the voice, someone from the studio, I guessed.

"He was big and boxy looking, His eyes were slits. His face sat there on top like a lump. He looked like he had just lost his best friend. Actually, this did not come as a big surprise.

"We had all just returned from a big meeting on this subject, the previous weekend, at the Cal-Neva Lodge: Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Bobby Kennedy, and Sam Giancana, to name a few.

"Somewhere out there, I had a big fan and he had been making anonymous phone calls to all these people, but not to me. He could not say too much, or else the truth would lead back to him. So, he told us just enough and hoped that we could handle it.

Part of what he did not tell was ‘why.’ This is what I would learn from my guest.

He spoke.

They sent me here to kill you, Marilyn. And for the stupidest reason I ever heard.

Are you going to kill me?

And become the man who killed Marilyn Monroe? No way. That ain’t goin’ on my head. Besides, I’m too big a fan to do that. Shame I can’t walk out of here with your autograph.

I’d give it to you.

Aw, I can always see you anytime I want for a thirty-five cent movie ticket. Here’s the problem, Marilyn. We got to go into hiding, tonight.

You and I?

No, but thanks for asking. Separately and alone. I got a body out in the station wagon, thawing. We can’t take all night with this. I was looking in on all you people at that hotel last weekend.

The Cal-Neva?

Yeah, I wired the rooms. Heard everything. You gotta do just what you was all talkin’ about. Marilyn, you gotta vanish. They gotta send you money. And they gotta get the fix in with the police and the coroner so that this body I brought here becomes Marilyn Monroe. Considering who’s on your side, I’d say that’s a lead-pipe cinch.

What if someone finds out?

Marilyn, that’s the beauty with these things. Lemme tell you somethin’ you don’t know. These things always attract liars and people on the make. There’s going to be lots of other versions to this story even if we hide our tracks perfect. The beauty is we don’t have to, just only good enough. And then, if you got the right people—and you do—then you lean hard on a few folks and the story becomes real. Giancanna and Kennedy will know just what to do. Funny they’re working together. Kennedy had us trying to get something on him for a while. Strange bedfellows, Marilyn.

Who is ‘us’. Who are you?

Just call me Bob. The ‘us’ is J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover wants me dead?

Yep.

Why?

"Well, in order to understand, you really gotta know the director, but I’ll try to explain. Because of you, he had something on the two Kennedys. The director has something on everybody. He don’t use most of it, cause he don’t want much. He don’t push it. But one thing he does want is not to lose his job. He likes it there. He intends to die in that job. Now the director figures that what he’s got on Jack and Bobby will only degrade. Maybe your star fades. Maybe you become a nun. Maybe you run off and have a different scandal. So the director wants this on ice. He wants the goods frozen in time. The way to do that is to put you on ice so that the story stays just the way it is right now, forever.

"Now lemme correct a few things. Frank wants to be the one to send you your money from the estate. Bad idea. Use Lee Strasberg, but don’t tell that New York crowd anything. They couldn’t keep a secret in a washtub.

Next, have them photograph you tonight, when they come over.

Who’s coming over?

"I got a guy calling Bobby in ten minutes. He’s in town, anyway. That puts him here in twenty-five minutes. Frank and Peter will get the call right after. Frank will call Giancana. Now, you gotta get photos. Have them of you in bed, no clothes. That way people ask fewer questions. Have your nightstand full of pill bottles in the photographs. Take a lot of pictures. Have the phone in your hand. Keep your eyes closed. You only get one chance at this.

This will be a suicide?

Yeah, that’s best. I already talked to your doctor and your housekeeper. Bobby will use them, especially Dr. Greenson.

No one will believe I killed myself.

Honey, you can make the world believe anything you want. It ain’t hard and there’s lots of people who know how. It don’t even have to be that good, just good enough. I gotta get that woman in here.

Do you want some help?

No, I got it. It would be too creepy if you helped.

Does she look like me?

Close enough. As good as I was able. Dead people don’t look like themselves anyhow. Especially if they’ve been laying around for half the day.

What happened to her?

"You gotta learn to be careful, Marilyn. Information and money leaves tracks and people follow tracks back to where they start. I got ten minutes. So, one thing more. You take this piece of paper and don’t show it to nobody. This is a guy up in San Fran who used to be a Colonel in the French Army. He got crosswise with his higher-ups during all that Algeria stuff and had to disappear. You hide out with him for six months. He’s gonna show you how to take care of yourself and how to stay hid. You don’t never tell nobody about him or he’ll come after me. And I don’t want that.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry to bring this up, but you want to have a small funeral. Twenty mourners, tops. Tell Frank to put Joe-D in charge of that. Nobody will argue with DiMaggio.

Now I gotta bring her in and then get lost myself.

Do you mean that you have to go into hiding, too?

Yeah. J. Edgar won’t be none too happy if he finds out or even suspects. But with me gone, he’ll never know for sure. Except he knows that if I turn up I can make things pretty hot for him.

But your life, Bob, your career.

Marilyn, I ain’t never had no career, just a job. And life on the lam can be just as good as life in one place. Trust me. This ain’t the first time I’ve disappeared. I don’t even remember the name I started with.

I don’t know what to say.

Folk never do, Marilyn. No matter which way it shakes out, at times like this, they’re always speechless. Unless they’re gonna turn on you. Then they gots lots to say. That’s a tip-off. You see? There’s tricks to every trade. Listen, I want to make sure there’s one good thing I’ve done with my life and not killing Marilyn Monroe is that one good thing. So hey, have a great life.

I became aware of the silence. I realized that the tale had ended. I awoke, as from a dream. Marilyn watched me drift back into the present moment, like a ship returning quietly into the harbor. It was the middle of the night. I had the welcome of only a single person on the dock. She leaned against a piling and her expression glowed with wonder at the magic of it.

Marilyn Monroe, I said, limply.

Marilyn Monroe, she repeated , nodding in understanding.

Why me? Why now? Why here? I asked, recovering.

She pointed to the book in front of me. I picked it up. I had forgotten. What should I do with it?

Publish it. Believe the first draft. Stop calling the poor man a liar. As you see, it is all true.

Yes, true. But why?

Because I’m coming back.

To assume your former and real identity?

"Yes. I don’t want to die alone. Not that it is happening any time soon, but it is closer than it was. And everyone from the old days is gone and so I would not be hurting anyone, except for a few reputations. But reputations are so tight a weave that no one can tell where one thread stops and another begins.

And then, in addition, I will have two more books of my own.

This news straightened me as I sat. You’ve written two books, I gasped.

Photographs and captions only.

Scenes from your secret life?

Yes and no. Yes, there is that and it would be another book that can come later. For now, these are photographs of the secrets of other lives.

Secrets of whose lives?

"Remember that I was acquitted as a good actress in my time, even taught by the great Lee Strasberg. I used many disguises. Sometimes even as men. I followed and photographed the celebrated people of the twentieth century.

"Remember that I came from these people. I know who