Tell-All

“Think, you commie bastard!” She screams, “Do you really want LBJ as your president?”
    A shot rings out, and Hellman staggers back, clutching her shoulder where blood spouts in pulsing jets betweenher fingers. In the distance, the pink Halston pillbox hat of Jacqueline Kennedy moves out of firing range as we hear a second rifle shot. A third rifle shot. A fourth …
    More rifle shots ring out as we dissolve to reveal the kitchen of Katherine Kenton , where I sit at the table, reading a screenplay titled
Twentieth Century Savior
authored by Lilly. Sunlight slants in through the alley windows, at a steep angle suggesting late morning or noontime. In the background, we see the servants’ stairs, which descend from the second floor to the kitchen. The rifle shots continue, an audio bridge, now revealed to be the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, the sound of the fantasy sequence bleeding into this reality.
    As I sit reading, a pair of feet appear at the top of the servants’ stairs, wearing pink mules with thick, heavy heels,
clop-clopping
lower down the stair steps to reveal the hem of a filmy pink dressing gown trimmed in fluttering pink egret feathers. First one bare leg emerges from the split in front, pink and polished from the ankle to the thigh; then the second leg emerges from the dressing gown, as the figure descends each step. The robe flapping around thin ankles. The steps continue, loud as gunshots, until my Miss Kathie fully emerges and stops in the doorway, slumped against one side of the door frame, her violet eyes half closed, her lips swollen, the lipstick smeared around her mouth from cheek to cheek, the red smeared from nose to chin, her face swooning in a cloud of pink feathers. Posed there, Miss Kathie waits for me to look up from the Hellman script, and only then does she waft her gaze in my direction and say, “I’m so happy not to be alone any longer.”
    Arrayed on the kitchen table are various trophies and awards, tarnished gold and silver, displaying different degreesof dust and neglect. An open can of silver polish and a soiled buffing rag sit among them.
    Clasping something in both hands, concealed behind her back, my Miss Kathie says, “I bought you a present …” and she steps aside to reveal a box wrapped in silver-foil paper, bound with a wide, red-velvet ribbon knotted to create a bow as big as a cabbage. The bow as deep red as a huge rose.
    Miss Kathie’s gaze wafts to the trophies, and she says, “Throw that junk out—please.” She says, “Just pack them up and put them away in storage. I no longer need the love of every stranger. I have found the love of one perfect man.…”
    Holding the wrapped package before her, offering the red-velvet-and-foil-wrapped box to me, Miss Kathie steps into the room.
    On the scripted page, Lilly Hellman holds Oswald in a full nelson, both his arms bent and twisted behind his head. With one fast, sweeping kick, Lilly knocks Oswald’s legs out from under him, and he crumbles to the floor, where the two grapple, scrabbling and clawing on the dusty concrete, both within reach of the loaded rifle.
    Miss Kathie sets the package on the kitchen table, at my elbow, and says, “Happy birthday.” She pushes the box, sliding it to collide with my arm, and says, “Open it.”
    In the Hellman script, Lilly brawls with superhuman effort. The silence of the warehouse broken only by grunts and gasps, the grim sound of struggle in ironic contrast to the applause and fanfare, the blare of marching bands and the blur of high-stepping majorettes throwing their chrome batons to flash and spin in the hard Texas sunshine.
    Not looking up from the page, I say it isn’t my birthday.
    Looking from trophy to trophy, my Miss Kathie says, “All of this ‘Lifetime Achievement …’ ” Her hand dips into an invisible pocket of her dressing gown and emerges with a comb. Drawing the comb through her dyed-auburn hair, a fraction, only a day or two of gray showing at the roots, drawing the comb away from her scalp, Miss Kathie lets the long strands fall, saying, “All this ‘Lifetime Contribution’ business makes me sound so—dead.”
    Not waiting for me, Miss Kathie says, “Let me help.” And she yanks at the ribbon.
    With a single pull, the lovely bow unravels, and my Miss Kathie wads up the silver paper, tearing the foil from the box. Inside the box, she uncovers folds of black fabric. A black dress with a knee-length skirt. Layered beneath