Tell-All

shoves the ream of paper, sliding it across the chessboard toward me. She says, “You can’t tell anyone. It’s so humiliating.”
    Bark, oink, screech
… Screen Star Stalked by Gigolo .
    Moo, meow, buzz
… Lonely, Aging Film Legend Seduced by Killer .
    The stack of papers, she says she discovered them while unpacking one of Webb’s suitcases. He’s written a biography about their romantic time together. Miss Kathie pushes the stack at me, saying, “Just read what he says.…” Then immediately pulling the pages back, hunching her shoulders over them and glancing to both sides, she whispers, “Except the parts about me permitting Mr. Westward to engage me in anal intercourse are a complete and utter fabrication.”
    An aged version of Anthony Quinn slaps a clock, stopping one timer and starting another.
    Miss Kathie slides the pages within my reach, then pulls them back, whispering, “And just so you know, the scene where I perform oral sex on Mr. Westward’s person in the toilet of Sardi’s is also a total bold-faced lie.…”
    She looks around again, whispering, “Read it for yourself,”pushing the stack of pages across the chessboard in my direction. Then, yanking the pages back, she says, “But don’t you believe the part where he writes about me under the table at Twenty-one doing that unspeakable act with the umbrella.…”
    Terrence Terry predicted this: a handsome young man who would enter Miss Kathie’s life and linger long enough to rewrite her legend for his own gain. No matter how innocent their relationship, he’d merely wait until her death so he could publish his lurid, sordid tale. No doubt a publisher had already given him a contract, paid him a sizable advance of monies against the royalties of that future tell-all best seller. Most of this dreadful book was in all probability already typeset. Its cover already designed and printed. Once Miss Kathie was dead, someday, the tawdry lies of this charming parasite would replace anything valuable she’d accomplished with her life. The same way Christina Crawford has forever sullied the legend of Joan Crawford . The way B. D. Merrill has wrecked the reputation of her mother, Bette Davis , and Gary Crosby has dirtied the life story of his father, Bing Crosby —Miss Kathie would be ruined in the eyes of a billion fans.
    The type of tome Hedda Hopper always calls a “lie-ography.”
    Around the chess pavilion, a breeze moves through the maple trees, making a billion leaves applaud. A withered version of Will Rogers reaches his old Phil Silvers hand to nudge a white king forward one square. Near us, an aged Jack Willis touches a black knight and says,
“J’adoube.”
    “That’s French,” Miss Kathie says, “for
tout de suite.”
    Shaking her head over the manuscript, she says, “I wasn’t snooping. I was only looking for some cigarettes.” My Miss Kathie shrugs and says, “What can we do?”
    It’s not libel until the book is published, and Webb has no intention of doing that until she’s dead. After that, it will be his word against hers—but by then, my Miss Kathie will be packed away, burned to ash and interred with Loverboy and Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq. , and all the empty champagne bottles, the dead soldiers, within her crypt.
    The solution is simple, I tell her. All Miss Kathie needs to do is live a long, long life. The answer is … to simply not die.
    And pushing the manuscript pages across the chessboard, shoving them at me, Miss Kathie says, “Oh, Hazie, I wish it were that simple.”
    Printed, centered across the title page, it says:
    Love Slave: A Very Intimate Memoir of
My Life with Kate Kenton

Copyright and author,
Webster Carlton Westward III
    This is no partial story, says Miss Kathie. This draft already includes a final chapter. Pulling the ream of paper back to her side of the table, she flips over the stack of pages and turns the last few faceup. Near the ending, her voice lowered to a faint whisper, only then does she begin to read aloud, saying, “ ‘On the final day of Katherine Kenton’s life, she dressed with particular care.…’ ”
    As old men slap clocks to make them stop.
    My Miss Kathie whispers to me the details about how, soon, she would die.

ACT II, SCENE ONE
    Katherine Kenton continues reading as voice-over. At first we continue to hear the sounds of the park, the
clip-clopping
of horse-drawn carriages and the calliope music of the carousel, but these sounds gradually fade. At