Tell-All

real time, we see the flash of pointed teeth. We hear guttural roars and hear bones breaking. A scream rings out.
    “ ‘At that instant,’ ” the voice-over reads, “ ‘my everything, my reason for living, the idol of millions, Katherine Kenton , loses her footing and plummets into the grizzly bear enclosure.…’ ”
    Still reading from Love Slave , the voice of Terrence Terry says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

ACT II, SCENE FIVE
    While my position is not that of a private detective or a bodyguard, for the present time my job tasks include plundering Webb’s suitcase in search of the latest revisions to Love Slave . Later, I must sneak the manuscript back to its hiding place between the laundered shirts and undershorts so the Webster specimen won’t realize we’re savvy to his ever-evolving plot.
    The fantasy murder scene dissolves into the current place and time. Once more we find ourselves in the hotel ballroom crowded with elegant guests previously seen in the awards ceremony with the senator. Here is an entirely different event, wherein my Miss Kathie is being awarded an honorary degree from Wasser College . On the same stage used earlier, in act one, scene nine, a distinguished man wears a tuxedo, standing at a microphone. The shot begins with the same swish pan as before, gradually slowing to a crane shot moving between the tables circled by seated guests.
    Used a second time, the effect will feel a touch clichéd, thus suggesting the tedium of even Miss Kathie’s seemingly glamorous life. How even lofty accolades become tiresome. Again, the upstage wall is filled with a shifting montage of vast black-and-white film clips which show my Miss Kathie as Mrs. Caesar Augustus , as Mrs. Napoleon Bonaparte , as Mrs. Alexander the Great . All the greatest roles of her illustrious career. Even this tribute montage is identical to the montage used in the previous scene, and as the same close-ups occur, her movie-star face begins to register as something abstract, no longer a person or even a human being, becoming a sort of trademark or logo. Symbolic and mythic as the full moon.
    Speaking at the microphone, the master of ceremonies says, “Although she left school in the sixth grade, Katherine Kenton has earned a master’s degree in life.…” Turning his head to one side, the speaker looks off stage right, saying, “She is a full tenured professor who has taught audiences worldwide about love and perseverance and faith.…”
    In an eye-line match, we reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing, hidden among the shadows in the stage-right wing. She stands frozen as a statue, shimmering in a beaded gown while I apply touches of powder to her neck, her décolletage, the point of her chin. At my feet, around me sit the bags and totes and vacuum bottles that all contribute to creating this moment. The hairpieces and makeup and prescription drugs.
    When
Photoplay
published the six-page pictorial showing Miss Kathie’s town house interior it was my hands that folded the sharp hospital corners on every bed. True, the photographs depicted Miss Kathie with an apron tied around her waist, kneeling to scrub the kitchen floor, but only afterI’d cleaned and waxed that tile. My hands create her eyes and cheekbones. I pluck and pencil her famous eyebrows. What you see is collaboration. Only when we’re combined, together, do Miss Kathie and I make one extraordinary person. Her body and my vision.
    “As a teacher,” says the master of ceremonies, “Katherine Kenton has reached innumerable pupils with her lessons of patience and hard work.…”
    Within this tedious monologue, we dissolve to flashback: a recent sunny day in the park. As in the earlier, soft-focus murder fantasy, Miss Kathie and Webster Carlton Westward III stroll hand in hand toward the zoo. In a medium shot, we see Miss Kathie and Webb step to the rail which surrounds a pit full of pacing grizzly bears. Miss Kathie’s hands grip the metal rail so tightly the knuckles glow white, her face frozen so near the bears, only a vein, surfacing beneath the skin of her neck, pulses and squirms to betray her terror. We hear the ambient noise of children singing. We hear lions and tigers roar. Hyenas laugh. Some jungle bird or howler monkey declares its existence, screeching a maniac’s gibberish. Our entire world, always doing battle against the silence and obscurity of death.
    Chirp, squawk, bray
… George Gobel .
    Moo, meow, oink …
Harold Lloyd .
    Instead of