Tell-All

made him marry me.…”
    The would-be assassin has now become her full-time, live-in love slave.
    The bright-brown-eyed wonder will do her bidding, collect her dry cleaning, chauffeur her, scour her bathroom, run errands, wash her dishes, massage her feet and provide any specific oral-genital pleasure Miss Kathie deems necessary, until death do they part. And even then, it had best not be her death or the Webster will likely find himself arrested.
    “But just to be on the safe side …” she says, and reaches to retrieve something off the stone shelf. From among the abandoned pill bottles and outdated cosmetics and contraceptives, Miss Kathie’s hand closes around something she carries back to her fur coat pocket. She says, “Just in case …” and slips this new item, tinted red with rust, blue with oil, into her coat pocket.
    It’s a revolver.

ACT III, SCENE FOUR
    Here we dissolve into yet another flashback. Let’s see the casting office at Monogram Pictures or Selig studios along Gower Street , what everyone called “Poverty Row,” or maybe the old Central Casting offices on Sunset Boulevard , where a crowd of would-be actresses mill about all day with their fingers crossed. These, the prettiest girls from across the world, voted Miss Sweet Corn Queen and Cherry Blossom Princess . A former reigning Winter Carnival Angel , a Miss Bountiful Sea Harvest . A pantheon of mythic goddesses made flesh and blood. Miss Best Jitterbug . A beauty migration, all of them vying for greater fame and glory. Among them, a couple of the girls draw your focus. One girl, her eyes are set too close together, her nose dwarfs her chin, her head rests squarely on her chest without any hint of an intervening neck.
    The second young woman, waiting in the casting office,cooling her heels … her eyes are the brightest amethyst purple. An almost supernatural violet.
    In this flashback, we watch the ugly young woman, the plain woman, as she watches the lovely woman. The monstrous young woman, shoulders slumped, hands hanging all raw knuckled and gnawed fingernails, she spies on the young woman with the violet eyes. More important, the ugly woman watches the way in which the other people watch the lovely woman. The other actors seem stunned by those violet eyes. When the pretty one smiles, everyone watching her also smiles. Within moments of first seeing her, other people stand taller, pulling their bellies back to their spines. These queens and ladies and angels, their hands cease fidgeting. They adopt her same shoulders-back posture. Even their breathing slows to match that of the lovely girl. Upon seeing her, every woman seems to become a lesser version of this astonishing girl with violet eyes.
    In this flashback, the ugly girl has almost given up hope. She’s studied her craft with Constance Collier and Guthrie McClintic and Margaret Webster , yet she still can’t find work. The homely girl does possess an innate, shrewd cunning; none of her gestures is ever without intention and motivation. In her underplaying, the ugly girl displays nothing short of brilliance. Even as she watches those present unconsciously mimic the lovely girl, the ugly one considers a plan. As a possible alternative to becoming an actress herself, perhaps the better strategy would be to join forces—combining her own skill and intelligence with the other girl’s beauty. Between the two of them, they might yield one immortal motion picture star.
    The homely girl might coach the pretty one, steer her into the best parts, protect her from dangerous shoals andentanglements of business and romance. The beastly girl can boast of no prominent cheekbones or Cupid’s-bow mouth; still, such a bland face nurtures a nimble mind.
    In contrast, beauty which evokes special favors and opens doors, such astounding eyes can cripple the brain behind them.
    Counting backward, before the Webster was Paco, before him the senator. Before him the faggot chorus boy. Before that came the suicidal business tycoon, but even he wasn’t her first husband. The first “was-band” was her high school sweetheart—Allan …
somebody
—some nobody. Her second was the sleazy photographer who snapped her picture and took it to a casting director; good riddance to him. Her third husband was an aspiring actor who’s now selling real estate. None of those first three posed a threat.
    While my position was never that of husband or spouse or partner, I was always far more