Tell-All

finally to be found dead sitting astride a rented toilet.
    Hers would not be a slow, grinding death or a sad fading away. No, the legend of Katherine Kenton required an epic, romantic grand finale. Something drenched in glory and pathos. Now she would never be forgotten. I’ve given her that.
    A dramatic exit—after a suitable third act.
    I raise my glass and say, “Gesundheit.” I drink a toast and pour another.
    Please let me remove all doubt that Webster Carlton Westward III adored her. It was obvious the first time their eyes met down the length of that long-ago dinner party. He never wrote a word of Love Slave , despite how each draft was found in his luggage. No, all of those chapters were my doing, typed and tucked beneath his shirts, where I felt certain Miss Kathie would discover them. A woman torn between love and fear, it would be only a matter of time before she delivered a sealed copy to her lawyer or agent, where it would later implicate the Webster.
    Forgive me for boasting, but mine was a perfect frame-up.
    We intercut here with a tableau which the police discovered: Miss Kathie shot to death by a gun still gripped in the Webster’s hand. It would appear that the pair slaughtered each other amid the candles and flowers of her boudoir. Theresult of a failed robbery attempt. Near her lies the corpse of Mr. Bright Brown Eyes wearing a black ski mask and shot by Miss Kathie’s old gun, the rusted gun she’d retrieved from the crypt. Clutched in his hand, a pillowcase spills out pilfered praise, gold-plated, silver-plated trophies and awards. The symbolic keys to Midwestern cities. Honorary college degrees awarded to her for learning nothing.
    If it is the case that love does survive death, then you may consider this to be a happy ending. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Happily ever after or not.
    In a Samuel Goldwyn touch, ham-handed as that final shot in his
Wuthering Heights
, we might include a quick flashback here. Just a quick reveal to show me shooting both the lovebirds in their bedroom, then staging the scene to suggest the burglary described in Love Slave . The surprise ending: that my role is not so much best friend or maid as villain. Hazie Coogan played the role of murderess. Perhaps in that last instant, Miss Kathie’s violet eyes will register the full realization that she’s been duped all along.
    Slowly, we dissolve back to the Kenton crypt.… With the mirror propped in its customary place, positioned just so, I step to the lipstick X marked on the stone floor and superimpose my own face over the true face of my Miss Kathie. The lifetime of her scars and wrinkles, every distortion and defect she ever suffered, it’s my own burden for the moment. The mirror itself sags with its collection of so many scratched insults. Every single one of Miss Kathie’s faults and secrets.
    The fur coat I’m wearing, it’s her fur coat. My black veil, her veil. I reach into the slit of one pocket and retrieve the Harry Winston diamond ring. Kissing the ring, where it sits in the palm of my hand, I blow on it the way you would a kiss, and tumbling, thrown and flashing a low arc across thecrypt, the diamond shatters the flawed reflection. What was an actual life story collapses into countless sparkling, glittering fragments. That single perfect image exploded into so many contradicting perspectives. The priceless diamond itself lost in this heap of so many worthless, dazzling glass shards.
    Katherine Kenton will live for all time, preserved in the public mind, as permanent and lasting as silver-screen legends Earl Oxford and House Peters . Immortal as Trixie Friganza . Her face will be as familiar to future generations as the luminous, landmark face of Tully Marshall . Miss Kathie will continue to be worshiped, the way applauding audiences will forever worship Roy D’Arcy, Brooks Benedict and Eulalie Jensen .
    From the shattered mirror, any true record of my Miss Kathie reduced to glittering slivers, from this the camera swings to focus on the newest urn. Coming closer and closer, we read the name engraved into the metal: Katherine Ellen Kenton .
    To this I raise my glass.

ACT III, SCENE EIGHT
    Act three, scene eight opens with Lillian Hellman throwing herself across the plush boudoir of Katherine Kenton , rocketing through the room and landing with her full weight upon the gun hand of a masked Webster Carlton Westward III . Lilly and the Webb struggle, throwing themselves about the bedroom,