“When it comes to leisure reading, I prefer the
James Bond novels of Ian Fleming.”
—John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1962
Miami had always been a contradiction in terms, a point noted by Pedro Menendez de Aviles when he first discovered the area, claiming it for Spain in 1566. How could a single stretch of land alter so drastically, from mellow Biscayne Bay just off the east coast to the treacherous Everglade swamplands near the western border? By the mid-20th century, even the architecture featured not one style but two: ancient stone buildings dating back nearly 400 years in tandem with steel-and-glass needles stretching upward as if longing to touch the clouds.
Such a contrast held true for the population: half Anglo, half Cuban, this mix salted by Tequesta Indians, peppered with African-Americans, spiced too by assorted people of color.
To the city’s immediate east, separated from Miami proper by the Bay and from there edging toward the Atlantic, sat the community of Miami Beach. Incorporated and independent, here was a demi-monde with its own unique appearance, people, and values.
Structured over a set of strangely shaped barrier islands, some natural, others man-made, there one discovered a smaller world within the self-contained universe of Miami. Most unique among its neighborhoods: South Beach (SoBo as locals called it).
This area overwhelmed Lee with its odd, appealing buildings, described by the ever-knowing George as Art Deco: a throwback to the late 1920s and early thirties. The New Yorker Hotel, where Lee stayed (courtesy of the U.S. government) during those heady five days in early April, 1961, captured the spirit of this playground for adults. The building's extended horizon gradually curved so as to give the impression of a large land-bound leisure-boat of the type Cole Porter envisioned for his long-ago musical Anything Goes.
Of course, Lee had never seen the lavish show performed onstage. As a boy he had watched the movie on TV, imagining himself transported to such an alternative domain in which men wore tuxedoes, women elegant gowns; everyone was beautiful, the surroundings lavish. Always soft jazz played in the background.
I did it. I made it. I’m here! At this moment, I’m living inside a Hollywood film ... Three days ago I ate garbage in a filthy Cuban prison cell. Last night I dined on lobster ...
Hot chicks were twisting on the corner of 79th Street as Lee roared by in Johnny Handsome’s Corvette, The Muse seated in-between them. They were off for a drive as Johnny and his young beauty, who appeared as if out of nowhere, informed Lee. He detected a European accent when the young woman spoke, likely from Germany. He couldn’t be sure. She said little as they drove west from Miami, as if this ’muse’ were a beauty object, not some real person with a history, feelings and ideas all her own.
It’s as if I’m living out a scene from some fantasy ...
The trio enjoyed their quick passing glance at the girls, none over the age of seventeen, breaking into the latest dance craze, The Hully-Gully. These real-life Lolitas wore bathing suits so brief that, had they dare appear in public so flimsily attired two years earlier, the authorities would have had them arrested.
That was then; this, now. The Eisenhower era, dominated by such solidly old-fashioned icons as I Love Lucy and the Davy Crockett Craze, had given way to the Kennedy Years: a jet-set sensibility that incorporated something called The Sexual Revolution.
Motored by everything from the advent of The Pill, which freed casual sex from the stigma of unwanted pregnancy, to Playboy, around since 1954, suddenly part of the mainstream.
*
The political scene had altered, too. Cuban exiles living in Florida, for the past year busying themselves with handing out anti-Castro literature, had turned militant. Lee could detect that in their eyes and body language as the Corvette cruised down Biscayne Boulevard. All along the main drag he observed a striking contrast. For each street corner peopled with giddy, wild, oblivious kids arriving from all over the country for their annual spring break, on the next there would be a plank table, manned by refugees from the revolution.
Angry, intense, ever more open and aggressive, the Cubans and a smaller coterie of Anglo supporters wanted to share with passersby what they considered the absolute need for America to join them in opposition to that bearded tyrant, Castro. As Johnny pulled to a halt at a stop-light, Lee heard the talk between pamphleteers and the locals and tourists who happened by. What had once been a carefully kept secret could now be spoken of openly: an armed invasion of their homeland.
"Shortly a secret brigade, ‘Freedom Forever!,’ will launch an attack,” one man insisted to Lee, leaning close to Johnny’s sleek Corvette, before the light changed and they drove off.
The trio zipped onto the highway. Everything struck Lee as clean, fresh; palm trees, soft green at the top, dark brown on the base, swaying slightly in the mid-morning breeze.
It doesn’t get any better than this! If they could see me now ...
*
The city now behind them, Johnny explained to Lee and The Muse what George and Dick Tracy had told him: there had until recently been more than fifty organizations, each with a small membership, between five to twenty volunteers tops. That old adage—too many chefs, too few cooks—applied. Not only did the groups fail to unite; some expressed hostility toward others.
To George’s disappointment, the leaders mostly turned out to be egomaniacs, jealously viewing counterparts as competitors. Angry statements from any one patriotic group were more often directed at neighbors than Castro.
Clearly, they could never get together to achieve something of value until a single leader emerged. Representing the CIA, George initially assumed that role. He knew, though, that only a fellow Cuban, one with much charisma, could fill the bill.
Meanwhile, George had ordered an ongoing series of B-26 raids, kept secret from the American public, assigned to drop bombs over Cuba. Once, for kicks, The Muse flew alongside the pilot, she dazzled by the yellow, orange, red explosions below.
“How beautiful it looked, Lee. Like fireworks—”
“But people on the ground ... were killed?”
“Hmmm? Oh, yes. Of course.”
When Castro screeched over Havana’s radio network that such illegal, immoral actions were taking place, and that some of his citizens died, the U.S. government denied any involvement.
Who would people in the heartlands believe: JFK’s Secretary of State, or the ugly, swarthy bearded giant down south? They believed their movie-star handsome president to be a hero. Cliff Robertson even now prepared to play JFK in a film.
It’s as if we’re all at once living in a movie. Let’s call this film The Sixties. A Beach Party flick. Beautiful girls in bikinis, twisting away their afternoons. Political activists, readying for a Crusade in Cuba. Our gorgeous leader in his American Camelot with that perfect queen-like wife beside him.
The bearded, unclean enemy, whom most Americans hoped would drop dead, howling somewhere to the south.
We, the good guys; about to wipe out the bad guy. Then “the End” appears over a screen as we live happily ever after.
But that’s only in The Movies. Life isn’t like that. JFK can’t be as perfect as everybody wants to believe. Nor can Fidel Castro be the simplistic villain he’s made out to be.
This is real-life. Complex, not simple. Which means sooner or later, the shit must hit the fan. It’s only a matter of time.
*
Without warning, the highway ended. They passed onto an old road. That in time gave way to a dirt and pebble path. No others were traveling in this direction today. Lee recalled the back-roads George once drove him down. Now, in a different part of the country; yet everything looked the same as it did then.
The Everglades! We’re approaching the swamps. But why head here? Not exactly right for a spring afternoon picnic, what with all the snakes and other beasts crawling about ...
As they proceeded along a barely visible trail through foliage so thick it appeared black rather than green in the increasing brightness of an early-afternoon sun, Lee spotted a guard station ahead. Manning the small outpost, three scruffy fellows, each brandishing a large pistol in a holster by his side, lolled about chatting until the Corvette cruised up.
“Hello, Le Muse,” the trio’s leader called out.
“Buenos dias,” she answered with a Cheshire cat smile.
“I hoped to show my companion here the outpost.”
“Any amigo of yours, Johnny,” the man responded with a pleasant smile, “is our friend as well.”
This man in charge nodded to one of the guards. He pushed a button, bringing the metallic gate up so that the car might pass into the compound. On Lee’s passenger side, a long stretch of barbed wire, naturally camouflaged by the twisted overgrowth, could barely be detected. Deeper inside the hidden camp, Lee spotted several groups of young Cubans, all in para-military fatigues, training under similarly attired Anglos.
Johnny swerved his car off the trail, up onto the gravel, so they could watch experts instructing Cubans in martial arts, the handling of heavy and light weapons, and a guerilla tactic in which scouts slipped up behind an enemy, shadow-like.
“Hello,” one instructor, his face shrouded by the brim of a fatigue hat pulled low, called out. At once, Lee recognized the voice: George! He allowed his trainees a ten minute break and sauntered over, pulling away his cap to reveal the face of Lee’s CIA mentor. “Welcome to Operation Vaquero.”
Vaquero? Lee thought. Isn’t that Spanish for cowboy?
“I might have known you’d be in charge here.”
“Actually, I’m only assisting. I found a Cuban national to handle that job. That’s why you’re here: to meet him.”
Lee gradually put the pieces together. This had to do with the upcoming D-Day he’d heard Dick Tracy mention during the flight to Cuba. Apparently, now that they were back—mission not accomplished—no longer did the brass have to fear Lee breaking down and talking under torture.
“That’ll be my pleasure,” Lee said.
Johnny pulled the car back onto the muddy dirt road and continued on past flat fields. Lee assumed these to be take-off and landing points for airborne arrivals and departures. Most intriguing: the Company made no serious attempt to conceal this place from the public. Yet few if any in the nearby city knew of its existence. Nor, apparently, did they care. If the media were aware, few reporters felt any compunction to report on it. The attitude trickled down from the government: ignore everything.
Seeing was believing. People believed what they read in the papers and watched on TV. There, they perceived none of this.
Ignorance was bliss. Until something unexpectedly went awry.
True, the New York Times had printed probing editorial pieces, insisting those in authority in D.C. should be called on to explain what was taking place. That small percentage of the public labeled the intelligentsia, which read this paper, mostly agreed. The other ninety-percent of Americans were happy to remain blissfully ignorant as to pretty much everything.
Their attitude? What we don’t know can’t hurt us. Those in charge know what’s best. Anything they do is for our benefit.
The mainstream press in those pre-Watergate days? Their job was to rubber-stamp anything the government said, pass it on to readers and listeners, mostly without comment. Already, the newspapers and TV networks were doing precisely that as to yet another theatre of war then developing: Vietnam; southeast Asia.
And, for the time being at least, the majority of Americans believed whatever they were told. As Lee’s mother liked to say: If it weren’t true, they couldn’t put it on TV.
At the compound’s main building, an ebullient Cuban came darting out to greet the trio and shake Lee’s hand.
“Meet Manuel Artime Buesa,” Muse said. “George’s hand-picked choice for this all-important task.”
“Oh? This one actually has a full name?” Lee asked, the other Cubans at the guard post having remained anonymous.
Buesa laughed heartily. “We all do, amigo. But it would prove difficult for me to try and keep mine secret. You see, I am Miami’s secretary general for the MRR.”
Lee knew that to be the abbreviation for Movimiento de Recuperacion Revolucionario, an umbrella title for all those splinter groups that manned the Biscayne recruitment tables; originally united by George, now fully overseen by Buesa.
*
“How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?” billboard advertisements and media commercials for the first controversial film of the new decade asked. There was Sue Lyon, the unknown child-woman picked to embody onscreen the perfect nymphette in red plastic heart-shaped glasses, sucking provocatively on her drink from a straw. Based on a much-banned book that had been subject of heated discussion during the previous decade, Lolita had been considered unfilmable then. No self-respecting L.A. producer was willing to consider such an explosive property.
Now? This was The Sixties. Things change ...
Johnny had received a pair of passes to a preview of Lolita and swung by The New Yorker to pick up Lee. In the Corvette, which caught the eyes of every female the two men passed, they headed downtown, arriving early to be sure to secure seats.
Lee, who had read the book, swept up by its artistic sensuality, wondered how close this commercial project dared approximate the power of Vladimir Nabokov’s prose-poetry. The work analyzed an older man’s fascination with an underage female.
James Mason, as Humbert, takes one of Sue Lyon’s adorable little feet, gently holding her steady with his left hand while applying nail polish to the other. What a marvelous way for a filmmaker to suggest the man’s obsession that Nabokov relayed in words ... That’s how they made a movie out of ‘Lolita!‘
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Johnny said as they exited.
“I’m almost afraid to ask ‘what’?”
“How would you like to meet ... ‘Lolita’?”
Lee stopped in his tracks. “The actress is in town?”
“Not her. Something even better. The real Lolita.”
*
“Absolutely true,” the beautiful twenty-year-old blonde, wearing the satin gown in which she’d performed as headline singer at one of Havana’s night spots, explained after exhaling a mouthful of cigarette smoke. “I was supposed to play Lolita!”
“What went wrong?” Lee asked, sitting opposite the slender beauty at a prime table while Johnny made the rounds.
“The whole idea was, Errol would play ‘Humbert Hubert’, and I’d be Lolita. Reflecting, of course, our actual relationship.”
Johnny says she started sleeping with Errol Flynn in 1958. That would make her fifteen at the time. Lolita’s age, in the film. I gotta admit, she does look the part.
“Incredible. So?”
“Just before shooting was about to start, the law came down on us.” She paused for a long swig of her double-Scotch. “Errol was charged with statutory rape with me being so young. His mug was on the cover of every tabloid in the country. No major Hollywood company wanted anything to do with him after that.”
“But even if they dropped him, why didn’t you—”
“A package-deal. Without him, I was persona-non-grata.”
“Such a shame! How amazing it would’ve been for people to see a real Lolita and the real Humbert together onscreen.”
“Well, actually, they can. I mean, we did make a movie, if not so big a one.” Surprised, Lee asked her to explain. As an inveterate movie buff, he could hardly believe a film had been shot with such a major star that he’d never heard about, much less caught. “It’s called Cuban Rebel Girls. Shot on location!”
“Must’ve been only a short while before Mr. Flynn died of that heart attack up in Canada.”
“Bullshit! Errol didn’t drop dead. He was murdered by the Mob. My guess is, your pal Johnny over there likely did it!”
“Please continue,” Lee begged. “I’m all ears ...”
*
The Tasmanian-born, Australian-raised devil-may-care star had always been a closet lefty. Following the war, his Warner Bros. contract finally exhausted, Flynn became an independent producer. For fifteen years he labored, trying to get a film made about William Tell, the great peasant-rebel from Swiss history. Flynn would have starred in the screen-play he co-authorized concerning the overthrow of a tyrant, Gessler. In the film, this would directly parallel current Latin American rebellions against corrupt dictators.
When Castro, whom Errol adored, appeared likely to succeed, this inspired Flynn all the more to create his movie-metaphor. He hoped his film would win over the American people, terrified of communists, to see the Cuban situation in a positive light.
During that final year of planning, Beverly Aadland was to have been the female lead. Then, funding dried up in the light of the Errol Flynn/Bev Aadland scandal.
“Incredible! I’d heard that Flynn was a right-winger, even attracted to Hitler during the late 1930s.”
Bev roared at that. “No one in Hollywood hated the Nazis more than Errol. He never made a big deal about it because he believed stars should keep their politics to themselves, when speaking in public if not as to what they might slip into any film. Go back and watch Robin Hood from 1936: it’s no accident that the peasants carry hammers and cycles into Sherwood.”
Of course! That was purposeful. I never realized it until now but, they do just that. Robin Hood as Red propaganda!
“So one day, Errol got invited to the White House for a special secretive meeting with F.D.R. The German bund was just then forming. The president asked Errol, owing to his Aryan appearance, to join. You can’t imagine how many American lives were saved by information Errol picked up as a secret agent.”
“He did that, knowing he might later be considered a Nazi?”
“Errol believed the good of the country was more important than any man’s reputation. Even his own.”
Just like me! Defecting to Russia, as George requested.
Acknowledging in late 1958 that the big William Tell epic was never going to happen, Flynn—now nearing fifty, looking decades older owing to years of wine, women and song—decided to use whatever box-office clout he might have left to realize his dream movie, a cinematic tribute to Castro, if on a considerably less spectacular scale. What mattered most, he believed, was the message: To paraphrase FDR we had nothing to fear from communist Cuba but fear itself. Fear would drive them into the enemy camp as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One night, while lying in bed with Bev after sex, his mind already off and wandering in search of a first tentative step, it dawned on Flynn: Why not go down there, improvise a movie on location? Perhaps even convince Castro to play himself! Such a trip would cost money. Lots of money. Once wealthy, Flynn didn’t have any, his fortune squandered on what he referred to as ‘my wicked, wicked ways.’ Then he admitted to Bev that in his secret life Errol Flynn had always wanted to be a journalist. She gazed on as his eyes, red and blurry, lit up as a scheme hatched.
Right-wing newspaper magnate William R. Hearst, unaware of Flynn’s fellow traveler sensibilities, worshipped the star. The publisher, an extreme right-winger, had like many others heard of Flynn’s pre-WWII era “legend” as an ardent Nazi sympathizer, Hearst secretly supporting Hitler in the days before the America entered the war.
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
Indeed he was. Flynn called Hearst. Could they meet in the publisher’s office to discuss a unique project? In a half-hour session, Flynn convinced Hearst, in those days leading up to the New Year’s Day takeover of Havana, to send him down as a reporter. Flynn promised to glorify Batista at Castro’s expense while planning to do precisely the opposite.
Delighted at the prospect, Hearst tipped the CIA off. Aware of the star’s previous Secret Service work, the Company approached Flynn with the idea of assassinating Castro during an interview. They too were unaware of Flynn’s far-left leanings.
Devilishly delighted at how things were progressing, Flynn gladly agreed. He even went through several weeks of special training, planning to instead kill Batista, who would surely invite the Hollywood star to dinner upon arrival.
The CIA meanwhile put Flynn in touch with The Mob, already fearful of what would happen should Castro pull off his coup. Knowing the amount of money that the Made Men possessed, and that some, like Johnny Handsome, had once been involved in the movie business, Flynn came up with a far more bizarre concept, one that would realize his secret cinematic project: Talk the Mafiosos into financing a B-budget anti-Castro film while preparing to kill Fidel for the CIA. The idea flew.
Amazed at how beautifully all the pieces were falling into place, Flynn accepted the deal, writing a script that would instead glorify Fidel. He and Bev left for Cuba and, shooting on a shoestring, did precisely that.
*
Lee finally caught the flick about a year and a half later as the third feature on a triple bill at a Texas Drive In. He was with Marina and their daughter June, seated in an old jalopy, never mentioning that he’d met the female lead. So far as anyone could see, they were one more white trash family, out for the night.
Bev played Bev Woods, a typical American teenager who can’t grasp why her boyfriend would ditch her to run off and join the Cuban revolution. She follows and, shortly after arrival, meets a Vodka-guzzling American movie-star-turned-war correspondent, Flynn as Flynn in a script written by Flynn, he starring in a project produced by Flynn. The old rogue raises the nymph’s political consciousness as together the two trek off into the hills. She strips down to short-shorts, whacking away at jungle foliage and fascistic forces with a machete.
Flynn planned to end his story with a fictional projection of he, Bev, and Castro making ready for the invasion of Havana. Then he would rush home, edit the film, and release it so the American public might see the event before it could occur.
Instead, the New Year’s Eve attack took place while Flynn and Bev were still shooting. Improvising, Flynn filmed Castro’s motorcade entering Havana, Bev sitting up on a tank, waving a red victory banner. Bev playing Bev while, adjacent to her, Fidel embodied himself, fact and fiction mingling, blurring, coming together as never before on celluloid.
The image cut away to Flynn, happily glancing down from his hotel room window. In a voice-over, he explains:
Well, I guess that winds up another stage in the fight to rid Latin America of tyrants and dictators. The spirit started by this wonderful band of rebels is speedy and growing stronger every day. And all you young men and women fighting for political freedom, your beliefs?
I wish you good luck!
Shortly after returning home, having tried but failed on several occasions to shoot Batista, carrying several cans of film under each arm, Flynn was dead.
He and Bev had on October 9, 1959 flown to Vancouver where Errol hoped to lease his much loved yacht, the Zaca, on which he had spent so many happy days with his underage mistress. Now he desperately needed money so that he and Bev could continue to lead ‘the sweet life’: that emergent 1960s fast-lane style.
On October 14, the two attended a party at the West End apartment of Dr. Grant Gould. Errol knocked down drink after drink. Shouting “I shall return!” an unbalanced Flynn waved bye-bye and stepped into the adjoining bedroom to crash.
After an hour or so, Bev—who had spent that sixty minutes conversing with an Adonis-like suited Latin named Johnny—began to worry. She excused herself, rose, and headed into the bedroom to check on her lover.
Flynn’s face, red as a beet, stared up at her from the bed, his wide-open eyes utterly devoid of life.
“Oh, my God,” she wailed. “Johnny, I think he’s dead!”
Johnny, who had followed Bev, leaned over Flynn’s body to check. “Yep,” he said, cradling Bev under his arm. “Errol is with the angels now. Or, heaven forbid, down below.”
That struck her as a strange comment. Still, Bev needed to be held that night. She went home with Johnny, who made love to her almost as fiercely as her legendary paramour had often done.
Shortly, all known prints of Cuban Rebel Girls disappeared. Until one eventually surfaced at a rural Texas Drive-In.
*
“Hey,” Johnny suavely said, swinging back to the table where Bev held court, Lee gazing at her adoringly. “Shall we go back to my place and pick up where we left off in Vancouver?”
The heartbreaking blonde considered Rosselli long and hard. “No,” she finally quipped, rising. “I think I’ll go home with Lee. Thank you anyway, though, for a lovely evening.”
The following morning, after Lee and Bev shared coffee together on his balcony, she prepared to leave.
“One last question. You said early in the evening that you believe Errol was ... murdered?”
“I don’t believe. I know! Look, Lee, he took Mob money to make a movie they believed would work to their benefit. Then he went and shot precisely the opposite.”
“They’d actually kill a guy for making a pro-Castro movie?”
“Never in a million years. Live and let live. So long as someone does something on his own, that’s his business. This was different. He lied to them. Took their dough and then betrayed their trust. It wasn’t the movie so much ... as ...”
“I get your drift.”
“Do you? Then always keep this in mind, particularly if you’re going to hang out with Johnny Rosselli, whom I now hold responsible for the poisoning of Errol’s drink. I never would have gone to bed with him that night if I’d had any inkling—“
“As you were saying?”
“Oh, right. Listen to me, Lee, and listen good. You don’t want to play ball with the Mob, you don’t have to. That’s up to you. On the other hand, don’t ever fuck ‘em over.”
“I hear you.”
“Good! Because no one can get away that. Understand? And when I say no one, I mean no one!”
*
When Johnny swung by to pick Lee up the next evening, the Mafioso found his unlikely pal reading yet another James Bond paperback. Unconsciously, Lee crammed it into his jacket pocket and they took off. Lee felt a little nervous there might be some friction with Bev choosing him the previous night. Rosselli laughed at the idea. He’d spent the night with the Muse, and few women could compare to her. Matter of fact—hey, this is quite a coincidence!—her CIA codename used to be Lolita.
“Okay. So where we headed for tonight?”
“Guess you could call it a party. More like what the kids these days call ‘a happening.’ Pretty cool. You’ll see.”
They cruised down The Strip, that stretch of high-rent property where enormous hotels and glitzy bars awaited the arriving upscale visitors. At least those who hadn‘t yet abandoned Miami for Vegas, where gambling, the final necessary ingredient in such an adult entertainment mix, was legal.
Feeling like a million bucks, Lee observed in passing ‘The Big Five,’ as the prime resorts were known: The Americana, Carrillon, Deauville, Eden Rock, and Fountainbleau. Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Sammy Davis all put in regular appearances. Johnny pointed out another attraction: a houseboat docked at the canal. This was used for all the exterior shots on Warner Bros.’ TV series Surfside Six. Twice a year, sandy-haired youth-idol Troy Donahue would show up and film here for two weeks.
As to what transpired next? When Lee thought back on it later he could not tell what had actually happened and how much must be relegated to a fantasy concocted by his brain. They arrived at one of The Big Five. As an attendant parked Johnny’s car the two were ushered by a pair of beautiful women in elegant satin sheaths into a large, crowded private hall.
Before he knew what was happening, Lee had been handed a drink. He sipped it. A double-scotch, of the highest quality. As soon as the glass’ level had diminished, yet another gorgeous hostess appeared, refilling his glass.
Within minutes Lee felt under the influence. Johnny stood beside him, for the moment. The crowd grew ever thicker.
“How do you like it?” the man Lee was supposed to address as ‘James Stewart’ while in the Sunshine State asked.
“Excellent Scotch.”
Johnny laughed. “I meant the L.S.D. it’s spiked with.”
Now Lee understood why his head felt as if screwed on backwards. He’d read about the experimental drug known to alter and intensify one’s perceptions. The room appeared to whirl around him, though a strobe up above in the semi-darkness, projecting harsh rays of white light onto each of the partygoers, added to that effect.
Lee’s rational mind told him to stop drinking. But there was nothing at all rational about the situation he found himself in: a phantasmagoria of lights and shadows, time and space now dissolving; everyone before him moving, as if in a film, in slow-motion one moment, terribly speeded up the next.
Any final sense of reality dissipated when Lee stumbled into ... himself. For a second, he thought he was about to walk into a mirror and, perhaps Alice-like, pass into a Wonderland.
There was no mirror. The image facing Lee, a man with his face, sported a different jacket. Unlike lee, he wore no tie.
“Hi, guy. What d‘ya know?” Lee’s twin joked.
Lee couldn’t speak, partly out of the shock of confronting his double, also as he’d momentarily lost the ability to do so. His tongue felt frozen, yet dry.
“The sneer was the most difficult part to master,” the twin explained. “Took me many hours of practice to perfect that.” He broke out in the snide, cynical grin Lee had developed as his shield against the world. “You have quite a surprise waiting when you get back, Lee Harvey Oswald,” the twin continued.
Before Lee could respond, another voice pierced the lights and colors from behind them. “Which of you is which?”
Lee turned and found himself face to face with Robert Kennedy, the president’s younger brother and Attorney General of the United States. Or did he? Was this real or only imagined?
“I’m ... me,” Lee gasped. He tried to imagine how they three might appear to others: Robert Kennedy, with a Lee Harvey Oswald standing on either side. Then Lee recalled everyone else in the room must be as spaced-out as himself, hallucinating in Technicolor.
“Good to finally meet you in person, Lee. George has been telling me great things about your devoted service.”
One thing that couldn’t be denied: When all of this was over, Lee’s copy of From Russia With Love was nowhere to be found. Only a recollection of, during the time Lee spent with Robert Kennedy and the other Lee—seconds, minutes, hours—wanting more than anything to give the great man a present.
But here, in the crowded room, what could he offer ...
“Mr. Kennedy, I’ve heard that you and your brother love the 007 novels.” Lee pulled out the paperback, handing it to Bobby Kennedy. “Have you had a chance yet to read this one yet?”
“Yes, Lee, I have. Been recommending it to Jack, though he’s been too busy to get around to it. Maybe someday.”
Ecstatically, Lee responded: “Take my copy, sir. Please pass it on to the president.” Then Lee realized he also had a ball-point pen in the same pocket.
He drew it out and on the first page wrote:
To President John Fitzgerald Kennedy
From your greatest fan!
Lee Harvey Oswald
“Thank you,” Bobby graciously responded, sticking the book into his inner jacket pocket. “I’m flying back to D.C. tomorrow. Jack will have it later in the day.”
“Wow! From Lee to Jack, me to the president.”
Bobby nodded, then mentioned he had to be moving on, greet other guests. Before doing so, he shook hands with Lee, who later recalled this as the greatest single moment in his life.
If, that is, it ever actually happened.
*
“Hey, I see you finally met Bobby,” Johnny Rosselli said, joining them as Lee’s twin soon disappeared in the crowd.
“He and his brother are my heroes. Civil rights—”
“That’s all well and good.” A frown lined Johnny’s brow as a dark cloud passed over his face. “Let them do whatever they want for the niggers. They’d best not fuck with us.”
Lee mulled that over, recalling something on the radio or TV about Bobby possibly employing his office to finally go after organized crime in America.
Lee was on his fourth drink when a hush fell over the room. The strobe light whirled across to a stage on the far side. A woman stepped into view there. Apparently, someone played a record of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” the number Marilyn Monroe had sung in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Then there she was: Monroe, under the stultifying white light, wrapped from neck to toes in that hot pink dress she’d worn. The diamond tiara, clasped chokingly tight against her chin, with matching elbow bracelets; waving the jet-black fan that reflected the outfit’s dark borders. A white fur trim completed the illusion.
A Marilyn impersonator! And talk about a twin! This blonde looks as much like the real thing as my own double resembles me. She’s even lip-synching the words to the song with perfection.
The proverbial pin could have been heard dropping as the blonde went through the precise motions of choreography Lee and everyone else in the room had seen in the movie. It was as if that sequence now came to life in front of their eyes, a dream from Hollywood transcending into actuality ...
“She’s so beautiful,” Lee whispered to Johnny.
“I know,” Johnny grumbled, “but I’m worried for her.”
“Huh?” However swiftly the room had been whirring earlier, this latest drink caused Lee to feel as if he’d lost all touch with gravity, free-floating through an alternative universe.
“Too brazen about ‘doing’ Jack and Bobby. The girl’s a loose cannon. That’s dangerous. To her, unless she shuts up.”
Lee tried to take that in but nothing made sense anymore. Johnny was talking about the impersonator as if she were ...
The infamous number finally reached its climax. To ecstatic applause, The Blonde stepped down, into the crowd. Like Moses leading the way through the Red Sea, she parted the human waters as awestruck partygoers stepped aside, allowing the fantasy-come-to life to drift by, eyes half closed, her mouth smiling dazzlingly.
As she swept past Lee, it suddenly occurred to him that this might be the girl he had bedded during the Twinning. She had struck him as Marilyn-like. Could it be ... ?
“Honey?” he called out as she breezed by.
“My name’s Norma Jean,” she cooed over her shoulder, “but you can call me ‘Honey’ if you like.”
*
When Lee woke on the couch of his suite at the New Yorker, he had no idea what day it might be or how he had come to be there. The last thing he recalled was a sense of free-falling.
Lee had dropped into a strawberry-tinted, banana scented tunnel, sliding down, and further down, with the possibility that no end awaited him.
But that was not true. Only a nightmare. For here he was, waking to a new day, if a bit worse for wear.
Lee had to be certain, though, make sure he was the person he believed himself to be. He grabbed for his jacket, whisked out his wallet, flipped through his identification.
The passport made clear that he was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald. So that much seemed certain.
Moreover, the photograph next to it proved that his life had, up until this strange sojourn in mid-April, been what he believed it to be.
For there was Marina, the girl with the flashing eyes, waiting for him even now in Russia.
All at once, he could not wait to be with her again.