Eight

Then Troja’s life took over violently.

Normalyn had just returned to the house, still holding in her hand the mysterious telephone number and address she had written on a torn piece of paper, when Troja walked in.

Her pale yellow dress was slashed. Kirk held her trembling body. He said words to a new presence at the door: “I’ll kill you—”

Coldly blond, eyes like black stones, Duke stood there. “Tell him what happened,” he said to Troja.

“It wasn’t Duke, Kirk.” Troja rushed her words in panic. “It was someone else, waiting for me. Tore my beautiful dress with a knife—tore and tore.” She looked down in astonishment at the violated dress. She held a gashed portion of it in her hand. “Duke stopped him, Kirk—I swear it—and he drove me here!”

Normalyn had to look away from Troja, hurting for her, remembering another time.

“You find out who it was and I’ll cut him up,” Duke said.

Troja did not face Duke as Kirk continued to hold her.

“Lucky for you I hear everything,” Duke said. “How you been freelancin’ and shit. That’s real dangerous. Drove there to tell you that when I heard—and just in time, too.” His dark eyes bored on Kirk and Troja. “You need protection, babe. This just shows you how bad you need Duke.”

Normalyn longed to see Kirk advance on the man, smash the pale scruffy face. But he didn’t. And it was clear that the ugly skinny man was responsible, had planned to be there to stop the attack—a vicious warning. They just didn’t dare acknowledge that.

“I even got some good news for you both,” Duke said with a twisted smile for Kirk and Troja. “Got something for both of you again. No hurry on that.” He placed a paper by the blonde wig on the stand on the cleared table with the glorious photograph of Marilyn Monroe in the pose Troja had imitated. His eyes glided icily over Normalyn. He nodded. Then he smoothed the hair on the wig. “Too pretty not to wear it,” he said to Troja.

Troja shook her head, just slightly.

With mocking delicacy, Duke left Kirk a packet of cocaine on his bed.

“Troja—” That was all Normalyn could say.

2

That ugly incident was not possible! Normalyn sat up in her bed, wide awake. She heard no sounds. Dressing, she opened the door. Troja was still asleep. Yes, it all had occurred. There was the piece of paper near the wig. Kirk lay awake, his massive arms behind his head, looking up at nothing.

Determined not to connect with Duke, Troja went out on a few “leads”—real auditions. She would return exposing her dark moods to Normalyn, keeping them from Kirk. What had made her desirable as an entertainer, the black impersonation of Marilyn Monroe, was what she now refused to do since the sacrificial assault at the Hollywood Four Star. She did “perform” occasionally, as a “backup”—“for singers I can sing rings around,” she asserted. Normalyn suspected that she still went out on guarded “dates.” There was no absence of cocaine for Kirk.

Once Troja returned very tired, rubbing her feet as if she had been walking and standing for long. Normalyn did not allow herself to believe that she had again joined the women on the streets, increasing her dangers.

Kirk went on an interview once, to a bar in a wealthy beach community called Marina del Rey. While he was gone, Troja read aloud—twice, for Normalyn to congratulate—the advertisement Kirk had found in one of the entertainment-trade newspapers she bought daily: “Must be muscular and good-looking,” she read the job requirements, and added, “They could’ve put Kirk’s name on the ad, fits him so right.” But Kirk returned to inform that the job had “already gone”—to a “kid” he had once trained at Gold’s Gym.

Since that one day of revelation, Troja had not proposed another drive. She seemed to want only to protect Kirk. So Normalyn would walk or ride the bus throughout the city of complicated wonders, tired and luxurious streets, broken and lofty buildings—and flowers everywhere. As spring aged, her joy at seeing the frail, now fading jacarandas was tainted by sadness.

Normalyn thought constantly of David Lange. She always carried with her his telephone number and his address. Whenever she passed the telephone at the gas station, she paused. It still surprised her to remember that she had made that first call.

Sometimes Normalyn would apply slightly heavier makeup. She had bought her own, with Troja’s suggestions on “the best.” She would see in the mirror, always fleetingly, “that someone else” she had seen before. Once she reached the front door on her way out before she returned to wipe away the extra makeup.

At times, aware of someone looking at her with interest, she would allow herself a momentary pleasure before the feeling of being set up for ridicule conquered. Once at the corner, a good-looking youngman filling the gas tank of his car started a conversation with her. Normalyn was definitely attracted, too. As soon as she became aware of that, she rushed away. Still, she hardly ever put on her glasses. She knew now she had never needed them, as Enid had insisted.

When Troja’s telephone would ring, Normalyn might wonder now and then whether it would be Ted Gonzales. She was not sure whether that would gladden her or anger her.

“We are becoming one strange family,” Troja observed once as they sat watching a silly mystery called The Thin Man. The detective was a pitiful alcoholic and everyone in the movie thought that was hilarious. Normalyn remembered Enid’s pain-etched face—and remembered it now with such sorrow that she decided to escape the memory and the movie by taking a short walk.

She passed the telephone booth. She took out the slip of paper. She dialed David Lange’s private number. She knew she would hang up once she asserted what she now thought she had only imagined: that his voice had been concerned, gentle. When there was no answer, it became imperative that she reach him! She dialed again, demanding the telephone connect her. She focused sudden anger on the numbers themselves, punching digits, letting the phone ring, hanging up, dialing again immediately. She was about to hang up and dial yet another urgent time when she realized that the telephone had been answered, by the same soft voice she remembered. Her fingers almost crashed on the receiver.

“Normalyn? If it’s you, please don’t hang up.”

He knew it was her!—had expected her!—perhaps had even kept from answering the telephone, knowing she would become determined, and then— She stopped herself from attributing such enormous knowledgeability to a man she did not know. She drained all surprise from her voice: “David Lange?” She spoke the name her mind had been repeating so often in the past days.

“Yes.”

She could not think of what to say. He suggested that she might like to come to his office for a talk. If she preferred, he would of course meet her anywhere convenient for her. Then he said, “I believe our meeting would be to mutual advantage, Miss Morgan.” She set the time, and the date—tomorrow.

Of course she wouldn’t be there. As she walked away from the telephone, it was as if she had not called, so strange did it all seem.

In the morning she decided to verify its full reality.

Normalyn’s words stumbled on each other as she told Troja and Kirk that she was going “on an interview.”

“Secretary job?” Troja said absently as she added rouged highlights to her cheeks with a moistened finger. “And why, with all your money, hon?”

“What makes you assume it’s a ‘secretary job’?” Normalyn was annoyed. “And as for all my money—”

“Goin’ out myself,” Troja said. “I’ll drop you off if you’re goin’ my way.”

Trapped. Normalyn did not want anybody to know where she was going—especially not why, since she wasn’t sure herself. Not able to think up a reasonable address, she consulted the paper where she had written David Lange’s. She read it aloud, altering the last two numbers.

“Good address,” Kirk reacted. “Agents, producers, big shits. Best section of the strip.”

“Then I can drive you,” Troja decided, insisting that it was “sinful” to waste good money on a cab “when there are needy people everywhere.”

“Why are you so damn mysterious, hon?” Troja couldn’t keep herself from snapping when she dropped Normalyn off.

Normalyn waited until the Mustang had disappeared along the street before she hurried to the correct address. It was a small handsome building, only two stories high. Perhaps once it had been a comfortable home. As she walked up carpeted steps, a sobbing woman running out almost collided with her. She was in her sixties, attempting to look much younger; her hair was bleached colorless, her face was a calcimined mask outlined with makeup.

Along a wide hallway were six doors. One was open. She stood before it, before a large elegant room of quiet light.

“Normalyn,” David Lange said from behind his desk.

Normalyn walked in.