Dreams of Jeannie and Other Stories Part 16

"Wherever we are, I don't believe ghosts are hanging around to give us advice," Faith said.

"Then I think you should stay the night." Bobby stated it firmly, punctuating again with his wine gla.s.s. He licked off the few drops that fell on his wrist.

"What?"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Faith, that isn't a proposition. You can sleep wherever you like, as long as it isn't with me. But I think you should find out for yourself what's going on," Bobby said.

"I agree." Michael nodded, clearly enjoying the situation. "I think you should stay and find out for yourself. After all, Jean Harlow said Marilyn wanted someone to interfere."

"Frankie said, you mean," Faith said, ready to argue.

"Frankie said Jean said Marilyn said," Bobby chanted.

"Faith, you know you want to," Michael said.

By the time the bottle of wine was gone, Faith had decided they were right.

"I'll stay out here, in one of the chairs," she said. "I don't want to fall into a sound sleep. I want to be alert."

"Call me tomorrow and let me know what happens," Michael said, kissing her on the cheek.

"I may have to call sooner than that-my car is in your garage."

"Take a cab home if it's before ten. We'll have lunch, and I'll get you back to your car."

Bobby saw him to the door.

"You don't have to amuse me," Faith said when he returned.

"I'm just picking up the gla.s.ses," he replied. "And then I'm going to snuff the candles. I have Tetris on my Nintendo, if you want to amuse yourself."

"Do you have a book?"

"I have a week's worth of the trades, plus the current Dramalogue."

Faith shook her head. "I don't do that anymore. I'll just sit here and brood until morning."

"Suit yourself."

Once Bobby had gone to bed and the lights were out, Faith understood how the apartment could inspire visions of ghosts. Pale light from the high windows cast s.h.i.+fting shadows on the walls.

If there is a ghost, she thought, it ought to be Peter Cus.h.i.+ng's.

But it was Marilyn Monroe who danced at the periphery of her mind, just out of reach. Faith was wide awake, certainly, when she tried to focus on the haze in the corner, inches beyond the moonglow. How sad she felt, how sad that she couldn't quite see.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a hand touched her shoulder.

"I thought you weren't going to sleep," Bobby said.

"I wasn't asleep."

"You were. I had to shake you. You haven't heard the crying, have you?"

"What-" Faith started, then stopped. She hadn't heard it consciously, but that had been the source of her own feeling of sadness. The sobbing.

As she listened, the low sobbing crescendoed to a high wail, filling the room.

"It must be the woman downstairs," Bobby said. "I've tried to figure out where the sound is coming from, and it has to be rising through the heat vents."

"Well, time to meddle."

"Are you sure you want to?"

"No, but I think someone should. If I were crying like that, I'd want someone to help me. And so I guess I have to try to help her." Faith struggled out of the chair and stretched her stiff legs.

"Your grandmother said you were going to have a new client soon."

"Frankie said that. And it was a safe prediction, since he didn't say how soon."

"Well, good luck. I'll be waiting."

Faith ran her hand through her hair and thought about a mirror and some fresh makeup, but a new wail set her moving toward the door.

The hall was quiet and dimly lit. Faith moved quickly down the stairs.

She leaned her ear against the door directly below Bobby's and thought she could discern m.u.f.fled sobs. She rapped the iron knocker sharply, and the sound stopped. While she was trying to decide whether to keep knocking or leave, the door opened a crack, held by a chain.

Faith caught a glimpse of a single puffy eye, and then the door slammed shut.

She lifted the knocker and let it fall one more time.

"I thought you might want to talk," she called.

She had started back down the hall when a woman's voice stopped her.

"Wait-don't leave yet."

The woman standing in the doorway had the anguished look of an abandoned child. Dark hair hung limply around a red, swollen face. She hugged a stained flannel bathrobe close to her thin body.

"I'm sorry," she said. "For a minute I thought you were Marilyn's ghost. But you're too old, and your hair isn't blond enough, and she never appears in her frumpy period, the way she looked when she was married to Arthur Miller. I guess you have to be real."

"Marilyn's ghost?" Faith was too stunned to comment on the rest of the woman's reaction to her.

"Yes. I've seen her several times. She lived in this building, a long time ago."

"I know Marilyn lived here." Faith stared at the woman, not certain how to continue.

"What did you want?"

"A friend of mine lives upstairs. We heard you crying, and I thought you might want to talk. I'm a therapist."

The woman wiped her eyes with one hand, then looked at Faith again. "Maybe I do want to talk. I don't know." She s.h.i.+vered for a moment. "Not now. Do you have a card or something?"

"Upstairs. I left my purse upstairs."

"Stick the card through the mail slot. Maybe I'll call you."

Faith was trying to think of something more to say when the woman shut the door.

Bobby had kept his promise to wait up. He even fixed Faith a cup of tea while she called a taxi. She told him briefly what had happened.

"Do you think you'll hear from her?" he asked.

"I'll have to wait and see," she answered.

By the time she met Michael for lunch the next day, Faith had more information.

The woman had already made an appointment to talk.

"Why did she decide to trust you?" Michael asked.

"She had asked Marilyn's ghost for help, and for a moment she thought I was Marilyn's ghost, answering her prayer. Then she realized I don't look much like Marilyn Monroe." Faith decided not to mention the word frumpy. "She still thinks Marilyn's ghost answered her prayer."

"Are you ready to revise your opinion of Frankie Fallon yet?"

"Not really. I asked Lily-that's the woman's name-if she had ever heard of him, and it seems that she had called him one night after hearing him mention Marilyn's spirit on his television show. Probably the same one Bobby saw. She told Frankie that she was praying to Marilyn's ghost." Faith put on her gla.s.ses to study the menu, but she could feel Michael staring at her.

"Are you suggesting that Frankie Fallon set all this up to make it appear as if Marilyn Monroe's ghost was answering Lily's prayer?"

"I think it's possible."

Michael put his hand on the menu, so she had to glance up at him over the top of her gla.s.ses.

"If you're truly convinced he's a bad wizard, then you have to admit he's an awfully good man, at least when it comes to providing for the lilies of the field."

"Your grandfather mentioned them."

"Frankie mentioned them."

"I remember. Let's eat."

"And the ghost?"

"Maybe it wasn't a ghost." Faith gently removed his hand. "Maybe it was an angel. Who knows?"

AFTERWORD.

I heard that Marilyn Monroe was dead on Sunday afternoon. A friend called me, crying, to pa.s.s on the news that Marilyn Monroe had committed suicide the night before. I was stunned and puzzled and, at least to some extent, despairing. If Marilyn Monroe couldn't find love and happiness, what hope was there for the rest of us?

I was living in New York that year, studying acting at Neighborhood Playhouse. I thought Marilyn was funny and charming and s.e.xy, and if she wasn't taken seriously as an actress, well, so what? Neither was anyone else except for Katharine Hepburn and a few old Brits. I envied her fame-especially when it brought her the opportunity to sing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. (I didn't envy Jackie Kennedy. And I still have trouble believing that only people in the entertainment industry knew of her husband's escapades.) I wondered what it would be like to be Marilyn Monroe, and still to fall victim to the dark night of the soul.

Since then, she has become my own private metaphor to describe the difficulties that uncommon women have in maintaining relations.h.i.+ps: Marilyn Monroe was home alone on a Sat.u.r.day night when she killed herself. (Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?) Arguments that she wasn't really alone or that her suicide might have been abetted only beg the question. Marilyn Monroe had no "significant other." And who were we women in 1962 unless we were with men?

With that in mind...what would Marilyn's ghost be doing today?

Cat, the Jury A Faith Ca.s.sidy Mystery I received the invitation to write a story for an anthology about cats and courts not long after I had moved to Ventura. I couldn't resist dragging Faith Ca.s.sidy there, if only for the afternoon. Around the time I finished the story, I ran into Michael Collins at a party and asked for his professional opinion on t.i.tles-should I call it "Cat, the Jury" or "Reasonable Doubt"?

" 'Cat, the Jury'-'I, the Jury' with a cat?" Michael gasped, then recovered. "Everybody has written a story called 'Reasonable Doubt.' Call it 'Cat, the Jury.' " So I did.

"If there ever was an excuse to get out of jury duty, this is it. Show me the notice again."

"Wait till we get to our table." Michael headed purposefully toward the one vacant table near the small lunch counter and grill.

Two burly, bearded men wearing Harley Davidson vests above their swimming trunks glared as Michael cut them off. He pretended not to notice.

"We shouldn't have come to the beach." Faith stopped, ready to retreat, but the two men moved away without comment.

"Of course we should have come," Michael replied. "Although next time we're going to rent one of those tables with the yellow umbrellas."

"Making reservations for the beach seems un-American. Still..." Faith let the sentence trail away. If the bikers had wanted to argue, they would be eating sand with their sandwiches.

The August heat had rendered West Hollywood uninhabitable. When Michael had called that morning asking Faith to cancel whatever appointments she had and join him in a trip to the beach, Faith had confessed that the two clients scheduled for the afternoon had already cancelled. She lived in an older building, with only a window unit to cool her combination office and living room, and one client had explained politely that suffocating heat was not conducive to productive psychotherapy. The other had left a message on her answering machine while she was in the shower.

Michael had read about a European-style area of the Ventura beach where yellow umbrellas had been set up near a small espresso and sandwich bar, allowing spur of the moment beach-going and instant picnics. Ventura sounded like a long drive for nothing to Faith, but since Michael was driving, she agreed to go.

Once they had walked the length of the rickety old Ventura pier and back, stopping to watch the group of fishermen at the end, she was too tired and hungry to walk down the beach to the yellow umbrellas. The lunch counter on the pier was as far as she was willing to move. Besides, the area with yellow umbrellas was packed with escapees from the city. They hadn't thought to make reservations, so they would have had to wait.

The topper was that she was almost cold. Not quite, but almost. The Los Angeles basin was well over a hundred degrees when they left. The Ventura beach wasn't even eighty, and there was a stiff breeze from the ocean. With just a light terrycloth jacket over her bathing suit, Faith wanted shelter. The pier provided it, the beach didn't.

Still, she had to admit that the Ventura beach had its charms, with its clear green water and slightly hazy blue sky. The ocean ended not at the horizon, but in an offsh.o.r.e mist that hid the Channel Islands from view. That was why the breeze was so cool-the marine layer.

Faith set the plate with her grilled veggie burger on the small table next to Michael's teriyaki ahi sandwich. She took a long swallow of her iced tea.

"Elizabeth is a cat," she said. "A cat can't be a juror. How did they get her name?"

"From the voter registration rolls. I bet Bobby that the system was so lax that I could register Elizabeth and no one would check. I was right. And so Elizabeth-my cat-has been summoned to jury duty."

Faith examined the summons. Munic.i.p.al Court in Van Nuys. She took a bite of her veggie burger and thought about the heat. The pervasive heat, the heat that she had been wandering through malls and going to afternoon movies to get away from. The heat that they had come to the beach to escape. The heat that would be waiting for her when she returned to the city, returned to an apartment with only a fan in the bedroom and a window unit in the combination office/living room for an air conditioner.

"I'll go," she said.

"My G.o.d! Why?"