Please excuse typos. I have not finalized the edit yet.
Norma
The curvy, platinum blonde flounced
into room 228. She had forgotten how to
walk without swinging her hips provocatively, as if to primal music. Her essence filled the chamber, but did nothing
to brighten it. She immediately drew the dingy drapes, though the universe she
wished to escape was also inside this dreary hotel room. She tossed her purse and a brown paper bag
onto the bed.
She stripped off her tawdry clothes,
again to the silent beat of the music in her head, until she was down to a lacy
bra and sheer, matching, panties. Still wearing her 6 inch stiletto heels, she flopped
gracelessly onto the bed, and began the familiar, mindless, ritual of rummaging
in her fake Prada bag, seeking the soothing, hollow, rattle that had forever transformed
her into one of Pavlov's drooling dogs.
As she lined up the pill bottles on
the nightstand, like empty red solo cups at a frat house kegger, she was
surprised by how many there were. Some
were uppers that brought her down and some were downers that made her fly. There were anti-depressants that made her so
very sad. Some were for pain, others for
sleep, and she thought one was actually for either a sore throat or the clap. She couldn't remember which was supposed to
do what as none really seemed to work anymore, unless she washed them down with
a pint of vodka. Gin would do nicely in
the absence of vodka, as would rum. She
called them out by name, like a day one teacher mistaking her way through the
roll, as she pulled them one by one from the cavernous bag. There was just
enough light coming from the bathroom to read the labels:
"Nembutal, Seconal, Chloral Hydrate,
Librium, Valmid, Perco----dan, Parvate, Lomotil, Dexedrine, Redisol, Darvon,
Hydrozeta, Sulfa ----thal----lidine, Phenergan," and a couple of bottles
with no label at all. It took two rows,
looked like some kind of prescription
Phalanx formation. "Yes I know that word," her voice echoing in the
empty cubicle. Though no one was
listening, she needed to say it
aloud. They all thought she was dumb
blonde. To them it was sexier. She
never got that and she loved to celebrate that she was neither.
She could actually feel the
oppressive weight of the darkness, but still preferred it to the revealing glare
of stage lights. The unflattering light detailed
the toll that chronic insomnia and 15 years of
displaying a narcotically induced smile can take on a body racing
willy-nilly towards 40. She tossed
a wadded up handful of singles on the
bed. There was a time,
she thought grimly, when these
bills would have been in much larger denominations. Just like with Elvis, the demand was for the
young Marilyn. The fantasy that even
the shadows of seedy, dimly lit, rooms could no longer sustain.
She thought about what had brought
her to this room, this night. Her mind
drifted back to her childhood. She had
always been cursed by her beauty. She
knew that seemed vain but it was simply the truth.
The dirty secret she shared with her
disgusting step-dad was unbearable.
There wasn't enough body wash to get the unclean off of her and no
amount of Listerine could temper the lingering foulness of his whiskey tainted, smoker's
breath. You are always supposed to remember your first time. She would certainly never forget. More like her first fifty times. Fortunately for him, before she summoned the
courage to tell anyone, somebody slit his throat. Another secret between them. Unfortunately, death did not stop him from entering
her nightly nightmares. Surprisingly she
felt safest in the dark. He always
wanted the lights left on. "You are
so beautiful."
The mean, middle school, girls hated
her for her early development and clear skin and to the
guys she was simply a conquest; bases
that needed to be stolen, or at
least touched. The false rumors about
her from boys that failed to score became her reality. Why not?
She had spent much of her early
twenties wriggling on casting couches, auditioning for roles that didn't exist. And then came Marilyn. She had always been told of a resemblance,
but had never thought much about it until a sweaty studio exec, with that
recognizable, fatherly, halitosis, offered her $500
to put on a platinum wig and sing Happy Birthday off-key.
Then the same guy, after several
more $500 performances, seeing her value, found her several other high rollers
with the similar fetishes and eventually became her "agent". Soon she was playing Marilyn at every venue
from cameos in feature films, to mall openings and bachelor parties.
She can't remember when she lost
her own identity and only occasionally can she see that lonely girl through the
illusion of her life, as false as her eyelashes.
One totally unqualified acting
teacher........well of course he lacked credentials. What reputable educator would trade sex for
acting lessons? "Probably more than
you would think," she chuckled humorlessly to herself. He had given
her one useful piece of advice:
"when you play a part, abandon yourself, and become that
character".
` Norma removed Marilyn from her head
and tossed her onto the dresser. She
shook out her own hair; shorter and thinner, brown streaked with grey. She could stop being Marilyn with a simple
costume change, but she could not divorce herself from the pain of Norma. Marilyn was fake. Norma was all too real. The face she saw when she was forced to look
in a mirror. Norma had never had her
heart broken, just chipped away a
granule at a time, as by the chisel of a sculptor. And she had known a lot of chiselers.
For Norma, life was both too much and not enough. She would not miss it. The lyrics to an old Bob Seger, no John Mellencamp, song came to
mind:
"Life goes on
long after the thrill of livin' is gone"
long after the thrill of livin' is gone"
She looked at the pill bottles and
reached for the green ones. She really
didn't know them by name, or purpose,
just by color. Then she thought better
of it. Tonight calls for a
tourniquet, not a Band-Aid. Her life was a series of paper cuts and she
was finally bleeding out. She reached
behind her into the paper bag and pulled
out a liter of Grey Goose, which she had
splurged on, but tonight was special
It took maximum effort to unscrew
the top off of the vodka and she rewarded herself with a large swig, feeling
the warmth spread to her extremities.
She reluctantly set the decanter down
on the nightstand and picked up the first of the bottles, examining the
capsules, tablets, and gel caps. If the
color appealed to her, she poured some into the vodka bottle, laughing at
the recommended dosages.
When she had finished concocting her
multi-colored chemical cocktail, "shaken not stirred", she propped up
on two pillows, picked up the remote and turned on the television. She knew that at 10:00 PM, on channel 17,
they were showing "The Misfits".
The hotel clock showed 9:49, she would have to pace herself.
She looked around the lonesome alcove. It was indistinguishable from countless other
lifeless bedroom ceilings she had vacantly contemplated. The difference is that this would be the last
that she would ever occupy. Well, at least alive. If she was really alive right now. The morgue did not count, even though the
cold drawers could not feel more soulless than room 218 at this moment.
The movie began and Norma marveled
at how strange but appealing Clark Gable looked in a cowboy hat. It was hard to believe it would be the last
movie for both of them. All three
actually. Time to start drinking the misery
away. She lifted the jug to her vivid
red lips. A rivulet ran from the corner
of her mouth. She did not wipe it off, but prospected for it with her tongue. .
When she is found by the maid in the morning, unconscious and as cold as a marble slab,
having drowned in her own sick, there will be no headlines. No need for a note. Who would read it, anyway? And Marilyn didn't leave one. Why should she? Norma took another gulp, ignoring how foul her potion
tasted. Will they even notice the
bruises?
Her last coherent thought was that
she wondered how long before they found the bastard's body. They located her step-dad pretty
quickly.
