Jack Dann has written or edited over fifty books, including the international bestseller The Memory Cathedra His Civil War novel The Silent has been compared to Huckleberry Finn. He's won the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and two Ditmar Awards, among others. He's also been a buddy of mine for twenty-five years, which had absolutely nothing to do with the story you'r about to read. For Redshift he presents an absolute treat: an alternate history concerning Marilyn Monroe and James Dea Ting-a-Ling Jack Dann It was the same dream, the same ratcheting, shaking, steaming, choo-chooing dream of b back on the ghost train with his mother. She is imprisoned in a lead casket in the baggage c and he knows that she is alive and suffocating. But he can't reach her, even as he runs from car of the Silver Challenger Express to another. The cars are huge and hollow and endless, he is exhausted; James Dean, forever the nine-year-old orphan, on his way again-and again again- to bury his mother in Marion, Indiana. Mercifully, the whistle of the train rings-a telephone jolting him awake. "Hello, Jimmy?" The voice hesitant, whispery, far away. "Marilyn? ..." "Well, who do you think it is, Pier Angeli?" "You're a nasty bitch." "And you're still in love with her, you poor dumb fuck, aren't you." Fully awake now, he laughed mordantly. "Yeah, I guess I am." "Jimmy? . . ." "Yeah?" "I'm sorry. I love you." "I love you, too. Are you in Connecticut with the Schwartzes or whatever the rack their name is?" Jimmy felt around for cigarettes and matches . . . without success. He slept on a mattress on the floor of the second-floor alcove. Shadows seemed to float around him in the darkness like clouds. Marilyn giggled, as if swallowing laughter, and said, "Anti-Semite. You mean the Green and I'm not staying with them anymore, except to visit and do business. I'm living in New Y now-like you told me to, remember? I'm at the Waldorf Towers. Pretty flashy, huh? But tha not where I am this very minute." "Marilyn ..." "I'm right here in L.A., and I've got news, and I want to see you." She sounded out of bre but that was just another one of her signatures. "I got a race in the morning," Jimmy said, feeling hampered by the length of the phone co and the darkness as he felt through the litter around his mattress. "It's in Salinas, near Monte You want to come and watch?" "Maybe I do . . . maybe I don't." "Shit, Marilyn. What time is it? I've got to get up at seven o'clock in the morning. And I'v got to be awake enough so as not to crash into a goddamn wall. And-" The phone was suddenly dead. Marilyn Monroe was gone. Jimmy should have known better. But it was-he got up and flicked on the light switch-tw o'clock in the morning. Not late for Jimmy when he wasn't racing; he'd often hang out with t ghoul Maila Nurmi and the ever-present Jack Simpson at Googie's or Schwab's on S set, which were the only places in L.A. open after midnight, or he'd drive . . . or talk throug the night to Marilyn, who would call whenever she felt the need. The lights hurt Jimmy's eyes, and although he hadn't been drinking or doing any drugs, felt hung over; and as he looked around his rented house, forgetting for the instant that needed a cigarette, he remembered his dream . . . running through the clattering passenger cars of the Silver Challenger. "Momma," he whispered, then jerked his head to side, as if embarrassed. But eventually the light burned away the dream. He found the cigarettes in his bed, the pack of Chesterfields crumpled, the matches tucked inside the cellophane wrapper; an he sat on the edge of the alcove, his legs dangling, and smoked in the bright yellowish light. Below him was a large living room with its huge seven-foot-tall stone fireplace. He had bo a white bearskin rug for the hearth, and on the wall was an eagle, talons extended, wing outstretched, a bronzed predator caught in midnight. It belonged to Jimmy's landlord N Romanos. He could almost touch his pride-and-joy James B. Lansing loudspeakers that just about reached the ceiling. Below . . . below him was the mess of his life: his bongos, scatte records and album covers, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, cameras and camera equipment, crumpled paper and old \newspapers and books ... a library on the floor. The walls were covered with bullfighting posters and a few of his own paintings, but pride of place was gi to a bloodstained bullfighting cape that was cut into spokelike shadows by the bright wheel lamp that hung between the beams of the ceiling. Jimmy gazed at the cape and remembered when the Brooklyn-born matador Sidney Franklin had given it to him as a souvenir. That w in Tijuana. Rogers Brackett had introduced Jimmy to the matador, who was a friend of Erne Hemingway. Brackett introduced him to everyone. All he ever wanted in return was Jimmy cock. But Brackett knew everyone. Jimmy could still feel the dark presence of his recurrent nightmare. It blew through him hot, fetid air, the hurricane of a fucked-up past. . . of memory. He had named it, thus making tangible, absolutely real. Black Mariah. Black Mariah. Black Mariah . . . Suddenly frightened, feeling small and vulnerable as his thoughts swam like neon fish in deep, dark water, he huddled close to himself on the landing. He wanted to cry. Momma . . . He flicked his half-finished cigarette in a high arc across the room and wondered if it w start a fire. If it did, he would sit right where he was like a fucking Buddha and die without moving a muscle. If it didn't. . . he would race tomorrow. The phone rang again. He picked up the receiver. "Hi," Marilyn said. "You ready to go out with me?" Jimmy laughed. "Why'd you hang up on me?" "Because you were treating me bad. I've changed. The new me doesn't take shit from anybody, not even from the person I love more than-" "More than who?" "Anybody." "More than Arthur Miller?" he teased. She laughed. "Maybe a little, but you'd better see me now because who knows what cou happen later." "You're married, remember?" Jimmy said. "But not for long, honey." There was a long pause, and then Marilyn said, "No, not for long." The sadness was palpable in her voice. "Well, you want me to hang up again or what? ..." "No." "You going to see me then? . . . Please, Jimmy, I don't want to be alone right now. I'll co over to you." Then, changing mood, "And who knows, we might both get lucky. Anyway, I'l show you my new car. It's a gift. And it's fabjous." "From who?" "I got it for doing a show with Art Linkletter. It's a Caddy DeVille convertible, and it's p as your cute little ass. I love it." She giggled and blew into the phone. "I'll give you a ride." "You sure you didn't get it for riding that pink elephant in Madison Square Garden? That was a stunt-and-a-half." "It was for a good cause. Now make up your mind, I'm hanging up ... one . . . two . . ." "Okay," Jimmy said. "I'm awake. But how the hell am I supposed to drive to Salinas tomorrow?" "I'll bring you some pills." "I can't drive stoned out. You want to kill me?" "No, Jimmy." He knew she was laughing at him. "I'd show you the new Porsche, but it's at my mechanic's. I can pick you up with my stati wagon. Where are you?" "No, I want to drive," she said. "I'll be at your place in fifteen minutes. I've got somethin tell you that you won't believe. You're still on Sunset Plaza, right?" "No, Marilyn, I moved, remember? I'm in Sherman Oaks. 14611 Sutton Street. It's a log cabin, you have to-" "I'll find it. Bye." "I can't stay out long." But Jimmy was speaking to dead air. Although he couldn't be sure when-or if-Marilyn would arrive, Jimmy waited outside ne the road for her. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, scuffed black penny loafers, and the bright jacket that Nick Ray had bought for him to wear in Rebel without a Cause after Jack Warne ordered the film to be re-shot in color. Eartha Kitt had told him to wear the jacket, that it w bring him luck. Something about its color. Jimmy grinned as he thought about Eartha. He had once tried to seduce her, but she only laughed at him and curled up on his couch. "You shouldn't screw your friends ... or your ca she said. Jimmy could still hear the purr in her voice. It was a cool night, with the promise that tomorrow would be a perfect day to drive his n flat-four 547 Porsche Spyder. He daydreamed about dancing with Eartha in Sylvia Forte's dance class in New York. He daydreamed about driving, dancing, driving; but there was nothing, nothing better than speed, the adrenaline surge that would open deep inside his che the pressure in his eyes as the liquid silver curve of the hood swallowed the road in one lon drawn gulp, and the beautiful, perfect, third-eye sense that he was about to rise, to lift right the pavement, to go so fast that the car would shudder like a plane as it became airborne; an he'd rip a hole right through the sky. Marilyn drove into the gravel driveway. The top of the pink Cadillac was down, althoug she had neglected to snap on the decorative leather boot. She smiled at him, but she looked tentative, as if frightened that he wouldn't recognize her, or, worse yet that he would recogn her and turn away. She didn't look like Marilyn Monroe. That was the guise that she turned and off like a lightbulb. Jimmy understood all about that. They'd even discussed it. They we both lightbulbs. Bro...
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