Page 21 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Four or five other men are seated at a long poolside table, sucking on cigars.

Marilyn recognizes the man from the back of the limousine. “Mr. Schenck!” She waves. She sucks in her stomach and sways her hips, picking her way across the wet flagstones toward Schenk.

What a face,she thinks, as she nears him.It is as much the face of a town as of a man. The whole history of Hollywood is in it.

When she reaches the table, another man beckons her over.

She smiles at the handsome, well-dressed man patting the cushion next to him. His shiny gold watch glints in the lamplight.

“Come and sit, my darling,” he says. “I’m Ben Siegel. Would you like a highball?”

Marilyn happily obliges, sipping her drink and listening as Mr. Siegel talks about his new project, the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

There are important people here,she realizes.These aren’t party figures but Mr. Schenck’s personal friends.She knows better than to ever use Mr. Siegel’s hated nickname—Bugsy—to his face.

“Come to the opening,” he tells her. “Jimmy Durante’s the headliner. It’s going to be a swell party.”

“Opening the day after Christmas,” Marilyn says. “What a marvelous idea.”

“Do you like gambling?” Siegel asks. He drops a mention that he also owns the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Baja, California. She’s always welcome to be his guest.

Three highballs later, the noise from the swimming poolhas become increasingly raucous. Empty cocktail glasses are abandoned on lounge chairs and wet bathing suits are piled on the pool deck. Marilyn glances across and spots a nude girl in the water. Her dark hair is wet, her makeup smudged, her bare breasts bouncing with the motion of throwing a beach ball across the shallow end of the pool. In the dim pool lighting, she cannot be sure, but it looks an awful lot like her friend June.

When I started modeling,she reminds herself,sex was part of the job. All the girls did. They weren’t shooting all these sexy pictures just to sell peanut butter in an ad or get a layout in some picture magazine. They wanted to sample the merchandise, and if you didn’t get along, there were twenty-five girls who would. It wasn’t any big dramatic tragedy. Nobody ever got cancer from sex.

Joe Schenck slips his arm around Marilyn’s shoulders, interrupting her thoughts. “Would you like to come inside and play cards?”

“Cards?” she asks.

“Sure,” he nods. “We’re all going in.”

The pool crowd is meandering across the lawn, back toward the house. They’ve paired off into couples, each man with a girl by his side. Some are barefoot, swigging from a bottle of champagne.

“Mr. Schenck, I am not very good at cards.” Marilyn wrinkles her nose.

“Call me Joe,” he says, wrapping his arm around her waist. “You don’t have to play. You can just watch. And fix me some drinks.”

Around a green baize table, a game of gin rummy is in full swing, its players sipping cocktails and smoking cigarettes.

Marilyn sits on one side of Schenck. On the other is a naked redhead who’s intent on the game. The redhead’s playing to win, and when she does, she squeals with delight, throwing down her hand of cards and kissing Schenck hard on the cheek.

“Well done!” he laughs. “Here we go!” He takes a $50 bill out of his wallet. “You won that fair and square.”

“Thank you, Joe!” She plants another kiss. “You are the sweetest.”

“Say, Marilyn? Aren’t you working tomorrow?” Schenck asks. “Let me call you a limousine.”

She’s grateful to have been dismissed. But even more grateful when the invitations keep coming.

CHAPTER 15

“MR. SCHENCK NEVER so much as lays a finger on my wrist, or tries to,” Marilyn tells Whitey Snyder as she sits in his makeup chair, getting ready for another night at the mansion in Holmby Hills. “He’s interested in me because I am a good table ornament and because I am what he calls an ‘off-beat’ personality.”

Marilyn, you have an electric quality,Schenck has told her.You sparkle and bubble like a fountain.

“What’s it like, being in a fancy place like that?” Snyder asks.

“The food is very good,” Marilyn laughs, but she knows her friend won’t be satisfied with that answer.

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