Marilyn's Ghost Read online

  “CUT! Fabulous, fabulous! Marion, you were splendid! Very good Pam,” he said, slapping Pam’s back and moving over to Marion to give her a warm hug.

  Pam felt left out as all the attention was going to Marion. Marilyn was still annoyed in a dark corner, until she saw Richard enter.

  “How are you?” he asked Pam.

  “We started with Marion’s final scene,” the young woman told him, a little disappointed to be in the background, far from everything and everyone. “Thank you for the flowers.”

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  “No, no,” Pam negated shyly. But Richard knew something was happening and he understood. He wanted to cheer her up so that she did not feel at any point let down or disappointed with the world she was in, in which she was a novice.

  “Pam, they love you. It’s normal for Marion to get all the attention because her salary at the end of the movie is not one she is used to. They have to treat her like a princess. The day will come when they treat you the same way, or even much better. Seven days of filming. You only have seven days left, be patient. I hope to make your day better with a surprise…”

  “How?”

  “You’ll see when the filming is over,” Richard answered, smiling and stroking Pam’s uncombed black hair.

  “That man is incredible,” Marilyn sighed, putting herself between the actress and the agent, who were still gazing at each other.

  Between waiting and more scenes, the first day of filming came to a successful end. But Pam was disenchanted, she thought everything would be different. She felt left aside and put down at times. She understood that she was the beginner and not the star that had been shining for years like Marion. Still, she preferred to leave unnoticed. The only one to approach her was Brenda, her makeup artist, to touch up the bags under her eyes, deepening them and the artificial wrinkles further as Marilyn looked on attentively and upset. The production assistants offered her sandwiches to eat and coffee to stay awake and alert, while Marion was served excellent vegetarian meals and high quality tea. Where was the Hollywood glamour? Pam could not see it anywhere, at least not in herself, as she spent more time waiting in her dressing room than on the set between the cameras, the lights and the technical team.

  “Before, there was even glamour in filming. How things have changed…” Marilyn continued to sigh, looking around with displeasure.

  Just as promised, it was Richard himself who came to pick up Pam from the filming in his flaming Chevrolet Belair 1955 that Marilyn fell in love with. The ghost was filled with joy sat in the back seat, listening to the agent attentively.

  “They don’t make cars like this anymore. Nor men like Richard!” Marilyn exclaimed, as Pam looked attentively and surprised, who with a hidden movement told her to calm down a little.

  “Are you ready Pam? I’ve got a surprise for you,” Richard said mysteriously.

  “What a man… what a man…” Marilyn continued sighing. “Pam, kiss him… kiss him or I will!”

  Pam looked at her sideways sternly.

  “Okay, I’ll be quiet, I know it’s been a hard day so I won’t say anymore. I promise,” the ghost continued.

  Pam, awed and worried, saw how Richard drove to the luxury zone of Valley Village and stopped in front of a gorgeous house located on the leafy Bellingham Avenue. A beautiful staircase led to an impactful and glittering white and two-story house, full of picture windows from the Victorian era.

  “Welcome to your new home,” Richard told her, handing Pam a set of keys as they got out of the car. “I’ve taken the liberty of having your things brought here and of talking to the landlord of your old apartment. He didn’t complain, you won’t have to go back there.”

  “But Richard, I won’t be able to afford the rent on this house,” Pam said, about to cry, while Marilyn ran from one side to another as if she were once again the swimsuit model photographed on the beach at the beginning of her career.

  “I thought you would be happier,” Richard said, disappointed. “And yes, you will be able to afford it. In a month they will pay you $500,00 for Toward the Light and another $50,000 for the drama with Pattinson.

  Pam was speechless. At no point had she spoken of money with Richard and she had absolutely no idea her bank account would go up so much that she could live to a standard she did not feel ready for. She just wanted to work, to be an actress, to be known and respected. And although she had always dreamed of not having financial problems and of living in a dream house like the one in front of her, she had never thought to would all happen so soon, so fast. It seemed so simple, as everything had been since the first time she had spoken with Richard in his office. She looked at Marilyn, who was still skipping through the garden in front of the house. Pam smiled, imagining what would happen if the sprinklers suddenly opened.

  “At least you’re smiling!” Richard exclaimed. “And if one day you need salt, sugar, you just have to cross the street. I live in the house opposite.” Pam hid her enthusiasm. She did not know if she felt happy for the unbeatable change of house or for having Richard close, so close.

  “Richard, I don’t know how to thank you for all this…”

  “I don’t think he does this for all his actresses!” Marilyn shouted, breaking the intimate moment between the agent and the actress.

  “This isn’t usual, Pam. I’ve never done this for anyone, not even for Charlotte,” he admitted, mentioning one of his most popular young actresses.

  “Then why for me?” Pam asked, confused.

  Richard didn’t answer. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at her with sadness. If Pam had seen a photograph of Richard’s mother, if she discovered which actress she had been, she would have understood everything. The young woman was an almost identical copy of his ambitious and unfortunate mother.

  “Don’t you see it yet Pam? This man is in love with you!” Marilyn exclaimed excitedly, while they went through the large and luminous rooms of the new house. “What a beautiful sofa! We can see an infinity of films comfortably from here.”

  But Pam did not smile. Each exquisitely decorated and minimalist room of her new home intimidated her. It was as if she did not feel like it belonged to her, as if she did not accept her new life. Was it a dream? When she woke up, would it all disappear? Would Marilyn disappear? Would she have never met Richard? She shook her head and tried to imitate the joy the diva felt.

  “Enjoy it Pam. Live in the moment. Have you seen your new library? There is room for hundreds of books!”

  “Did you like reading, Marilyn?” Pam asked.

  “A lot. I had a personal library of over four hundred books. I loved poetry and reading fragments that I had dared to write myself to Arthur, one of my husbands. He loved listening to me, and I loved to read Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Saul Bellow, Carl Sandburg, Heinrich Heine… The hours flew by with Freud. Do you know their work Pam?” Pam shook her head, she was embarrassed to admit to the ghost that she had only read five novels in her life and only because she had been forced to.

  “Do you remember any of your poems, Marilyn?”

  Marilyn measured her answer for a few moments. She closed her beautiful droopy eyes and started to murmur:

  “Life.

  I am both of your two directions.

  Somehow remaining hanging downward

  the most

  but strong as a cobweb in the wind

  I exist more with the cold glistening frost.”

  Pam began to cry. Defenseless, she seemed like a little girl too small for this mansion and everything that was happening to her. Marilyn realized that the small child inside her that was insecure and full of life and dreams she thought were unreachable, was disappearing… and that scared her a lot.

  CHAPTER 12

  I KNOW I WILL NEVER BE HAPPY,

  BUT I KNOW I CAN BE GAY

  (Marilyn Monroe)

  Marilyn, fed up of Pam not knowing how lucky she had been, woke the young woman up in the middle of the ni
ght, decided to make her see. She did not want Pam to have a sad life, thinking she was the most unfortunate woman in the world despite having everything just as had happened to her. No, that was not her Pam, that could not be her life.

  “Pam! Pam! Pam! Wake up!” Marilyn shouted insistently.

  “What’s happening?” Pam asked, leaping up still frightened by the ghost’s shouting, trying to figure out where she was in her new bedroom.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “At two in the morning?” Pam asked, looking at the clock on the bedside table. “Marilyn, please, I have to wake up at six… it’s the penultimate day of filming,” Pam criticized, letting herself fall back down onto the large and comfortable bed.

  “No. It has to be now, Pam.” If something remained in Marilyn’s ghost from when she was alive, it was stubbornness.

  “Fine,” Pam said reluctantly, rubbing her eyes. “What do you want?”

  “You’ve been sad for days, ever since the filming started. Everyday it’s the same thing: head down, spiritless, depressed, I don’t see any light in your eyes. I can’t see you like this, Pam. You’re getting everything you wanted only two months ago. Everything you haven’t achieved in the two years you’ve been in Los Angeles you are now. You’re really lucky, Pam. Appreciate that. Appreciate it each moment of your life, appreciate that I’m here with you, and that you have Richard. He will always protect you.”

  “I know Marilyn, and I’m trying. But you can’t imagine how much I want this shoot to end. I feel like a nobody.”

  “But you’re not a nobody. You don’t see it now, but the day of the screening you will have thousands of fans that will make you feel important. Although I don’t want you to depend on them to feel like this, you understand? You are important for how you are, not for the films you do or stop doing. Do you know how many girls dream of being in your shoes? Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I didn’t appreciate the privileged situation I was in and I collapsed. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you, Pam. Because I love you.”

  Pam jolted awake. Hearing ‘I love you’ from the diva was something unthinkable. Pam also loved her, Marilyn was an extraordinary soul.

  “I love you too, Marilyn. My life has been better since you have been in it. I know I asked you to leave two months ago, but now I ask you to never leave…”

  “I can’t promise that, Pam. I think one day I will have to go, I hope they open the doors upstairs for me. I’m a little tired of being here, even though everything has been better since I’ve been with you, obviously,” Marilyn smiled sweetly.

  “When I finish this shoot I have a free week before starting the next one. Do you want to go visit my grandfather?”

  The offer made the ghost very happy. After so many years, so much life and having traveled so much as a ghost, finally she would see the man who had been her great, hidden love and that lived only in her memory. It was the memory of a soul that had missed him very much, forever.

  Forever punctual, the driver came to get Pam to start her second-to-last day of filming.

  “Are you not sad to be leaving us?” the driver asked her, smiling through the rearview mirror.

  “A little,” Pam admitted, looking at Marilyn. Both were smiling. “But I’m looking forward to getting my blonde hair back,” she continued, making the river laugh.

  “Perks of the job, I suppose.”

  Pam had decided to take heed of Marilyn’s advice one more. She put her fears and insecurities aside and tried to be happy. Everything would go well… life would go well. Everything would be as she had dreamed and nothing, absolutely nothing could go wrong. She remembered how she was a few months ago, working as a waitress in a greasy hamburger restaurant, living in a small and dingy apartment tat she could hardly afford the rent for, with an agent that did not value her enough to turn her into the star she wanted to be and she dreamed of so much when she saw magical movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her only way of escape was to photograph landscapes, skies, stars and the faces of strangers, a passion she had always put aside to live off what she had always wanted. She felt like Cinderella with a fairy godmother, except her fairy godmother was Marilyn Monroe and she would not fail when she tried to become the brightest star of the difficult and competitive world of Hollywood.

  Brenda worsened and aged Pam’s face in the dressing room. She had to simulate that years had passed and that the son Marion had left for her to adopt before dying, had grown and was searching for the mysterious secret of Toward the Light. The endless hours of filming of that week had made Brenda and Pam friends. Brenda had done the makeup for great artists of Hollywood such as Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron or Susan Sarandon, among many others. Pam asked about them and although Brenda could not give her much information because she was discreet, she could recommend that she never become like any of them.

  “Why?” Pam asked. “All we young actresses want to be like them, I suppose.”

  “They don’t trust anyone. And they’re right not to, obviously. They can’t go around telling just anyone their life, because the next day those revelations will be worldwide in magazines or gossip shows. But never loose your spontaneity, Pam, your positivity and your enthusiasm. Treat everyone the same like you do now, and never look down on anyone. That will make people appreciate you and will enable you to keep being yourself and not one more Hollywood puppet.”

  “My spontaneity,” Pam repeated, pensive.

  “Who were you talking about?” Marilyn interrupted, looking at Pam through the mirror. “It’s true, that woman gave you very good advice. Follow it.” Marilyn winked at Pam and disappeared. She loved taking endless walks through the studios, laughing at the egos of some actors and driving the production teams crazy, creating interferences in their walkie-talkies.

  When Pam left the dressing room and headed to a new chroma set that would simulate a grim forest through which she had to walk through with the main character, the son of Marion Cotillard’s character, she froze when she found herself faced with Brad. Brad! She had completely forgotten about the young musician aspiring to be an actor she had thought she felt good things for.

  “Pam,” Brad greeted her timidly.

  “How are you?” Pam asked, trying to slip away as soon as possible. She had not answered his WhatsApps and the last thing she had done to him, as deserved as it was, had not been good.

  “Here, trying my luck… as an extra. They pay well.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Actually, could you send me Richard’s contact? I’ve love him to be in charge of my career, look at what he has done for you.”

  “Yeah, I have to go Brad.”

  Brad looked disappointed. His pretty face had completely stopped attracting Pam’s attention. Focused, she could not stop repeating the dialogue that minutes later she would have to say in several takes, walking through a fictitious forest that she could not yet see, but that the magic of new technology would create on the big screen and would look spectacular.

  Pam dealt with each and every scene of that day spectacularly. Her second to last day of filming encouraged her. Without the presence of the famous Marion Cotillard, Pam took all the praise and attention of the team. Finally, she felt like ‘somebody’. But she tried to keep her feet on the ground like Richard had advised her. She should not feel like somebody for the work she did, but for who she truly was, as Marilyn had advised her. When the filming finished, Karl wanted to see the young actress.

  “Pam, you’ve been doing a brilliant job. I know we haven’t even you the attention you deserve, perhaps we’ve all been stressed or busy trying to please Marion, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t value your efforts. We really do value it and we appreciate you.”

  “Thanks, Karl. I really value your words.”

  “Your life is going to change, young lady. I’m finishing the script for a movie called Story of Two Souls, a romantic drama about reincarnation. If all goes well, we’ll start filming in about
six months. I’ll talk to Richard, because I’d like you to play the main character,” he told her enthusiastically.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. As I’ve been developing the female character, I’ve been thinking about you. I see you. It will be difficult work, we will have to travel to Rome and stay there a few weeks, but I think you could rise to the top, Pam. And you deserve it.”

  Pam wanted to hug Karl. The light began to shine again in the blue eyes of the young woman that snuck into a class in Actor’s Studio, because she did not have enough money to pay for it. Optimism and hope returned to her smile, seeing that her life was as she had always dreamed, that she was appreciated and that her efforts and work was value. Why waste time being unhappy? She had everything! She was achieving everything!

  That night, Richard went to visit Pam in her house. Marilyn did not even blink when she saw him, she was too absorbed in watching the second half of Men in Black that her dear Will Smith starred in.

  “Last day of filming tomorrow, Pam,” Richard said.

  “Yes. It seems like the audition was only yesterday,” Pam reflected. “Time has passed so quickly, so quickly. Actually, Karl offered me the leading role in his next movie.”

  “He mentioned it to me. That’s great, Karl is a great guy. If he thinks you’re his muse, you have a certain future in Hollywood.”

  “It’s also a bit scary, you know?”

  “Yes, I know. You’re not very well-known yet but in six months when Toward the Light is releases, you will be. You have to be prepared, Pam. There will be many people who want to get close to you for their own gain and others that will become obsessed with you or with your characters and they will follow you in the street. You will no longer be anonymous, you will be a Hollywood star. You will also have to get used to the paparazzi who, believe me, are very annoying.”

  “It’s what I always wanted, no?” Pam admitted, looking at Marilyn. Years ago, the blond-haired diva had also wanted that, and had achieved it. And she had not been happy. Would the same happen to her? It was something Pam was obsessed with.