Bombshell by Max Collins (pdf ebook reader TXT) 📕

Mrs. Hahn angrily marched down the aisle to the boy, and pointed a trembling finger at him. “Report to the principal’s office,” she ordered, “at once!” She hoped her manner was authoritarian and did not reveal that the boy’s remarks had gotten to her, as well.

Harold smirked and shrugged and got up from his desk and sauntered slowly to the closed wood-paneled door, where he looked back at the teacher. But the smirk had wiped itself from his face, to be replaced by something else …

Fear.

“ ‘We’ll bury you,’ that’s what that Rooskie fatso said,” the boy told her, and for all his bluster, Harold’s trembling lower lip and his teary eyes revealed his classroom behavior had been motivated not by orneriness but terror.

Then—embarrassed—Harold pushed open the door and disappeared out into the hallway.

The classroom fell deathly quiet again, punctuated by the sniffles of the red-haired girl, and one or two others. The cartoon with the cheerful “duck and cover” theme song and the cartoon turtle had scared the hell out of these seventh graders.

And their teacher.

Mrs. Hahn walked back up the aisle and planted herself in front of the chalkboard. “Class,” she said, forcing her voice to be calm, “don’t pay any attention to Harold. He’s … he’s just a prankster, trying to scare us.” She squared her shoulders, hands clasped under her bosom, and pronounced: “President Eisenhower would never allow an atomic war.”

Then she moved to her desk, pulled out the oak chair with a fingernails-on-blackboard screech, and sat down. “Now, take out your social studies book,” she instructed coolly, “and turn to chapter four.”

As the students rustled around in their desks, Mrs. Hahn glanced down at her notes on the forthcoming lesson; but her mind wasn’t on them.

World War II had been the war to end all wars—hadn’t it? Her husband had fought in the Pacific, coming home with nightmares and recurring malaria. She had lost her brother in Italy. The war to end all wars. That’s what everyone said.

Of course, they’d said that about World War I, as well…

Could it all have been for nothing? Could the world end in a heartbeat—always remember, the flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time!

She gazed out the open window onto Selby Avenue, where on this beautiful Friday morning in September, in the entertainment capital of the world, cars and pedestrians bustled along in pursuit of the American dream.

Sighing, shaking her head, she made herself smile—for her students, for herself. President Eisenhower would never allow an atomic war. Wasn’t that the reason he’d invited Nikita Khrushchev over? To sit down like human beings and reason together? To talk, to straighten all this silliness out?

An atomic war could never, ever happen!

Could it?

Then she withdrew into the class lesson, like a turtle into its shell, and went about her business.

1 BLONDE AMBITION

In bungalow number seven on the lavishly landscaped grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the bustle of Hollywood had been banished. A goddess was—with the help of others— preparing herself for an appearance before those who worshipped her.

At just after nine a.m., Ralph Roberts—Marilyn Monroe’s personal masseur—had just finished giving the celebrated actress a rubdown in a bedroom decorated all in white (with the exception of heavy black-out curtains). The man—handsome, muscular, hetero-sexual—and the woman—beautiful, curvaceous, blonde-all-over, naked—had exchanged only a few words, the massage all business, but for the pleasure the actress received from skilled hands.

In a corner of the room, a portable hi-fi—fit for the most pampered teenage girl—perched on the white-carpeted floor, spinning the latest of a stack of Frank Sinatra 45s. Later in the day the swinging come-fly-with-me Sinatra might have been heard in this snowy chamber; but at this early hour, the singer was crooning, “September Song,” softly, lulling the actress into wakefulness.

In a blue t-shirt and chinos, Roberts—as tall as he was muscular, with wide Apache cheekbones and a perpetual smile—began putting away his oils and lotions in a worn leather carrying case, as the nude Marilyn lay stretched out on her stomach on the bed, her translucent, pale skin now pink, glowing, from the vigorous rubdown.

The two had known each other for only a few years, having met in 1956 at the Actor’s Studio in New York, where they’d quickly become good friends. Roberts’s gifts as a masseur kept him working when his acting talents did not, and his easygoing manner and discretion made him one of Marilyn’s closest confidants.

Whenever she called him for a massage—which was often (sometimes in the middle of the night when the Seconal or Demerol or Nembutal pills refused to kick in)—he always took her lead: if she craved silence (as was the case this morning), he was quiet as he worked his magic on her tense muscles. But if she desired some gaiety, his devilish humor could always make her laugh.

Sometimes, after a massage on the set of one of her movies, Roberts would help Marilyn with her lines, giving her the encouragement she always seemed to need, before she faced the camera.

“You did well with that diet,” Roberts said, snapping shut his case.

“You’re sweet,” she murmured. “A liar, but sweet.”

He sat next to her on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were closed as he said, “No, you have your figure back.”

“Little too much of it.”

“Anyway, you’ll look fine for the shoot. Take it easy on the diet pills.”

Her eyes flickered open, dark blue peering through lashes. “Don’t you get tired of playing Jiminy Cricket?”

“Just be careful, Pinocchio. Chosen your co-star yet?”

She propped herself on an elbow, her breasts cushioned against the mattress, hair tousled. “Leaning toward Yves Montand. He has a one-man show coming up, later this month.”

“Out here?”

She shook her head, tousling the platinum locks even further. “No, New York. Arthur’s taking me. Arthur likes him— Montand played in The Crucible, in Paris.”

“Kind of an unknown quantity, isn’t he? In American movies, I mean.”

She smirked prettily at her confidant. “Don’t you think I can carry a picture by myself?