Read The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe for Free Online Page A

one of the large windows that looked on to the driveway. A cool breeze came round her legs and she pointed up. ‘We really are valley girls, Muddah,’ she said. ‘That’s the San Gabriel Mountains up there, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t know such things,’ said Mrs Gurdin. ‘It’s all just the mountains. Give me a beach house in Malibu or give me Beverly Hills. These are mountains I can do business with.’
‘Nick Ray told me that when it glows over the hills, it is usually the military doing rocket tests.’ Unlike Natalie, who was happily American in all obvious aspects, Mrs Gurdin always experienced a vague flare-up of melancholy at the mention of rockets or bomb shelters, the latter of which Mr Gurdin had long been planning for the bottom of their garden.
‘I hope they are not just throwing good money away on those rockets,’ said Mrs Gurdin.
‘Ha! You sound like me,’ said Natalie. ‘Your politics are going my way. I thought you were all for us raining death and destruction on the Muddah-land.’
‘I don’t hate my country,’ said Mrs Gurdin quietly. ‘I hate what they have done to it.’ I stepped onto the patio. In a second I smelled oranges and grapefruits on the breeze that filtered across the valley, I could hear the low snarl of bobcats coming down the chaparral slopes, and wasn’t there also a whiff of old Spanish airs and sulphur out in the mountains? All this was broken very suddenly by the sound of a car horn and a glint of teeth.
‘Frankie!’
He did have a touch of style, that man. He came out of the car with flowers for Mrs Gurdin, white orchids in a silver pot, and was singing an old song of Bing Crosby’s, in that way of his, both transgressing and apologising at the same time. The song said the San Fernando Valley was just the place for him. Frank’s neat row of teeth rhymed perfectly with the white line of handkerchief cresting the top pocket of his suit. I ran inside to get away from his charm, but not before I saw him kissing Mrs Gurdin’s hand and opening his arms to Natalie, saying, ‘Hey, Nosebleed! You gonna make a guy beg?’ She kissed him and I witnessed one of those subtle shifts that Natalie was so very good at. It was as if someone had gently turned up the setting on an icebox, her eyes sparkling a wee bit harder as she turned a few degrees cooler.
The style of their speech was off-hand, yet full of manners. Mr Sinatra spat the letter t in the New Jersey way while playing the part of the easiest guy on the planet, clicking out words that shimmied over the great topics of the day. It mattered to him that he should seem not to care a great deal. Yet he cared to the point of madness. It was a wonderfully comic kind of curse, the wish to be cool, chiefly because the people who had the curse were generally those whose free-floating anxiety made coolness an impossibility. They were uptight in ways that presented a challenge to molecular physics, but hey, daddy-o , what merry battalions of determination they sent out to overcome the needs of your average Joe. * Everything appeared to melt into a shrug, but it was all appearance: Mr Sinatra was actually the least relaxed person I ever met. ‘What a blast,’ he said, lighting a cigarette for each of them. He was talking about Ocean’s 11 .
‘I guess the suits are looking for dollars,’ said Natalie, easing into the put-downs of Hollywood she found so congenial.
‘Made in the shade,’ said Frank. ‘Those shmucks will get their money. Say, how’s that pom-pom-shaker of a husband of yours?
‘Actually,’ said Mrs Gurdin, ‘RJ is trying out for a serious play in New York.’
‘We might have to bend his nose a little,’ said Mr Sinatra. ‘Give him the Actors Studio look, huh?’
‘Yeah!’ said Natalie, laughing. ‘Detroit’s answer to Karl Malden. Come and see the greatest show in town. Drop dead!’ Mrs Gurdin looked at her daughter and said nothing but Natalie felt the full force of admonishment. She