Free L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories by Jonathan Santlofer

trick as they called it of a callow heart.
    Of the five daughters of Cleo Short only one would forgive him. Only one would write back to him & soon travel to live with him in far-away California in a new life that beckoned.
    For the old life was used-up & of no promise, in Medford, MA. And the golden California life beckoned—Los Angeles & Hollywood.
    Betty you’re a terrific gal. & sure the beauty of the Short females. Look at you!
    It did not seem a far-fetched idea to Betty Short as to Cleo Short or anyone who knew them, that daughter Betty was pretty enough & “sexy” enough to be a movie star one day.
    That was a happy time, those months then.
    They did not last long but Norma Jeane said to me when we were new & shy to each other sharing a room in Mr. Hansen’s “mansion” on Buena Vista Avenue Oh Betty you are so lucky! for Norma Jeane said she had not ever glimpsed her father even from a distance but now that she’d been on the covers of Swank & Stars & Stripes maybe he would see her & recognize her as his . & if ever she was an actress on screen he would see & recognize her—she was sure of this.
    (Poor Norma Jeane had faith, if she worked hard & made the right connections among the Hollywood men, like all of us, she would become a star like Betty Grable, Lana Turner, & earlier Jean Harlow who was Norma Jeane’s model & idol. It was so: Norma Jeane was very beautiful in a simpering-baby way with a white-rose-petal skin that was softer than my skin even & did not show fatigue in her face as I did, sometimes. We were not jealous of Norma Jeane for she was so young-seeming though at this time nineteen years old which is not so young in Hollywood. We laughed at Norma Jeane, she was so trusting & innocent & you had to think, hearing her weak whispery voice, Norma Jeane Baker was just not smart & mature enough to make her way in the shark-waters where her white limbs would be torn off in the predators’ teeth.)
    It was the New Year of 1947 when this terrible
    act was perpetrated upon me. That was a later time.
    We did not crawl back to that bastard K.K.! Except he owed us money, he’d kept promising to pay. & he knew “gentlemen”—he said—of a “dependable quality” & not the kind waiting like sharks in the surf for some trusting person to wade out.
    Anyway—I didn’t crawl to K.K. like he boasted. Betty Short did not crawl for any man not ever.
    So it was the Bone Doctor inflicted such hurt upon me: that I would not submit to him in the disgusting way he wished. For not even $$$ can be enough, in such a case.
    Of course—I did not know what would befall me. I did not know what my little cries No! No-no-NO! would unleash in the man, who had seemed till then a sane & reasonable man, a man who might be handled by any shrewd girl like Betty Short!
    Port mortem you would not guess that I had had dignity and poise in life as well as milky-skinned brunette beauty though it is true that I had not (yet) a film career—even a “starlet” contract like many girls of our acquaintance at the Hollywood Canteen. (Norma Jeane Baker had not a real contract yet, either—though she led people to think she did.) Post mortem seeing me naked & white-skinned (for my body had totally bled out ) & covered in stab wounds & lacerations—my legs spread open in the most ugly & cruel way in mockery—& my torso separated from my lower body & twisted slightly from it as if in revulsion for the horror perpetrated upon me— post mortem you would not guess that I had been a vivacious young woman whom many men admired in Hollywood & L.A. & a favorite at parties & very popular with well-to-do older men & Hollywood producers & Mr. Mark Hansen who owned the Top Hat Club & Mesa Grande movie house & invited me to live in his “mansion” on Buena Vista Blvd. with other girls—(some were “starlets” & others aspiring to that status)—to “entertain” guests.
    Dr. M. was not one of these. Dr. M. was known by no one except