Free The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan

mille-feuille pastries, which she called Napoleons – it was just heaven to fall in with Mr Vince of Jackson Heights, Queens.
Plutarch thought creatures could live on goodness alone. That was sweet. A philosopher can’t have everything. I am happy he recognised the speech of animals, but he failed to admit our bad character, when we so obviously love to rend a piece of ox with our teeth and worry a hog with our mouths and feel good about it afterwards. Yet our learning is there to bridle our conscience, is it not? Do we not educate ourselves in order to be moral? So it was with livery breath that I passed my first snooze on those cold floor-tiles, digesting my carrion and worrying it might mean I was not personable.
Frank was whistling in the dark hallway, spinning his hat on his finger, when the lift opened on the thirteenth floor and Vince handed me over. Frank’s great joke was to place me inside the apartment and let me find my way to Marilyn. The door was open. I stepped over a pair of stiletto shoes covered in bright grey rhinestones – Ferragamo , it said inside them – and stopped to nibble the strap of a Pucci handbag that leaned against a drinks trolley. She was nowhere to be seen so I sat on a copy of Paris Match . ‘Go on, shoo. Keep walking, shitstick,’ stage-whispered Frank from the front door, bending down and urging me on. The carpet was white and fluffy and smelled of carbolic soap, an English smell of rotting flowers. When I got to the living room I could hear her voice, then I saw she was sitting on a Louis XV provincial-style ivory and yellow painted chair, her nice legs folded under her. She wore a lace dress. The chair was right next to a small white piano and she was speaking on the telephone, her head tilted back, her eyes absorbing the light coming from a cut-glass clock that hung above the television. ‘It isn’t a story for Marilyn Monroe,’ she was saying. ‘I guess he’s a good writer but the girl is some kind of tramp, right? Well, Lew. I happen to know she wouldn’t say those lines. She couldn’t. There’s no Sugar in them and there’s no Cherie in them, and gee, Lew, there’s no me in them. Don’t you think that’s important? If I’m going to play a tramp I’d sooner do Rain for NBC. Lee says I’m ready. Mr Maugham wants me, right?’
She didn’t see me coming in. She listened like an oldfashioned listener, ready to learn, ready to change, alert to the sudden wisdom that makes all the difference. She bit her nails one minute and twisted the phone wire the next. It was a feast to my hungry ears. ‘Well, that is possible too. Yes, I know all that . . . Not where I come from . . . But don’t you ever just want to surprise yourself, Lew? I mean get up and not have to . . . gee, it’s humiliating. I don’t want to do an imitation of myself, okay? . . . Well, it’s nice of you to say it, Lew . . . I’m always running into people’s unconscious. Maybe. I hope so. Which part? This part? I don’t think so. Maybe this time round I could just start myself over again. Hey, is that possible? I know what she is and she’s not that way. I’m on a freedom ride, Lew.’
She laughed and poured some champagne from a bottle next to the telephone. ‘Are you listening to me? . . . I’m a monster, Lew, okay? I accept that. Now listen here . . . But . . . Yes, I was born nervous . . . Listen here. Lew.’
I had never seen anyone so enraptured on the phone before; she seemed to have forgotten about Frank and she only noticed me when she put back the receiver. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘O Lord. Wow. Hattie! Lena! Frankie!’ She was the only girl I ever knew who could whisper an exclamation. She lifted me into her arms and kissed me as if I was the returning hero, and I did feel special, you know, for a moment, held up high by Marilyn like the dog who finally worked things out and made it home.
Well met , Comrades. Marilyn’s helpers came rushing into the room with Frankie