Free Casting Norma Jeane by James Glaeg Page A

in the forest, surrounded by many curious old books among which there’d been one featuring an ornate illumination of the letters MM—for the Latin “Memento Mori,” meaning “Remember that you must die.”
    That somber thought, joined to the intoning in his memory of Turia’s ancient bell, brought to André de Dienes’ mind a picture of Norma Jeane and her Aunt Ana bowing their heads in prayer at lunchtime. That fine old lady had invited André to share a meal with them before she would consent to her niece’s going away with him on a month’s journey to pose against a backdrop of the California wilds for his camera. It was to be her first truly professional assignment.
    Subsequently on the road with André, Norma Jeane had gone right on bowing her head in prayer every time they’d stopped for a meal. All about her, no matter in what circumstances, there continued to cling a certain demure and proper air that never once verged on prudery. De Dienes had delighted in this. It underlay, he’d discovered, all her expressions of face and all her postures of body. Especially, in their work, it had added an unexpected zest to the inborn knack she had of sporting before the camera a fanny which had proven to be of uncannily compact excellence when encased in the blue jeans he’d newly purchased for her, her very first pair.
    Of course the photographer had explored every part of her body in his imagination before he’d ever touched her. On one particularly hot and dusty day when he’d gotten all sweaty and frustrated trying to fix a flat tire at the roadside, he’d happened to look up and see Norma Jeane sitting at a distance on a large stone—her makeup perfect, her clothes spotless, the very picture of pristine calmness and composure. He’d dropped his tire iron right then and there, and the next minute he’d been at her side thanking her for simply coming along with him and begging her to marry him! In the surprise of the moment she’d only turned her face away and said nothing.
    Weeks later, however, after he’d grown so vilely exasperated and petulant with her standoffishness that she’d finally submitted to his advances, he’d reveled in an experience of love exceeding all his expectations. Until morning, that is, when he’d found the twenty-year-old sobbing quietly into her pillow. It hadn’t been, he’d found, what she’d wanted to do at all. Only something she’d allowed him to do. Stabbed by the feeling that he’d practically kidnapped Norma Jeane, André de Dienes immediately knew just how he would make everything right. It was a fact that he adored her. He would make her his own the minute she was free to marry!
    Now as the two spoke in her little one-room pied-à-terre, the black lace negligée made it clear she’d been stringing him along about marriage all this time only because of what he could do for her career. He’d known that kind of girl—and used them—plenty of times before in Rome, Paris, New York. But finding that Norma Jeane had become one of them was a thing hardly possible for him to accept.
    For some reason, when he left her at her door, their embrace felt like one between a brother and sister. About that and about everything else Norma Jeane appeared relieved, pleased with the outcome of a sticky situation.
    It was only for André de Dienes to feel otherwise. Yes, he prided himself on how swiftly he’d always adapted to crises, and his sangfroid in the handling of this one had been professionally for the best. But now he was going to have to awaken like one of the white owls in the dark shadows of the Turia forest at the ringing of the Angelus bell. Now he was going to have to come to terms in his heart with his discovery that he’d been living in a dream about Norma Jeane. How was it possible to say that nothing here had been lost to him? His dream, after all, was his dream! Therefore, he was anything but through with this nervous breakdown his friends said he was