Read Online Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk - Free Book Online Page A

senator’s embrace and accepts that gaudy piece of gilded trash.
    Coming out of the flashback, we slowly dissolve to a tight shot which reveals this same trophy, engraved,
From the Greater Inland Drama Maniacs of Western Schuyler County
. Over a decade later it sits on a shelf, the gold clouded with tarnish, the whole of it netted with cobwebs. A beat later a scrap of white cloth wraps the trophy; a hand lifts it from the shelf. With further pullback, the shot reveals me, dustingin the drawing room of the town house. Polishing. Stray spiderwebs cling to my face, and a halo of dust motes swirl around my head. Outside the windows, darkness. My gaze fixed on nothing one can actually see.
    From offscreen, we hear a key turn in the lock of the front door. A draft of air stirs my hair as we hear the heavy door open and shut. The sound of footsteps ascending the main staircase from the foyer to the second floor. We hear a second door open and shut.
    Abandoning the trophy, the dust cloth still in one hand, I follow the sound of footsteps up the stairs to where Miss Kathie’s boudoir door is closed. A clock strikes two in some faraway part of the house as I knock at the door, asking if Miss Kathie needs help with her zipper. If she needs me to set out her pills. To draw her bath and light the candles on her fireplace mantel. The altar.
    Through the boudoir door, no answer. When I grip the knob, it refuses to turn in either direction. Fixed. This door Miss Kathie has never locked. Pressing one dusty cheek to the wood, I knock again, listening. Instead of an answer, a faint sigh issues from inside. The sigh repeats, louder, then more loud, becoming the squeak of bedsprings. The only answer is that squeak of bedsprings, repeating, a squeak as high-pitched and regular as laughter.

ACT I, SCENE TEN
    The scene opens with Lillian Hellman grappling in barehanded combat with Lee Harvey Oswald , the two of them wrestling and punching each other near an open window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository , surrounded by prominent stacks of Hellman’s
The Little Foxes
and
The Children’s Hour
and
The Autumn Garden
. Outside the window, a motorcade glides past, moving through Dealey Plaza , hands waving and flags fluttering. Hellman and Oswald gripping a rifle between them, they yank the weapon back and forth, neither gaining complete control. With a violent head butt, slamming her blond forehead into Oswald’s, leaving his eyes glazed and stunned for a beat, Hellman shouts, “Think, you commie bastard!” She screams, “Do you really want LBJ as your president?”
    A shot rings out, and Hellman staggers back, clutching her shoulder where blood spouts in pulsing jets betweenher fingers. In the distance, the pink Halston pillbox hat of Jacqueline Kennedy moves out of firing range as we hear a second rifle shot. A third rifle shot. A fourth …
    More rifle shots ring out as we dissolve to reveal the kitchen of Katherine Kenton , where I sit at the table, reading a screenplay titled
Twentieth Century Savior
authored by Lilly. Sunlight slants in through the alley windows, at a steep angle suggesting late morning or noontime. In the background, we see the servants’ stairs, which descend from the second floor to the kitchen. The rifle shots continue, an audio bridge, now revealed to be the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, the sound of the fantasy sequence bleeding into this reality.
    As I sit reading, a pair of feet appear at the top of the servants’ stairs, wearing pink mules with thick, heavy heels,
clop-clopping
lower down the stair steps to reveal the hem of a filmy pink dressing gown trimmed in fluttering pink egret feathers. First one bare leg emerges from the split in front, pink and polished from the ankle to the thigh; then the second leg emerges from the dressing gown, as the figure descends each step. The robe flapping around thin ankles. The steps continue, loud as gunshots, until my Miss Kathie fully