No one called the police, because Nina’s Whiteness vanished the second the Negro man called her his wife. She was forgotten as soon as she disappeared, thanks to Maude, who distracted the crowd with her tears over her friend’s betrayal.
Only a few acted shocked that something like this could happen to Nina.
“This isn’t your fault,” Lucy said, still consoling Maude. “That man was Nina’s husband. Upon her decision to pass, one day Nina said she was going to the store and just never came back. He’ll never get over her.”
“Question is, how did he find her?” Cora asked. She had looked angry, not sad, when she arrived.
“LA is big, but it’s small. Especially among Colored folk.”
“Especially when people talk…” Liberty let her voice trail off, which naturally incited questions.
“Someone told him where he could find Nina?”
Liberty continued her insinuation. “Who told someone, who told someone.”
Eyes exchanged glances, processing the breach in loyalty and security.
“Where is he now?”
“Gone.”
“She’ll be back.”
Maude cried out again. “It’s been two days!”
Laurie shook her head with regret. “We told Nina to move, but she’d already fallen in love with Titan and refused.” Laurie began to pace the room. “We need a new story. Cora and Billie, you all were on a boat down there. Say Nina was … with some man. The boat docked, and you assumed she had already gotten off. Let them think she drowned.”
The room agreed.
“You’re going to tell the police she was having an affair?” Kitty asked.
Laurie looked at Edna as if to instruct. “We must. It doesn’t matter what really happened; it only matters what people believe. Finding out what really happened to Nina could lead to them finding out about us.” Any story was better so long as it ended with Nina still being White.
“What about her husband?”
“It’ll embarrass him, make him less likely to push for an investigation,” Cora said, explaining the fragility of the male ego.
Laurie flung her fingers in the air. “The sun is rising. Go home.”
Days later, Nina was found tangled in a fishing net near the pier. Cora and Billie were quoted in the paper as planned. Maude was erased from the night altogether. The word of two prominent White women erased the memory of the angry Negro man in the minds of the people on the pier that night; he became the nameless White man Nina’s husband thought she was having an affair with. Not too long after that, as predicted, Nina’s death was ruled an accident, and the case was closed. There wasn’t a funeral, and her husband remarried within a year.
Nina’s death jolted Kitty back to the reality of the danger she could face. The women convened at Blair House to refuel the emotional depletion they shared; it was one of the few times their pain wasn’t categorized by skin shade. Everyone realized how vulnerable they were, how insignificant they could become. How beauty sometimes led to tragedy. Some had been jealous of Nina’s glamorous life, but they felt bad about their envy now. The need to possess, to own her, was the masculine greed that had killed her.
Eventually, the leak was discovered: it was proven that Wilma was the one who knew Nina’s ex-husband, and she was removed from their ranks. Kitty used work as an excuse to disassociate. Like the deaths of Joshua Hunt and Emmett Till, Nina’s murder haunted her. She sought refuge with Nathan, whose calm nature settled her. She felt most safe with him, inside the confines of the lot’s walls and story lines, among the things she could control.
* * *
Kitty fell asleep watching the latest edit of The Misfits in one of the screening rooms. There had been ten or more such sessions—Nathan insisted on seeing every cut before and after everyone else’s notes. It was Kitty’s job to be there every time. Having loved it five cuts ago, she drifted off five minutes in.
When she woke, startled by her dream or the silence, Nathan was smiling at her. “You look like a baby when you sleep.”
She hid her face. “Why were you watching me?”
“It’s what I look forward to every day.”
Kitty sat up straight and clenched the sides of her chair as he walked up to her and bent to kiss her. Her eyes closed involuntarily as their mouths moved, synchronized as though their tongues had their own secret language. She never wanted to stop kissing him and would have fought against it if forced. Nathan exposed her need to connect, to touch and find an emotional dwelling in another. It felt dangerous that first time. She pulled away, panicking, but he pulled her back, and she let him, surrendering, sinking, being swallowed whole by what felt natural. He sank on the floor in front of her, unbuttoning her shirt with one hand and the top of her skirt with the other. He had an urgency for her body, and she mimicked his motions, feeling the same. She vacillated about whether to stop him every time his hands or tongue went somewhere new but then pulled him in, binding them together.
They became a couple without any formal discussion, though there were valid reasons to end their romance before it started. Kitty didn’t trust her ability to keep her secrets from him, and Nathan was embarrassed he’d fallen for the ingénue. Wanting her was typical—but their attraction had originated from their conversation, from imaginations that seemed to have been born from the same place. For nine months they had worked side by side, knowing their commitment to the studio was more important than their feelings. Now their love bolstered their creativity, blending their relationship and work into one.
When they weren’t at the studio, they escaped to remote beach spots or to his house in the hills. Most nights they would share a roof, whether at his place or hers on Orange Drive, each dependent on the other for sleep. He proposed marriage within a few months, which she eloquently delayed, but did not refuse, with reminders about their continued focus on the studio.
CHAPTER 27
Kitty
October 1956
The premiere of The Misfits was bigger than anyone expected. The crowd of reporters and photographers made Kitty feel as though she were hovering outside her body in a space where it was both loud and quiet, light and dark. Everyone was yelling, but she could hear each voice clearly, as if the reverberations were being transmitted through individual funnels into her ear.
When it was time to enter the theater, Nathan held her back, clasping her elbow with his fingertips. “It’s bad luck to watch your film at the premiere.” He put his tuxedo jacket around her shoulders.
“You made that up. You’re worried they won’t like it.”
“I’m serious, it’s bad luck. Don’t you worry. Your beautiful face is going to be wildly famous. You’ll see.” After a year of working together, and months as a couple, Nathan was the only person who could calm her, the only person she wanted to. Their relationship was a mutual stroking of their egos, the shining twinkle, a gold glittering reflection of the other. Time had stopped the first time their lips touched, and every time since.
A flash of light ruined it in the present.
Kitty’s eyes opened in time to see a lone photographer duck into the shadow of the theater awning, less than twenty feet away.
Nathan barked into the darkness. “Credentials, please! Where do you work?”
A butterscotch-colored Negro boy, skinny and no more than sixteen, emerged into the light.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Michael Walker, sir.”
“Michael, do you know who I am?”
“No, sir.”
Nathan gestured to Kitty. “Do you know who she is?”
“Miss Kitty Karr. I couldn’t get close enough to take a picture earlier.”
“Because you don’t have credentials?”
The boy smiled. “Yes. I’m working on putting a portfolio together. I apologize, sir. I was just trying to capture the moment.”
“What if I gave you an exclusive with Miss Karr here?”
He looked down at his camera, dangling from his neck. “I have that already.”
The boy’s boldness would have angered a lesser man, but Kitty could tell Nathan was impressed by his confidence.
“That photo,” said Nathan, lowering his voice, “could make things very difficult.”