Fade to Black by Ron Renauld

a separate lashing, “That you come straight home, right after the movie.” She rolled her eyes upward, driving her gaze into Eric. “I want my back rubbed.”
    Eric didn’t reply. There was no need to. While Aunt Stella reached into her robe and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, Eric loomed uncertainly over her, the joy drained from his features, replaced with an uneasy dread.
    Marilyn sat across from Joey Madonna at a patio table outside the West Beach Café. They sipped burgundies and traded small talk as they waited for a table inside. Waiters and other patrons drifted in and out of view in the nearby doorway.
    She was still waiting for him to go into more detail about his photography job and where she could fit into it.
    Joey kept putting her off with some banter about spoiling a surprise.
    There was no one sitting at the nearby tables, leaving them quite alone. They sat in view of the ocean, which drank down the last colors of the sunset. The atmosphere called for romance, but Marilyn’s heart wasn’t in it. She was getting impatient with Joey.
    He leaned forward, looking her in the eyes. “They tell me that dreams reveal a lot about a person’s inner secrets.”
    “Oh, no,” Marilyn said sarcastically. “I have these horrible nightmares about losing my makeup. What does that mean?”
    She took out a small hand mirror and looked into it, adding a fresh gloss to her crimson lips.
    “I had a dream I photographed Marilyn Monroe last night.” Joey let his hand slide across the table and make a play for Marilyn’s. Her fingers retreated at his touch.
    “How’d it go?” she asked blandly.
    “I don’t know.” Joey said dramatically. “The proofs haven’t been developed yet.”
    Marilyn looked back at the restaurant.
    “I’m starved,” she said, thinking, two can play this game.
    Westwood was a magical world all its own. Bordered to the north by UCLA, it presented itself as a retail wonderland for the affluent collegiate set and also boasted one of the highest concentrations of movie theatres per capita and square foot in the world. It was difficult to look in any direction without seeing a theatre marquee jutting out over the sidewalk, advertising a new release in a blaze of pulsing neon.
    Ship’s Westwood was a coffee shop on the order of a posh Denny’s, dwarfed by a forest of high-rise buildings crowded near the intersection of Westwood and Wilshire Boulevards. Eric paced nervously in front of the restaurant, framed, in neon as he stared out at the street, waiting for Marilyn to show up. She was late.
    “Excuse me,” he said to a man coming out of the coffee shop, “what time is it, please?”
    “It’s about nine o’clock,” the man answered.
    “Thank you,” Eric said, deflated. He readjusted his Hopalong Cassidy watch and wound it again. “Where is she, Hoppy?”
    He ran the day back over in his mind, concentrating on his scene with Marilyn after he had dropped her off. He could swear he had said Ship’s Westwood at eight o’clock. He was almost positive. Of course, maybe she had misunderstood. Most of the films started at a little after nine. Maybe she thought he’d said nine, then, and just wasn’t familiar with the long lines in Westwood.
    Damn, he thought. He’d been right there at the shop. All he would have had to do was stick his head in the door and say something charming. “Date at eight, don’t be late.
    Just a reminder.
    “Stupid,” he told himself. “I should have come with her.”
    Once she decided that Joey was playing her for a fool, Marilyn went all out to give him his comeuppance. She played not only hard, but expensive to get. Even though she had eaten only a few hours before, she ordered escargot and a Caesar salad to precede her main meal of filet mignon. She just picked at all three dishes, leading Joey on with her responses to his trite advances.
    “Would you change your name if you became famous?” he asked her.
    “If?”
    “When . . .”
    “Change it to