“What’s a cold spot?” The boy asked Joanne with nearly complete disbelief.
“Sweetie, a cold spot is a place in a room that is colder than the room around it because the supernatural energy is so strong there. In the Roosevelt you might experience a cold spot generated by the spirit of Marilyn Monroe or Montgomery Clift. They each have reasons to haunt the hotel. Look on the mezzanine level. You’ll find a mirror that was once in Marilyn’s suite and that some have said has revealed her image. Maybe it will for you!”
“Oh.” The boy tugged at his sagging socks, slightly intrigued.
“Yeah. So run along to the hotel and I’ll be there soon.” The middle-aged woman turned and walked in the opposite direction.
The boy, along with his mother and brother, began walking from the Mann Chinese Theater. On their way, they stepped on the stars of the Walk of Fame. They walked over Johnny Depp, then Glenn Close and Hugh Hefner until they were at the end of the block and could see the Roosevelt Hotel. They were incredulous, but that was normal. Few people took the Haunted Hollywood tour very seriously.
Joanne went over to the small tour office, which was made of plywood and snuggly held only one person. The side of the structure read “Haunted Hollywood Tour! See the specters that linger on after THE END.”
She opened the door, nearly causing her co-worker’s carefully balanced chair to spill him.
“Henry, can I get the keys to the van?”
“Sure, but Joanne, are you sure that you’re up for this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” She flicked at the hair that was constantly falling in her eyes.
“I dunno. I mean, you’ve been giving the tour for two months now, and you’re very good with all the facts, but please remember that there’s more to it. You are the personality of the group. You are the believer.” The old man said believer like it was a sacred role.
“I will scare them, Henry, I enjoy this job.”
“Good. Please scare them. I like you, and don’t want to be a jerk, but there are other people who have shown interest in scaring the public if you can’t.” With that, he handed Joanne the keys.
Truthfully, Joanne knew most of what she was telling the guests before she even took the job. She had long been a fan of the secret stories of Hollywood, the dirt behind the glitter. Somehow she could relate more to the things that went wrong in people’s lives than to the fairy tales that were sold as the truth. She could even relate to ghosts.
She lived on the east side of L.A. near the old sports arena, the one that had hosted two Olympics. Nothing so spectacular happened there lately, though. A mother of two, she often felt like the kids floated through that east-side home, rarely even saying hello to her and leaving cold spots behind. Her husband at least gave her the courtesy of an insult or two before ignoring her. The truth, though, was that she didn’t blame them. When she looked in her mirror, rather than seeing Marilyn Monroe’s ghost, she saw her own silver hair and pretty features. She looked good for her age, but everything that she saw seemed nearly transparent. Like a Hollywood visual effect, she was slowly fading. How could she expect her family to see something that she didn’t see herself?
She reached the empty van and sat in the driver’s seat. “Welcome to the Haunted Hollywood tour! Boo!” She nearly shouted the words and then produced a ghoulish cackle. These things were part of the job. She looked at her hands; the skin was pulling a bit tighter than it once had. The veins were a little more apparent. Some day, she would pass into the beyond, but she was sure that part of her was already there.
She took a deep breath, got out of the van and walked to the Roosevelt hotel to gather her tour group. The group had grown to a total of seven. A mother and daughter from Texas, two girls on spring break from Alabama and the trio that she had talked to at the Chinese Theater.
“Feel any cold spots?” She asked, but didn’t wait for the answer. A big part of the job was to consistently suggest that there were ghosts, but to dance away from the hard questions with answers that were light on facts.
“OK. Let’s head to the van, folks.”
She led the group across the street and to the van that was parked in a nearby turn-around. Just before getting on it, though, she asked the group to form a circle.
“OK, folks, we are about to embark on the Haunted Hollywood tour. This is a tour full of sites of tragedy and loss in Hollywood. Many spirits have not yet come to peace with the lives that they left behind in this city of dreams and so they walk these homes and streets and parks seeking peace, and hoping to be seen. By you.”
What Joanne said next was the best part of the Haunted Hollywood tour’s logic, according to Henry, who had written the script.
“In order to see the spirits, you need to clear your mind of doubts. Become a believer in the unexpected. Allow yourself the option of the supernatural mixing with what you believe to be natural. Are you ready?” She raised her voice in a frenzy of excitement until by the last question, she was nearly a cheerleader.
A chorus of “Yeah,” “Sure” and “OK” followed her question as a response. They were good sports. Thank God. That was always easier. A funny thought entered her mind, though, as she climbed into the bus. Maybe today they would see something.
The van drove past a string of sites of overdoses, murders, suicides and even deaths by natural causes. The goulishness of your death had no bearing on your status as a Hollywood haunter.
The van drove down a back alley that led to Chateau Marmont, Bungalo Number Three where John Belushi had overdosed. There was no mention of a ghost here, but the story fit the mood. She slowed the van to a creep.
“Did I just see a light turn on in that window?” Joanne asked the group through her microphone. They didn’t answer. “I think I did!” She hit the brake hard enough to make the group gasp. Then she drove on.
Next the van passed The Viper Room where River Phoenix had died. His overdose occurred right on the sidewalk visible from the van. She slowed the vehicle as the group stared at the concrete slabs.
If someone in Hollywood had claimed to see a ghost, it was on the tour. If they hadn’t, though, Joanne never mentioned it. They were honest about the facts and the sightings, her job was just to present it all in the most encouraging light.
Jayne Mansfield was rumored to have been involved with a satanic cult. Joanne mentioned it in a creepy voice. Lucky Luciano was believed to have killed many innocent people in Hollywood, which she stated in a Brooklyn accent. George Reeves, the original Superman, was killed by a self-inflicted bullet wound. Insert “faster than a speeding bullet?” remark. John Barrymore’s body was allegedly stolen from the Hollywood morgue and brought to the home of Erol Flynn where it was propped up in a chair to await Flynn’s return home. He would never be the same after the incident.
Then she told one of the most tragic stories of Hollywood, the story of the Black Dahlia. It was one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in the city. In 1947, the body of Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in East L.A. The woman who first found the naked body initially thought that she had found a mannequin. Then upon looking closer, she discovered that it was a woman severed in half at the waist and with a smile carved into her face. As Joanne said this, the tour group grew quiet.
“Tough town.” She whispered.
The tour group snickered at some of her remarks, but overall were entertained by the shtick. Joanne drove and joked and told stories that she new better than Henry who’d written the script, but something was different. Something new lingered in the back of her mind. It was the ghost of possibility.
They pulled into the Westwood Memorial Park cemetery and Joanne walked them to each of the interesting gravestones within. Dean Martin’s stone said “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.” Jack Lemmon’s gravestone simply read “in”, suggesting that this last credit was just another credit. Rodney Dangerfield’s stone said “There Goes The Neighborhood.” These departed stars rested among Roy Orbison, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood and finally Marilyn Monroe. It was standing in front of Marilyn’s stone that Joanne broke from the script forever.
“You’ll notice the surveillance camera that is constantly monitoring the vault,” she began and pointed to the panel that held Marilyn’s name. Standing there with her hand pointing to the camera, she thought about Marilyn’s life. She thought about poor Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. Then she thought about her life. She thought about the slow fading and decided that it wasn’t OK. She thought about her home and her kids and her husband, then, still pointing at the camera, she let her arm drop to her side.
“You know, folks, the camera is not watching for ghosts, it’s watching for vandals. I’m sorry. I just don’t think that Marilyn is coming back to hang out in this pretty, but empty cemetery. It’s empty, you know, except for the hearts of the people that come here looking. Where are you ladies from?” She pointed to the girls in front.
“We’re from Alabama.” The surprised blonde responded.
“Well, you’ve got more spirit, young lady, than this place has on Halloween night.”
The group laughed, but the mood had changed.
“Hollywood has a lot of great history, and this tour will show you how a lot of the people that are attracted to the bright lights are also likely to have strange ends. Rather than glorify these souls any longer, though, let’s enjoy the rest of the tour as a cautionary tale. And if you see a ghost I’ll give you my next paycheck.”
Joanne had never talked this way to anyone. She didn’t know where the words were coming from. She finished the tour by taking the group past the site of the Manson murders which she called idiotic and senseless and then on the way back to The Chinese Theater she took a detour. She stopped in front of a restaurant.
“Folks, this is the former site of the Knickerbocker Hotel. Once a year after the death of her husband Harry in 1926, Bess Houdini would gather a group on the roof of this building for a séance. The reason that she was optimistic about the return of the great escape artist was that he told her that if there were a way to escape from the afterlife and get a message to her, he would. Psychics lined up for the opportunity to channel Harry back to Bess. The Houdinis were smart, thoug. They had arranged a password that Harry would give from the afterlife to prove that he was who he said he was. Part of the password was the word “Rosabelle,” which was inscribed on Bess’s wedding ring. The rest was an encrypted phrase “answer – tell – pray –answer –look –tell –answer, answer –tell. No medium ever passed the secret message back from Harry to Bess and after ten years she stopped trying.”
The group was now completely quiet as the Hollywood Blvd. traffic rolled past the van.
“I guess that the best messages are the ones we give to the people we love while we’re still here.” Joanne said. Then she drove the van to its parking space and quit her job.
I arrived in Las Vegas in the dark. As you drive across the desert, you can see a single light beam rise over the dark hills and you know you’re close. The glow comes from the top of the Luxor Casino and is the brightest light in the world. The cylinder of light was built to hypnotize and attract tourists from all over the world. It’s worked. So much of what you see in Las Vegas is designed to attract you, steal from you and then, rudely, to get you to leave. That’s why the best gambler to walk into Vegas is blind and deaf. I guess that they’d try to get him with smells, though.
My point is that you can’t get distracted in this land of distractions. It’s asking a lot, but I have some training. Back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I hung with a few of the famous Black Jack card counting team from MIT. They developed a system of card counting that Vegas never saw coming and they made millions. While they employed it, though, the casino would throw free drinks, hookers and even phony gamblers at them. The trick was not to lose your focus and not to lose your count. Sitting in the apartments of fellow MIT grad students, thousands of miles from Vegas, we’d practice, and we’d even practice at ignoring distractions. The apartments had drink servers, loud music and even girls that would touch the back of your ear when you’d least expected it.
I suppose I was the best counter that they ever had, but I never let them know it. I saw the undealt deck float before me and the cards arranged themselves before my eyes, along with the probabilities of the next card. It was natural for me, but I had a wife and a promising career. That wasn’t the right time for gambling. Now I am alone on the other side of the country. Now, I am driving a rusted old Ford Mustang and my cash supply is low. Don’t ask about my savings, let’s just focus on this moment. Back then wasn’t the right time. Now is.
Two weeks after Joanne quit her job, her car was packed. She didn’t bother to explain to anyone why she was going to Las Vegas, and that was probably for the best. She didn’t know the answer. She barely heard her husband tell that she was going to fail and would be back within a week- he was just a ghost to her now. She knew that she was finally doing the right things. She knew that she was finally acting rather than reacting and that she could see a clear image when she looked in the mirror. She slammed the trunk of the car and then climbed into the open driver's side door. Sitting in the driveway, she fished through her glove compartment for a map. She found one and began to open it when she realized that it was not the U.S. map, but the L.A. map that she had once used to train for the Haunted Hollywood job.
On the map, she saw something that made her decide to make a quick stop before leaving Los Angeles. She rode though the intersection where Elizabeth Short’s body was found and then headed for Route 101. She was still thinking about how the poor girl from Medford, Massachusetts could cross the country to follow a Hollywood dream only to have it end in a vacant lot. She knew that after she got on the highway she could say that Los Angeles had not claimed her like it had Elizabeth. As she drove east on Martin Luther King, though, something made her stop short of the highway. She parked the car and got out to lean against it and to see what she had failed to notice for years. It was only three blocks from the house where she’d lived all of her adult life. There, like something from a dream, stood the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. As she looked at it, she felt more at home than she ever had with her children and husband. An older part of her felt at home with its arches reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum. Then she got back in her car, got on the highway and soon was well on her way to Las Vegas.
The other three had already arrived.
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