Mike
Mazurki
"Marilyn used to
come and socialize with me every Saturday. We sat in my office and
chatted away, and she seemed to enjoy herself. It was obvious she needed
to talk to another woman. This was before she shared that apartment with
Shelly Winters. She was a little girl who
was very smart, who had everything, but for some crazy reason never felt
terribly secure. And she always had some gentleman--some man--making
decisions for her. It was a pattern she fell into early on. She seemed
miserable. Over here, Honey!"
Heads turn toward the entrance and
the gang waves and whoops. Mazurki has been upstairs at the offices of
George Parnassus. Mike and George have been trudging down memory lane with
their old grappling buddy Jim Londos, the Golden Greek, who has just come
up from his avocado ranch in Escondido. Across the room Jimmy McLarnin is
getting nobly besotted--the only person who gives the appearance of paying
no attention to Mazurki. He keeps an eye on the popular wrestler the way
Ernest Hemingway described Wyndham Lewis watching Ezra Pound in A
Moveable Feast: "Carefully without seeming to look at him, as you do
when boxing." Coincidentally, Hemingway wrote that at a time when Jimmy
McLarnin was the most brilliant boxer on Earth--a time when men like
Hemingway and Clark Gable stood outside Jimmy's dressing room hoping to
shake his powerful hand.
