Collectibles by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lawrence Block
Published: 2021-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Miss Golden Dreams 1949

Joyce Carol Oates

* * *

Hel-lo! Welcome to Sotheby’s! Come in.

As you see, your seats are reserved. Today’s (private) auction is restricted to the most elite collectors.

And I am the most prized item on the bill—Miss Golden Dreams 1949.

That’s to say the single, singular, one-of-her-kind three-dimensional living-breathing-plasma-infused PlastiPlutoniumLuxe Miss Golden Dreams 1949.

Not mass-produced. Not “replicated.” Just—me.

(Re)created from the authentic DNA of—me.

The most famous pinup in the history of America and the most famous centerfold in the history of Playboy. And by popular acclaim the Number One Sex Symbol of the Twentieth Century.

Do you doubt, Daddy? Approach the platform—(no, Daddy, you can’t climb up on the platform!)—see for yourself.

My eyes see. This voice you hear is issued from me, it is not a spooky recording of Marilyn’s hushed breathy little-girl voice but the authentic thing. I am the authentic thing. Full-sized, anatomically correct in every crucial way.

How am I “animated”? I am not animated, Daddy. I am alive.

In fact I am superior to the original Miss Golden Dreams. She was just a frightened girl, her (flat, perfect) stomach growling from hunger. Those shadowy parts of my brain that once preserved troublesome memories have been (mostly) excised. My teeth are certainly in better condition—whiter, more even, and cavity-free—than they were in 1949. A heated red liquid is circulating in my veins and arteries, serving double duty as one-third again more efficient in carrying oxygen to my brain than my old anemic blood—and it’s an aphrodisiac, an added bonus.

Good thing you’ve brought your checkbook, Daddy.

How’d you like to own me, Daddy? Take me home with you? Love me?

Daddy, I know I could love you.

All you’ve got to do, Daddy, is make a bid for Miss Golden Dreams. And keep bidding. Keep upping the ante. Up—up—up until your rivals fall behind, panting and defeated.

Lowest acceptable purchase price for Miss Golden Dreams today is twenty-two million. Highest—hey, there is no highest.

In fact, it’s predicted that we will set a Sotheby’s record this very day—you, the most elite of Marilyn collectors, and me, Marilyn.

Yes, Miss Golden Dreams is the original Marilyn nude. The nude. The one you saw as a boy and never forgot. The one that rendered all the girls, at least the girls you knew, and the women you would come to know, irrelevant.

So young! (Practically as young as your granddaughter but don’t think that.)

Fun fact: I was paid fifty dollars to pose for this photo.

Fun fact: I wasn’t “Marilyn Monroe” yet—the studio hadn’t named me. I was Norma Jeane Baker.

Fun fact: already I’d been abandoned by a husband, divorced.

Fun fact: occupation starlet but—already—dropped by my studio.

Gaze greedily upon Norma Jeane as she was in 1949—more than seven decades ago. That was an era of female beauty like none before or since, and Miss Golden Dreams is the most desirable of them all—the “icon” beside which all other females fall short.

Flawless nude on red velvet. Soft sinuous velvet like the red interior of a heart. Creamy-white baby-soft skin, flawless skin, bright red-lipstick smile revealing small perfect white teeth, blond hair tumbling past (bare white) shoulders.

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