a spider web of diamonds

From the roof of Sutton Place on four hundred and forty four East fifty seventh street, you can see the blue sheet that is the East River and the Queensboro Bridge, pale in the afternoon sun. If you turn around, New York City stretches on, all sky scraping glass and green lights through the green trees of Central Park. It is the nineteenth of May, ninety sixty two, a Saturday and the hottest day in the city for five years. 

The apartment is thirteen E on the thirteenth floor. Mirrors, black and white tiles. The bedroom wall is painted mint green, there are silk blankets on the bed, the colour of cream. All the books inside the bookcase are red, a gold Cartier clock ticks on a silent white baby grand piano. A champagne glass is left fizzing, the Dom Pérignon black bottle nearly empty. 

Makeup artist Marie Irvine paints her face. With the lightest of touches, she tints her cheeks pink, her eyelashes grow longer under the brush, eyelids shimmering with powder and lips covered in red rose, the darkness pushed away. Costumier Jean Louie creates the dress. The fabric is the lightest of light, the colour of pure naked skin. Covered in six thousand individually hand stitched rhinestones. It glints on its hook, taken down by the maid, Hazel Washington, whose hands guide the teeth of the invisible zipper, bringing the twenty seven layers of nude net together. She is sewn into the dress, it clings to her. Underneath the fabric she wears nothing. 

The celebrated form drips with sex and rhinestones. 

Standing in the next room in a black suit is Isadore Miller. His eyeglasses and strong face are a match to his son, Arthur. She comes to him, her dress swishing on the tiles, and whispers into his ear. Her limousine waits outside as the sky turns blue black, and night comes. 

Most politicians, when they come to New York make their headquarters at the Waldorf, mine is Madison Square Garden. The city screams. Thousands of people reach out pale arms to grab, to hold on to. He is surrounded by policemen wearing white gloves, horses gleaming, their hooves loud in the street, motorbikes roar past, cars shine from the heat. 

It is ten past nine, and John. F Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world, walks into the front entrance of Madison Square Garden for the Gala celebration of his forty-fifth birthday. Inside there are ball gowns and bow ties, the star spangled banner sparkles, the room is alight with noise and life and laughter. The President takes his place and the crowd stands as one. He sits in a chair next to his mother with his feet up on the rails. The smoke from his cigar and that of a thousand other pinprick cigarette flares throughout the Garden, dances to the ceiling, creating a lazy haze of smoke that stays. 

At eight forty, she arrives. Wrapped in the whitest fur, she slides backstage, clutching onto Isadore. Ella Fitzgerald is there, wearing long white gloves and a black dress that moves with listless beads. Maria Callas is there, in a collar of gems and satin. Peggy Lee is there, in gold. 

Bill Ray is twenty six and a photographer for Life Magazine. Escaping the throng of photographers at the front of the stage, who are slowly being forced away by the Secret Service, Bill moves up through the Garden. As he climbs, he takes pictures of the fifteen thousand men and women below, their faces a pale upturn. He sees the red, white and blue strips of streamers that shine through spotlights. He sees a cage high up above the stage. Once every so often, the cage is released and balloons float down slowly, quietly, like rain. 

Bill stops climbing and takes a photograph of a man and a woman above the lights. The blurry euphoria is below, a large eagle looms, the President's crest. Her dress is off the shoulder, showing the smooth of her back. The man leans close to her.  Bill climbs up to the highest point of the Garden. He stands on a thin steel platform, surrounded by the rafters and beams of the roof. He feels the cold steel bars underneath his hands. 

At the podium below is actor Peter Langford, co Master of Ceremonies for the night. Mr President. On this occasion of your birthday, this lovely lady is not only pulchritudinous but punctual. And he says her name- there is a great shout from the crowd, a drum roll, an empty spotlight. 

Peter Langford looks nervous, he laughs a short burst into the microphone. A woman about whom, it truly may be said, she needs no introduction. A lull, he grins. Let me just say and the audience laughs, quick for the joke. Peter swings his arm around to welcome the spotlight again. Here she is! There is another drum roll, shorter now and absolute silence from the waiting, watching crowd. She isn’t there. 

But she is. Shivering in the darkness just outside where the light hits the stage. Waiting patiently for the grand third introduction to the seemingly shambolic appearance that she and Peter have concocted in rehearsals. He says the words that herald her But I'll give her an introduction anyway Mr President because in the history of show business at best, there has been no one female who has meant so much, who has done more...than- and there she is. Skittering across the stage towards him. Her dress guarded underneath the fur wrap to be revealed seconds later. She is with him now, he puts an arm around the fur and says Mr President, the late, Marilyn Monroe. 

She smiles as the whole of Madison Square Garden roars. Peter says to her I'll take that, the wrap slips into his hands, he looks at her breasts through the dress and grins like a kid. She is alone. 

And then comes the hush. She is naked. Her dress glitters through the light. She is covered in a spider web of diamonds. There’s a collective drawing of breath. 

She flicks the microphone with finger and thumb and brings her hands to shade her eyes, looking up, at the President, to the audience. A drum is hit, once. Echoing. 

Much later, she would say in an interview with Life magazine- There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing Happy Birthday, like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out! I looked all the way up and back, and I thought, That's where I'd be, way up there under one of those rafters, close to the ceiling, after I paid my two dollars to come into the place.

Up in those rafters is Bill. There was no sound. No sound at all. It was like we were in outer space. Then boom, on comes this spotlight. He looks down through his camera with its three hundred millimetre telephoto lens. He has no tripod to rest it on, so he places it on the railing. Metal meets metal. He only has one chance. 

On the stage, Marilyn is nervous. She moves her hands over the microphone, stroking the metal. She sighs one long sultry breath. There are voices humming, whispering. Hank Jones is her accompanist. He waits, his fingers on the keys. Begins to softly play the first bars of a song that is sung to somebody, somewhere in the world every day, and will continue to be sung, forever. 

She opens her mouth frowns, turning her head a little towards Hank at the piano so she can find her place. She sings, sighs, whispers. Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Mr President. Happy Birthday- to...you. As the applause begins, her arms float up, she licks her lips a little, grinning. Hank plays the first bar of the next song. She has missed her cue. Hank plays it again.  Thanks, Mr President, for all the things you've done, the battles that you've won. Her arms float down, and she moves one hand up the famous hip, clutching at her own waist. The way you deal with US steel and our problems -

It is here that Bill takes his picture. 

Marilyn is perfectly encased in her spotlight. The dress is so low cut that the bones of her back are prominent. The scapula, the spine. Far from the oozing size sixteen she was, she is thin. The photograph shows her glittering form. The wooden podium with its creased running sheet and microphone wires. The music stand lamps create pools of light, but the darkness of the night spreads out, surrounding. 

by the tonne! We thank you! So much. Everybody! Happy Birthday! she screams. The lights go up, she spreads her arms to conduct the orchestra, jumping to the sound of strings and brass. She cant see him, but a man is walking slowly towards her, he will lead her away. A one and a half meter high multi-tiered cake with forty five blue lit candles is carried out by two chefs, who crouch slightly as they walk, underneath the weight. The whole audience stands once more for an ovation. The cake wobbles slightly. 

It is eleven fifty five at night. If you walk up East sixty ninth street and across fifth avenue, you can walk through Central Park. Darkness closes and unseen people are sudden in the street light, slipping away. You can sit at the Bethesda Fountain to watch the ripples settle and listen to the music of New York City while the Angel of the Waters, green from age, watches over your rest. 

The townhouse is number thirty three on East sixty ninth street. Grey stone that streaks darker when it rains with a black door and white curtains. Inside, in the library, Marilyn Monroe stands with the President and his brother, Bobby. They are surrounded by books and men in black suit jackets holding glass with ice and residue. Cecil Stoughton is forty two and a photographer hired by the White House. He is the only photographer there. The President, his hands deep in his pockets, turns his head away from Marilyn as Cecil takes the picture. Her hair covers her eyes, her lips are pursed. Her body curves. Shapes from the flash of Cecil's camera are everywhere. Bobby's shadow lives forever on Marilyn's neck, Marilyn's shadow lives forever on the bookcase behind. 

Her gift to him is in her left hand. A gold Rolex watch, the inscription- Jack With love as always from Marilyn May 29th 1962. A poem is tucked inside the box. 

Let lovers breathe their sighs and roses bloom and music sound. Let passion burn on the lips and eyes and pleasures merry world go round. Let golden sunshine flood the sky and let me love or let me die.

Later in the night, the whole of the party moves upstairs to the landing. Diahann Carroll in pale diamonds and white silk performs, her eyes closed. Her unaccompanied voice echoing through the room, down the stairs, lingering through number thirty three. 

Quiet nights and quiet stars, quiet chords from your guitar, floating on the silence that surrounds us. Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams, quiet walks by quiet streams. Climbing hills where lovers go to watch the world below together. We will live eternally, in this mood of revelry, away from all the earthly cares that bind us. My life was dull each minute, until I found you in it, and all at once the happiness I need became this quiet nights of loving you. 

Quiet nights and quiet stars, quiet chords from your guitar. 

The President has one arm resting on a table full of roses and the glow of a lamp, his right hand a soft fist that he brings to his chin. Marilyn Monroe sits on the wooden floor, her left elbow on the railing, cheek resting on her hand. 

These two people, never to be spoken without the other, intertwined forever throughout history. 

Quiet love, quiet love, quiet love, quiet love. 

And the music spreads through.

Photograph by Bill Ray.