So, in 1957 she packed it in. She went to Florida, modeled for three or four years and then disappeared. Utterly.

*

What became of her? Here is a selection of the rumors that I've heard over the years:

After gangsters threatened her life, she had plastic surgery and went to live in Europe.

She entered a convent.

She secretly married a minor film star, or the brother of a minor film star, or a friend of a minor film star's lawyer, and lives with him in Canada.

What happened, of course, is much less colorful. Probably, as most of those who were close to her believe, she went back to Tennessee, got married, had kids and settled down to a Baptist life. By now, if she's still alive, she's pushing 70.

There's a man in California who claims to be her brother. He's not talking. There are others, Bunny Yeager among them, who know where she is, but they are keeping her secret. A tidy sum of money was recently offered to her through intermediaries if she'd surface and tell her story. The response, if indeed it was an authentic one, seemed to have something to do with "the Lord's work."

*

The Bettie Page that we know ceased to exist some time ago. She never got to play those glamorous, exciting parts on stage or in the movies that she dreamed about. But the part she did play, however inadvertently, was unique. That Bettie Page will never grow old. She will never be hounded by crazed fans. Paparazzi will not track her down and humiliate her. The tabloids will not draw comparisons between what they say she has become and what we know she is.

One hopes she has cashed in on at least a fraction of the happiness she gave to others. Maybe she has a daughter or, by now, a granddaughter who has black hair and a slightly droopy eye.

*

The third and last time I saw her was on a camera-club shoot. We all met on a weekend afternoon at an abandoned farm someplace in the New Jersey countryside: Bettie, Brandy, one other model, a dozen or so photographers and I. The guys clicked away for four or five hours as the girls lounged against barn doors and leaned out of windows, hugged trees, draped themselves against boulders and rolled around in the grass. Mostly, the men followed Bettie from place to place, as did I. They asked her to turn this way and that way, bend over a little more, even more, look back, back here, back here at the camera, at the lens, smile now, big smile, one more time, right at the lens, please....

She smiled for all of them. Even though I didn't have a camera, she smiled one time, I think, at me.