I understood that adultery was wrong. Karen’s sex-dead union gave me my moral road in. I craved marriage with Karen. We were friends at the start. Helen and I had had that. Joan and I had not. “Marriage is sex and courage.” Doris Lessing said it. Helen quoted it at our wedding. I threw the quote at Karen. I told her she should not remain in her marriage. It was wrong to pass stasis and romantic dysfunction on to her girls. Her relationship with her husband was moribund. The cocksucker was doomed. My mantra: Divorce your homo hubby and marry me!
We talked, we made love, we became deep friends. We discussed history. I compiled notes for my new novel, Blood’s A Rover. I studied Karen. I created a Karen-meets-the-Red-Goddess-narrative in my mind. I pre-aged Karen to the age of the fictive Joan Rosen Klein. I retained her adultery and two daughters. I made her a Quaker/leftist/pacifist. My lost daughters with Karen merged with my lost daughter with Joan. My creative world veered toward matriarchy. Motherhood as courage and a road to transcendence. An oddly unveiling late theme for a guy like me.
I learn things late—and only the hard way. My life was a maternal march. Joan and Karen showed me the shortcut to women as History. I had the whole book in my head now.
Dark rooms, phone calls, Women.
I called Helen every night. I yearned for Joan non-stop. I brought Joan-yearning to Karen and Karen-lust-overflow to Joan. My multi-woman dreamscape was joyful and unimpeded by hierarchy. Karen and I shared a single nervous system. We were tall, thin and hyper-caffeinated. We could not tamp down, sleep or halt our continuous assessment of meaning. We phone-talked every night. We had hot dates at my love crib twice a week. I mauled Karen with my marry-me mantra. Karen taught me about family.
I’d never had one. That killed Karen. She described her daughters’ lives and her motherly duties as rapture and ravaged sprint. Karen persevered within the strictures of a skunk marriage. She rebuffed my portrayal of said marriage and spun stories of her girls. The tales rebuffed my ridicule of their dipshit dad. Karen’s girls became my long-sought children. It was an imaginative construction formed by pillow talk. It was free of the swerving fears of real parenthood and all the daily drudge work. I mythologized two kids I had never met. Karen and I riffed off their established personalities and gave them gleeful fantasy lives. They were the henchbabies of southside dope dealers and sold black-market nukes. They robbed pharmacies and peddled pills to their nursery school chums. Karen and I laughed our fucking asses off.
We had fun. I left Karen raucous phone messages. Hey, baby—LAPD’s surveilling your hubby. I’ve got my minions out to frame him. He’s cruising gay bars. He’s been to the Manhole, the Cockpit, the Rump Room and Boys “R” Us. Karen loved this shit. Karen howled and roared. I kept up my marry-me mantra. Karen said, No, no, NO.
It got to me. I wanted more. I loved Karen. We were lovers and friends. I hadn’t met her daughters. They were old enough to rat me to the hubby. All my crazy Joan shit got re-constellated and re-themed.
Karen’s out dancing, Karen’s nude hot-tubbing, Karen’s fucking black guys and seeking monster meat. My nerves sheared, my sleep tanked, my brain spun that tape.
It was frantic phone calls, panic attacks and sobs in the dark. Karen consoled me and said, No, no, NO. I begged, pleaded, scrutinized, importuned, cajoled, dissected, analyzed and begged and pleaded anew. I hit a wall at Christmas ’06.
Karen went back east with her family. I drove to Carmel and crashed in Helen’s garage. Margaret barked and growled at me. I pondered a Frisco run to peep Joan. I moped around. Helen kicked me and said, “Quit mooning for your married girlfriend, you fuck.”
I went through a week of Yuletide moans in the night. I sat down to start the outline for the novel. The themes and characters jumped out, boldfaced.
Lost mothers, lost children, Karen Sifakis and Joan Klein. Helen’s edict to write more from the heart. History as redeeming fire. The great male urge to atone for misdeeds. Women as the ever-present grail and payoff. Women as the proactive voice of revolution.
I called Karen back east. I marry-me mantraed her a last time. She said, No, no, NO. I said, Let’s segue into a friendship. She said, Please don’t bail on me. I said, Not a chance.
Karen didn’t bail. I didn’t bail. We spoke every night. We had coffee, lunch or dinner twice a week. We hogged a back booth at the Pacific Dining Car and talked heavy-duty shit.
She said, “Do you really believe that you conjured me?”
I said, “Yes, I do.”
“You saw me in a dream and put me in a book.”
“That’s correct. It rained that night. I saw you quite vividly.”
“And you weren’t at all surprised when you met me twenty-odd years later?”
“No. Prophecy is a by-product of my extreme single-mindedness and the cultivation of solitude.”
“So you uprooted to L.A., to pursue a married woman you’d met for two seconds?”
“That’s correct.”
“And you did not really expect that we’d become lovers.”
“No. I had to get out of San Francisco. L.A. seemed like a good idea.”
“Because you have friends and film colleagues here?”
“No.”
“Because you’re from here, and it’s where you’re the most well known?”
“No. Those are not sufficient reasons.”
“You’re saying …”
“I’m saying I had a dream and met the dream woman in the flesh. I’m saying, ‘Why the fuck not?’ ”
“Do women possess conjuring powers, or is this strictly a male preserve?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would you do if a woman conjured your skinny ass out of the spiritus mundi and did a number on you like you did on me?”
“I’d brood and pray. I’d assess her character. I’d ponder her acuity and her intuitive powers very carefully.”
“And if she passed all those tests?”
“I’d capitulate.”
The friendship pact was formed at New Year’s ’07. I worked on my book and got tighter with Karen and Helen. They met once. They liked each other. Helen told Karen to get smart. Divorce your fruit husband—but don’t marry Ellroy.
I vowed to give up chasing for Lent. I wanted to reseal my thoughts within a love/sex ban. I wanted to see how my brain and soul waves might shift as I stumbled toward 60.
Karen and I stuck in. We talked funny shit and profound shit. Most of our moments were freighted with loss and longing. Every other moment impishly implied irony.
I’d ask Karen, “Do you love me?”
She’d say, “I’ll think about it.”
I’d get frustrated. I’d say, “Divorce your fruit husband and marry me.”
She’d say, “You don’t understand family. All you’ve got is your audience and your prey.”
I laughed and winced. Karen was right. Those factions comprised my whole world. Karen recalled our talk on dream states and female summoning. She said, “For a right-wing religious nut, you’ve always seemed to lack faith.”
PART VI
HER
I said, “You knew before I did. That’s what gets me.”
She said, “You’re saying that you always know before the woman does?”
“Yes.”
“It’s called ‘projection.’ It’s why standard gender roles have remained in place for eons.”
“I hate to consider myself predictable.”
“You’re not. Your single-mindedness is so furious that it recasts projection and puts you in an entirely different league.”
“And you knew that?”
“Immediately.”
“That first day we met?”
“Instantly.”
“You were married. You had two daughters.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
“You might have considered it a pathologically ingrained pattern. I’m stating a phrase my friend Karen might use when I describe you to her.”
&nbs
p; “Your pathology is possessed of grandeur. I appreciated that.”
“Your marriage is Karen’s marriage. You married a safe guy and went for the okeydoke. It’s called ‘projection,’ and it’s why standard gender roles have remained in place for eons.”
“Thank you for patronizing me without sufficient knowledge of my husband and daughters.”
“I’ve always wanted a daughter.”
“Yes. I know that.”
“When did you figure it out?”
“The second time I met you.”
“A year later?”
“Yes.”
“We discussed daughters that time.”
“It wasn’t the topic of discussion. It was your eyes.”
“Divorce your fruit husband and marry me.”
“Don’t recycle your old married-lover shtick.”
“We aren’t lovers.”
“No. And we probably never will be.”
“We’re blowing our vibe. Let’s get back to ‘You knew before I did.’ ”
“I thought, ‘That is the only man I have ever met who is as love-hungry as me.’ ”
18
Faith and self-will clash and fuel me. Abstinence releases a magical flow. Helen and Karen remained my best friends. They harped on the faith-versus-will issue and applauded my Lent ’07 plunge.
Asceticism and lust clash and fuel me. That conflict and my extremely narrow focus create great discomfort and bursts of inner peace. Winter ’07 was my past recaptured and my writing future remapped. I lived in a superbly appointed apartment. It was 14 blocks from the dog-shit dive where I’d lived 45 years back. It was spotlessly clean and tidy. The only books on shelves were my own books. There were no family portraits. I possessed one photo each of Helen, Karen and Joan. Beethoven portraits loomed on walls and counters. I had a high-line boom box and no TV, computer or cell phone. The pad was bereft of extraneous objects. I mimicked Christ’s sojourn in the desert on a lush leather couch. The geography of L.A. then cradled me now. I time-machined back to a fictional L.A. before my post-war novels and my birth. I began to envision Jean Hilliker within a new fictional context. I abstained from seeking women who resembled her, refracted her, absorbed her or diverted and allayed the shock value and spiritual content of her life. Her image bushwhacked me constantly. Vivid period settings evolved each time she appeared. I conceived a quartet of novels, larger in scope than anything I had thus far achieved. I danced with my mother’s ghost and walked from room to room in the dark. I felt time and space as her sole continuum. Lent came and went. I met a woman four days after Easter. Helen and Karen were skeptical.
Helen said, “Mr. Restraint.”
Karen said, “What took you so long?”
She was a lovely woman. It felt un-kosher, nonetheless. My mojo was off. I was horny, predatory and preachily pristine. I was off in matriarchal mania. I was writing a big novel and planning four bigger ones. Joan and Karen ruled the current book and most of the men in it. Jean Hilliker loomed as fictive deity.
I liked the new woman. She found me dubious. She was gracious, she was charming, she was naturally restrained.
My herky-jerky momentum unnerved her. I was trying to be proper and reinvest in sex.
Be courtly. Meander and milk the moment for meaning. Pile on the pianissimo and postpone the pizzazz.
I bumbled and poked around in the woman’s murky places. I craved drama and tried to shed some blood, à la the Red Goddess Joan. The woman was a writer. We had same-day gigs at the L.A. Times book fair. I arrived before her and hobknobbed with folks in the greenroom. I motor-mouthed per the woman and our emerging grand passion. I was selling myself a bill of goods. I knew it then. I knew the woman was not The Woman and could not pick up the tab for me. I was resurrection-razzed and chaliced by chastity. I was love-starved and full of shit.
The greenroom buzzed. I chatted with some people. We stood with plates and book-gabbed. A man and a woman stood to my right. A woman stood to my left. She was tall and had reddish blond hair. She was in her early to mid-forties. Her features were stern, with odd and quite lovely swerves. She ate chili. I observed her. I watched her resist the urge to bite her nails. It delighted me.
Her eyes were no-shit, non-hazel green. Her body was sleek, with surprisingly voluptuous swerves. I knew I’d ponder her in the dark, habitually.
Her first name was Erika. Her surname denoted a pedigree. She had a flash-in-the-pan novelist mother of ’70s vintage and a famous film-critic dad. She was a journalist. She had published a momoir during a recent motherhood-as-crucifixion-and-ecstasy book craze. She was married and had two daughters. I thought, That is one big, good-looking motherfucker—and blathered on about my latest folie à deux.
Married. Two daughters. Shit—I’ve been there. A sound track kicked on and broiled my brain waves. It wasn’t Beethoven—it was all bubblegum.
The Grass Roots with “Sooner Or Later.” Lou Christie with “I’m Gonna Make You Mine.”
Erika recalled the moment two years and three months later. She said, “I thought, ‘He should not be with that woman. He should be with me.’ ”
My reinvestment in sex and decorous romance went bankrupt. It was a pyramid scheme built on high hopes and hopped-up hormones. I tried. The woman tried. We attempted to merge our emotional assets and failed. We were wrong for each other. It was a short-sell scenario. It was all suspension of disbelief.
Erika learned that the deal tanked. She recalled the gossip two years and four months later. She said, “I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew you should be with me.”
Karen and I again reinvested. That didn’t fly. We had months-long on-and-off stints. I pressured Karen to leave her fruit husband. She persistently refused. We hit the off switch and settled into a long-standing friendship. I wrote my novel and burned for the historically revised Karen and Joan. They gave me daughters. Karen’s real-life daughter tales weaved through the text.
I was full of dumb-shit kid love and no one to give it to. I was turning sixty, with a teenage sex drive. I went out to dinner alone every night. I chose the restaurants on one basis only. Will a Jewish woman with dark, gray-streaked hair show up here? Will she be older and softer than Joan? Will she not be afraid of me?
The wish-named Joan, the real Joan, the Red Goddess in my book. A dozen L.A. restaurants as the No-Joan Zone.
I had dumb-ass liaisons. My attempts to make the wrong woman right triggered physical backlash. I trembled during bedroom excursions. I had panic attacks worse than the vintage ’01 jobs. I glimpsed women in restaurants and sent them gooey notes. They all blew me off. I flew to France and Great Britain—determined to wed, impregnate, contain. I moved to New York for a brief spell and attempted to levy the troika there. It all hurt. I fucked over good women. I was always tensed up to fight or run.
It’s not a fight. Love shouldn’t hurt. Erika told me that last night.
My novel describes History as a state of yearning. The writing of it tossed my yearning patterns every which way. I’d try to conjure faces and come up blank. I’d see Erika, propped up on her elbows beside me. She appeared persistently. She always wore blue jeans and nothing else. Her breasts brushed the bedcovers. Her undress and avid gestures whooshed as willpower, brainpower and Big Sex. Erika was my inconsistent companion in the dark. I had met her only once. I kept wondering what she meant.
I inquired about her. Mutual acquaintances provided snapshots. Literary folks distrusted her. She was an opportunist. She had a flamboyant and loudmouthed side. I got a vibe.
If you can’t love me, notice me. That staple from troubled-childhood textbooks. Possibly true of Erika, definitive of me.
The husband, the two daughters. Karen turf. I wasn’t up for another married-woman shitkicking—
Yet.
I ignored all stated opinions of Erika. I knew that she was better than the extant scuttlebutt. I knew that she was kind and true. She kept showing up inside me. Her appearances were sporadic and purposeful. She
existed outside of me and materialized at her—not my—will. I began to sense this mental flight plan as uniquely indigenous to Erika herself.
There she is. She’s on the bedcovers. I’ve got a sense that she knows things I don’t.
I attended the Times book fair in 2008. I looked for Erika and found her. She was delighted that I recalled her. I inquired about her daughters. Her answers ripped me up. She described two arty girls and a kids’ production of Peter Pan.
“You were my human, Ellroy. I knew it then,” Erika said that last week.
We knew people in overlapping circles. I laid out I-dig-her parries and got she-digs-you ones back. I grooved the process. It was très junior high school. Most people winced to indicate film noir fatality. People said, “She’s married.” More film noir shtick unfurled. I got what people got about the notion of us. Our shared flamboyance and opportunism. The inconvenient husband, the gas chamber in six months.
I probed per the marriage. I logged evasions and winces. I got the gestalt:
Tanker. Call Erika’s marriage the Exxon Valdez. It’s headed for environmental grief.
It was June ’08. A friend invited me to a party. I said, “Will Erika be there?” My friend said, “Yes.”
I said, “I’ll be there.”
I went to the party. Erika did not appear. She continued to crash my brood sessions. She appeared persistently. Fuck—she’s shirtless and up on her elbows. It’s not obsession or conjuring—it’s just fucking Her.
Her cadences eluded me. I didn’t know what she meant.
I spent Christmas ’08 in New York. I stood at Rockefeller Center and watched fortyish moms and their daughters ice-skate. Helen met Erika at a party in L.A. They had a lovely chat. I asked Helen to describe the conversation. She smiled and mock-sealed her lips.