I was her, she was me, we were doppelgangers and mirrored souls in duress.
I believed it then. I consider it fraudulent and dramatically expedient now. I differentiated her with some minor details and let the convenient and viable theme of oneness stand as the truth. I did not acknowledge the calculated maliciousness of The Curse or reveal that I would never know Jean Hilliker as long as I sought atonement in women.
The investigation continued. American Tabloid was published midway through. It was a smash. I book-toured and deftly segued from doomed mom to doomed JFK. The lease on the Connecticut pad expired. Helen and I considered our options and decided to move to Kansas City. She had family there. I dug the high-swank pockets around Ward Parkway. We flew in and purchased a six-bedroom Tudor crib. Man-o-Manischewitz—it was Hancock Park on growth hormones!!!
Helen did all the relocation shit work. I waltzed in and waltzed back out to brood and play cop. My absence enraged Helen. She teethed on it. Our daily phone talks were rife with her resentment and my halfhearted repentance.
The investigation was boring me. I had everything I needed to write the book. Jean Hilliker had been reconsidered, recast and realigned with my orbit. I was mentally tapped out on her. My orbit shifted. I got realigned with the faces.
They came at me. I didn’t seek them out. It was an unconscious re-migration. My exchange of marital vows carried a binding no-fantasy clause that rendered me mentally as well as physically faithful. I was just that rigorous and disciplined. The gutter-to-stars arc of my life and its overall extremity had convinced me of the wisdom of absolutism and the folly of permissiveness. I had to be that way. I was a man of devout faith. Psychologizing was a slothful substitute for the iron-willed pursuit of perfection. I was heedless, reckless, boorish, domineering and self-involved. I knew it and made sporadic attempts to eradicate it in practice. Character flaws were compartments. Compartments fissured and seeped. I acknowledged that, tenuously. I possessed two paramount spiritual goals and held them as unassailable compartments. They were my loyalty to my craft and to Helen Knode. I gave them my entire conscious focus. I underestimated the reflexive power of suppression and all the crazy shit that lies dormant inside your head.
The Faces.
The Women.
Them.
I was burned out on Jean Hilliker. I had melded her into my craft with all the guile and Curse-derived passion I then possessed. My marriage was compartments within compartments, all starting to crack. I quadrupled my nightly prayers for Helen and grasped at the compartment of physical chastity with suffocating force.
It’s all right, Cougar—there’s only you—they’re just spirits aflame.
There’s Marcia Sidwell at the Laundromat and Marge on the train. There’s Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto from Brief Encounter. There’s the wish-named Joan as she was then and might be now. She still feels prophetic. I’m nine years away from the real Joan, with her stunning, gray-streaked hair. There’s Karen out of my circa ’80 rainy-night dream. She’s more than a decade away in true life. Erika will find me in the backwash of both women.
And all the others. Alive in blur and hyper-focus. Indistinguishable spirits—each and every one unique.
I secured a new Anne Sofie von Otter poster. I propped it up on my work desk and studied her face. It was arrogant and kind in an artist’s proportion. She was blond and fair. Her hair was square-cut and severe and expressed the force of her will. She had rough skin and refused to disguise it. That displayed her composure, merged with a big gulp of diva’s Fuck you.
She was seven years, two months and five days younger than I. A classical music guide told me that. I found a full-length photo. She was lush-bodied and seemed to be quite tall. I bought some lieder recordings and went crazy with her voice.
I cried. I got up close to the poster and hugged a pillow. I couldn’t understand her words sung in German. I improvised my own English love lyrics and studied her face. The poster was affixed beside my mother’s murder file. I trembled and knocked it over sometimes.
The music, her picture, the meaning transposed.
I was threatened by her genius. She was threatened by mine. We were big and strong and full of lovers’ fight. We were horrified by our loneliness and appalled by our need and went out in the world with our crazy beauty just to get a touch of it back.
We burned down rooms. We knew what everything meant. We understood terror and fury as no one else had. It hurt to be together and hurt more to be apart. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our arms ached from the meld. We knew each other’s smells and heard each other’s voices and told each other things that no one else ever had.
Hear me, Helen. I was not disloyal. They’re all sacred chords that play out faint and let me return to you, chaste.
10
You’re working too hard.
Helen kept saying it. She said it first in ’93. She kept it up through ’99. No sex simmered as an issue, intermittently expressed.
Helen always broached it. I always said, “Soon, babe,” or “I’m on deadline,” or “You know we’ll get it back.” Helen mollified me or looked gut-shot or blank-faced let it rest. Her critique of my domestic forfeit assumed an edge. She called herself the “Concierge.” I was the “Star Boarder” or “VIP Guest.” She was the “Zoo Animal’s Keeper.”
I admitted that I was overbooked and cited her dogged work on her novel. It bought me a few grudging concessions and more time to brood and work.
Our life was adrenalized and outwardly sweet. Kansas City was the white-trash comfort zone I had always creamed for. I was a local celeb. Ex-dog Barko was back east with my ex-wife. Our new bull terrier, Dudley, possessed Barkoesque panache. My Dark Places was a best-seller and got a slew of year-end nods. The film L.A. Confidential reaped boocoo awards and got me big ink. Helen hunkered down, honed and re-honed her book. I read several drafts and did not intrude on the text. It was a bonaroo crime story set in a metaphysically re-mapped L.A. Helen persisted. She was the Cougarwoman. Big ideas were her prey.
You’re working too hard.
Yes, you’re right.
I was brooding up the sequel to American Tabloid. It was conceived as my massive take on the American ’60s. I had a feature-magazine contract. It mandated hours of daily work and near-constant travel. I hustled some choice screenwriting gigs and stretched myself ultra-thin. I worked, worked and worked. Helen and I shared meals and bumped shoulders in hallways. Dudley liked her more than me. He was diffident in my presence. He had me pegged as a head-tripper and a negligent dad.
I was gone a lot. Film and magazine work boinged me to L.A. and back. I stayed in the high-end hotels I’d drooled for in my childhood. I cut the lights and conjured Anne Sofie.
We talked. She always stretched out on my left and tossed a leg over me. I kissed her arms and shoulders. She told me things I never knew about music. I told her things she never knew about books. She riffed on her travel woes and fruit entourage. She said, You’re working too hard.
I admitted it. I was more candid with my fantasy lover than I was with my wife. Anne Sofie described my symptoms. She lay entwined with me. She knew my rhythms and felt my skewed chemistry.
You sleep poorly, you mumble, you take shallow breaths. You’re always checking your limbs for cancer bumps that aren’t really there. You stare into mirrors and count the flecks in your eyes. Liebchen, they’re just natural flaws. You’re not going blind.
Anne Sofie consoled me. She put her face up to mine and showed me the flecks in her eyes. I got scared and asked Helen to affirm my robust health. She stage-sighed and rolled her eyes. She said, “You’re fine, Big Dog” or “You’re working too hard.”
The work kept pressing, the phone kept ringing, I kept saying yes. My pace was Herculean. My focus was Draculean. My design for the new novel was super-planetary. I read research briefs and compiled notes. The outline ran 345 pages. I foresaw a 1000-page manuscript and a 700-page hardback.
Americ
a: four years, five months and 17 days of wild shit. Two hundred characters. Comparatively few women and a reduced romantic arc. An abbreviated style that would force readers to inject the book at my own breathless rate.
I wanted to create a work of art both enormous and coldly perfect. I wanted my standard passion to sizzle in the margins and diminish into typeface. I wanted readers to know that I was superior to all other writers and that I was in command of my claustrophobically compartmentalized and free-falling life.
Hubris, arrogance, isolation. The novel as sensory assault. The neglect of my dearly beloved wife.
Head-tripper. Absentee husband. Furious führer and furtive fantasist.
I had Anne Sofie. I had Anne Manson, the K.C. Philharmonic conductor. I had a lesbian FedEx driver. I had the wish-named Joan, aged to 50-plus. The real Joan turned 34 that Halloween.
Fever dream.
My nerves accelerated and my insomnia increased. They were locked in sync with the pace of history fantastically revised. I wrote The Cold Six Thousand in 14 months. I was ever the racist provocateur and cleaved to the souls of my right-wing assassins. I was rarely a real-life or fictional lover and boarded at the luxe hotel of my chaste chum Helen. I spent a great deal of time alone in the dark with Anne Sofie.
I was triumphantly exhausted. I completed the book and expected to feel a resultant buoyancy. I was mistaken. My nerves continued to crackle at history’s mad pace.
My agent and publisher praised the book and considered it a crowning achievement. Helen disagreed. She called it overlong, overplotted, and reader un-friendly. She said it was jittery and frayed and approximated my spiritual state.
You’re working too hard, Big Dog. Get some rest now.
A mega book tour loomed. Five European countries and 32 U.S. cities, consecutively. Months away from home and continual travel. Interviews, press conferences and nightly bookstore events. A long stint as le grand fromage.
Pre-publicity gigs loomed: long-lead magazine profiles, culture-TV, an Ellroy cable doco. A big excerpt spread synced to pub date. It boiled down to a Brutha, you de Man moment. I wanted to ride it, rock it, roll it, groove it, grok it, grab it and grasp it for all it was worth.
I prepared for the ego onslaught. My sleep came and went. I fixated on benign skin lesions and prayed off a fear of carcinogenic assault. I went on long head trips with Anne Sofie, Anne Manson and the lezbo FedEx babe. I spent hours perfecting my reading gigs and podium patter. I bought some snazzy new threads to enhance my You de Man status.
Helen’s book was almost done. Her agent’s plan was to auction it during my book-tour summer. Our sex stasis remained an acknowledged, but still tightly buttressed compartment. My plan was to wring my tour dry and watchdog the sale of Helen’s book. Then we would make time to reemerge as flesh and blood man and wife.
France, Italy, Holland, Spain, Great Britain. Conquer the Continent and annihilate the Isles. Ambush America and traipse a triumphant trail back to your wife.
Bon voyage, Big Dog. I won’t say “Don’t work too hard,” just “Remember to rest.”
Blooey.
It started instantly. A wave of discomfort hit me on the airplane. Short breaths, pins-and-needles poings, sweats. A business-class aisle seat, good legroom, a loose seat belt. Claustrophobic compression at 30,000 feet.
I tried to write it off. It was anticipation born of huge achievement and joy. I couldn’t sustain the thought. Acute vigilance swamped it.
I ignored the seat belt sign and jammed to the john. I spent 20 minutes looking for rips and tears in my eyes. The stewardess knocked. I told her I was all right. My bladder swelled. I took a long piss and became convinced that I had diabetes. I rolled up my sleeves and examined a spot for metastasization. My bowels swelled. I defecated and became convinced that I had colon cancer. The stewardess knocked again and told me people were waiting. I tremble-walked out of the john. I was sweaty, my fly was down, passengers eyed me weird.
Six more hours to Paris.
Dinner gave me a task. My bladder and bowels settled and blitzed my earlier diagnoses. I ate a third of my dinner and lost my appetite. I got an ancient brain signal to guzzle scotch and prayed it away. I could not rewire my brain past catastrophe. I could not physically or mentally unclench or deactivate my antennae. I could not focus on the upcoming blast of big-time acclaim. I fixated on immanent bodily malfunction and scanned the seat rows for potential assailants.
I shut my eyes and tried to relax. My thumping heartbeat popped my eyes open. I checked my arms for cancer signs under the seat lamp. My panic wavered and fluttered during a full-hour scan. I shut my eyes and prayed for a final medical verdict. I opened my eyes and saw a gray-haired woman walk back to her seat.
She felt like a divine signal. I craned my neck and furtively watched her for the rest of the flight.
My publisher gave me my arrival day off. Paris in spring—who gives a shit? Travel bored me then and bores me now. Sightseeing and the gourmet life were for geeks, freaks and fruitcake artistes. I holed up in my hotel suite. I pulled the curtains and got three hours of strange, pass-out sleep. I woke up, unrested. I spent an hour at the bathroom mirror, examining my eyes. I reached a tenuous accord: your vision is fine. My publisher called with great news: the book zoomed to #2 on the Le Monde best-seller list. I got a two-second joy jolt and started studying my arms.
Helen called. I ran down my symptoms and got her seal of good health. The Le Monde coup jazzed her. She wanted to dwell on it. I got bombarded by images of the woman on the plane.
Helen bid me adieu. I guzzled coffee to redistribute my exhaustion and stimulate myself someplace safe. I ate a piece of fruit and a roll to recirculate the buzz. Heavy curtains kept the suite dark. I stretched out on the bed and boomeranged.
Anne Sofie. The airplane woman. Real and fictive images merged with narrative—all day and all night, back and forth.
I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t unclench, I couldn’t forge a truce with my monkey brain and simply rest. I started thinking, What if this doesn’t stop?
• • •
It continued.
I performed brilliantly throughout.
My book was a sales smasheroo and a critic’s mixed bag. The smart frogs cautiously praised the book and echoed Helen Knode’s doubts. The Ellroy-toady frogs culture-vultured them out. I jaunted through France with my editor, translator and publicist. I gave interviews, attended lunches and dinners and never missed a beat. Bookstore gigs and late meals went past midnight. I engaged the iron-willed pursuit of perfection and never publically succumbed.
My colleagues saw me running gaunt and jaggedy. My public did not. No one saw me fixating on cell formations that microscopes could not detect. No one saw my hour-long eye exams. No one saw me run to mirrors to scrutinize eroding flesh.
I called Helen every night. She buoyed me and blitzed my fear for the moments that we spoke. I wrapped myself dark with Anne Sofie and the airplane woman. I rewrote her life.
She was a Jewish college professor. She was as religious as I was in her own faith. She was divorced and had a daughter in college. The daughter was a fine young woman in every regard. I had long talks with her. She indulged my long-yearned-for fatherhood and barely tolerated my pedagogy. The woman and I talked and made love. She tossed one leg over me, the way Anne Sofie did.
The real Joan was Jewish and a college professor. The real Joan and I had wanted a daughter. The real Joan bore a child without me finally. I swear that I unconsciously summoned her in curtain-dark bedrooms that spring. I swear that the summons was issued as an antidote to The Curse.
I couldn’t sleep, I barely slept, I unstintingly did my job. Little noises became amplified—incremental volume jumps every day. I weaved through Charles de Gaulle Airport and caught a flight to Italy.
Spring in Roma—who gives a shit? My publisher booked me a boss hotel suite and gave me the night off. I pulled the curtains and anchored them with heavy chairs. I had an epiphany and began read
ing the Gideon Bible placed in the nightstand drawer.
I got halfway through the Old Testament. Cancer cells started eating at me.
I ran to the bathroom and scratched my arms bloody. I doused them with rubbing alcohol and intensified the sting. I convinced myself that caustic agents had killed all the cells. I read the Bible until I passed out.
This madness was my whole world now. It was entirely real as it transpired. I did not second-guess it or retreat from my duty.
I did interviews in a hotel salon and smiled for photo shoots. The cancer cells returned during my first-day lunch break. I slipped a bellman a C-note. He drove me to a dermatologist quicksville. The doctor spoke English. He examined my arms and told me I didn’t have cancer. He called it a minor rash exacerbated by scratching and prescribed a soothing skin cream.
The book was a smash in Italy. I charmed journalists and the book-buying public shitless. My colleagues said, Ciao, baby, and packed me off to Holland.
Amsterdam in spring?—Truly Shitsville. Pot fumes wafting out of coffeehouse doorways and horseflies turdbombing canals.
I checked into my hotel and curtain-wrapped my room. I wanted to call Helen and commune with the airplane woman and Anne Sofie. I felt a jumbo zit on my back. I pulled off my shirt and prepared to pop it in front of the mirror. I noticed a big black mole starting to pulse and seep.