James Ellroy (19 page)

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.

There she is. She’s on the bedcovers. She’s telling you things.

We had amazing conversations. Her green eyes grabbed me. Her gestures were more forceful than those of any other woman who had ever joined me in the dark.

I finished my novel. It embodied Joan, Karen and daughters unfound. The weight of my years and my native kid verve coalesced. I felt swervy and out of control. That Rilke quote kept popping up: “You must change your life.”

I knew that I had to change. I sensed that I
could
change. I had to hurl my God sense and word self at The Curse.

It came to me in the dark. The revelation occurred between phone calls with Helen and Karen. Marcia Sidwell had drifted by. A flow of faces followed her. Jean Hilliker morphed out of them. Erika was propped up beside me. I had just thought about Joan.

So women will love me
.

Jean Hilliker would be 95 now. The Curse is 52 years old. I have spent five decades in search of one woman to destroy a myth. That myth was self-created and speciously defined. I imposed a narrative line to ensure my own survival. It levied blame to suppress grief and vouchsafe my crazy passion. The Curse was half a blessing. I’ve survived just fine.

So women will love me
.

It’s a fine raison d’être. It’s kept me hungry and working hard. I am predisposed to rash and thoughtless acts in love’s name. This memoir will help me to interdict the practice. I require strict boundaries. They serve to curtail my ardent resolve and grandiosity. The inward gaze has always pushed me outward toward Them. It’s often delusional and occasionally a ticket to a state of grace.

I have now set a bar that will mandate circumspection. The dominant story line of my life will dissolve on the last page I write here. The preceding pages have been me in address of Her and Them. It’s time to put down my pen and live from Their sole perspective. I must sit alone in the dark. They must come to me sans conjuring or images recalled and transposed. They may say nothing. They may tell me
that I have always possessed an unfathomable fate. God engages me through women. My task has always been to bring women to God. This pursuit has pushed me toward self-serving error. They have slowly and persistently revealed the cost of my actions. I must sit alone with Them now and will myself receptive. They have formed a sisterhood within me. I am steeled for Their rebukes and open-armed for any messengers They may send me. I’m getting past the shallow breaths at the core of my quest.

I exist in a matriarchy. I’m the lost boy rescued and cut loose by strong women. I outgrew him as I told his story. I always write my way through to the truth. I believe it because Helen Knode said so.

I talk to Helen and Karen most nights. Helen just moved to Austin, Texas. Margaret barks at me, long-distance. Karen’s still married to her fruit husband. I’ve quit pestering her about it. We’ve kept it clean for some time now. Karen still comes forward in laughter and nearly gasps in retreat.

Joan had a child last year. I’ve heard conflicting reports of the kid’s gender. I suspect it’s a boy and hope it’s a girl. I’m clueless per the patrimony. I want it to stay that way. History is the smallest of the many gifts Joan gave me. She earned her prominence and paid for it dearly. She’s a far-off fixed star now.

Joan never calls me. A woman named Julia does. She’s 29, she’s brilliant, she’s a lesbian. We look alike. She’s my spiritual daughter. We have dinner and talk profound shit about women. Restaurant people assume my patrimony. It’s heartbreaking. I met her at the
L.A. Times
book fair, 2009. I went there to give a speech. I had dressed for Erika.

I was
armed
for Erika. I wanted to go someplace quiet and contained with her. I wanted to look at her and let our
hands brush across a table. She’s married, I’m not. Who’ll pull their hand back first?

It’s been two years now
.

I’m exhausted with my crazy shit
.

We comprise a significant courtship. Your appearances are inimitable. Are you thinking about me?

I gave the speech. It was a fucking barn burner. I wore a blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit, a white shirt and a tartan bow tie. I looked handsome as shit. I never saw Erika. I prowled the greenroom and the area surrounding. My dream lover was nowhere.

Erika dressed for me at that Christmas party. She described the shoes that put her up at six one and the shoulderless black dress. We laughed about it last night. Erika said, “I met your ex-wife instead.”

She knew it first.

She summoned me.

She sought me alone in the dark. She spent over two years in the pursuit. She practiced the conjuror’s art with greater persistence and acuity than I did. She knew more about me than I sensed about her. Her knowledge superseded a glut of rumors and published text. Her insight outweighed my self-awareness. She came better armed. Her preeminent commitment, first formed in solitude, has enjoined us and sealed our romantic fate
.

She willed me. I lacked the fortitude and certain knowledge that fueled her will. She knew she could outwill me. A confrontation was required. I had failed to accomplish that task. Erika knew how to do it
.

My publisher hooked me up to Facebook. They knew
my aversion to computers and coerced me into it. My job was to ballyhoo my new novel all over cyberspace. A colleague told me that people posted “friend” requests that I must reject or confirm. I performed this boring duty for three weeks. It was deadening shit work. Then Erika’s name and image hit my colleague’s computer screen.

I whooped. I hit the confirm button. I composed an ardent poem in rhyming Old English. I pushed the send button. I waited a full day. Erika sent me a note back.

She was surprised, she was thankful, she was delighted. She included a perfunctory aside on her marriage. She left room for me to wedge my snout back in her Internet door.

I sent her a more ardent poem. Her reply gently rebuked me.

Yeah, I dig you. But, I’m happily married. I’ve got two daughters. We have too many friends in common. You’re too notoriously obsessive. It’s not worth the risk.

I Internet-apologized. Erika e-mail-accepted my mock retreat. She bemoaned her current psychic state. I slashed at the critque. I
knew
her. I
knew
her marriage was tanksville. I
knew
the extent of the crazy shit in
her
head. I
sensed
what
she knew
first: This person is a cut-from-the-bone version of my flawed and transcendence-seeking self.

Erika wrote me again. She dissected my most recent TV performance. I was nervy and pervy. My ego staggered her. I exemplified a particularly male strain of arrested development.
But
—she still felt
compelled
.

The e-mail was a wounder. I wrote back and offered to splitsville for good. I had called her “my seditious sister.” Erika wrote, “So it is with great regret that I must banish you, my brazen brother.”

I moped a little. I quickly revitalized. Give up?
Fuck that shit!

I waited two weeks. I thought about Erika, non-stop.
She had implied her own two-year conjuring. I conjured her conjuring and got an idea. It came to me. Not surprisingly—alone in the dark.

Erika was unparalleled in my passion pantheon. Our chaste courtship was two-plus years in. She might have her own belief in invisibility. She possessed wild perceptive powers. Her wavery skepticism demonstrated that. All our detractors would dispute it—but
—now I know
.

This woman is the female embodiment of your inner soul. You must address her in the voice of the most urgent artist in history.

Thus: this aging horndog writes as Beethoven. Thus: Erika becomes his “Immortal Beloved.” Thus: cyberspace becomes Vienna, 1810.

I went at it with bombast and glee. The letter reeked of the staggering ego that Erika glimpsed on TV. My mere identification with the Master announced my megalomania. The built-in gasp-and-yuck factor was enormous. Softness underscored it. I was a journeyman yearner. I assumed the voice of the greatest yearner of all fucking time. Erika was a yearner. She lived in the soft passages of the “Les Adieux” Sonata, whether she had ever heard it or not. She understood unexpressed desire and the sweetness-sadness parlay that is art. The years were 1810 and 2009. I added a jolt of 1962. I was a junior high school window-peeper, adrift. Erika was the mother of all the Hancock Park girls combined. She was all the society ladies I peeped at that Twist party. She was vexed, unbodied and riddled with ennui. Her height and carriage connoted Anne Sexton. She was 45, I was 61. She was every older woman I had youthfully glimpsed and craved. I was significantly older than her now. I was far further into the back nine of life. The letter was a cri de coeur and a treatise on ephemera, cut through with a blast of the “Peppermint Twist.”