The Hilliker Curse, Part IV

PUflSUTOf MO

SHED HIS MOTHER DEAD

50 YEARS AGO. HE'S BEEN SEARCHING FOR REDEMPTION EVER SINCE.

HELEN, JOAN. KAREN. THE WOMEN

IN HIS LIFE HAVE TORTURED HIM,

TEMPTED HIM, TAUGHT HIM. ABOVE

ALL THEY'VE SET HIM FREE.

THE DEMON DOG OF CRIME'S SEARING FINAL INSTALLMENT OF CRIMINAL LOVE

PART IV

he kissed me at Coit Tower. San Francisco was summer cold. I underdressed for the alk and didn 't factor in high monuments and wind. The sun was up, the view was wide, tourists clucked and snapped photographs. I shivered. She rubbed my arms warm.

Joan. The prophecy revealed. The real her, 46 years later.

The kiss stunned me. I'd brain-scheduled it for the hotel later. Coit Tower rolled.

My nerves were still shot. I was seven months into my open-marriage deal and nine months dope-free. Joan had rough hands and a tendency to stride ahead of me. I walked faster. She noticed that it was rude and held my arm to cor­rect her pace.

The kiss worked. A sun blast quashed my shivers. We found the fit and hit the right note of decorum. We disengaged simultaneous. Joan smiled to acknowledge it. She asked me if I was okay. I said, What do you mean? She said, It's your eyes. You can't tell if you're angry or hurt.

She was 38. Her gray hair and my smooth features sub­verted the age gap. My post-crack-up world looked garish. I was always tensed up to fight or run.

We walked down Telegraph Hill. The short steps messed with my long legs. Joan stead­ied me.

We knew our assignments already. We misread the cost at the start. My job was to fall. Her job was to catch me on the way down.

n.

My wife hated me. She sup­pressed it through my crack-up. I ran from the marriage and bled her solicitude dry. I slept and brooded my way through the move west. Helen did the shitwork. I voyeur-perved women and full-time fantasized. Dudley died of a heart attack. Helen held a can­dlelight vigil and bid his soul heaven-bound. I ran from the sight of our beloved dog dead and passed out.

Her fury was always checked by her love for me. My always-present self-absorption veered to vacancy. My insanity pushed

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES IMBROCNO

Helen to a crazed psychic state. She watched her bril­liant husband squander his internal solvency. She put her career on hold to play wet nurse. Our new house symbol­ized the worst of it.

A beautiful thatched cottage in the Carmel hills. Alleg­edly Clark Gable's ex-pad. A big price tag. Big upgrade cash. A dream home cum life raft.

Nest, haven, safety zone. A road flare to mark resurrection.

Helen marshaled artisans and workmen. Two-story beams were glazed and reset. A river-rock fireplace was laid in, stone by stone. The kitchen featured a half-ton marble island. The master bedroom offered an ocean view. My office was two stories high and built on three levels. My desk was presidential size. The walls were festooned with framed book jackets and award scrolls.

I popped uppers and downers. Helen watched our bank balance evaporate. I eyeballed women at shop-

ping mans, i stared at pictures of Anne Sexton and inter­dicted her suicide.

Jean Hilliker would have been 88 on our housewarming date. The Hilliker Curse was 45 years old.

xxxxx

Sobriety was no cure-all. I glibly assumed it would be. We didn't go broke. I pulled myself out of the shit again. God had more to do with it than I did. I believed it then and believe it more certainly now.

I was frayed, french fried and frazzled. I lost a bunch of

dope-bloat pounds and started looking good once more. I perched at the door of whew-we're-okay-now. Helen would not let me in.

I thought my sober state would cancel all debts. Helen once quoted Clifford Odets and called me "a bullet with nothing but a future." I stood ready to resume my life's trajectory. The preceding two and a half years were largely blurry. Fall '03: Helen refills my memory bank.

You drove around Carmel in shit-stained trousers. My friends heard you jacking off upstairs. You were vile to my family. You peeped women while you walked Dudley. You went to a network pitch meeting, bombed. You'd dribbled ice cream on your shirt. An executive asked you to describe your TV pilot. You said it was about cops rousting fags and jigs. You ran your car off the 101 and came home bloody. You became someone else as I watched helplessly and came to hate myself and doubt my own sanity for having stayed with you.

My riposte was "I never cheated on you." Helen's riposte was "It doesn't matter—it's all in your head, anyway."

The dreamhouse and coastal rainstorms. Helen's hurt and rage. Helen's open-marriage offer. My antennae twitching—no. not just yet.

We got a new bull terrier and named her Margaret. She instantly swooned for Helen and evinced outrage for me. Margaret followed me through the pad, barking and growling. Margaret's outrage remains to this day.

I couldn't get past Helen's grief. Helen rebuffed my vows with shrugs. I drove around Carmel and blasted Beethoven. I sat in espresso joints and watched women. I hurled myself at my office couch every night. I prayed for

Helen and asked God for signs. I tried to will sleep.

'03 into '04. The dreamhouse. the separate lives, the feminist/separatist hound.

I wrote three novellas to fill out a collection. They were sadly comedic. They detailed a fucked-up cop in love with an actress. The cop narrated the stories from heaven. He was waiting for the woman, but he didn't want her to die.

The big cosmic joke. My life's trajectory, retold for laffs.

I always get what I want. It comes slow or fast and always costs a great deal. I have honed the conjurer's art with an astonishingly single-minded precision.

A friend asked me to give a speech at Cal Davis. I knew She'd be there.

"You remind me of someone." "Tell me ahnut hpr "

"/ never spoke to her."

"Why?"

"I was afraid to."

"Why?"

"I was a child. I was ashamed of the thoughts I'd been having."

"What was she like?"

"She was a fine person."

"How do you know that, if you never spoke to her?"

"I spent a lot of time watching her."

"Was that a com­mon childhood prac­tice of yours?"

"Yes. "

"And it remains one?"

"Yes."

"What was the girl's name?"

"I don't know, but I named her Joan."

II.

The lectern was raised, the room was packed, I had a slay-the-audience view. She sat at the left rear. I caught her gray-streaked hair first. She expanded and filled my frame.

I read from My Dark Places. I brain-spoke to the woman at pause points. I described the wish-named Joan and stated the resemblance. The woman was skeptical—call her a college prof up for a fight.

May 28, '04. Sacramento in a spring heat wave. The 6,000th public performance of my dead-mother act.

I was boffo. I read from pitch-perfect memory and laid down even eye contact. The woman was my pivot point. I eyeball-tracked the audience and clicked back to her. She had deep brown eyes. Her features were the wish-named Joan's, aged and age-askewed.

A Q&A session followed. Two hundred sociologists— a dead-mom-tour first. A man asked me how I stage-managed grief.

I cited repetition. I cited faith and a buoyant will that sometimes swerved to obsessiveness. The man called me glib. I brusquely rebuked him. I said she was my mother—not his. I said I'd paid the price—and he hadn't.

The exchange sparked a rumble. I eyeball-drilled the man. He shrugged and shut up. I looked directly at the woman. She looked directly back. She asked me what different forms my mother assumed. (continued on page 110)

THE HILLIKER CURSE

(continued from page 66)

I swooned a little. In that moment, I knew.

I pointed to heaven and back down to earth. I said she's there and I'm here. I said other women had been known to intercede and fuck with my head.

The woman laughed. A few chuckles drifted out. I ended the gig with an elegiac Dylan Thomas quote. The folks clapped and lined up to get their books signed.

The woman stood behind them and moved toward me in small steps. She eclipsed the prophecy. Her features became hen alone. I thanked her for her question and asked her her name.

She said Joan and stated her surname. My legs shook. I asked her if she'd like to have a drink tonight. She said, "Assuredly, yes."

xxxxx

Sacramento was the first Joan Zone. It was three hours northeast of Carmel and always swamp hot. I got to the lobby bar early. People booze-effused and walked through with cocktails. They were dog-den crashers. I was tensed up to fight or run. First-date portent: I must contain Joan within a public place.

She showed on time. She'd changed clothes: summer dress to skirt-boots ensem­ble. Her arms were bare. She had a tattoo on her right bicep. First-date apostasy: I fucking dug it.

We arranged chairs beside a table. It was semiprivate. I guzzled coffee as Joan sipped scotch. She left lipstick prints on her tum­bler. It should have instilled a preacher's-kid fury. It didn't. First-date apostasy #2.

She'd read my books and knew some of my story. I supplanted it and laid in a first-date rationale. My wife and I were headed for Splitsville. Divorce was a fait accompli. Helen and I had our deal in the meantime.

I was disingenuous, verging on menda­cious. My relationship with Helen was tor­tuous and open-ended. My life was a daily process of atonement. I could not conceive of a life without Helen Knode. I started double-dealing Joan at the outset. I wanted Helen for companionship and the long shot of sex resurrected. I wanted Joan for her flaming expression of selfhood.

We talked. I got Joan a second scotch. She barely touched it. Not a juicehead— good.

Monologues followed. Joan went first. She was from New York City. Her bloodline was left-wing/Jewish. Mom and Dad were divorced. Dad was a college professor and Mom was a shrink. She was partially raised in a commune. She had a brother in San Francisco. She had two master's degrees. She was teaching at Cal Davis and was earning her doctorate.

She'd knocked around a lot. She'd pitched some left-wing woo-woo. She'd spent time in the radical women's move­ment and the punk-rock scene.

I asked her what punk rock meant—that shit had slid by me. Joan called it a rebut­tal to Ronald Reagan. I said I disliked rock and roll and greatly admired Reagan.

It was a test. Joan more than passed it.

She smiled and said, "That's okay." She picked up my left hand and dropped it in her lap. She laced up our fingers and contained me.

Mv monologue followed. I mentioned the crack-up and fresh sobriety. Joan bluntly stated that open-union deals don't work— she'd been through it.

Her jaw was wide. Her mouth connoted harsh­ness and determination. Her smile cut through a seething grievance. A wiseass aspect simmered. She knew when to deploy it. She inhabited moments intensely and performed and observed them in concurrence. She was the most stunning woman 1 had ever seen.

I moved my hand to her knee. I floated someplace. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We had some silent spells.

I thanked God for bringing Joan to me. I counted the runs in her black stockings.

xxxxx

The ride home was swervy. Parachute car: I zoomed south and whooshed north with equal force. I sent Joan flowers and a note en route.

Helen was out. Margaret growled and retreated to Helen's bedroom. I checked my office phone machine. Joan's name was on the display.

Her message began, "Hey, it's Joan." She continued and thanked me for the flowers. Her voice was softer than it was last night. I caught some Brooklyn in her vowels. She invited me to call her.

I played the message 30-odd times. I memorized every word and inflection. I don't know how long I cried. It was bright daylight when I started and full night when I stopped.

XXXXX

The Joan Zone, the Knode Abode, three hours between.

It began with phone calls and letters. The house was large and permitted privacy. I snagged the mail every day. My office was sealed off. I conducted the courtship sans disruption and overt lies.

It felt exhilarating and wrong. It was a second-to-second Joan-to-Helen parlay. I wanted to regain Helen's respect. I wanted to know who Joan was and what she por­tended. Joan was new and I was a seasoned opportunist. Opportunists ruthlessly cling to new imagery' and people. Joan was wildly vivid. My loyalty tipped toward her. It made me queasy, despite the deal. I fawned around the dreamhouse in redress. Helen barely acknowledged my efforts. / wasn't who I said I was. I sensed that 1 could never regain my stature.

Opportunists move on. My task was to cre­ate credibility with Joan. Written words and phone calls were my metier once more.

Her letters were brief. They expressed her attraction to me and ridiculed the Knode-Ellroy contract. My letters described the forthcoming dissolution of the marriage. It was preposterous. 1 had spent a total of two hours in Joan's presence. I was having it both ways. I was mending fences I intended to jump. Two women got the Ellroy troika: seduce, apologize and explain.

It was a tough climb. Joan was a tough woman. I struggled for handholds as she

pried at my grip. It was exhilarating. Joan made me work. Written praise sent me summit-bound. Rebuke kicked me back to earth. I lived for her voice in the dark.

Helen and Margaret retired early. My nerves were still shot. Sleep came late, if at all. Panic attacks 5/1// zapped me daily. Joan and I talked most nights. Her implied rule was /'// call when I call. I was breathless with the forfeit of male control and mind­ful of it as a means of seduction. I doused the lights at nine PM Darkness held me. I heard crickets and the waves on Carmel beach. The phone rang when it rang—and almost always at 10:30.

She always said, "Hey, it's Joan." Her voice carried a husk and registered as mid-range con­tralto. I'd ask her if her hair was up or down and whether or not she was wearing her glasses. She'd say up or down and yes or no with a swoopy inflection. It always pulled tears out of me. 1 never told her this. I was grateful for every small kindness she showed me. My gratitude was there at the start. My gratitude remains in Joan's long­standing absence.

She was left-wing, I was right-wing. She was Jewish, I was gentile. She was an atheist. I was a believer. Her cultural influences bored me. Her punk-rock shit was jejune. Our conversations fractured and rebuilt around desire. We flabbergasted each other. She pos­sessed a surpassing personal power. I told her this. Joan told me that my power leveled her. She hinted at a roundelay of role reversals. We always got there as we said good night. I always put the phone down, trembling.

xxxxx

I felt loyal to both women. I assessed Helen and Joan sans a decision-making process. I came to this: They were the only two women who had ever astonished me. They were big women suffused with big ideas. Helen and I had 13 years together. She still had the power to move me, jazz me, fuel me. I had squandered sex with her. It felt irretrievable. Joan was the pros­pect of sex as constant astonishment. Joan represented dialogue to spark enormous change. She had described moments of childhood horror that left me eviscerated. Her sporadic softness engendered my full-time softness. All my praying and brooding buttressed my love for both women. My addiction to woman imagery and the force of The Curse pushed me toward Joan.

XXXXX

Summer courtship, '04. The prelude extends.

Joan invited me to Sacto for Indepen­dence Day. It's a long weekend. Get a room at the Sheraton—it's near my place.

A film-director colleague lived close by. That provided my alibi. I drove up in an ever-present heat wave. I checked in at the hotel and walked to Joan's pad.

She wore a white blouse and jeans. Her hair was down and she wore her glasses. I smiled at that. Joan said "Down" and "Yes" and kissed my cheek. She put the flowers in a vase. I checked out her bookshelves. The only shit I recognized was three of my own novels. The other tomes: labor history, commie tracts, gender polemics.

Window units barely kept the heat out.

Sweal seeped through my shirt. My pulse raced and produced more wetness. Joan served a roast chicken and salad dinner. I hardly touched it. Talk was difficult. I wanted to tell her everything I'd never revealed to a woman. Joan chatted up her teaching load and a barbecue tomorrow. Some friends were throwing a bash. I was invited.

All I had was expressions of love and alone-in-lhe-dark perceptions. They seemed precipitous and untimely. Decla­rations of chivalry bubbled up and almost choked out. Joan mentioned her atheism. My chivalry pitch cited God as a primary resource. I kept my mouth shut. I got tensed up to fight or run.

We sat down on the couch. Joan smiled. Some lipstick was stuck to her teeth. I wiped it off with my shirttail. Joan asked me what I was afraid of. I said, "You." I asked her what she was afraid of. She pointed to me.

We kissed. We fell into the meld and stayed there. Joan held my face. I kissed her gray streaks. Joan pushed the coffee table back to make room for my legs.

I started to lay out my declarations. Joan touched my lips and shushed me. My heart rate went haywire. Joan sensed something wrong and held me. My shirt was halfway off. Joan removed it. I unbut­toned her blouse. I saw her breasts and started sobbing.

She let it be for a while. She said things like "Hey, now." She saw that it wasn't about to stop. She eased me up, got me to the door and told me she'd see me tomorrow.

xxxxx

The barbecue was above Sacramento, near the UC campus. Joan had a VW stamped with pro-labor stickers. We crossed a draw­bridge and hit a greenbelt. Joan said, "Last night was all right, you know." I touched her hand on the steering wheel. She curled a finger around my wrist.

The shindig was outdoors. The crowd was 30ish academics. Joan introduced me around. She kept a hand on my arm to indicate that we were a couple. It was stun­ningly decorous. She said James and left off the Ellroy. I felt weightless without my hot-shit surname. Joan caught it and touched me that much more.

Sunstroke heat and bad chow. Weight­lessness and sleeplessness. The vertigo that Joan always inspired.

XXXXX

My hotel was near the statehouse. We watched a fireworks display from my room.

Joan sat on the window ledge. I sat on the bed. The show produced a sputtery soundtrack. Joan's silence was a roar. I started to tell a trademark story. Joan said, "I've read your books, you know."

The fireworks crescendoed and died. I smellcd gunpowder through the AC vents. Joan walked to the door. I got up and fol­lowed her. She touched my cheek and told me not to worry.

XXXXX

She walked out the door and took my body with her. I checked my mouth for malignant bumps and my arms for seeping melano­mas. I went from the bed to the bathroom

mirror all night. I conjured Joan's face. The process tore at my fear. Every Joan image invoked Helen. Every Helen image returned me to Joan.

Dawn came up. I forced myself to shave and shower. I bolted half a bagel and cof­fee. I was tensed up to fight or run. There was no one to fight—so I ran.

I drove to Joan's place and rang the bell. Joan opened up and saw me. She sat me down and let me find breath. I got light-headed words out. "I love you," "I'm scared" and "I've got to go home" are all I remember.

xxxxx

The dreamhouse was empty. Margaret was kenneled up. Helen was back in K.C. with her mother. I gobbled food out of the refrigerator and fell down on the couch. I woke up at midnight. I ran to my

phone machine. The number 0 glowed.

Four days went by. I called Helen in K.C. and reveled in her family minutiae. I worked on a TV pilot and played raging Beethoven. I wondered when I'd get my body back. I saw her face every few seconds. It wasn't a conjuring. She was omniscient.

The doorbell rang. Thursday, mid-afternoon, FedEx for sure.

Take note of what you are seeking, for it is------

She looked grave and sweet, all bollixed up some new way. She said "Hi" with her swoopy inflection.

I kissed her gray streaks. I said, "I'll never run away again."

But I did. But not far. But not for long.

I was the amnesiac. She was the black-dad woman with the answers.

Joan raided my image bank. It was a yippie prank. The Red Goddess decreed that all women should look like her and that 1 should seek only her revised por­trait. She gave herself to me and eluded me. She gave me the knowledge that all women were her and that any runs away were just preludes to runs back.

Every partial resemblance dispersed into pixelated dots. No woman could ever be Her. No face could ever connote what She gave me and what She withheld. I stopped looking. There was Her and nobody else.

My nerves were still shot. Sleep remained problematic. I juiced my original cover lie to explain my weekends away. 1 relin­quished myself to romantic fixation and built bridges at home. I was sober, I made money. Helen researched her new novel and made a bevy of friends. I wondered if she sought male action and decided c'est la guerre. I got smug. We had an agreement. Helen sensed my preoccupation as a return to form. He's back, he's less crazy, he's off per always in his head.

Joan. The power of name. Strong-willed lovers Sturm und Drang'd.

xxxxx

Our time apart was my monk's retreat, shot through with phone sex. Our time together was a passion play with an often dissonant chorus.

Joan took me everywhere. Sex was an unending surprise and an ever-replenishing joy. Talk was enlightenment and vexation. My theme was You Must Change Me and

I Must Protect You. It was highly spe­cious and unassailably tender. It allowed me to hear shit lhat I didn't want to hear and stay in the Tight.

Joan's atheism killed me. I eschewed Christian text and laid on a soupc,on of deistic jive. I listened. My code was toler­ance does not equal approval and should not be construed as censure. Joan's leftist-anarchist shit bugged me. I listened. 1 fuck­ing tried. Joan loved me for it. I loved her for loving me. Every acknowledgement of my flowering heart gut-shot me with gratitude. We told each other sex stories. Joan chortled at my previous exploits. I portrayed them as buffoonish, to spare her pain and allay jealousy. We did not achieve parity here. Joan described good pre-Ellroy sex in wild-ass detail. It enraged me and moved me. The black-clad woman has the answers. She is your seditious sis­ter. The easy answer is She is you and you are She. The Christian answer is judge not, lest ye be judged. The hard answer is acceptance means loss of control.

The Hilliker Curse, a vital bylaw: You must protect all the women you love.

Helen never questioned my time away and always welcomed me back. I left my body and my design for conquest and surrender three hours northeast. I returned to Helen in all her goodness and unique brilliance. I assumed the role of companion-husband sans bedroom access. I crashed—just a little. The roar of Joan subsided—just a touch.

I flew to a Mexican book fair. I told Joan I'd call en route. I didn't. I felt unequal to her weight. I felt soul-frail. I abdicated. I

vowed survival in apostasy's name.

Misalliance, folie a deux, obsession. 1 mistakenly defined us as all that.

"You look the same."

"So Ho you."

"// hasn't been that long."

")'ou haven't asked me for an explanation."

"I don't need one. It got to be too much for you. I would have done the same thing if you hadn't."

"You would have done it more gracefully."

"I'm not sure."

"I am. You were always more gracious than me."

"I was surprised that you didn't return my calls. The phone was always your guiltiest pleaswr."

"I didn't want to be tempted. I was afraid I'd go crazy with it all over again."

"That might very well happen."

"I'll risk it."

"You say that now."

"I want to try again."

"Why?"

"There's no one but you."

0.

January "05 was a dreamscape. Coastal storms indoor-contained me. Joan called twice. I ignored her swoopy inflections and erased the messages. I brooded away hours. The Red Goddess appeared at least once per minute. She showed up, con­jured and unbidden. Her image ban on other women remained in effect. I could think of no one else.

I was overdue to write a new novel. Film and TV work bored me. I got a bug up my ass to write (HAS'I fiction. I had plot points, characters and historical flow brain-prepped. Helen urged me to cre­ate a less rigorous style and shape it with greater emotion. The crack-up had dead­ened my soul. My soul was astir now. 1 had an armored-car heist, black-militant shit, the late-'60s Zeitgeist. I had pro­tagonists, connective tissue, history writ small. I had a title: Blood's A Rover. I did not have the guts of the novel. A rainy-night brood session provided it.

Joan.

The Red Goddess as the unifying force of four years of History.

Our clash of wills, our war of belief, that astonishing woman's immensity exploded and contanirtl.

I waited lor the phone to ring. I played the llammerklavier Adagio in summons. I waited three weeks. She didn't call. She sent me a card instead.

It included birthday wishes and con­cluded with a poem. It ended with the word prayer.

She came that far. She honored our scp-arateness that deeply. She assured my eter­nal love.

xxxxx

Rain pounded San Francisco. My call: drinks at the Tonga Room.

A tiki bar with a barge sunk in chlori­nated water. Wall torches and carved god masks. The barge band played oldie covers. We imbibed the usual: scotch and coffee.

Joan was pensive. I was full of grand decla­ration. Joan's quiet gaze doused the volume.

I felt bombastic. I demanded the world in every moment. Joan looked exhausted. I saw what I had tost her so far.

The corny music was a godsend. Our talk floated in sync. We chitchatted and got to it. The All Souls Retreat meets the Work­ers' Collective. Commie cell minutes and Lutheran call-and-response.

My bullshit open marriage, her abrupt moods, our temperaments that no lover had ever withstood. My delusional expec­tations. Her debilitating brusqueness. Our incomprehensibly different worlds.

My controlling nature. Her controlling nature. Our amalgam of white-and-red flags aswirl.

Our big hurt. Our dear love.

We let it trail off. We watched fat tourists dance. Our eyes found each other. We both

nodded yes.

xxxxx

Winter courtship, '05. The process re-extends. Chaste week­ends in Sacramento. Sex postponed and reinvented. A chas­tened rapport and a precommitment plunge.

I stayed at a hotel near Joan's place. My cover lies became more convoluted. "My colleague" in Sacto—epic false­hood now. The re-courtship soft­ened Joan. I started to think marriage, daughter, dog. 1 wanted to rebuild a dreamhouse in the Red Goddess's name and reconsecrate the sacrament of mar­riage. ]oan was plan­ning a move to San Francisco. I dream-built our love shack by the bay.

I told Helen that I'd me I a woman. She winced and said, I know. She cried a little. I inouired

about her action. She laughed and refused to tell.

I continued with TV and film work. I compiled notes for my novel. 1 never told Joan This book is you. I wanted to debom-basticize. I wanted to reseal the union in a clarified state.

Joan always knew how to play me. It wasn't guile. She understood that her best weapon was the truth.

The word divorce ratched me. I wanted it both ways. I tend to err on the side of high cost and risk. I felt it coming here.

Spring into summer. Weekends in San Francisco and dinners with Joan's friends. Late lessons in etiquette and the merging of lives. Lessons rewarded with Joan's bright eyes and light touch.

We spent the Fourth of July in Frisco.

We had drinks at the Tonga Room and walked back to our hotel. The suite was red-walled and sconce-lit. Joan plugged in a CD player and performed a torrid dance. Her movements were stunning and shocking. Her black garments fell just out of my reach.

Lover, goddess, redeemer. Possessed eyes that went swoopy the instant the music stopped.

xxxxx

Dawn hit early. I cracked the drapes for some light. I circled the bed and watched Joan from different angles. I saw a dozen sides of her with ever)- tuck and stretch.

So be it. Whatex'er it costs, whatever it takes.

We said good-bye a few hours later. Joan drove home to Sacto and I drove home to

Carmel. I told Helen then. We both cried. I fished for reassurance and got it. Yes, it was inevitable. Yes, it has to be. Yes, it's the right thing.

We cut our financial deal there in the kitchen. I was grandiosely generous. I told Helen I'd always take care of her. She said, I know you will.

We debriefed a 14-year marriage. Blame got spread bilaterally. The talk did not relieve me. I felt shallow and cruel.

Helen had tea. I cued up Joan images and felt my brain-screen lurch. I saw Jean Ililliker. I calculated her current age as 90. I recalled March of'58, the day I inflicted The Curse.

I*.

Joan was scared. She told me why. She

rarely knew when I acted from drama or from a viable truth.

So women will love me. So 1 get what I want. There is no other truth.

I moved into a nearby apartment. Helen and I put the dreamhouse on the market and retained divorce lawyers. My lawyer found my largesse unnerving and finan­cially unsound. I told her tough shit.

Joan moved to San Francisco. I helped her pack and unpack boxes and do the shitwork. The relocation felt right. Frisco became the new Joan Zone. Carmel was less than two hours south.

We orbited closer. I resisted an impulse to crowd Joan. I wanted to hover near Helen for a bit.

The divorce went forward. The house went unsold, loan and I spent weekends

in her town and mine. I described her transit of History in my novel. The wish-named Joan to the real Joan to the fictive Red Goddess named Joan Rosen Klein. Joan said she felt honored. She took my hand and placed it over her heart.

Helen and I formed a friendship pact. It predicted a future partnership of great importance. Helen dismissed Joan as an older man's folly. She never ques­tioned my loyalty. She critiqued my eagerness to live in puerile fixation. She cited a single source: Jean Hilliker.

I had to keep Helen safe. I had to make Joan safe. We started discuss­ing the possibility of a child. We both wanted a daughter. |oan loved the name Ruth. It rolled off the tongue and was resoundingly Jewish.

I liked the name. It complemented Kllroy and sealed our Judeo-Christian pact. Joan nixed Ellroy and her own surname. She suggested Hilliker for our daughter.

// was like thai. The Red Goddess went thai deep. How could it go wrong?

xxxxx

The apartment came furnished. It reeked of transience. It vibcd fuck pad and divorce stopgap. I settled in. 1 started to go breath­less and squirrelly.

I got a script deal and goosed the Ellroy-Knode bank account. I fretted about Helen. Our years together lodged as a sob. I lived for weekends with Joan. I sat in the dark and ached for weeknight phone calls. The drcamhouse sat on the market. The cash split and alimony contract meant

big workloads forever. 1 creamed for the macho-maimed struggle. My nerves started shearing. My sleep vaporized. Those mela­nomas kept popping up on my arms. Brain-scrolls of Joan wiped the cancer cells out.

I gave a stage performance in L.A. Big room, packed house. I read a 20-minute monologue and nailed it heaven-bound. Big applause erupted. 1 blew Joan a kiss. All eyes were on me—except hers. I hob­nobbed with the audience after the show. A tall woman approached me. She was strong-featured and wore crooked glasses. We talked. She came forward in laughter and nearly gasped in retreat. She was the woman from my 1980 rainy-night dream.

Joan hovered. I never got the woman's name. Joan and I walked to my car.

1 willed the dream woman away. She recurred sporadically, in new dreams.

Joan and I had soft spells and harsh spells. An edgy momentum carried us. She ducked her head into me and said, "You." She laid on top of me during panic attacks and anchored me to the world. I told her I'd always take care of her. She told me I didn't have to say it so much.

We went to Japan for Joan's 40th birth­day. Travel delighted her. Travel bored and angered me. I wanted to contain Joan within hotel rooms and hot-spring baths. I was immune to the beauty around us. We flew back to San Francisco, drained and tense. Jet lag sent my world spinning. I poured sweat and took jagged breaths.

Joan suggested a walk. We trekked through Bernal Park and petted dogs as they loped through. I got that sob out. I said If you let me protect you, you'd be protecting me. Then you wouldn't have to be so harsh and I wouldn't have to be so driven.

It was a ground-zero moment. Joan said nothing.

Fall 05. I live for the Red Goddess that much more.

We had our weekends and weekday phone calls. 1 had my time alone. Dark rooms held me and drove me insane.

I saw Joan dancing with strange men. She repeated the sensuous movements that

she'd devised for me. I saw her fucking her old lovers. I saw her surfing the Internet for donkey-dicked dudes. The loop end­lessly repeated. It would not abate, it would not diminish, it would not cease.

Fight/run, fight/run, fight/run. No one to fight, no haven with Helen, just Joan to run to.

My phone pleas deadened her. My demands for softness sickened her. I saw that she had always found me intimidating and pathetic. Her love for me flourished some­where in between.

We went forward.

We tried.

We knew no quit.

November brought rain. We discussed my potential move to Frisco. We had Thanksgiving dinner with a group of Joan's friends. It was a slow and gracious evening. The people delighted me. I was much older, much taller, not Jewish or left-wing. We cel­ebrated our differences. Joan sat beside me and kept a hand on my knee.

Do it. She'll say yes or no.

I asked Joan to marry me the next morn­ing. She said, "Yeah." We held each other until our arms ached.

xxxxx

Helen thought it was nuts. Ditto all my friends. The divorce finalized on April 20. We set our wedding date for May 13. Win­ter '06: Everyone thought he craaazy.

It was sweet anomaly. I performed and tried to do the right thing.

I moved to Frisco at New Year's. I got a new transition pad near Joan's place. I drifted in and out of most moments. All my moments were screechy-nerved. A new troika raged: wed, impregnate, contain.

We marshaled a horrible will and pushed toward it. I saw Joan ratchet internally. I read her mind: misalliance, folie a deux, obsession. He's intimidating, he's pathetic. His only answer is ME.

My nerves and sleep imploded. The tape show spun. She's dancing, she's fucking black guys, she's seeking monster meat. I could not stop the tapes outside of Joan's presence. I wanted more, more, more and MORE of her.

Joan engaged a therapist to walk us through our shit. The woman liked her and loathed me. Wednesday afternoons under a microscope.

I got brusque and outright fucked-up with people. I eyeball-strafed street fools and dared them to GO. The tapes spun. I seized up around Joan and hovered word­less. My inner scream was Love me and save me and let me love and save you. I saw Joan veer toward the word HO.

She ran.

I don't think 1 ever could have. She always saw me at a sane lover's distance. She was black-clad and had the answer now.

We had a horrible blowup. It explicated all our divisions.

She made me leave her apartment. I came back and threw myself at her door. She found a soft voice. She told me to go home and rest.

I did it. She called me three days later and said we were done.

Home again.

Cut your losses.

Ghost of a chance.

1 looped back to L.A. Twenty-five years, two divorces, one crack-up. The shadow of Helen and Joan.

The dream woman lived there. I didn't know her name. I knew where she worked.

I pondered destinations in my post-Joan fugue state. The dream woman nudged me. I thought, Why the fuck not?

The dreamhouse sold. Helen and I split a bundle.

Home again.

I dumped transition pad #2 and bought a groovy Porsche. Joan and 1 had a final good-bye. We held each other and almost collapsed a kitchen chair. We vowed to stay in touch.

I told her she'd always be my fourth or fifth thought. I underestimated that part of the vow.

My shot nerves and sleep realigned through movement. I rented an apart­ment and had it decorated. The building

adjoined my old peeper turf. The girls' houses stood nearby.

The facades had changed. The faces and floor plans were still vivid.

L.A. was powder blue and bright-light translucent. I sensed opportunity. L.A. looked like it did the day Jean Hilliker died.

I called the dream woman's place of employment. I threw out a blithe offer to an arts czar. The film version of The Black Dahlia was nearing release. Would you like me to do a benefit gig?

And, by the way, I recently met a colleague of yours. She was tall and wore crooked glasses. She came forward in laughter and nearly gasped in retreat.

Oh, that was Karen. She's married and has a young family. She returned to academia.

A legally wedded professor. The double whammy from jump. A vision, a conun­drum, a name.

What thefu-----

I'll do the gig. I'm eager to help out. The film opens around Labor Day.

The name fit the woman. Her kids had to be girls.

xxxxx

The pad was a work space/dog den. I installed a phone and hung a portrait of Beethoven above the bed. I placed a pic­ture of Helen on my desk and a picture of Joan on my nightstand. The place was deep-hued and dimly lit. I kept the lights off after dusk. Dark rooms bid calls from women. This is sacred text.

Helen and I talked frequently. I called her more than she called me. My solici­tude engorged the phone lines. Joan and I talked intermittently. Her implied rule: /'// call when 1 call. I declined dinner invitations and waited in the dark.

Joan's calls played out in three acts. They ran chitchat, the relationship recalled, future career plans.

Softness started creeping in. It fright­ened me. My solitude felt safe. Joan felt like nothing but hurt. I started wanting her all over again. I fought a compensating war of containment. Limit Joan to phone calls. Extol Joan in the novel. Don't go crazy again. Deliver Joan to History and expunge your own history of reckless need.

The war raged. My old jealousies resur­faced. Three consecutive sleepless nights ditzed me. I wrote Joan a horrible note.

I overstated my religiousness and ban­ished her forever. I said I was free-falling and had to save myself. I told her I would pray for her and see her in heaven.

The note worked. It terminated all future contact. The note failed. Joan remained my every second or third thought. The note worked. I stayed sane. The note failed. I still waited for her calls. The note worked. The Red Coddess gave me the throbbing heart of historical fiction. The note failed. Joan still lives inside me, undiminished.

XXXXX

The Black Dahlia was a critical turkey and a box-office lox. I didn't care—it sold boocoo books. I did that promised gig. I got to the venue early. Karen and I ran to each other.

We caught our breath and beamed. We recalled our first meeting. I told Karen that I schemed the gig to see her again. She laughed and mentioned the kiss I blew to the woman. I pretended that you bleu' me the kiss. What happened to the woman* She was quite lovely.

She dumped my mangy ass six months ago. How's your marriage?

Karen went comme ci, comme (a. I sniffed opportunity. The emcee called me to the lectern. Karen sat in the first row. I gave my speech and H-bombed the room. Karen locked eyes with me. I blew her the kiss I blew Joan last year. She placed her hand on her heart.

xxxxx

I didn't think she'd call me. I tagged it as a flirt-and-run. I was life-sentenced to the Joan Zone. Karen was married and had two little girls. I was repentance-wrapped with my ex-wife.

Karen buzzed me. The call required Valium and sour mash. She became my third great love.

We met at the Pacific Dining Car. Our lunch ran three hours. We discussed everything.

Her New York roots. Her Ivy League years. Her historian's focus and the exigent bullshit of the academy. Her marriage and family were inviolate. She strongly stressed that. I thought, Yeah, sure.

I left the Dining Car, reeling. Lunch #2 was scheduled for the next week. I wrote a song called "Karen Girl." The first line was "Some men were born hungry, some men were born dead—but I was born just to give you head." Karen loooooooved it. She was a shit-talker with a Yale Ph.D. We deconstructed history and ragged vile cultural trends. Karen had a Tory streak. Karen had insomnia and Ellrovian nerves. Karen was streeeeeetched thiiiiiiiiiin. She bombed between her teaching duties and full-time motherhood. She was a task-assigned, duty-driven fucker.

Her marriage and family were inviolate. I thought, Yeah, sure.

Lunch #3 followed a week later. We talked ourselves out fast and laced hands. The gist was let's become lovers. Karen stressed: I'm not leaving my husband. I thought, Yeah, sure.

XXXXX

Adultery.

Adultery with a woman you love.

Adultery: the moral mishigas and murky metaphysic.

The relationship was restricted to my pad. I understood that Karen's girls came first and drew that line in the sand. We went forward on her terms. Her commit­ments demanded it. Karen described her marriage as passionless from the get-go. She justified our union via that fact.

We talked, we made love, we became deep friends. Karen joined Joan in my evolving novel. The Red Goddess and her comrade Karen Sifakis. A Quaker pacifist, a mother, an adulteress. Divergent fictions tailored to Karen's real-life persona. Names claimed and reborn. My first portent that my life and work were veering toward matriarchy.

I called Helen even' night. I yearned for Joan nonstop. I brought Joan-yearning to Karen and Karen-lust overflow to Joan. My multiwoman dreamscape was joyful and unimpeded by hierarchy and monogamy. Karen and I shared a single nervous sys­tem. We were tall, thin and brain-broiled. We could not tamp down, sleep or halt our continuous assessment of meaning. We phone-talked every night. We met 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 maternal duties. She ignored my autopsy of her marriage and spun stories of her girls. They became my long-sought children. It was an imaginative construction formed by pillow talk and phone talk. I mythologized two children I had never met. Karen and I rifled off their established personalities and gave them gleeful fantasy lives. They were the henchbabies of dope dealers and sold black-market nukes. They robbed phar­macies and peddled pills to their nursery-school chums. Karen and 1 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 for a crime he didn't commit. 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. 1 had to protect Karen and her daughters. I wanted all of her.

I begged, pleaded, scrutinized, impor­tuned, cajoled and dissected. 1 hit a wall at Christmas, '06.

Karen went back East with her family. 1 drove to Carmel and crashed in Helen's garage.

I went through a week of moans-in-the-night. I sat down to start the outline for my 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 payoff and grail.

I called Karen back East. I marry-me

She said no, no, NO. I calmed down. I said, Let's segue into a no-sex friend­ship. She said. Please don't bail on me. 1 said, Not a chance.

xxxxx

Karen didn't bail. I didn't bail. We spoke ever)' night. We had coffee, lunch or dinner twice a week.

We talked funny shit and profound shit. We changed each other in discern­ible ways and helped each other survive. Most moments were freighted with lust 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. .Ml you've got is your audience and your prey."

Helen contends that 1 write to get at the truth and that I get there eventually. Prat­falls in the real world often countermand the act. It's my inner war of pathology versus morality. It's my fruitless search for family. Family means women and women mean family.

I wrote my familial vision in the novel. It was the heartbreak of Utopia lost. I had a string of dumb-ass romantic adventures. I hurt splendid women and came to hate myself.

I knew 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. A flow of faces followed. Jean Hilliker morphed out of them. I had just thought about Joan.

Jean Hilliker would be 94 now. The Curse is 51 years old. I have spent five decades in search of one woman to eclipse a myth. That myth was self-created and speciously defined. I imposed a narrative to ensure my survival. It levied blame to suppress grief and vouchsafe my own crazy passion. The Curse was half a blessing. I've survived just line.

So women will love /ne.

It's a fine raison d'etre. It's kept me hun­gry and hardworking. I am predisposed to rash acts in love's name. This memoir will help me to interdict the practice. 1 require strict boundaries. They serve to curtail my ardor and grandiosity. The inward gaze has always pushed me outward toward Them. I'm 01 and in no way slowing down. My life is more often than not a felicitous state.

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 attentively alone in the dark. They must come to me sans conjuring or images recalled and trans­posed. They may say nothing. They may tell me I have always possessed a complex and unfathomable fate. Cod speaks to me through women. My task has always been

to bring women to Cod. This pursuit has pushed me toward self-serving error. They have slowly and persistently revealed the cost of my actions. 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 happier than I've ever been. I live in astonishment. I'm fit, healthy and full of fight. I'm surrounded by women, real and imagined. I'm beginning to tell the difference between Them. I'm starting to see the dovetailing terrors of rapacity and monogamy.

I exist in a matriarchy. I'm the lost boy cut loose and rescued 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 it.

I've retained two photos of Jean Hilliker. The years are '36 and '39. She's in a deck chair, reading a book. She's sitting on a fence post in jodhpurs.

I will never let Her go. I will always write about Her. I will always ponder who She was and what She means.

I talk to Helen and Karen every night. Helen just moved to Austin, Texas. Marga­ret barks at me long distance. Karen's still married. I still think it's wrong. We've kept it clean for some time now. Karen remains the dream woman. She 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 remain that way. Joan remains my every third or fourth thought. History is the smallest of the many gifts she gave me. She earned her promi­nence and paid for it dearly. 1 will never relinquish her. I cannot douse that flame.

Joan never calls me. Other women do. I have a friend named Julia. She's 29, she's brilliant and decorous, 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.

The messenger arrived 12 weeks ago. It pains me to state that she's also married and has two daughters. We're deeply in love. We are bound in blood ami unto the death. We were torn from each other's flesh and soul and recently restored through ('¦od's grace. Skeptics may doubt this asser­tion and point to these pages as proof. My response \sfitck you.

It won't be easy. That's perfectly fine. I am mil looking for ease in this lifetime. I want the truth and will pay for it—what­ever it costs, whatever it takes. I will not get off the hook easy. They will not let me, nor will She.

I'm transcendent. I'm Beethoven with the late quartets and his hearing restored. I've engaged a new set of variations on my life's theme:

So women will love me.

James Ellroy's new novel. Blood's A Rover, is available in bookstores now.