by James Ellroy
7. Inquisitive
Passive
9. Angry
Sensitive
11. Passionate
12. Aesthetic
13. Physical
14. Moral
15. Generous
7. Why did you come to the F.F.S. Institute?–I can’t honestly say. Some of the things in your book struck me as truthful things that could help me to better myself.
8. Do you think F.F.S. can change your life?–I don’t know.
A subtle woman. I can change your life, Linda; I am the only one who can.
Three nights later he broke into her apartment.
It was carefully thought out and bold. He knew that she would be attending the second Synergistics Seminar, which was scheduled to last from eight o’clock until midnight. At seven forty-five he was stationed across the street from the F.F.S. Institute on 14th and Montana in Santa Monica, armed with a matchbook sized circuit breaker and wearing skin-tight rubber gloves.
He smiled as Linda pulled into the parking lot, exchanged guarded greetings with other arriving F.F.S.ers and wolfed down a last cigarette before running into the large red brick building. He waited ten minutes, then sprinted over to her ’69 Camaro, opened the hood and attached the circuit breaker to the underside of the car’s distributor housing. Should anyone attempt to start the Camaro, it would turn over once and die. Laughing at the small perfection of it, he slammed the hood and ran back to his own car, then drove to the home of his beloved.
It was a pitch-dark spring night, and warm winds gave added audial cover. Parking a block away, he padded over to 3583 Mentone Avenue, carrying a flat-handled lug wrench and a transistor radio in a brown paper bag. Just as a huge gust of wind came up, he placed the radio on the ground outside Linda’s living room window and turned the volume up full blast. Punk Rock bombarded the night, and he slammed the lug wrench full force into the window, grabbed the radio and ran back to his car.
He waited for twenty minutes, until he was certain that no one had heard the noise and no silent alarm had been sounded. Then he walked back and vaulted into the dark apartment.
Drawing curtains over the broken window, he deep-breathed and let his eyes become accustomed to the darkness, then followed his most urgent curiosity straight back toward where the bathroom had to be. He turned on a light and then rummaged through the medicine cabinet; checked out the make-up kit on top of the toilet; even went through the dirty clothes hamper. His soul sighed in relief. No contraceptive devices of any kind; his beloved was chaste.
He left the door ajar and walked into the bedroom. Quickly noting that there was no overhead light, he turned on the lamp next to the bed. Its diffused glow gave him light to work by, and he flung open the walk-in closet door, hungry to touch the fabric of his beloved’s life.
The closet was packed with garments on hangers, and he swept them up in a giant armful and carried them into the bathroom. There were mostly dresses, in a variety of fabrics and styles. Trembling, he fondled polyester suits and cotton shifts, pseudo-silk culottes and businesslike tweed; stripes, plaids, tattersall checks–all feminine and all pointing to the subtle, searching nature of Linda Deverson. She doesn’t know who she is, he said to himself; so she buys clothes to reflect all the different things she could be.
He carried the bundle of clothing back to the closet and arranged it as it had been, then went looking for further evidence of Linda’s chastity. He found it on her telephone stand–all the phone numbers in her address book belonged to women. Heart leaping with joy, he went into the kitchen and rummaged beneath the sink until he found a can of black paint and a stiff paint brush. He pried the can open and drew out a big glob of paint and smeared “Clanton 14 St.–Culver City–Viva La Raza” on the kitchen wall. To make it look even better, he grabbed a toaster and portable cassette player and took them with him.
Fondling the toaster on the seat beside him, he drove back to the F.F.S. Institute and removed the circuit breaker from Linda Deverson’s car, then went home to meditate on the subtlety of his woman.
The following Wednesday night was the first F.F.S. “Question and Answer” grouping. He had purchased his ticket two days before at the Ticketron outlet near his shop and was curious as to how Linda would query the F.F.S. programmers, who had thus far brooked no feedback from their trainees. He was certain his beloved would interpose intelligent, skeptical questions.
There was a cordon of religious zealots outside the institute, brandishing signs that read “Synergistics is sin! Jesus is the only way!” He laughed as he walked into them; he thought Jesus was vulgar. One of the zealots noticed the ironic smile on his face and asked him if he had been saved.
“Twenty times,” he replied.
The zealot’s jaw dropped; he had been on the butt end of many sacrilegious one-liners, but this was a new one. He stood aside and let the nondescript heretic enter the building.
Once inside, he gave his ticket to the security guard, who handed him a large cushion and pointed in the direction of the assembly room. He walked through a hallway adorned with photographs of celebrity F.F.S.ers and into a huge room where knots of people milled around anxiously, chattering and sizing up the new arrivals. At the back of the room he wadded his cushion up and sat down with his eyes glued to the door.
She came in a moment later, setting her cushion down just a few feet away from him. His heart shuddered and pounded so hard that he thought it would drown out all the excited psychobabble that was floating through the room. Staring into his lap, he assumed a meditation pose that he hoped would forestall any conversation she might attempt. He shut his eyes so hard and wrenched his hands so tightly that he felt like a shrapnel bomb about to explode.
Then the lights in the room were dimmed twice, indicating the session was about to begin. A hush came over the assembly as the lights went out completely and candles were lit and placed in strategic positions throughout the room. The sudden darkness gripped him and held him like a lover. He turned his head and caught a glance of Linda silhouetted in candlelight. Mine, he said to himself, mine.
Sitar chords came over the P.A. system, winding down into a soft male voice. “Feel the fields that separate you from your greater self start to dissipate. Feel your inner self mix with the synergy of other tuned-in force fields to produce true energy and union. Feel the synthesis of yourself and everything good in the cosmos.”
The voice lowered itself to a whisper. “Today I am here to relate to you personally, to help you apply the principles of Force Field Synergistics to your personal lives. This is your third workshop; you have the ammunition necessary to change your lives forever, but I am sure you have many questions. That is why I am here. Lights, please!”
The lights went on, jarring him. Carefully modulating his breathing to keep his control at optimum, he watched a silver-haired young man in a blue blazer walk to a flower draped lectern at the front of the room. He was greeted with wild applause and bliss-filled gazes.
“Thank you,” the man said. “Questions?”
An elderly man at the front of the room raised his hand and said, “Yeah, I got a question. What are you gonna do about the niggers?”
The man at the lectern went beet red beneath his silver coiffure and said, “Well, I don’t think that’s germane to the issues at hand. I think—”
“Well, I do!” the old man bellowed. “You people took this building over from the Moose, and you got a civic responsibility to address yourself to the nigger problem!” The old man looked around for support and got nothing but embarrassed shrugs and hostile looks. The man at the lectern snapped his fingers and two burly, blazer-clad teenagers entered the room.
The old man ranted on. “I was a member of the Moose Lodge for thirty-eight years, and I rue the day we sold out to you bimbos! I’m gonna call for a meeting of the zoning board, and get an ordinance passed to keep all niggers and religious crackpots south of Wilshire. I’m a member in good…” The teenagers grabbed the old man by his
arms and legs and carried him, kicking, biting, and screaming, out of the room.
The man at the lectern called for quiet, raising his hands in a supplicating gesture to quell the relieved hubbub that followed in the old man’s wake. Running a hand through his silver hair, he said, “Now there’s someone with a low karma synergy! Racism is low chakra! Now …”
Linda Deverson raised her hand forcefully and said, “I have a question. It relates to that old man. What if his inner self is bad and all his native force fields are so twisted with fear and anger that meanness is all he can relate to? What if he has just one germ of kindness, of curiosity, and that’s what brought him here tonight? He paid to attend this meeting tonight, he—”
“His money will be refunded,” the man at the lectern interjected.
“That’s not what I’m talking about!” Linda shouted. “That’s not what I mean! Don’t you understand that that man can’t be dismissed with a cheap crack about low chakra? Don’t you …” Linda slammed her hands into her cushion, then got to her feet and rushed to the front door.
“Let her go!” the group leader said. “Her misery will be refunded if she leaves our program. Let her pay for her chakra!”
Barely containing his excitement, he got up to follow her and was almost knocked over by a tall buxom woman in a corduroy pantsuit. When he got outside to the parking lot, he found her conferring with Linda, who was smoking a cigarette and brushing angry tears out of her eyes. Shielded by a tall hedgerow, he could hear their conversation plainly.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Linda was muttering.
“Just forget about it,” the woman answered. “You win a few, you lose a few. I’ve been searching for a few years longer than you; listen to the voice of experience.”
Linda laughed. “You’re probably right. God, could I use a drink!”
“I wouldn’t mind one myself,” the woman said. “Do you mind scotch?”
“No, I love it!”
“Good. I’ve got a bottle of Chivas at home. I live in the Palisades. Did you bring your car?”
“Yes.”
“Want to follow me?”
Linda nodded and ground out her cigarette. “Sure.”
He was right behind them as they drove the twisting roads of Santa Monica Canyon up to a quiet block of large houses fronted by broad lawns. He watched as the first car hit its right-hand directional and pulled into a long circular driveway. Linda followed suit, parking directly behind. He drove on and parked at the corner, then walked casually over to the house the woman had entered.
The lawn extended around both sides of the house, with towering hibiscus plants forming its perimeters. He threaded his way along them, staying in the shadows, making a complete circuit of the house before catching sight of the two women sitting in adjoining easy chairs in a warmly appointed den. Crouching low, he watched Linda sip scotch and laugh in pantomime, imagining that she was being regaled by him, by his wit and the humorous verse that he wrote only for her. The other woman was laughing too, slapping her knee and freshening Linda’s glass every few minutes from the bottle on the coffee table.
He was staring into the window, lost in Linda’s laughter, when he suddenly became aware that something was drastically wrong. His instinct never failed him, and just as he was about to hit on the cause of his uneasiness, he saw the two women move toward each other very slowly and in perfect synchronization kiss on the lips, first tentatively, then hungrily, knocking over the bottle of scotch as they moved into a fierce embrace. He started to scream, then stifled the sound by jamming his hand into his mouth. He raised his other fist to smash the window, but reason took tenuous hold and he smashed the ground instead.
He looked in the window again. The women were nowhere to be seen. Frantically, he pressed his face to the glass and craned his neck almost off its axis, until he saw two pair of nude legs wrapped together, twisting and straining on the floor. Then he did scream, and the otherworldly sound of his own terrified voice propelled him out to the street. He ran until his lungs burned and his legs started to wobble. Then he fell to his knees and was perfectly still as comforting images of the twenty others washed over him. He thought of them at their moments of salvation, and of how much they looked like the ones who had betrayed his original true love so many years before.
Restored by the righteousness of his purpose, he got up and walked back to his car.
Performing the rituals of life allowed him to operate over the next week, keeping images of the betrayal from bludgeoning him into desperate action.
He minded the store from morning until late afternoon, then fielded calls that came in from his answering service. Wedding assignments were picking up, as they did each spring, and this year he could afford to be choosy, spending his early evenings interviewing the doting parents of engaged young couples who thought they were interviewing him. No uglies, he decided; no porkers. Only slender, good-looking young people would stand before his camera. He owed himself that.
After conducting business he would drive to the Palisades and watch Linda Deverson and Carol March make love. Dressed in black, he would scale a shadow-shrouded telephone pole and peer down through the upstairs bedroom window as the woman coupled on a quilt-covered waterbed. At about midnight, when his arms were weary from hours of hugging the rough wood of the phone pole, he would watch the sated Linda get up from the bed and dress as Carol importuned her to spend the night. It was always the same; his brain, willfully shut off as he viewed the lovemaking, would snap to life with speculation as Linda took her leave. Why was Linda leaving? Was buried guilt coming to the surface? Regret at the way she had debased herself?
He would then jump down from the pole and run for his car, pulling up without lights behind Linda’s Camaro just as she walked out the door. Then he would follow the glow of her taillights as she drove home via the most scenic route possible, almost as if she needed an injection of beauty after her night of debauchery. Keeping a safe distance behind, he would let her part at the intersection of Sunset and the Pacific Coast Highway, wondering how and when he could bring her salvation.
After two more weeks of extensive surveillance, he wrote in his diary:
6-7-82
Linda Deverson is a tragic victim of these times. Her sensuality is self-destructive, but indicative of stong parental need. The March woman capitalizes on this; she is a viper. Linda remains unsatisfied in both her sensuality and search for a mother (the March woman is at least fifteen years her senior!). Her midnight excursions through the most soulful parts of Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica speak volumes on her guilt and subtle searching nature. Her need for beauty is so strong in the aftermath of her self destruction. I must take her at this moment–that must be the precise time of her salvation.
Emboldened by knowledge of the place, he put the time out of his mind, losing himself in his courtship. But the late nights were taking their toll in little portents of slippage in his work life–rolls of film clumsily shot, then stupidly exposed to sunlight; appointments forgotten, photo orders misplaced. The slippage had to stop, and he knew how to do it. He had to consummate his courtship of Linda Deverson.
He set the date: Tuesday, June 14th, three days hence. His tremors of expectation began to grow.
On Monday, June 13th, he went to an auto supply store in the Valley and bought a case of motor oil, then drove to a junkyard and told the owner he was looking for chrome hood ornaments. While the owner scurried about looking for them, he scraped up several huge handfuls of iron filings from the ground and loaded them into a paper bag. The junkman came running back a few minutes later, waving a chrome bulldog. Feeling generous, he offered the man ten dollars for it. The man accepted. Driving back over the Cahuenga Pass to his shop, he threw the bulldog out the window and laughed as it clattered over to the edge of the roadway.
His consummation day was carefully planned and honed down to the second. Upon rising he placed the “Closed Due To Illness” sign in the window, then returned to his
apartment, where he played his meditation tape and stared at the photos of Linda Deverson. Next he destroyed the pages in his diary that pertained to her and took a long walk through the neighborhood, all the way over to Echo Park, where he spent hours rowing around the lake and feeding the ducks. At nightfall he packed his consummation tools into the trunk of his car and drove to his first and last rendezvous with his beloved.
At 8:45 he was parked four doors down from Carol March’s house, alternately shifting his gaze from the darkened street to his dashboard clock. At 9:03 Linda Deverson pulled into the driveway. He swooned at the perfection of it; she was right on time.
He drove to Santa Monica Canyon, to the intersection of West Channel Road and Biscayne, where West Channel bisected and the right fork led into a small campground filled with picnic tables and swings. If his calculations were correct, Linda would be driving through at precisely ten minutes of midnight. He pulled his car off to the side of the road on the edge of the park proper, where it was shielded from street view by a row of sycamore trees. Then he went for a long walk.
He returned at 11:40 and got his equipment out of the trunk, first donning his park ranger’s outfit of Smoky The Bear hat, green wool shirt and field belt, then assembling his sawhorse detour signs and carrying them over to the intersection.
Next he hauled his five gallon can of motor oil and iron filings to the middle of the street and poured them smoothly over the pavement, until the blacktop just before the detour signs was a slippery purple ooze glinting with sharp steel. Then all he could do was wait.
At 11:52 he heard her car approaching. As her headlights appeared, his body shuddered and he had to will himself to contain his bowels and bladder.