The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

by James Ellroy

  Joan moved to San Francisco. I helped her pack and unpack boxes and do the shit work. 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. Fence jumper/fence straddler/fence jumper. Fences and the two women I loved.

  The divorce went forward. The house went unsold. Joan and I spent weekends in her town and mine. We enjoyed an idyll in West Marin County. We took walks and made love in a country inn. 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 moved forward in our own way. We formed a friendship and style pact. We vowed to comport ourselves as the world’s grooviest exes. The relationship was frayed raw. Helen dismissed Joan as an older man’s folly and damned my bulletproof heart. 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. Joan loved the name Ruth. It rolled off the tongue and was resoundingly Jewish. I liked the name. It complemented Ellroy and sealed our Judeo-Christian pact. Joan nixed Ellroy and her own surname. She suggested Hilliker for our daughter.

  It was like that. The Red Goddess went that deep. How could it go wrong?

  The apartment came furnished and stocked with dishes and towels. It reeked of transience. It vibed fuck pad and divorce stopgap. Joan was 125 miles and a zillion light-years away. Helen was one mile and ten zillion. I settled in. I 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 cut through me and lodged as a sob. I lived for weekends with Joan. I sat in the dark and ached for weekday-night phone calls. The dream house sat on the market. The cash split and alimony contract meant big workloads forever. I creamed for the macho-maimed struggle of it all. My nerves started shearing. My sleep vaporized. Those melanomas kept popping up on my arms. Brain scrolls of Joan wiped the cancer cells out.

  Fall ’05. The ratchets tighten. I live for the Red Goddess that much more.

  We were committed now. I had trashed my life to assure an honorable union. Joan was grateful and perplexed. My burn-the-world-down mentality amazed and terrified her. It bid me to greater expectations and instilled an even greater lust.

  Joan swooned and resisted. We had moments of great beauty. She told me the stories she’d withheld and let me hold her, sobbing. She refused to attend a police function honoring me. It entailed the Pledge of Allegiance and socializing with cops.

  We spent time in West Marin County. We floated in hot tubs with wide river views. We had an hours-long fight on the subject of graffiti.

  My nerves were shot. I got tensed up to fight or run. I lived for that much more of her.

  I gave a reading performance in L.A. Big stage, packed house. I read a twenty-minute monologue and nailed it to the stars. Big applause erupted. I 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. Her hair was not quite blond and not quite red. 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. I thought of Marcia Sidwell out of nowhere.

  I willed the dream woman away. She recurred sporadically, in new dreams. I didn’t give her a name. I saw her in shutter stops and wondered who she was.

  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. I had to close the deal. 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. I had my time alone with Joan’s image. Dark rooms contained 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 trawling for black guys. 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 numbed.

  Helen thought it was nuts. Ditto, my few friends. The divorce finalized on April 20. We set our wedding date for May 13. We had our honeymoon before the ceremony. Christmas in Brooklyn—I meet Joan’s family.

  It was bittersweet anomaly. I performed and tried to do the right thing. I was ratcheted internally. A new troika raged: wed, impregnate, contain.

  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 of my moments were raw-nerved. I lived for the Goddess that much more. I could not endure life outside of our embraces. I could not see, think or act beyond the consecration of May 13.

  I horrified myself. I wanted to press us into smaller and smaller spaces. I trembled when Joan walked from room to room and withdrew her image.

  I lived for May 13.

  The country inn. The rings. The red wedding cake. Joan’s gown and my ancestral kilt.

  I marshaled a horrible will and pushed toward it. I scrounged film deals to cover alimony and the cost of a new home. Troika: the Goddess, Ruth Hilliker, me. The Curse outlived in our child’s name.

  We marshaled a horrible will and pushed toward it. I saw Joan ratchet internally. I read her mind: misalliance, folie à deux, obsession. He’s intimidating, he’s pathetic, our worlds collide. He’s an amnesiac. He doesn’t know where he’s been. He’s not listening to my answers. 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. Implosive tension—I must fight or run.

  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 NO.

  We spent a weekend in Seattle. It was suffocatingly tense. Joan knew a deftly mystical woman. Her specialty: melding antithetical beliefs into seamless wedding vows.

  The woman had our number. I saw it plainly. The aging burnout looking for a family. The young woman torn between pity and rage. I saw Joan read the woman’s read and veer closer. We flew back to San Francisco. Joan veered very close.

  She ran.

  I don’t think I ever could have. Joan 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. It predicted the terrible cost.

  It was mutually instigated. It was Joan’s pent-up fury and horror at her forfeiture of self. It was my groveling need turned inside out—and a hundredfold shriek of Joan at her most harsh.

  She made me leave her apartment. I went back and begged for expressions of love. I threw myself at her door. Joan found a soft voice. She quietly told me to go home and rest.

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

  PART V

  RAIN

  17

  Home again.

  Cut your losses.

  Ghost of a chance.

  I looped back to L.A. Twenty-five years, two divorces, one crack-up. The shadows of Helen and Joan. Opportunists require destinations. I didn’t know where else to go.

  The dream woman lived there. I never got her name. I knew where she worked.

  Her first dream appearance was 26 years back. It rained that night. I lost a day’s work at the golf course and put the woman in a book. She reappeared at a reading performance. Dreams, visions, potions, elixirs. Witches’ brews, vows and bridegrooms in kilts. I believe in this shit. My life testifies to magic and dark-room invocation. Why the fuck not?

  Her dream reappearances occurred during rainstorms. It rained in the dreams themselves. I went to church in Frisco just before I left. It rained as I walked out. That cinched the deal.

  I was in a post-Joan fugue state. I got weepy over little kids and passed out C-notes to bums. The dream woman nudged me. Go home, motherfucker. You might get lucky.

  The dream house sold. Helen and I split a bundle. A friendship blossomed in our post-divorce wake. Helen praised Joan for dumping my raggedy ass.

  Home again. Conjure female spirits in your smog-bound fatherland. I didn’t know that women could conjure men. I hadn’t met Erika yet.

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

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

  My shot nerves and sleep realigned through movement. The assignment of task has always saved me. I rented a two-bedroom 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. Affluent Asians and film-biz slime had replaced the Hancock Park stiffs.

  L.A. was powder blue and bright-light translucent. I sensed a roll with hot dice. L.A. looked like it did the day Jean Hilliker died.

  I called the dream woman’s place of employment. I ladled some bullshit 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 met a colleague of yours last year. She was tall. She wore crooked glasses. She came forward in laughter and nearly gasped in retreat.

  The arts czar got it. Oh, that was Karen. She’s married and has a young family. She left our organization and returned to her college post.

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

  What the fu—

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

  The arts czar was delighted. I asked about Karen’s kids. The arts czar said she had two girls.

  The pad was a work space/wolf’s 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. Helen said, Enough—I’ve got alimony and drama up the ying-yang. Joan and I talked intermittently. Her implied rule: I’ll call when I call. I declined dinner invitations and waited in the dark.

  Joan’s calls played out in three acts. They entailed an allocation of time. Chitchat and the relationship recalled and debriefed. Future career plans.

  A reciprocal softness began 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 war of containment. Limit Joan to phone calls. Expand and extol her in the novel. Don’t go crazy again. Deliver Joan to History and expunge your own history of misdeeds.

  The calls went softer. I played the Joan Baez song “Diamonds and Rust” while I waited in the dark. The song described romantic fatality and old lovers as saviors and destroyers.

  I sensed another fall impending. I thought about Joan every moment. I played the song obsessively. It was mordant and elegiac. The phone calls went softer. I wrote Joan letters. They were alllllll yearning. The containment 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 Goddess gave me the throbbing heart of History, revised. The note failed. Joan still lives inside me, full force.

  The Black Dahlia bombed. Theaters to cut-rate DVDs at light speed. 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. Her body movements contradicted all her maneuverings in my dreams.

  We caught our breath and beamed. We recalled our previous meeting. I told Karen that I schemed the gig to see her again. She laughed and mentioned the kiss that I blew to Joan.

  I pretended that you blew me the kiss. What happened to the woman? She was quite lovely.

  She dumped my raggedy ass six months ago. How’s your marriage?

  Karen chortled and went, Comme ci, comme ça. Those hot dice scorched my hand. 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 a kiss. Karen placed her hand on her heart.

  • • •

  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 daughters. I was repentance-wrapped with my ex-wife.

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

  We met at the Pacific Dining Car. Our embrace was a four-point collision. Helen and I had been married in the next room. The lunch ran three hours. We discussed Everything.

  Her outer-borough roots. Her Ivy League years. Her historian’s focus and the exigent bullshit of the academy. Karen’s body language was ambiguous. Likewise, her contradictory talk. She called her marriage and family inviolate. Yeah, but it was a lust lunch. We both knew it. Her marriage was malaise-mauled. She didn’t say it. I just knew.

  I left the Dining Car, reeling. Lunch #2 was scheduled for the next week. I full-time brooded on Karen. The Rachmaninoff Preludes, Opus 32, played along. 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 jus
t 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. My soul screamed, Ooooooh, baby!!!

  She again said, My marriage and family are inviolate. Fuck that shit. I was already at divorce, our marriage and Daughter #3. Karen refused to rag her husband. I knew why. She was a strong woman hitched to a seed-bearing wimp. She called the shots and let him throw himself at her blank spaces. They were East Coast white ethnics. Family was tsuris. Family was familiar and essential—but Karen craved romantic recognition and schlong. Her compartments had started seeping. She was yours truly, pre-breakdown.

  Lunch #3 followed. We talked ourselves out fast and laced hands. The gist was, Let’s become lovers. Karen stressed, I’m not leaving my husband. I winked and made the jack-off sign.

  Adultery.

  Adultery with daughters.

  Karen on adultery and a future Ellroy child: “The cloven hooves and trident tail would be tough for me.”

  Adultery with the woman you want for Wife #3.

  Adultery: the moral mishigas and murky metaphysic. Adultery as priapic prison and dead-end street.

  Karen had lost herself in the marriage. It was all kid shit, kid cacophony and middle-aged moms with their boring kid lore. Her work commute ran three hours daily. Her students were all named Mongo Lloyd. Her daughters ran her ragged. Her head was vice-gripped. She needed something all about her.

  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 existing commitments demanded it. Karen described her marriage as passionless from Jump Street. She justified our union via that. She was swamped by the results of her reckless search for togetherness and safety. My similar search brought me yet more dark-room solitude as I pushed sixty. Karen wanted recognition. She craved something urgently childless, undomestic and academically unbound. Her nervous energy was my energy—amplified by a lack of time alone in the dark.