Free James Ellroy by The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women Page B

when you meet her. Be assured that I love these less fierce women just as much as I love you
.
    Stand back now. Sex is the investing of your full soul.
    I know it more consciously now. The revelation often curtains my current time alone in the dark.
    I ached for the kinship of the body then. I wanted every touch, taste and breath I could have. I was too compromised to ever let it be just like that.
    I wanted an unnamed woman. It was the inextinguishable flame of my life. I wanted to write a specific woman’s story. I
knew
her name: Elizabeth Short.
    The Black Dahlia.
    I had postponed the book. My debt to Betty Short intimidated me. I wrote six novels in breathless preparation.
I owed her
. I had to grant the woman a precious identity.
    Betty Short died at 22. She was fatuous. She exemplified the silly-girl dreams indigenous to post-war America.
She
was
me
. She never got to outgrow her crazy shit and be somebody. She was all the Hancock Park girls with some fucked-luck chromosome inserted. She was all about invisibility. I never knew her, I never saw her, I only imagined her. I understood the male callousness and horrid pathology that mandated her demise. My predation provided theinsight more than my mother’s death did. My tender heart and smothering sense of conscience provided empathy. She died at 22. She was a kid. She was a wannabe actress with a chameleon personality and a penchant for telling whopping lies. She lied credibly on occasion. She had some knowledge of the limits of verisimilitude. She could have developed into a lie-for-profit storyteller. My depiction of Betty Short had to err on the side of honor glimpsed and foretold. She was visible in her invisibility. She died and spawned my kid crush and belated moral mandate. She preceded Joan, Karen and Erika and would in time lead them to me.
    I owed Betty Short the romance of her life—and was determined to give it to her.
    I began microfilm research and stitched up the plot. I recognized Jean Hilliker as a sister phantom reborn and dedicated the book to her. Honor the debt and reseal the tomb. Tell the story on your best-selling book tour. Combine Jean and Betty and ignore the enveloping issue of women. Seek more recent phantoms who might assuage you or at least fall for your act.
    Marcia Sidwell and Marge from the train kept nudging me. They played hell with my phone-call stints and stunts with present women. I called directory assistance once a week and tried to track Marcia. I had a friend post a note at that L.A. Laundromat. I checked Grand Central Station for Marge. I cruised the Tarrytown station and lurked by the tracks. My landlady told me about the film
Brief Encounter
. It was a ’45 British weeper. A man meets a woman in a train station. She’s married, he’s not. They acknowledge their love and kowtow to propriety and circumstance. My landlady said, You’d dig the sound track—it’s all Rachmaninoff.
    Bummer. You don’t fold before circumstance. You’re a weak sack of shit if you do.
    True in 1985. Still true today.
    Things were getting better. Book money trickled and almost flowed in. I tossed my caddy cleats. I wrote Betty’s story as the phone did or did not ring.
    And it was just that good and just that acclaimed. And it sold just that well. And it honored Jean Hilliker—as a fount of male inspiration and an
opportunity
.
    People
magazine ran a feature. The photos flattered me. I had a listed phone number. Four women called out of the blue.
    Women #1 and #2 sounded crazy. I got off the line quick. I kowtowed to circumstance with the others. Beethoven grinned and scowled above us. Jesus, what a run! and You’re a fucking
Scheisskopf!
    I always get what I want. It comes slow or fast and always costs a great deal.
    The world veered toward me. Acknowledgment and compensation flowed. I bought women I’d just met four-figure cashmere sweaters. I overtipped waitresses to the verge of bankruptcy. I sent half the female universe flowers. Sex