Love Me Fierce In Danger by Steven Powell;

Author:Steven Powell;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

7

Enter the Borzoi (1990–1993)

In October 1990, Ellroy was invited to LA to do an interview for Rolling Stone. His interviewer was the author Mikal Gilmore. Mikal was the brother of the convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, the subject of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. Mikal met Ellroy in the Pacific Dining Car. He brought along an ex-girlfriend of his, Helen Knode, who was at that time a journalist for the LA Weekly. Ellroy was jetlagged, Helen was recovering from dental surgery, but even if they both felt fuzzy headed there was no doubt that a genuine attraction developed. Helen had not read his novels and did not know, at first, who Ellroy was. He tried to impress her with a string of one-liners which “all fell flat.”1 Helen described herself as a “Girl-Bolshevik” at the time, and Ellroy may have verbally softened some of his right-wing views so she wouldn’t be put off by him.2 In the interview, Ellroy accuses Ronald Reagan of “sleepwalking through his presidency,” which is in stark contrast to his usual glowing assessment of Reagan.3

Ellroy had not yet separated from Mary at this point, but his strong attraction to Helen would give him the impetus to walk out on what he and his wife knew was a failing marriage. In subsequent interviews, Ellroy would place his first meeting with Helen as occurring after he and Mary separated, to spare Mary’s feelings.

Ellroy called Gilmore and asked him for more details about Helen. She had a fascinating background which tantalized Ellroy. Born in Calgary, her family had worked in the oil business for four generations. Her father’s alcoholism and mismanagement of the family wealth had broken up his marriage to Helen’s mother. Helen developed a peripatetic existence as a young woman. She studied at the University of Kansas and then did an MA at Cornell. She then moved to Europe where, by her own admission, she was something of “a wild one” traveling and partying in London, Paris, and Berlin. Her journalistic career started as a film reviewer for the Cornell Daily Sun, then the New York based East Village Eye, before she moved to LA. Having grown tired of reviewing films, Knode was now writing her “Weird Sister” column for the LA Weekly, which gave her the scope to cover a wide range of subjects. Ellroy and Helen began corresponding, but there was a tacit understanding between the two of them that the relationship would not become intimate until his marriage to Mary was over.

In March 1991, Gilmore called Ellroy to request another interview. Ellroy accepted on the condition, as he had been obsessing about Helen, that it took place in LA. Gilmore told him that the magazine wouldn’t cover the costs of another flight. Ellroy paid for the flight himself. The interview eventually ran in Rolling Stone’s sister publication Men’s Journal. Since their last meeting Helen had read three of Ellroy’s novels that he had mailed to her. She had been entranced by The Black Dahlia, “I was stunned and hit by how sympathetic he was to her—Elizabeth Short.

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