Clandestine (1982) by James Ellroy

Author:James Ellroy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I was beginning to wonder who she did marry. I

began to wonder who I married. I started to feel a

hollowness, a depression that was fifty times

worse than fear. But I held on: rigorously

continuing to earn through construction work and

golf hustling at least as much as Lorna did as an

attorney.

We split the household expenses fifty-fifty, and

each contributed monthly stipends to our joint

savings and checking accounts. At the end of each

month when we did our bookkeeping, Lorna would

shake her head at the sad equity of it. We had a

running gag at these sessions. We would split the

expenses fifty-fifty, but I would pay for everything

connected with Night Train. Lorna was mildly

amused by him, but considered my noble link to

Wacky and the past an obscene object. She thought

dogs belonged on farms. "And the beast is your

burden," she would say as we concluded our

paperwork.

One day early in '55, she didn't crack her usual

jokes. She was drawn and cross that day. When I

looked to her to deliver her line she flung a sheaf

of papers at me and screamed, "It's so goddamned

easy for you! Goddamnit, how can you live with

yourself? Do you know how hard I work to make

the money I do? Do you, Freddy, goddamnit? Don't

you think it's sad that I went to school for eight

years to become a lawyer and help people, while

all you do is swing a hammer and hit golf balls?

Goddamn you, you Renaissance bum!"

For the first time I felt my marriage vows begin

to impinge me. I began to feel that I couldn't ever

be the man Lorna wanted me to be. And for the

first time I didn't care, because the Lorna of 1955

was not the Lorna I married in 1951. I started to

get itchy to break the whole thing up, to blow it all

sky high.

As my love for Lorna entered this awful, angry

stasis, I felt stirrings of what I could only call the

wonder. Wonder.

Years had passed. With the end of the Korean

War and the discrediting of Joe McCarthy, a

slightly more sane political climate was emerging.

Time seemed to be opening new wounds in my

present and healing the old ones in my past. If

Lorna was the replacement for the wonder, maybe

now it was time to reverse the situation.

Knowing I could never be hired as a police

officer, I applied for a state of California private

investigator's license, and was refused. I applied

for positions as insurance investigator with over

thirty insurance companies, and was rejected by

each one.

So I hit more thousands of golf balls, recalling

the trinity of my youth: police work, golf, and

women. Women. The very word bit at me like a

jungle carnivore, filling me with a venomous guilt

and excitement.

One night I went to a bar in Ocean Park and

picked up a woman. The old small talk and moves

were still there. I took her to a motel near my old

apartment in Santa Monica. We coupled and

talked. I told her my marriage was shot. She

commiserated; it had happened to her, too, and

now she was "playing the field."

In the morning I drove her back to where her car

was parked, then drove home to Laurel Canyon and

my wife, who didn't ask me where I had spent the

night.

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