My Dark Places - James Ellroy [60]
I replaced the window screen and bent the nails back to hold it in place. I walked home very7 high.
Burglary was voyeurism multiplied a thousand times.
Kathy lived in a big Spanish house at 2nd and Plymouth. She was my longtime secret love.
She was tall and slender. She had dark brown hair, brown eyes and freckles. She was intelligent, sweet-natured and altogether gracious. I was afraid of her for no justifiable reason.
I broke into her house. It was a very cold night in early ’67.
I called her number and got no answer. I walked over to the house and saw no lights on and no cars in the driveway. I walked around to the back and tried to slide some windows open. The third or fourth one was unlatched.
I pulled myself inside. I stumbled around the first floor and turned lights on for a split second. I found a liquor sideboard and guzzled out of every bottle on it. I got a slam-bang-heavy booze rush and walked upstairs.
I couldn’t tell whose bedroom was whose. I lay down on all the beds and found female undergarments in an armoire and chest of drawers. The sizing on the bras and panties confused me. I stole two sets to make sure I had Kathy’s.
I found some prescription downers in a medicine chest. I stole three and chased them with a weird-ass liqueur. I went out that back window, weaved home and passed out on my bed.
I kept doing it. I went at it with uncharacteristic restraint.
I quit popping pills at the scene. I only stole fetishistic booty. I went back to Heidi’s, Kay’s and Kathy’s houses at odd intervals and stayed inside no more than 15 minutes. I aborted my mission if I found my entry points secured.
The thrill was sex and other worlds briefly captured. Burglary gave me young women and families by extension.
I burglarized my way through ’67. I never strayed outside Hancock Park. I tapped the homes of my dream girls exclusively.
Heidi, Kay and Kathy. Missy at 1st and Beachwood. Julie three doors down and across the street from Kathy. Joanne at 2nd and Irving.
Secret worlds.
Daryl moved up to Portland in early ’68. Fritz transferred to UCLA. Lloyd was attending L.A. City College. He was almost as booze-and-dope-addled as I was.
Lloyd possessed the balls that I lacked. He had a bent for tortured women hooked up with abusive men. He tried to rescue them and got into fights with dope-dealer sleazebags. He had a big heart and a big brain and a wickedly nihilistic sense of humor. He lived with his religious-nut mother and her second husband—a produce merchant with a couple of fruit stands out in the valley.
Lloyd had a taste for Hollywood lowlife. He knew how to talk to hoodlum types and hippies. I tagged along on a few of his Hollywood excursions. I met bikers, fruit hustlers and Gene the Short Queen—a 4′10″ transvestite. I stumbled around Hollywood, took weird drug combinations and woke up in parks and Christmas-tree lots.
The peace-and-love era was booming. Lloyd had one foot in that cultural door and one foot back on the edge of Hancock Park. He had his own dual-world scheme going. He postured and copped dope in Hollywood and came home to his crazy mother.
Hollywood scared me and vexed me. Hippies were faggot shitheads. They loved degenerate music and preached specious metaphysics. Hollywood was a pus pocket.
Lloyd disagreed. He told me the real world frightened me. He said I only knew a few square miles.
He was right. He didn’t know I supplanted my knowledge with things he’d never know.
I kept burglarizing. I went at it cravenly and cautiously. I kept reading crime novels and brain-screening crime fantasies. I kept stealing and eating an all-steak diet. I lived off a C-note a month.
The dog disappeared. I came home and found my door open and Minna long gone. I suspected my dog-hater landlord.
I searched for Minna and put a lost-dog ad in the L.A. Times. Nothing came of it. I blew two months’ rent money on dope and got locked out of my pad.
Aunt