Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled (12 page)

"We stopped off at my bank on the way to the airport," he said. I was very upset at that information.

"Listen, man," I said, "I've known her a few years and she's not even in the running as the most responsible female I've ever known. I mean, she's a sensational lady and all, but I don't really know where she's been the last few years."

Jim suddenly seemed disturbed. That hundred was about all he had to his name. He'd earned it assisting me in the teaching of a six-week writing workshop sponsored by Immaculate Heart College, along with Ed Bryant; and he'd worked his ass off for it. "She said she'd borrow it from a friend in San Francisco and get it back to me tomorrow."

"You shouldn't have done it. You should've called me first."

"Well, I figured she was your girl, and she was going to live here. And she said there wasn't time to call if she was going to make the plane, so ..."

"You shouldn't have done it."

I felt responsible. He'd been trusting, and kind, and I had a flash of uneasiness. The old fable about the Country Mouse and the City Rat scuttled through my mind. Valerie had been known to vanish suddenly. But ... not this time ... not after her warmth and protestations of love for me ... that was unthinkable. It would work out. But if it didn't ...

"Listen, anything happens, I'll make good on the hundred," I told him.

And we settled down to wait for Val's return the next day.

Two days later, we reached a degree of concern that prompted me to call her mother. The story I got from her mother did not quite synch with what Valerie had told me. Valerie had said she'd told her mother she was moving in with me; the mother knew of no such thing. Valerie had told her she was working in Los Angeles; Valerie had told me she would try and get a job when she returned from San Francisco. The worm of worry burrowed deeper.

Using the phone number of Valerie's alleged apartment in San Francisco, I got a disconnect. No word. No Valerie, no word of any kind. Had her ex-boy friend murdered her? Had she bought the VW bus and run off the road?

Students of the habit patterns of the lower forms of animal life will note that even the planarian flatworms learn lessons from unpleasant experiences. I was no stranger to ugly relationships with (a few, I assure you, a very few) amoral ladies. But homo sapiens, less intelligent than the lowest flatworm, the merest paramecium, repeats its mistakes, again and again. Which explains Nixon. And also explains why I was so slow to realize what was happening with Valerie. It took a sub-thread of plot finally to shine the light through my porous skull. Like this:

In company with Ray Bradbury, I was scheduled to make an appearance at the Artasia Arts Festival in Ventura, on May 13th. That was the Saturday following Valerie's leavetaking. Ray and I were riding up to Ventura together, and though I'm the kind of realist who considers cars transportation, hardly items of sensuality or beauty, and for that reason never wash my 1967 Camaro with the 148,000 miles on it, I felt a magic man of Bradbury's stature should not be expected to arrive in a shitwagon. So I asked Jim to take my wallet with the credit cards, and the car, and go down to get the latter doused. I was still chained to the typewriter on adeadline, or I would have done it myself.

Jim took it to a car wash, brought it back, and returned my wallet to the niche in my office where it's kept at all times. Aside from this one trip out of the house, the wallet (with all cards present) had not been out of my possession for a week.

The next day, Saturday, Ray came over and I drove us up to Ventura. After checking in, we went to get something to eat. At the table, I opened my wallet to get something--the first time I'd opened the wallet in a week--and suddenly realized some of the glassine windows that held my credit cards were empty. After the initial panic, I grew calm and checked around the table, covered the route back to the car, inspected the map-cubby where I always keep the wallet, looked under the seats ... and instantly called Jim in Los Angeles to tell him I'd been ripped off.

Since the wallet had only been out of the house once in the last week, the cards had to have been boosted at the car wash. Do you see how long it takes the planarian Ellison to smell the stench of its own burning flesh?

I called Credit Card Sentinel, the outfit that cancels missing or stolen cards, advised them of the numbers of the cards (I always keep a record of this kind of minutiae handy), and asked them to send the telegrams that would get me off the hook immediately. There's a law that says you can't get stuck for over fifty bucks on any one card, but there were five cards missing--Carte Blanche, BankAmericard, American Express, Standard Chevron Oil and Hertz Rent-A-Car--and that totaled two hundred and fifty dollars right there; with Sentinel, the effective lead time for use of the cards is greatly reduced.

Having deduced ·á la Nero Wolfe that the thief had to have been the dude who swabbed out the interior of the car at the washatorium, I called the West L.A. police, detectivedivision, the area where the car wash was located, and put them on to it. I called the owners of the car wash and relayed the story, and tried to coordinate them with the detective who was going to investigate, advising them that they should check out the guys who'd worked interiors that previous Friday, noting especially any who hadn't shown up for work.

My detective work was flawless ... aside from the sheer stupidity of my emotional blindness.

You all know what happened.

But I didn't, until five days later, when I received a call from the BankAmericard Center in Pasadena asking me to verify a very large purchase of flowers sent to Mrs. Ellison in the Sacramento, California Medical Center. I assured them there was no Mrs. Ellison, I was single, and the only Mrs. Ellison was my mother, in Miami Beach.

The charge, of course, was on my stolen card.

Then the light blinded me.

The next day, I received a bill for forty-three dollars from the Superior Ambulance Service in Sacramento, a bill for having carted someone from a Holiday Inn to the Sacramento Medical Center on May 13th. The name of the patient was "Ellison Harlan" and the charge had been made to my home address.

In rapid succession came the BankAmericard reports of huge purchases of toilet articles, men's clothing, women's sportwear, hair dryers, and other goodies. Of course, I knew what had happened. At this point, pause with me, and join in a Handel chorus of O What a Schmuck is Thee!

Care to relive with me the last time you were fucked-over? The feeling that your stomach is an elevator, and the bottom is coming up on you fast. That peculiar chill all over, approximated only by the morning after you've stayed up all night on No-Doz and hot, black coffee. The grainy feeling in the eyes, the uncontrollable clenching of the hands, the utter frustration, thewanting to board a plane to ... where? ... to there! ... to the place where something that can be hit exists. It's one thing to be robbed, it's quite another to be taken. Okay, no argument, it's all ego and crippled masculine pride, but God it burns!

I pulled my shit together and dropped back into my Sam Spade, private eye, mode. First I called the Sacramento Medical Center and checked if there was a Valerie B. checked in. There wasn't. Then I asked for a Mrs. Ellison Harlan. There wasn't. Then I asked for Mrs. Harlan Ellison.

There was.

Then I called the Security station of the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, there at the Medical Center. I spoke to the officer in charge, laid the entire story on him, and asked him to coordinate with Officer Karalekis of the West L.A. Detective Division, as well as Dennis Tedder at the BankAmericard Center in Pasadena. I advised him--and subsequently advised the Administrative Secretary of the Center--that there was a fraud in progress, and that I would not be held responsible for any debts incurred by the imposter posing as "Ellison Harlan," "Harlan Ellison," or "Mrs. Harlan Ellison." Both of these worthies said they'd get on it at once.

Then I called Valerie. She was in the orthopedic section. They got her to the phone. Of course, she answered: the only one (as far as she knew) who had any idea she was there was the man who had purchased the flowers.

Is the backstory taking shape finally, friends? Yeah, it took me a while, too. And I'm dumber than you.

That was May 23rd, ten days after the ambulance had removed her from the Holiday Inn and she'd been admitted to the Center.

"Hello?"

"Valerie?"

Pause. Hesitant. Computer running on overload.

"Yes."

"Harlan."

Silence.

"How's San Francisco?"

"How did you find me here?"

"Doesn't matter. I get spirit messages. All you need to know is I found you, and I'll find you wherever you go."

"What do you want?"

"The cards, and the hundred bucks you conned off Jim Sutherland."

"I haven't got it."

"Which?"

"Any of it."

"Your boy friend has the cards."

"He split on me. I don't know where he is."

"Climb down off it, Princess. If I'm a patsy once, that makes me a philosopher. Twice and I'm a pervert."

"I'm hanging up. I'm sick."

"You'll be sicker when the Sacramento Sheriff's Department there in the hospital visits you in a few minutes."

No hangup. Silence.

"What do you want?"

"I said what I wanted. And I want it quick. Jim's too poor to sustain a hundred buck ripoff. I can handle the rest, but I want it all returned now."

"I can't do anything while I'm in here."

"Well, you're on a police hold as of ten minutes ago, so figure a way to do it, operator."

"God, you're a chill sonofabitch! How can you do this to me?"

There is a moment when one watches beloved Atlantis sink beneath the waves, and resigns oneself. There is a moment when one decides to cut the Devil loose because you can't pay the dues. That's the moment when one toughs-up and decides to let the fire consume the tabernacle, the holy icons and the fucking temple itself!

"I'm the only one who can press charges against you at this point,Valerie. Try to wriggle and I'll chew on your eyes, so help me God."

There was silence at the other end.

"Give me a minute to think; it's all too fast," she said. I could just conjure up a picture of a rat in a maze, looking for a wall to chew through.

"Sure. Take a minute. I'll wait."

And while I waited, I tried to piece together the off-camera action that I'd refused to believe had happened. I'd needed that final punch in the mouth, the sound of her voice across the line from Sacramento, actually to accept what a jerk I was. But now I'd gotten the shock, and I started piecing it all together.

All the facts were there ... only someone afraid to find out what a patsy he'd been could have missed it. She had either met up with her boy friend at the Burbank Airport--a guy described in the police report from his purchase of the flowers sent to Valerie as "Mrs. Ellison" in the hospital as a "dark, swarthy guy," a description that tallied with Valerie's mother's recollection of him as "a Latin of some kind, maybe Cuban"--or had had him fly to Sacramento from San Francisco. They had shacked up at the Holiday Inn and something had happened to Valerie. Something serious enough for her to have to be rushed by ambulance to the Medical Center, at which point the boy friend had checked out on her, with my credit cards.

Now I had her on (I thought) a police hold.

"I can't do anything while I'm in here," she said, finally.

"You're not getting out." I was firm about that.

"Then I can't get the money."

"Then you'll go to jail. I'll press charges."

"Why are you doing this?"

"I'm just a rotten sonofabitch, that's why."

A few more words were exchanged, then she rang off. I turned to Jim Sutherland and said, "I may have to fly up to Sacramento. It looks resolved, but I've got bad feelings about the sloppy way the BankAmericard people and the cops are going at this thing. Besides ... I want to look at her face."

What I was saying was that I wanted to see if I could detect the stain of duplicity in her expression. What I was saying was I'd become a man with an ingrown hair that needed digging and tweezing; like all self-abuse, I needed to put myself in the line of pain, to relive the impact, to see what it was that had made me go for the okeydoke, what had made me such a willing sucker, so late in my life of relationships, making a mistake of placing such heavy emotions in such an unworthy receptacle. I was consumed with the need to understand, not merely to stumble on through life thinking my perceptions about people were so line-resolution perfect that I could never be flummoxed. She had taken me, and with such perfection that even after I had spoken to her in the hospital, even after I knew I'd been had, some small part of my brain kept telling me her expressed affection and attention could not all have been feigned.

Thus do we perpetuate our folly.

Fifteen minutes later, she called back, collect.

"What did you tell them?" she demanded.

"Tell who?"

"The cops. A cop just came up to talk to me."

"I told you what I told them. That you were a thief and you were registered under an alias and I wasn't going to be responsible for any bills you ran up and they'd better hold onto your pretty little ass till the Laws had decided what to do with you."

"Are you going to press charges?"

"Give me reasons not to."

"I'll get the money back for Jim."

"That's a start."

"I can't do anything else."

"The cards."

"I don't have them." And she named her boy friend, who she said had kited off with them. That didn't bother me; I'd already had the cards stopped. Larry Lopes (pronounced LO-pez) was his name. It comes back to me now.

"Okay. You get the hundred back to Jim and as far as I'm concerned you can move on to greener pastures."

She rang off, and I sat in the dwindling light of the sunset coming over the Valley to my hilltop, thinking furiously. Getting no answers.

I heard nothing further for several days, and when I checked with Dennis Tedder at the BankAmericard Center in Pasadena, I was informed Valerie was no longer at the Sacramento Medical Center.