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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
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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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]