“Sure. How do I get there?”
        “I'll take you.”
        Two-timing alley cat that I was, I woke up the next morning in bed with this girl, whose name I had not quite gotten the night before. “What's your name?” She was using the old New Orleans spelling then, and wrote it out: Jeanne Nelle. The only thing I knew for sure when I departed for LA the next day was that she was smart and brassy and beautiful and I adored her, she'd lifted me out of my depression and I wanted to see more of her. She flew out for a weekend in Malibu. I flew to New Orleans the next weekend. Very quickly she became pregnant and moved to Malibu. I told myself I was more than ready, now, to have a family. And I thought we balanced each other, for she was very extroverted and I am an introvert most of the time. The fact that she was 18 years younger didn't bother me, although I knew it would be viewed as scandalous by a lot of other people. No matter, I was smitten and she was pregnant and I'd put out of my mind—temporarily—the mysterious goings-on in New York. Given our age difference and my history in relationships, I assumed that J'Nelle and I would not grow old together. I thought it would be enough if we remained friends long after we'd had our dance and moved on.
        The night J'Nelle arrived to stay, while we were out having dinner, Beverly returned to the house, piled J'Nelle's clothes in the middle of the livingroom, wrote a poison-pen letter, and stuck it to the pile by driving a knife through the letter into the stack of clothing. The object was to put a curse on me. She needn't have bothered. In the coming years, I was to become so self-destructive, it's a wonder I lived through it.
        The first sign of trouble ahead with J'Nelle came one Sunday afternoon when we held a get-together for people I'd met through a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, Murray Korngold, interested in backing an independent movie of One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding—if, that is, Hilly Elkins didn't exercise his option. Among the guests was Carol Cole, the now-famous songwriter and singer. She was sitting in my favorite easy chair and we were chatting, getting acquainted. J'Nelle was in the kitchen cooking up a huge Louisiana gumbo. She was also drinking wine and smoking marijuana. Suddenly, her voice cut through the livingroom chatter using the word “Nigger.” The room went deadly silent and, one by one, guests departed. I was enraged.
        But J'Nelle wasn't a racist. It was to take her a couple of months to realize her Louisiana Southern-isms were anathema in California. Meanwhile, I decided our togetherness would never work and packed her bags, loaded them and her into the car, and drove to LAX, intending to send her back to Dixie, preferring to pay child support rather than even try to make a family out of such disparate cultures as hers and mine. As I was standing in line to buy her a ticket, she slumped to the floor and wrapped her arms around my ankles and tearfully begged me to take her back. I relented, and scolded myself for yet another act instigated by my orphan's complex. I told myself she would emerge out of her Southern programming, and make a very good mother for our children. In the back of my mind, though, the old saying echoed: “You can take the girl out of Louisiana but not Louisiana out of the girl.” Conversely, “You can take the guy out of the orphanage but not the orphanage out of the guy.”

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