Without a Doubt

American Tabloid

I don’t mean to sound like a whiner. I know there are lots of people who would trade a kidney for a few seconds of celebrity. In fairness, I’m willing to concede that under some very special circumstances it can be flattering to be the center of attention. It’s a nice little perk. You feel important for a moment; then you go back to work.

But the escalating media frenzy in the Simpson case filled me with a sense of foreboding. The attention didn’t stop at my work, or even at the length of my skirts. The reporters who besieged Suzanne Childs and her overworked public relations people were interested in “Marcia Clark, up close and personal.” Read: What gives with Marcia’s personal life? I told Suzanne to hold them off. I did whatever I could to discourage them. When I heard that the L.A. Times was looking to profile me, I kept ducking the reporter. Poor guy finally threw in the towel and ran something called “The Reluctant Headliner,” which was a piece about how I avoided publicity. Whenever reporters asked Gil about my personal life, he’d say, “I don’t even know if she has a family.” Most of my friends and colleagues were similarly discreet.

Around the middle of July, the National Enquirer published its first piece about me. It was a sweetly inaccurate story about how, in my private life, I was a homebody in the June Cleaver mold. They’d found some eight-year-old neighbor girl who was supposed to have said, “What I love best is when Mrs. Clark lets me make cookies with her… She says little girls are the best helpers when it comes to making cookies and that makes me feel special.”

That one had the guys in my office absolutely howling. For the record, I bake cookies about once a year. As for the kid, I wouldn’t know her to pick her out of a lineup.

All in all, it was pretty harmless fluff. But what worried me was the fact that they would be out there talking to my neighbors at all! Was it because I was going through a divorce? The Enquirer had already gotten hold of it, A divorce filing must send out some kind of subliminal alert to those dissolute Brits who run the American tabloids.

Under ordinary circumstances I would not even consider talking about my private life. In fact, when I sat down to write this book, I didn’t intend to touch upon anything personal at all. I’ve had second thoughts about that. So many absurd things have been published about me that I feel I owe you an honest accounting of myself. By “honest,” I do not mean exhaustive. But there are some things about me that I can and should discuss. Things it’s important for you to know. And when you read on, I think you’ll understand why.

Marcia was a very reserved person who came from a very orthodox Jewish family. She would sometimes have her face covered with a veil and before… marriage was even chaperoned by another woman who spoke no English.

National Enquirer, August 2, 1994.

I was born Marcia Rachel Kleks, daughter of an Israeli immigrant. We were most emphatically not Orthodox. We rarely went to temple. I spent my babyhood in the Bay Area. At the age of three or four I decided to become an actress.

It was more than some preschooler’s daydream. Joel Grey was a distant cousin on my mother’s side-though I only met him once, when I was eight. My mother herself was a classical pianist. By the time she was eighteen, she’d made a recording. She never went on to perform professionally. She married. All the time my brother, Jon, and I were young, she kept that recording locked away somewhere like an old love letter. I never heard it.

When I was six my mother started me on piano lessons. I was a nervous, fidgety kid and had a hard time sitting still long enough to practice. Unfortunately, I was blessed with a good ear, which allowed me to be lazy. I would listen to my teacher play a piece, and then I’d learn it by ear so I wouldn’t have to be bothered figuring out how to read music. I took lessons off and on until I was nine years old, when both my mother and I conceded defeat. But then, I’d discovered dance, a passion that would last a lifetime.

I have a faint recollection of practicing ballet in the living room while my mother played the piano. Unfortunately, I don’t have many of those mental snapshots. For the most part, the memories of my early years are chaotic and incomplete. My father was a chemist with the FDA, and his job required us to move at least ten times while I was growing up. I’d just get settled into a place-then, wham, uprooted again. I could never afford to let myself get too attached to anyone or anything. There’s a lot, I’m sure, I’ve never let myself remember.

When I was ten or eleven we moved back to the Bay Area into a new development called Foster City. It was touted by its developers as a sort of Shangri-la laid out along a string of lagoons. The showcase homes had their own boat docks. Ours didn’t. It sat across the street from a beach. We did get a Sunfish, and I learned how to sail. The area was raw and undeveloped in those days. My mother would send me to the store in my sailboat to pick up milk and other small items. As I look back on those days, I realize that I enjoyed a remarkable amount of freedom. And when it wasn’t given to me, I went to great lengths to steal it.

Foster City didn’t have its own school system, so in seventh grade I was bused to a junior high in a very rough neighborhood. I wasn’t exactly born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but I’d never seen anything like this. These kids were all wise in the ways of the streets. Here I was in knee socks and pleated skirts, with long, straight brown hair, sitting next to babes wearing ass-hugging skirts, black fishnets, a pound of makeup, and hair teased into humongous lacquered swells. They smoked in the bathroom, swore like sailors, and didn’t give a damn about their grades or what their parents would say. Très cool. I wanted some of that.

I knew my parents would throw a fit if they saw me in fishnets, so I came up with a plan to get around them. I went shopping with a school friend who helped me pick out a low-cut V-necked sweater that exposed my nonexistent cleavage. I borrowed a tight black skirt that was way too long for me. I think it was something my friend’s older sister had outgrown. I fixed the hemline problem by rolling up the waistband, then hid the bulge under the bulky sweater. I scored a pair of black hose and doctored the runs with pale pink nail polish. And I bought a pair of cool black pumps. This became my uniform. My secret uniform.

I’d leave the house every morning in normal clothes. Then, when I got to school, I’d duck into the girls’ bathroom, dig into my knapsack, and pull out my finery. There were usually several friends willing to help me tease my long, straight hair to an acceptable height. The black eyeliner, applied with a canoe paddle, and pale pink lipstick completed the transformation. I was ready for class.

Back then the student population was divided into two groups: “surfers” and “greasers.” I liked the greasers, car-addicted, chain-smoking tough guys who swore at the slightest provocation, wore tight jeans, pointed boots, and leather jackets, and poured more oil on their hair than in their engines. I attracted the attention of the leader of the pack. Tom was fifteen-an older man by the standards of a twelve-year-old. He wore his hair slicked back with a ton of lubricant and sported a black leather jacket, his trademark. He was reputed to be epileptic; this somehow only added to his mystique. He had a pair of deep brown eyes, full sensuous lips, and a sexy macho attitude that made him the premier catch of the school. Shortly after my own transformation, he decided we had to go steady.

This seemed a very cool thing to do. It was a sure way of getting accepted by the fast crowd and proving how tough I was to boot. So I took Tom’s ring, a heavy metal number that was way too big for me. I tried the prescribed remedy of wrapping yarn around it to improve the fit, but that made it so bulky, I ended up wearing it on a chain around my neck. My steady didn’t mind. He considered it proof of his manliness that his ring hung loose on his woman’s skinny finger.

At recess he’d let me wear his leather jacket, which hit me at the knees. We’d stand together, his arm around me. Periodically, he’d plant an ostentatious kiss on my lips. He’d linger long enough so that everyone could see we were a couple. What they couldn’t know was that he’d repeatedly invited me to go out on dates-usually to Saturday matinees-and that I kept finding ever more creative excuses to decline. Quite apart from the fact that I’d never be able to carry off an actual date under my parents’ noses, I learned that I could expect to be “felt up” and “felt down.” That prospect terrified me. I knew that eventually I’d have to put out or get out. I wasn’t quite sure how to do either.

It was one of my steady’s jealous ex-girlfriends, Linda, who settled the matter once and for all. She sent out the word that she was going to knock out my lights. Tom told me he’d “take care” of her. One day, at noon recess, I went into the girls’ restroom. I’d just finished patting my hair into place when Linda burst through the door, cornered me, and threw a punch. I was agile enough to duck, or she would have knocked me out cold.

“You little bitch,” she growled. “You can’t have Tom; he’s mine. Get it?” She was leaning forward with clenched fists. It would have been funny, it was so trite-except I was scared to death. What had happened to Tom’s promise to “take care” of her? It was clearly up to me.

“Take him, he’s yours,” I told her, in as rational and assertive a tone as I could muster. She seemed surprised, but she backed off. And so I slipped out of a rumble and a sticky romantic entanglement within the space of a minute.

My career as a greaser was cut short by my family’s next move, this one to Michigan. I had just turned thirteen. I found to my dismay that the quiet suburb we now called home had no great appreciation for fishnet stockings. The kids in my new high school worshiped all things Californian. They wanted to be surfers. There was only one real “in” crowd. All the rest were wannabes. By my third day, the popular clique-operating upon the mistaken assumption that because I was from San Francisco I must be a surfer girl-took me under its wing. I was ceremoniously escorted to their table in the lunchroom and introduced all around. The girls were all dyed-in-the-wool Heathers. You know the type.

Before lunch was over, they’d set me up to join them for Cokes at a local hangout on Friday, go shopping with them on Saturday, and visit someone’s house on Sunday. The kicker came when one of the girls called me at home that night to announce that I would be going steady with one of the freckle-faced rich guys I’d met at lunch. I was stunned. I’d heard of arranged marriages, but this was ridiculous.

The next day at lunch, I deliberately chose to sit at a table of outcasts-those who’d either abandoned all hope of ever being popular or had never cared much to begin with. One girl leaned over to me and asked, “Do you realize how pissed off they’re going to be if you sit with us?” Of course I did. I actually enjoyed watching the Heathers glower at me from their privileged position. They didn’t like the idea of being rejected. Serves you damned right, I thought.

I did okay on my own terms. That year I got into gymnastics. I would have liked to try out for the women’s gymnastics team, except there wasn’t one. Instead, I became a cheerleader. Co-captain of the squad, in fact. Before I could really get into the season, however, we moved again. This time to Maryland.

I was prepared to hate the place, but I ended up loving it. The apartment complex we moved to was populated largely by families as transient as my own. They came from all over the world. In the afternoons and on weekends I’d play soccer in the central courtyard with kids from India, Chile, Argentina, and England. They were kindred spirits. Most of them had lived lives as unsettled as my own, and they had no trouble welcoming a newcomer whose tenure was uncertain. I faced the usual trauma of having to make new friends, but the transition was easier than ever before. Within two months I’d become part of a congenial crowd, with a few close friends among them.

That interlude of contentment, however, ended abruptly with yet another move, this time to New York. The announcement devastated me. I’d been so happy in Maryland. For the first time in my life I hadn’t felt like a freak. Maybe it was the feeling of having no control over my life, or maybe it was just the prospect of having to start all over again, but when I got news of our impending departure, I marched upstairs to my room, closed the door, and ripped up every book I could lay my hands on. Then I threw every fragile object I owned against the wall. When my belongings lay in ruins around me, I dropped onto my bed in a fit of sobbing.

We moved to a development on Staten Island, where we bought a large house. That, at least, made me happy. I had the whole downstairs floor to myself. It had its own entrance, which gave me more freedom than ever. The bad news was that the kids in my new high school regarded me with outright hostility. The California mystique didn’t mean spit here. The only group that would accept me were the hippies. They were not junkies or hypes or anything, just basically good kids who, like me, didn’t fit in anywhere else. I helped them organize the distribution of the High School Free Press and agitated for the abolition of the school dress code. And I smoked a little dope, something I admit without a twinge of regret or guilt. When I see a politician squirming when asked to admit he sneaked a toke as a kid, I just want to shake him and say, “Grow up, Junior.” The way I look at it, toking was just one more rite of passage.

One night my friends and I met at a local park that was one of our favorite hangouts. We were just sitting around acting cool. One guy brought his guitar and we were singing Dylan songs badly. Suddenly a crew-cut man wearing a Ban-Lon shirt, cutoffs, and a peace symbol approached us and flicked on a flashlight.

“This is a bust, everybody,” he barked. “Stand up.”

I thought it was a joke. I mean, he had to be kidding, especially in that getup.

“I mean it,” he repeated. “I’m a cop.”

“Oh, yeah? Well then, where’s your badge?” I taunted him. I was perfectly sober but high on attitude.

He produced a badge. We promptly stood.

The cop marched us out to where several other officers had stationed themselves in the middle of the park. Another girl and I were handed over to an older cop who questioned us apart from the others. I was scared. I was enough of a middle-class Jewish girl to know that an arrest would be terrible for me in every way. But I also knew that I’d done nothing wrong.

“Why are we getting busted?” I asked him. “We were just singing.”

“Don’t give me that,” he sneered at me. “We found a bunch of hype kits and Baggies of heroin right over there.” He pointed to some bushes.

Heroin! The thought of pushing a needle into my arm made me physically ill.

“You must be kidding,” I said in complete amazement. “We don’t do heroin!”

“Oh, yeah?” he said right into my face. “Well, let’s see your arms.”

I was wearing a sleeveless top, which, as I think back on it, should have told the cops right off the bat that I was no junkie. But I stretched out my arms obediently. The officer examined them and pointed to a small scratch on my right bicep. “You see,” he said triumphantly, “that could be a skin pop.”

Skin pop? What the hell was that?

The sickening realization swept over me that this guy could say anything he wanted. He could manufacture any evidence he wanted. No matter how innocent I was, he could send me to jail if he wanted to. To him I was just a scruffy piece of shit.

I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but that sense of total helplessness stayed with me long after I became an officer of the court. For a prosecutor, it’s easy to become annoyed at a criminal justice system that seems to be stacked so ridiculously in favor of defendants. But you have to have been on the downside looking up at the face of the law before you realize how thin those defenses really are. Once you’ve been there, you can’t honestly begrudge a defendant any help he can muster.

That night in the park, I had no cards to play. So I did the only thing I could. I begged. I pleaded. And as fear and frustration overcame me, I began to cry. The other girl watched this performance in silence, but when I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, I saw she looked as terrified as I felt. When I’d run out of words and courage, I stopped.

The officer stood looking at us for a moment, confused. Then he said, “All right, you two, get out of here, and fast. I don’t want to see you anywhere around here ever again. You hear me? Now beat it!”

I looked at him for a moment, unsure of what I’d just heard. I looked at my friend. She nodded, and together we turned and began to walk away, expecting to be stopped at any moment. After the first few steps, we broke into a sprint that had our hearts pumping. We didn’t stop running until we got to a bus stop about a mile from the park. And there we parted ways. Neither of us said a thing to the other. And after that evening, I never saw her again.

I never figured out what happened that night. How the heroin-if it really was heroin-got there. Whose it really was. The word around school was that the cops had planted the drugs as an excuse to bust us because neighbors had complained about noise in the park. The boys were booked and charged. No one got any jail time, but after that we all pretty much lost touch with each other.

My life was already drifting in another direction.

Shortly after we’d moved to New York, I’d started taking weekly acting classes at a small repertory theater in Greenwich Village, Circle in the Square. I absolutely lived for those classes, especially during the first six months of the school year while I was still battling the stigma of being the “new girl.” The acting teachers at Circle in the Square were terrific; they gave me the opportunity to cut my teeth on Shakespeare. When we worked on readings from Othello, I chose to play the maid rather than Desdemona. No mystery as to why-Desdemona was an ingenue, a sheltered little girl. Emilia, the maid, was an older woman, wise in the ways of the world and the streets.

My teachers seemed to think I was pretty good. At the end of the course, we put on a showcase and I was given the female lead, Emily, in a short segment from Our Town. I also had two roles in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, which was more than anyone else got to play. While waiting to go on, I was paralyzed with stage fright. It was like being underwater, that queer sense of dissociation from the physical world. I would suffer that same crisis of nerves many times in years to come-in fact, any time I had to deliver an opening statement. But the resolution was always the same. Once I actually set foot onstage, the fear drained away. I became totally immersed in the moment. Onstage the imaginary characters overtook me and I felt the rush of bringing them alive for a few moments. Heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old.

From my first trip into the Village, I felt at home. It was exciting. Exotic. I just couldn’t get enough of it. During the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I found a way to spend more time there: I got a job. Well, sort of.

One afternoon after school, I wandered into a leather shop-I’d always loved the smell and feel of leather-and struck up a conversation with a man who turned out to be the manager. He asked me if I’d like to make a little extra money. I was wary. “Like to make some money?” sounded like a preamble to “Take off your clothes.” The manager saw my reaction and laughed. He was looking for someone to distribute advertising flyers. He’d pay me five bucks an hour to walk up and down the street and hand them out to passersby.

It was too perfect. I’d be right in the middle of the action, and making money at that. I accepted on the spot. He handed me a stack of flyers and I hit the pavement with a big grin on my face. I did this for about two months until I got a job as a salesgirl at a low-end fashion boutique. I was really good at it. I could talk to people, size up types, and put together great outfits. Low-riding, hip-hugger bell-bottoms, tight T-shirts and halter tops.

For the next two years I worked at several shops on the Lower East Side. Artists and entrepreneurs had moved in and begun transforming what was basically a slum into another hip venue. It would come to be called the East Village, but in those days it was still a pretty raunchy part of town. The boutiques where I worked stayed open until one or two A.M. on Fridays and Saturdays, which meant that I was out on the streets in the small hours of the morning. On the way home I had to run a gauntlet of winos, junkies, and speed freaks, all looking for a handout. I knew better than to stop and reach into my purse on those dark streets. I decided I’d better get myself some protection. Not a gun-camouflage. I bought the scruffiest leather air force jacket I could find, as well as a pair of funky, threadbare jeans. Add to that a really beat-up suede saddlebag. I’d change into my grungy getup, pull a scarf over my hair and face, and adopt a speed-freak lope all the way to the subway. Worked like a charm. Even the winos gave me a wide berth.

By now, my old school chums were history. I wouldn’t date high school boys. I didn’t have to. Village dudes were invariably more attractive to me than high school geeks. I’d finally found someplace where I belonged. Then, once again, the ax fell. We had to move again-back to the West Coast, this time to Los Angeles. I was too young to stay in New York and finish high school alone. I had to go with my parents.

That next fall, when I started college at U.C. Riverside, I was suffering from depression. I hated the place. I hated life in a girls’ dorm. You can understand why. I’d just come from the Village, which was on the cutting edge of everything from street fashion to politics. Now all of a sudden, here I was, stuck in a dormitory where my floormates wore curlers and fuzzy slippers and agonized over whether boys should be allowed to use the girls’ bathrooms during Sunday visits.

I had fun shocking people. I still dressed in my Village clothes, which consisted mostly of velvet and leather. The only thing I would consider wearing to bed was an ivory satin gown, Jean Harlow-style, fitted to the hips and flaring out into a swirl around the ankles. I’d found it in a thrift shop. The Sandra Dee types viewed me with suspicion, and I avoided them like the plague. After two weeks I transferred to a coed dorm where I had a much better time.

The coursework was easy and I found a terrific jazz dance class. It was taught by Joe Tremaine, a slender redhead who had an impressive list of professional credits as both a dancer and a choreographer. It was just dumb luck to have run into someone that good. Joe gave me religion. One day the class was doing a combination he’d just demonstrated when he suddenly stopped the music and glared at us.

“You all think you can just get out there and wiggle your fannies and have a good time, don’t you? Well, you look sloppy and amateurish. Anyone can see it. I can tell who’s had ballet. I can tell who’s trained and worked, and who hasn’t. There’s no substitute for real work. If you’re not working, you’re not fooling anyone but yourselves.”

I knew he was right. Whether I ever danced professionally or not, I knew I wanted to do it right or not at all. The next day I got myself into a ballet class and continued to study ballet for the next twelve years. I danced until the rigors of trial work, and later, motherhood, made it impossible for me to keep up.

The following year I transferred to UCLA. I cut classes as often as I could get away with it. I don’t mean to leave the impression that I was a slacker. Far from it. I just preferred to study on my own. In fact, I took a heavy load each semester so I could graduate as soon as possible. I also worked several nights a week as a waitress at a local steak house. I hardly dated at all. To make up for the absence of a social life, I started folk dancing, which was a real craze back then. I made a few good friends, mostly women, and we started going out together on the nights when there was no good place to dance. Our favorite watering hole was on Fairfax Avenue.

This was the early seventies; the Six-Day War, which had ended in a huge victory for Israel, was still fresh in the minds of American Jews. Israeli males who streamed to the States in its aftermath carried with them not only the aura of foreignness but the macho allure of the conqueror. Most of these hotshots found their way to Jewish communities, where they felt most at home. In Los Angeles, that was the Fairfax district.

Fairfax Avenue was jammed with small restaurants that served falafel and shuwarma. They were in constant and largely unsuccessful competition with Cantor’s Delicatessen, the flagship anchored on the busiest part of the thoroughfare. Cantor’s was the premier hangout for newly arrived Israelis, as well as for Americans who wanted to meet them. Young Jewish girls who were bored by the nice Jewish boys they’d grown up with were thrilled by the prospect of these exotic specimens. (How strenuously, after all, could one’s parents object? These Israelis were Jewish-and war heroes to boot.)

The Israelis were perfectly well aware of their allure, and took full advantage of the many romantic opportunities it afforded them. Some were honorable; some weren’t. The rogues among them left a trail of broken hearts and bitter stories that eventually saddled the whole lot with reputations as womanizing bastards. When I came on the scene, that rep hadn’t yet evolved; we still had reason to believe that they could be okay guys.

My girlfriends and I tended to congregate at a joint across the street from Cantor’s. It had only about ten glass-topped tables, seating forty at most. On the walls hung posters of Israel. A tape of popular Israeli music played nonstop. The owners didn’t object to patrons nursing cups of coffee for hours rather than spending money on dinner. This made it a great favorite of the Israelis, and of the girls looking for Israelis.

It was there I met my first husband.

I wasn’t looking for a husband, or even a boyfriend. I had no desire to be added to anyone’s list of conquests. My friends and I had finished eating when I was aware that one of the sharks was cruising our way. I was about to warn my friends to ignore him when he pulled up a chair and sat down next to me.

It was one of those heavy-handed advances so typical of Israeli men. I signaled to my group to ignore him, but he’d already started chatting up one of the girls. She was getting all shiny-eyed and breathless and had taken it upon herself to make introductions. I half-turned to say hello-and sitting next to me was the most incredibly handsome man I had ever seen.

He had glossy dark curls and enormous green eyes. His features were angelic and yet strongly masculine. Gaby-that’s what his friends called him-was doubtless a womanizing cad. But he was very charming. And he was incredibly funny. Gaby’s wit was never self-deprecating; the joke was always at someone else’s expense. But it was always right on the mark. I was charmed by him despite myself. He spoke to me only in Hebrew, which seemed more intimate than English. About a hour after we’d met he told me, “I’ll take you home.”

It was not an offer. It was an order.

All my life I’ve had this thing for bad boys. I’m embarrassed even having to think about this, let alone talk about it. But I got turned on by that tired old macho come-on. Worldly as I considered myself, I was still a kid. I was wildly confident one moment, withdrawn the next. And so when I ran smack into this handsome, assertive man who seemed to know exactly what he wanted, I saw in him only what I wanted to see: real strength.

I let him take me home to the studio apartment I was sharing with a friend near campus. We began seeing each other. In less than a month I was living with him.

Gaby and I made an odd pair. Here I was, a grubby college student in jeans, whose idea of high fashion was the latest shipment at the army-navy surplus store. I studied all day and ventured out at night only for folk dancing. Gaby was flashy, always dressed to the nines in body-hugging suits. He seemed to have plenty of money. He slept all day and went nightclubbing all night. I found his lifestyle very glamorous, and allowed myself to be swept along by it.

Gaby played backgammon for a living. I’d never even heard of the game before I met him, but Gaby took great pains to teach it to me. He instructed me not only in the basic rules, but in theory and strategy as well. He spent hours explaining the various plays and how to size up your chances of winning at any given point. The sizing-up business was important, because the stakes of the game could be raised over and over again by “doubling.” One player could challenge by offering to double the stakes. If the other player refused, the game ended and the challenger scored a point. The stakes could range from a quarter a point to hundreds or even thousands of dollars a point. When you consider that fifty or sixty points can be easily racked up in one sitting, you can see how some heavy coin could change hands, fast.

I soon learned that backgammon was a real hot pastime with the rich. The craze was in its infancy when Gaby and I first met. Two years later, when I started law school, it had become a full-tilt mania. Bars and clubs everywhere had at least one or two tables. Some clubs devoted themselves exclusively to it. The most popular of these was Pips, in Beverly Hills. Pips catered to the rich and famous. The name of the club was inlaid discreetly in brass to the right of the large double-doored entrance. Muted lighting, thick carpets, and dark, paneled walls lent the place an air of understated opulence. The room devoted to backgammon was right off the foyer. It had ten tables and its own bar. I liked Pips more than other places on the backgammon circuit because it was relatively quiet and had cushiony, well-upholstered chairs. There, I could park myself and study while Gaby played.

Gaby and I would drop into Pips every other night or so while he tried to hustle up a “pigeon,” the pro’s term for a novice who played for high stakes. It wasn’t easy to get a game at Pips. The fashionable set usually played with their friends and were understandably leery of a flashy stranger with an Israeli accent. So if he failed to score, we’d move along to the Cavendish.

The Cavendish, located on the border between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, was a private club that had been devoted largely to bridge and gin rummy. Gambling, of course, was illegal, and I’d heard that the Cavendish had been raided a couple of times-but as far as I could tell that hadn’t slowed down the action. During the early seventies, the entire back room was given over to backgammon. The Cavendish was not the plush playground that Pips was. It was located in an office building, two flights up. There was no elevator that serviced the club. Nor was there any sign visible from the street to announce its existence.

The first thing you saw when you came in was a long counter where club personnel would check to make sure you were a member in good standing. To the left of that counter was a lounge with a couple of sofas and coffee tables. If you passed through the lounge, you’d walk into a large room filled with bridge tables. To the back was a partition of wood and glass; beyond that, backgammon.

Gaby never had trouble finding a game here. In fact, he made a lot of money. The tabloids later portrayed Gaby as a chronic cheat. I should tell you that backgammon is a game of cutthroats, and it was very common for players to accuse one another of cheating. So you have to take those stories with a grain of salt. All I can say is, I never saw him cheat.

At the beginning, I loved doing the clubs with Gaby. The nightlife reminded me a little of my time in Greenwich Village-which I still think of as the happiest, most carefree part of my life. But looking back on it, I can see that my life with Gaby was a weird existence by any standard. Gaby would play all night; then we’d hit a twenty-four-hour diner. By the time we got home, it would be four in the morning. We’d be too keyed up to sleep, so we’d watch TV until at least five or six A.M. Of course, then we slept until one or two in the afternoon. We’d start out again at seven or eight. It was common for us to see the sun only as it was setting or rising.

I skipped classes. Actually, I’d never gone much, to begin with. I’d check in for a few sessions at the beginning of the semester and then spend the rest of the term reading on my own. That suited me better. My grades stayed high. Everything worked out fine.

After the first year, however, I found the charm of the nightclub circuit wearing a little thin. Nocturnal living left me isolated, dependent almost solely upon Gaby for love and companionship. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that he and I fought a lot. Sometimes the conflicts were subtle-he’d get sarcastic over something as small as my not making dinner the way he liked it. But that was usually a pretext for deeper irritation, like the fact that I’d come home from dance class later than I was supposed to. He didn’t like being alone. He couldn’t stand not knowing where I was. He’d say he was afraid that whenever I wasn’t with him, I was seeing other men.

We’d scream at each other in Hebrew. Once he barricaded the front door with chairs and sat down on one of them, arms folded, refusing to let me out. I’d lock myself in the bathroom to get away from him; once, he literally kicked the door in. I tried to leave him so many times. One time in particular, we’d been fighting about God knows what, and I decided I’d had enough. I threw some clothes in my dance bag and ran out of the apartment. Gaby ran after me and caught me just as I reached my car. He grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me back with him across the street. He yanked me so hard the he knocked me off my feet. As he dragged me over the ground, I screamed “Let me go!” over and over. Finally, a neighbor opened a window and shouted, “If you don’t knock it off, I’m calling the police!” That sobered us up real fast.

But the brawls continued. I’d try to leave; he’d try to stop me. Once as I was headed for the door, he pushed me onto the bed. I got up and pushed him back. As I tried to make for the door again, he grabbed hold of me. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the floor and he was standing behind me. I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting. I swung my foot up behind me to ward him off and I felt it connect with his body. For one startled second I waited in dread for the retaliation. It didn’t come. I leaped to my feet and, without so much as looking at him, I ran to the balcony, climbed over the railing, jumped, and hit the ground running. Thank God, we lived on the first floor. I ran hard, convinced I’d hear him gaining on me. After about five minutes, I realized that he wasn’t following. Winded, chest heaving, I stopped and looked back. He wasn’t there.

I was puzzled. This was a first. I’d never run out the door without Gaby hot on my heels. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I hadn’t kicked him. After about an hour, I figured it would be safe to test the waters. I entered the apartment warily and found Gaby sitting in a chair in the bedroom, slumped over, ashen-faced. What had I done?

“Are you okay?” I asked him timidly.

“You kicked me in the balls, damn you,” he managed weakly.

I started to apologize, but he waved me away and limped over to the bed.

“Just leave me alone.”

I felt so guilty that I stayed. Things went back to our peculiar idea of normal. That meant rolling from the heat of battle to the unnatural quiet that settled over us after we’d wrung ourselves dry. Then we’d drift for a while into a loving period when we’d actually laugh and have fun together. And then it would all start up again.

Gaby never slapped or punched me. Things never escalated past the shoving stage, which was almost always the result of my trying to leave and his trying to restrain me. Once, during an argument, he pushed me against the wall, pinned my shoulder back with one hand, and tapped my cheek in a mock slap. Then he grabbed my chin. I asked him tearfully to let me go. He looked in my eyes and said, “I hold you like this because I love you. You make me act this way. I’d never get this way if I didn’t love you so much.”

And I accepted that. Somehow, we’d both come to equate a display of physical aggression with a demonstration of love. When our fights escalated to the point that I tried to walk out the door, his efforts to restrain me were actually a form of reassurance for us both. It was the way we proved to each other that we were still in love.

I spent half the time wishing I could get away from him; the other half of the time I felt that all I wanted to do was be with him. I hated myself for being so weak. I seemed to have no real personality of my own. Gaby was the mirror in which I saw myself. I’d changed my habits to fit his convenience. I’d pegged my expectations to his. I had never had a job other than waitressing or salesclerking. I knew that those menial jobs paid barely enough to live. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, unable to see a route out.

I had a vague, unformed, yet undeniable realization that having a job was where it was at. If you had well-paid work, you had some power in a relationship. You could be independent. And if you had a well-paid job that was interesting and satisfying? That almost took the place of a relationship. But how the hell did you get a gig like that?

By now, I’d realized I would never make it as an actor or a dancer. I had some talent, but not the insane drive you need to make it to the top. I had enough sense at the time to realize that I needed a profession. But I didn’t have any clear idea what that was. I was so clueless that I actually applied to United Airlines for a position as a flight attendant. (In those days we were still calling them stewardesses.) The airline called me back for a second interview. I’ll never forget it-about ten of us sitting around the table. They started asking us our political views. Everybody’s sitting there simpering, “I don’t know, I mean, I don’t really care.” Then I weighed in with a few strong opinions. I never heard from United again.

I fell back to reconsider. I could be a diplomat. Sure. Why not? This was admittedly an odd choice for someone as impulsive and confrontational as I am, but I already had a couple of languages under my belt. I could speak French and Hebrew. I applied to work in the Foreign Office in the State Department. During my first interview some functionary informed me that I would have to take an entry-level post as a secretary. I thought, I don’t see how that works. Secretary to diplomat? No. I don’t think so.

In the spring of 1973, after graduating from UCLA, I took a job with a law firm that specialized in estate planning. My God, was that dense. I did accounts receivable and reception work. Basically, I was a girl Friday. At the outset, I approached the job rather too casually for my employers’ taste. I came in late, showed up when I felt like it. Before long, my supervisor called me in and warned me that I was about to be fired.

That brought me up short. “Man,” I thought, “I don’t mind getting fired from a good job, but I can’t get fired from a job this tacky.” So I cleaned up my act, became prompt, innovative, a real dynamo. They came to love me. I started thinking, Maybe there’s some future for me in the law.

It was not such a leap. An actor seeks validation from his audience. An attorney gets his validation from judge and jury. (Many trial lawyers, I’ve concluded in the years since, are frustrated actors.) I took stock of my abilities. I had a good memory. I could write well. I could think on my feet. So I got a book from UCLA Law School that was supposed to help you prepare for the LSATs. On the night before the test I looked through it. Then I went out and got drunk. Maybe I wanted to sabotage myself, or perhaps I wanted to give myself an excuse if I failed. Anyway, they give that test early in the morning. I stumbled in, three sheets to the wind, barely able to pencil in a blurred succession of circles. Somehow I did well enough to be accepted by Loyola and Southwestern in Los Angeles and Hastings in San Francisco.

Gaby was threatened by the whole idea of my going into law. He refused even to consider the prospect of my moving, or our moving, to San Francisco, so Hastings was out of the question. His objections were just enough to undermine my confidence. I put off sending in my applications until it was too late for Loyola. Southwestern accepted me for the fall of 1973.

I grabbed onto law school like a drowning woman clings to flotsam. It was to become my salvation. Law school took more effort than undergraduate work. I had to study. I had to memorize. I actually had to attend classes. I found that I was well suited to analytical thinking. Briefing cases came easily to me. You take a case decision of fifty pages written in the densest legalese and have to figure out: What’s the issue? What’s the rule? What’s the conclusion? I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of taking something very complicated and reducing it to its essence.

I cannot say that the law loomed before me as some mystical, meaningful vocation. A sense of principle did not kick in until a few years down the line, when I realized my real calling lay in the D.A.‘s office. But from the start, studying law served as an absorbing and invigorating counterpoint to my life with Gaby.

The deeper I got into law, the more I withdrew from him. We continued living together-we were going on five years. But the screaming matches and the physical skirmishes ended. The reason was simple. I was no longer really there.

Sensing that I was distracted for long periods, Gaby’d ask me, “Where’s your mind? Where are you?”

I’d always had the ability to distance myself at will from reality. During our first year together, I recall, I had an unwholesome penchant for romance novels, real bodice-rippers like Lust in the Weeds. I read them voraciously. And I lived in a dream world.

But now, my emotional disengagement from Gaby took on a different quality. It was convenient, in a way. He liked me best when I was docile and submissive. I’d made that discovery the first year of our relationship, when I’d gotten a terrible cold. I was weak and exhausted and Gaby couldn’t have been sweeter to me. He was at my side almost constantly. He tended to my every need and even carried me to the bathroom. My dependence galvanized him into chivalry. Subconsciously, I dragged out my illness to extend that peaceful interlude as long as I could. The problem was, I couldn’t stay sick forever.

I remember so many nights I’d come home from a study session or the library and peek into the bedroom to see if he was there. If he wasn’t, I’d hop into bed as fast as I could in hopes that I’d be asleep before he got home.

As I look back on it all now, I realize that I was suffering from a true depression. I was unhappy with Gaby, but my perspective was so distorted that I couldn’t imagine being happy with anyone else. I repeated to myself all those bromides that I’m sure a lot of couples repeat to convince themselves that they should stay together rather than get out and look for something better. Like: “There’s no such thing as the perfect mate.” “You can’t find it all in one person.” “You always have to compromise.” What I didn’t understand at the time was that in order for compromise to work, both parties have to be essentially compatible. They shouldn’t be spending 90 percent of their time together brawling. There should be something in each that enhances the other. Still, whatever it was that Gaby and I had, I thought it was the best I deserved, the best I could hope to get from life.

Even now, I’m hard put to explain why I married him. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of what I’ve done in my personal life has been impulsive, has seemed to run counter to the dictates of common sense. But in its own weird way, getting married made sense at the time. If we were having trouble, the thing to do was to bind ourselves closer to each other so we’d have to get along. Right?

Well, no, actually.

Still, Gaby was a pragmatist. He needed a green card and he’d get one if he married me. Since we were obviously going to stay together, didn’t it make sense to do it in a way that would give him citizenship? I saw the logic of that, though Gaby knew how down I was on marriage in general. I agreed on one condition-that no one but the government would know about it. We’d run out to Las Vegas and get a piece of paper and keep our lips buttoned. He agreed. And that’s how we got married the first time. It was just a formality.

Gaby kept his end of the bargain. Our secret never leaked. I never told anyone, and no one ever knew-not even my brother, who was my closest confidant.

A year or so passed this way and Gaby started to talk about doing it properly. The idea of a wedding seemed to make him happy, so I gave in. On November 6, 1976, we were married again. My father’s father, a very devout Jew, came over from Israel, and for his benefit we had an Orthodox wedding in my parents’ home. I remember standing at the altar, nearly delirious with a 102-degree fever, telling myself, “This is not happening.” The rabbi’s words washed over me. I was barely conscious.

We spent our three-day honeymoon in-where else?-Las Vegas. On our first night, we went out to dinner at a swanky restaurant. It dawned upon me that we were alone. Really alone. There were no distractions. No backgammon cronies. No games to jump into as soon as dinner was over. We gave the waiter our order, and when he walked away I looked across the table at Gaby. I experienced a moment of absolute emptiness, realizing that I had nothing to say to him. My God, I thought. What have I done? This man, whom I had publicly vowed to cherish, etc., till death do us part… this man felt no closer to me than the waiter who’d just taken our order.

I wandered through casinos on Gaby’s arm. I laughed too loudly, played the part of the happy newlywed. When the strain became too much, I laid claim to a chaise longue by our hotel pool and drank piña coladas until I was stuporous.

I continued to be the dutiful camp follower. Whenever Gaby had an out-of-town tournament, I’d bring my law books and study while he played. One week before my final exams, he had a big tournament in Las Vegas. Again, I brought my books and spent all day alone in our hotel room studying before I went out at night and joined him for the tournament. You would hardly think that those conditions would have made for distinguished academic achievement. But I made the dean’s list that year. On the surface, everything seemed to be working out fine.

It’s just that our marriage was hollow at the core. I didn’t care if Gaby saw other women, as long as he left me alone. I got a clue to the depth of my own disengagement when a woman called the house one day asking for him. The tone of her voice made it clear that she was no business associate. I asked her if she wanted to leave her name, and she hung up. I had every right to be angry. Not only was he cheating on me, but he’d had the gall to give his girlfriend his home number. But I didn’t care. I truly did not care.

We had some good times left. After I took the bar exam, we treated ourselves to a trip to Europe. I’d been studying nonstop for two months and during that time we hadn’t even gone to see a movie together. Gaby wanted us to take a real vacation, as opposed to the usual backgammon jaunt. I’d been going to law school on a federally insured student loan and I had some of that money left over. We splurged on a week-long trip to Italy and France.

After those two months of sensory deprivation studying for the bar, I was exhausted and ready for a blowout. The sights and smells of southern Europe were intoxicating. I couldn’t do or see enough.

Gaby had a way of going up and talking to people. He could speak a little Italian, a little French. He regaled strangers with his backgammon exploits until they were eating out of his hand. Anyway, he struck up a conversation with the conductor of the sleeping car we took from France to Italy. He was a young guy with a sweet face and large warm brown eyes. When we arrived in Rome, the conductor took us home to have dinner with his mother. And he offered to act as our unofficial tour guide. On one outing he took us to a topless beach. I thought it was an absolute riot. I’ve never been the inhibited type. In fact, shortly after we got there, I shed my own bikini top. Gaby put his arm around my waist, and our Italian friend snapped the picture. I was happy and smiling in that shot.

When we returned from Europe, I withdrew into myself again. Gaby and I lived more or less separate lives. I got a job as an associate lawyer with the firm I’d been clerking for. And there I discovered the healing powers of work.

I like to think that having a real career awakened some semblance of self-esteem and an independent identity that gave me the strength to confront the truth. Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe it was just the growing-up process, which would have happened regardless of whether I’d found a profession. Whatever the reason, I grew stronger. More confident. I liked myself a little better. And I realized then that my days with Gaby were numbered.

I agonized about leaving him. I knew I should just pick up and go, but I was hamstrung by guilt. Just as my career was taking off, his fortunes were taking a downturn. The backgammon mania was subsiding. It became clear that gambling would not provide him with an identity-or even a living-very much longer. All he’d ever been was a backgammon pro. A teacher at best; a hustler at worst. His entire image of himself was built around being pretty and having a fast, flashy lifestyle. His looks were going. His money was going. He was depressed. We spent long nights discussing his childhood, his past, and his uncertain future. I knew that if I was ever going to find it in my heart to leave him, I was going to have to get him back on his feet. But I’d suffered from bouts of depression myself. And trying to deal with Gaby’s problems left me feeling overwhelmed.

Gaby needed professional help. I begged him to see a psychiatrist, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Then I remembered something from my days in Greenwich Village. The managers of the leather shop I’d worked for had been Scientologists. They’d talk to me now and then about their beliefs. The church gave them very specific suggestions for learning to be assertive and confident. A lot of that teaching struck me as pure common sense, but it seemed to provide them with a source of strength.

As it happened, one of Gaby’s star pupils was into Scientology in a big way. His name was Bruce Roman and he was one of the few genuinely good guys I met on the backgammon circuit. Bruce was a tall man whose athletic build and curly blond hair contrasted strikingly with Gaby’s dark good looks. When they went out together, women would stop dead in their tracks and stare.

Bruce was passionate about backgammon. He just couldn’t get enough. He initially gravitated toward Gaby in order to learn the game, but over time the teaching relationship grew into a close friendship. When Gaby refused therapy, I turned to Bruce for help. He’d already noticed the change in Gaby, though he didn’t realize the extent of his distress. At my urging, Bruce suggested to Gaby that he might look into Scientology.

At first, Gaby was reluctant. His attitude was basically “What can they tell me that I don’t already know?” I knew that he didn’t like the idea of being treated like someone’s crazy aunt. So I offered to go check it out with him. That idea appealed. He agreed to enroll in a few courses and we went together to sign up for the first class.

At first Gaby was gung-ho. We’d go a few nights a week, although we ended up taking different classes. For me the experience was interesting, though not earthshaking. Scientology, as I saw it, was really kind of a ragbag of truisms from the world’s great religions. But Gaby’s spirits seemed to be improving. After only three or four weeks, however, I heard that he was close to getting thrown out. Apparently, he’d been hitting on the women in his classes and they didn’t appreciate it. They complained to the supervisors, and Gaby was put on notice that he’d have to clean up his act or get out.

That did it for me. I realized right then and there that I couldn’t waste my life if he wasn’t going to get serious about his.

It was around that time that I met the man who would become my second husband.

I’d gone down to the church’s administrative offices to sign up for a new set of courses. A pleasant young man was assigned to help me. His name was Gordon Clark.

“What’s your job?” he asked me.

I told him I was a lawyer. I wanted courses that would stress interpersonal relations. I was looking for something that would help me to size people up and evaluate them from an attorney’s point of view.

Gordon cracked a joke or two about lawyers, something I’d gotten used to during the year since I’d passed the bar. The conversation wound its way around to ourselves. I learned that Gordon was an officer in the church. He lived right in church housing and worked twelve- to fourteen-hour days. He lived, breathed, and ate Scientology. He also seemed very upbeat, not just about Scientology, but about life in general. I responded to his energy and enthusiasm and to what I took at the time to be spirituality. I came away from our first meeting feeling lighter than I had in years. It was just the way a person should feel, I told myself. Happier, lighter, focused upon the betterment of the self instead of on an unending quest for big scores and fast times.

I knew that I was attracted to Gordon Clark. And I could tell he was attracted to me. I suppose anyone looking at us from the sidelines could tell what a mismatch this was. For one thing, I was a twenty-six-year-old attorney. He was a twenty-two-year-old without a college degree. But he seemed to hold out the promise of happiness. I looked at him and I saw, or thought I saw, stability.

I knew what I had to do and I steeled myself to do it. One evening, I waited for Gaby to come home. I wasn’t nervous or frightened. I was sitting on the stairs and he was in the living room below me. He started to discuss a trip we’d been planning to take to Monte Carlo, where he was to play in a backgammon tournament.

“Gaby, I’m not going to Monte Carlo with you,” I told him.

“What are you talking about?” he asked me, mildly exasperated. “It’s all planned.”

“I’m not going,” I told him in a voice so calm it surprised even me. “Gaby, I want to get a divorce.”

He stared at me in silence for a few seconds. Ordinarily there would have been blame-swapping, finger-pointing intended to intimidate me. Instead, I found calm acceptance.

“Can’t you give me another chance?” he asked.

“No, Gaby. It’s too late, I just want a divorce.”

It was over. We both knew it.

There was one small problem. I had no place to go. I had no money. I could have gone after community property, but all I wanted was out. The sentiment was noble-but hardly practical, given my current circumstances.

I was in between jobs and on unemployment. And the nine-month grace period on my student loan repayment had expired several months before. I’d thought Gaby was making those payments, but shortly after I moved out, I learned that he hadn’t paid a dime; I was several months in arrears. That nonpayment had been reported to all the credit agencies, so I had no credit cards and no way to get one. I couldn’t have passed a credit check even if I’d been able to afford an apartment. How could a woman with a law degree be so helpless?

Luckily, friends of mine knew a man who was converting some apartments into condominiums. He agreed to let me stay in one rent-free for a month or two until I could get on my feet. I packed up my clothes. Gaby gave me an old TV and I moved out. I wrote the bank a letter explaining that I was going through a rough period and that I had no intention of defaulting on my student loan. I assured some faceless bank official that as soon as I was employed I would catch up on the delinquent payments and make all future ones on time. I made good on that promise. After a year of timely payments, I wrote another letter to the bank asking them to clear my credit rating. And to my surprise, they did. (If whoever was responsible for that act of kindness is reading this, I’d like to say thank you. That gesture meant more to me than I can properly express. It didn’t just boost my credit rating, it was a vote of confidence.) Someone had cared enough to look past the data sheet and see that I might actually shape up to be a responsible member of society.

When I left Gaby, however, I was destitute. In spite of that, I was happy. I felt I might actually be able to make it out on my own. Not long after moving out I landed a job with the law firm of Brody and Price doing defense work. I loved my colleagues. They were wonderful, ethical people. I was well on my way to making it on my own. And yet within three months, I was married to Gordon Clark. How did that happen?

Why didn’t I take some time to enjoy my newfound freedom and experience life as a single, independent adult for a while? What the hell was the rush?

The relationship with Gordon had taken off like lightning, but marriage was definitely not on the agenda as far as I was concerned. The Church of Scientology, however, didn’t allow romantic liaisons between its officers and members of the public. If Gordon wanted to stay on the staff and keep seeing me, we’d have to get married. The problem was that I was still legally married to Gaby. One of Gordon’s fellow Scientologists told us how to get a quickie divorce in Tijuana. It was supposed to be perfectly legal, but I wasn’t so sure. On the other hand, so what if my marriage to Gordon wasn’t strictly kosher? We were only going through this charade to appease the church hierarchy.

And so I made the trip to Tijuana. My brother came along to keep me company. Two weeks later Gordon and I got married in a friend’s apartment. The Scientology minister who married us was Bruce Roman, who, strangely enough, managed to remain friends with Gaby. Having a friend do the honors made it seem less frightening. It was quick and casual. Gordon immediately went back to work.

Thinking back on it all, I can see both the pattern and the reasons for the facade weddings, the race from one marriage to the next. The truth was, I didn’t know how to be alone. I didn’t have a self to be alone with. As long as there was a man in my life, there was someone to cater to and mold myself around. As long as I had a man to define me, I didn’t have to confront the uncomfortable issue of discovering my own identify. It’s funny. People used to tell me how they never really felt they knew me; that I was mysterious to them. If I’d been a little more in touch with myself, I would have looked inward to see what the hell they were talking about. But I never got beyond being puzzled by my own actions.

I look back on those days of obscure identity with great sadness. If only I’d found the strength to stand on my own for a while, to endure the loneliness, to handle the challenges of daily living as a single adult! I might have learned, among other things, to enjoy my own company. I might have discovered a real person who didn’t need another to find definition. That must be what happiness is all about. It’s not a life without problems. It’s the ability to handle those problems. It took me two marriages-and two divorces-to figure this out.

Four or five months after I’d left Gaby I was driving through Beverly Hills when I saw him walking somewhere. His expression was so sad. I’d heard that he’d gotten into a fight with someone who accused him of cheating at backgammon. Gaby had been punched in the face. It was the only time I’d ever heard of a backgammon row ending in real violence. Gaby was apparently sinking deeper.

I didn’t hear anything about him for another seven years or so. One morning I saw a small article in the L.A. Times. A man named Gabriel Horowitz had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. I sat stunned, reading and rereading the lines of print, not quite comprehending. Gabriel Horowitz? My Gaby? It had to be.

I knew that for my own peace of mind I had to get the whole story, so I asked a detective I was friendly with to check it out for me. A few days later he reported back. Gaby’d been visiting Bruce Roman and the two of them were looking at guns-they were both collectors-when the gun Bruce was holding went off and the wild shot found its way into Gaby’s head. It had been a freak accident. The shot had ricocheted off the ceiling and hit Gaby on the rebound. It left him paralyzed.

Such a bizarre twist of fate. For weeks, I walked around in a daze, barely able to concentrate. The guy had put me through a lot of pain, but when I thought of him confined to a wheelchair for life all I could think was “Poor Gaby.” I never thought I’d say that.

My sadness was so deep, it was inexpressible.

Admittedly, my private life has taken some unusual turns. And whenever I can manage to climb onto a plane of semidetachment, I see why the tabloid press ended up pursuing me with such cruel enthusiasm. I had no defenses. All I could do was steel myself for the worst-case scenario. In late July 1994, just as we were gearing up for the harrowing business of jury selection in the Simpson case, I got word from Suzanne Childs that the tabs were rooting around my marriage certificates and divorce papers. A couple of weeks later, the Enquirer published an opus entitled “O.J. Prosecutor’s Tragic Secret Life,” which alleged, among other things, that I had “dumped” Gaby after receiving my law degree. It also detailed the shooting incident at Bruce Roman’s, leaving the casual reader to imagine that I was somehow involved.

The stories presented me in absurd caricature, but anyone could see that they contained nuggets of truth. I was so humiliated. I’d never confided the details of my first marriage to anyone at the D.A.‘s office except my friend Lynn. My “past,” as I saw it, was not an opportunist’s upward scramble, but a painful, private struggle. As far as I was concerned, I was a survivor. I had surmounted my personal difficulties through acts that took considerable initiative and will. In the summer of 1994, I was not Marcia Kleks, the gambler’s girlfriend. I was a lawyer-an intelligent and accomplished one at that. I was a damned good mother. And everything admirable that I’d accomplished seemed threatened by this disturbing and unsolicited celebrity.

I knew that the only chance I had of coming off with any dignity was to stay calm and keep silent. I thought, If I just concentrate on my job, I can get through this. They’ll get tired of me. I can ride this out.

But the tabs didn’t get tired of me. In September I picked up new rumblings: the National Enquirer was working on a story that I had been a battered wife. They’d apparently turned up a pair of backgammon promoters who were claiming that once, during a tournament-organizing event, Gaby got angry and threw a chair at me. They’d also found some dingbat who’d once been a neighbor of Gaby’s and mine. She was claiming that I walked around in long-sleeved dresses all the time so that no one would see the bruises from Gaby’s beatings.

The news threw me into a state of near panic. Of course, I knew what the truth was. Gaby never threw anything at me in public. His pride would never have allowed him to let people see that we fought. We did all that in private. But even during those arguments behind closed doors he never beat me. Never. He pushed, I shoved, we wrestled. That’s as far as it ever went.

Don’t misunderstand me. The pushing and the shoving were bad enough. But I always gave as good as I got. It wasn’t right to let Gaby take the rap when I’d done so much provoking. I was not a battered woman! I was not a victim!

I have always hated the culture of victimization. It seems that everyone nowadays has some personal trauma to explain away his own character failings. It’s something I can’t tolerate. I believe people have to take responsibility for themselves and their actions. This seems a reasonable position for a prosecutor to take on matters of human conduct.

My approach to domestic violence cases over the years was one of extreme caution. I’ve never gotten up on a pulpit to spout a feminist line. I never rushed in and charged spousal battery without a full set of facts in hand. The Simpson case was no exception. From the beginning I’d hung back on the DV. I felt there was too much we didn’t know. As of July 1994, the personal history of the Simpsons was still too murky. From a strictly legal standpoint, we would never have needed to address their history of marital violence. True, the fact that a man has beaten his wife over the years may go to motive if he is accused of murdering her. But the state isn’t required to establish why one person killed another, only that he intended to do it. It is perfectly possible to get a conviction strictly on the physical evidence. And in the Simpson case, the physical evidence was so amazingly strong, I felt that we could probably put him away relying on that alone.

The domestic violence aspect of the case, by contrast, left me deeply conflicted. The photos of Nicole, her voice on the 911 tape-these produced in me sensations of dread. When the police and city attorney’s reports arrived in my in box, I scanned them hurriedly, professionally, then pushed them to one side. Later, when Scott Gordon would collar me in the hall, as he did at least seven times a day, with, “Marcia, we’ve got to get to work on DV,” I’d say “Yeah, yeah, Scott. Why don’t you write me up a memo on that?”

Every time a reminder of Nicole’s physical suffering came up, I felt headachy. Sometimes a little sweaty. I’d knock the feelings away and keep pushing on. There were so many brushfires burning around me that it was easy to postpone dealing with the issue indefinitely. I’m sure I knew that, when the time came, I’d have to confront my personal history as well. Which gave me added incentive for not facing the demon down.

By late September 1994, this new threat from the tabloids to invade my personal life left me feeling desperate. If things proceeded on a crash course and the Enquirer was allowed to publish such a wildly distorted account of my troubled marriage to Gaby, the fallout could be disastrous. O. J. Simpson’s defense would charge that I had some political agenda for going after their client. This was not a time to work through my personal mishegoss. I had to take some kind of action. But what, I didn’t know.

My good friend and fellow D.A. Lynn Reed came to my rescue.

“You have to go and see my friend Mark,” she instructed me firmly. “He’s an entertainment lawyer. He helped out a friend of mine who’s been chased around by the press, and he really knows what he’s doing. If the tabs start hearing from your lawyer, they might decide it’s not worth it. Trust me on this one, kiddo.”

She gave me his number.

This whole thing seemed so weird to me. How does it happen that a D.A. in the course of prosecuting a class-one felony comes to need an entertainment lawyer? Come to think of it, have you ever heard of a prosecutor whose private life has made it into a tabloid banner? I haven’t.

Anyway, I gave Mark Fleischer a call and we agreed to meet at a downtown restaurant called Checkers.

I arrived at six o’clock. The place was almost empty. Businessmen and bureaucrats had already decamped for home after downing their “freeway flyers.” I lurked apprehensively in the foyer until the maître d’ directed me to a table in the farthest corner of the room. Mark rose to greet me. He was a slender, dapper man reminiscent of Fred Astaire. He had twinkling blue eyes and a firm yet gentle handshake. I liked him on sight.

“I’m the one who bakes cookies and collects husbands,” I told him.

Mark laughed. “I’m aware of your financial situation,” he said. “One of my dearest friends works in your office. Scott Gordon.”

Scott! I felt a pang of guilt for having ducked him every time he tried to get me moving on the domestic violence issue. My neglect of the issue was, of course, all the more ironic in light of my current predicament. I was about to become poster girl for the battered women’s movement, for no good reason.

“I’m going to help you out as a favor to the D.A.‘s office,” Mark told me. “I’ve always admired you guys and I’m going to take this opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. There will be no fee for my services.”

Had I heard correctly? A lawyer was going to take on a client who might give him nights and weekends of grief-absolutely gratis? The man was a freaking saint.

“We’re probably not going to persuade them to leave you alone,” he warned. “Only time and some new scandal will do that. But we can discuss the possibility of a lawsuit. We don’t want to come at them unless we feel fairly sure of winning. That means I’ll need you to do some homework.”

Homework. Exactly what I did not need at this moment. The Simpson case was already threatening to bury me under an avalanche of paperwork. Every night I’d carry home a couple of satchels of documents. Then, after the usual bedtime routine, I’d spread my papers out on my bed and work into the early hours of the morning.

“I want you to get one of those little pocket recorders and document each article and how it affected you,” Mark continued. “It would be best if you could manage to do that every day. The more detail the better. Spare yourself nothing. This will describe the emotional distress and the damages we ask for.”

He told me to keep the tapes in a secure place. And if I didn’t have one, I should give them to him to put in his office safe.

“When am I going to do all that?” I asked him.

“You spend a lot of time in your car, don’t you?”

I did as Mark asked. I bought myself a microcassette recorder. It sat for a few days on the dashboard of my Maxima. Finally I picked it up and made my first faltering attempts.

“Well, Mark,” I began, “here goes. It is… what is today? September thirtieth, and I’m leaving the courthouse. It’s about ten after nine and I’m exhausted…

“The stress has been building and building and building… the stress of this trial… and, of course, going through a divorce and everything… I always feel like I’m being pounded. And it’s real hard to focus because when I’m at work during the week there’s always people coming in my door and calling on the phone, just one after another… I feel like I’ve been beaten to a pulp… The only time it really feels good to go to work is on a Saturday or Sunday when there’s no one there to bother me and I can focus on my job…

“There’s so much to organize. I just wish I could stop the clock for about three weeks and put everything together in a nice, neat, tidy order. Do all the things that I usually do to prepare for a trial. I am beginning to [be] very pessimistic about my ability to put it together the way I ordinarily would. And in this, of all cases, where I need to do more than I usually would-it’s frightening… Ah, God. I don’t know how I’m gonna survive this…”

When I replayed the tape, the distress in my own voice took me aback. I was also surprised by the relief it gave me to vent my frustrations. I continued to record, not every day, but every few days. I found that getting into my car was like entering a confessional. I talked, and talked, and kept on talking to that mute, whirring confidant. I reflected and I flamed.

A tape recorder is a patient listener. It passes no judgments.