Trevor Hoyle
Did Philip K. Dick dream of English axe murderers? He’s sitting on a low sofa in a medium-sized airless room gazing up at me, eyes quickening and then blinking with nervous inquiry …
I
was staying in Anaheim at the Hyatt, across the road from Disneyland, with my wife and son. We had done the Grand Canyon, Aspen, the Durango-Silverton Railroad, and were spending a few days in Los Angeles before driving up to San Francisco along the highway where James Dean crashed his Porsche 550 Spyder in 1955. This was September 1978. A sultry Sunday evening. I had no qualms about taking the freeway down to Santa Ana where Philip K. Dick lived. Streets in the US go on forever, often several miles in length, and finding Civic Center Drive almost the minute I came off Interstate 5 seems like a miracle. I drive for five minutes and decide to pull over to get my bearings. The building I’d stopped outside was typical southern California white stucco, four-storey, with Spanish-style wrought ironwork guarding the entrance. The address number was the same fancy metal scroll: 409. I checked the piece of paper in my hand. Out of an avenue of ten thousand numbers, by curious happenstance, this was the address I was seeking. It did seem odd, but I wasn’t too
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alarmed; it was already turning into a melodramatically fraught kind of evening. Alongside the rank of mailboxes set in the stucco wall were cards bearing typewritten and scrawled names, and alongside each one a button and speaking grille. I didn’t expect to see “Philip K. Dick” in the slot reserved for Apartment C-1. But there it is: no pseudonym, no alias, no subterfuge. One of the world’s greatest SF writers, whose name emblazons from a million paperback stands, is right there on a piece of pasteboard for any common-or-garden passing stranger to read and identify.
A
sense of alienation and trepidation constricts my breathing. What to do – turn about? Retreat down Interstate 5 to Anaheim and Disneyland (but this is Disneyland!) or stop at the nearest neon-lit liquor store and grab a six-pack of Bud? Instead, I clear my throat, press the button, and ease my mouth close to the grille. It feels like an exam question reverberating inside my head: “Explain who you are, what you want, and why you’ve come six
thousand miles to press the button on Philip K. Dick’s mailbox in a single concise and comprehensible sentence that doesn’t make you sound like the Bloody Lancashire Axe Maniac brought up on “H” certificate Universal movies”. The explanation is redundant. None is required. Before I can speak, a click to my left tells me that the Spanish-style wroughtiron gate has been released remotely and is even now swinging open on noiseless hinges. The stifling melodramatic evening increases its clammy grip. I enter the paved courtyard. The white stucco walls are replaced by a sullen brown. Concrete steps lead upwards. I climb slowly to the next floor, turn a corner and come upon a short corridor of doors, the first of which is signed “C-1.” I don’t need to knock because the door is visibly ajar by a few inches. (As if, let us suppose, One of the World’s Greatest SF Writers had been expecting, indeed eagerly anticipating, a visit this Sunday evening from the Bloody Lancashire Axe Maniac. Well, relax, Phil, here I am. As promised. No, don’t go for your blaster – my
