I stayed with her that night, and through the weekend. I couldn't get enough of her. For the first time in my life I was in love. Sunday morning she served hot tea, fresh fruit, and homemade pastries, and her eyes shone as she spoke. "I did your chart last night," she said as she poured the tea. "You are a Scorpio and Taurus is your rising sign." I smiled back at her. "No," I answered. "You are my rising sign."
She laughed. "Yes, well, there's that, too. But seriously, Steven, you have an amazing chart. You will make lots of money in real estate and you will —" She paused as I touched her arm. "Kiyo, I don't know anything about that stuff," I said. "And, to be honest, I don't care about it. All I care about is you and me. I've never known anyone like you, and I love the way I feel when I'm with you." Her voice turned serious. "You must not tell anyone about us, not your mother, not your brothers, no one. Understand?"
I shook my head. "Why?" I asked, without really wanting to know the truth. "Are you married or something?"
"No," she said. "It's just that you must promise me you will not say anything to anyone about us. Promise me that. Give me your word of honor." I gave her my word.
While I agonized over the slow passing of the final months before my military discharge, I also discovered that Kiyo was a very assertive person. She had an in-your-face attitude that had begun to set off my warning bells. But I ignored them, because I told myself that I was in love. Unbeknownst to me, Kiyo had driven up to the Navy base, demanded to see my C.O., told him we were getting married, and asked him if it would be possible for me to get an early discharge in July. She said she wanted me to start college in late August. "You said what to him?" I asked her in disbelief. "Why would you say such a thing?"
"Oh," she answered. "It's just my Leo way. I have six planets in Leo, so sometimes I get a bit pushy, but it's not really me."
But it really was. The following weekend, at her insistence, we drove to the nearest state where we could marry without parental consent because I was still a minor: I wouldn't be twenty-one for another four months. I hadn't told my mother about Kiyo, nor had I made any contact with my brothers. I had simply dropped out of sight to be with Kiyo. I ignored my instincts, which kept shouting, "Careful! Wait!" I also ignored my emotions when I found myself eyeing lasciviously the person who was performing our one-witness marriage ceremony — Miss Idaho of 1954. She had gone on from winning her state's beauty pageant to become a justice of the peace in Twin Falls, Idaho. On our drive back we stopped overnight at
Yosemite National Park and stood out near the edge of the high ridge, embracing each other, looking exactly like newlyweds should.
An old man watching us, who looked as if he'd been prospecting in the surrounding mountains since the Gold Rush of 1849, said to me, "You be careful, son. In another two years, she'll be pushing you off the edge of that cliff." Kiyo and I turned around as he walked silently away. I looked at her and teased, "Nice guy. He must be a pushy Leo."
Had I been even a little knowledgeable about astrological combinations I would have known that Scorpios and Leos don't make for an easy relationship. Kiyo was fire and I was water, and the ensuing three years of our marriage generated a lot of steam as each of us tried to force the other to adjust. Kiyo knew a lot of Hollywood people and some of them, like Jane Russell, attended her astrology classes, respected her knowledge, and were genuinely interested in what she was teaching. And Kiyo's relationships with her clients got us on the guest list of lots of Hollywood personalities, particularly with Jane Russell and her husband, Bob Waterfield, the great former quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams.
I was slightly disconcerted that most of Kiyo's friends seemed much older than she. And, of course, since I was ten years younger than Kiyo, I felt awkward and uncomfortable with many of them. They would invariably remark, "Steven, you look so young. How old are you?" They always seemed surprised at my answer, "I am young; I'm twenty-one." I began to feel that talking about age around Kiyo and her friends was taboo.
One Sunday morning, about three months after we had married, Kiyo threw the classified section of the Los Angeles Times at me and said, "Look, the Los Angeles Police Department is hiring. The starting salary is a hundred dollars a month, more than you're making now." I read the ad out loud:
LAPD WANTS YOU!
Are you one of the four in a hundred applicants that will make it through the process to our police academy training? Would you like an exciting and rewarding career in law enforcement and retire in twenty years? Apply at City Hall now!
I was working at the time as an orderly at Kaiser Hospital in Hollywood, emptying bedpans, moving patients, making sure that whatever slop came out of a patient was cleaned up before the next patient was brought in. It was a job I hated, certainly not my idea of an "exciting and rewarding" career. I looked back at Kiyo, who had been staring at me in silence, and asked, "What does a policeman do? Write tickets? Direct traffic?" A cop? I knew nothing about it, and cared less. Maybe I could be a detective, I thought, just like Joe Friday on Dragnet. After another week of Kiyo's prodding and her wily offhand comments of, "I think guys in uniform are very sexy," and her prompting, "We could sure use the extra money," I'd had enough. I applied at city hall for both LAPD and the sheriff's department.
Two weeks after I had passed both entrance exams and had been rejected by the sheriff's department at the in-person interview for being too young, I was called in for my oral at LAPD. That went better. I fit their job description as if I'd come right out of central casting. I was a young, trim, tall WASP who racked up strong written scores on the exam, was married, and had four years of military training. At that time, the department was trying to rid itself of the old image of the fat sloppy cop stealing an apple. They were looking for young, idealistic men that they could mold into professionals. I was what my interviewers said was the "new breed."
I took the psych test, convincing the department psychological evaluator that, even though my father was a psychiatrist, I wasn't neurotic, or worse. Then I underwent the background check in which the department's investigators checked out every movement I had made on this planet from birth, including personal interviews with out-of-state Navy buddies and neighbors from old addresses ten years back. The only smudge on my background check was a drunken brawl I had been involved in while on Guam, where I punched out a fellow sailor in a bar and got arrested by the MPs. Actually, I think the investigators liked that tidbit: it gave me just enough macho credibility.
But when a few months passed following my original application and exams without any word from the department, I began to get worried. I believed I had made good impressions in person, on paper, and in the difficult physical agility tests. And during the process I had evolved from an emotionally blase, take-it-or-leave-it attitude to a strong feeling that I really wanted this job. Finally, on a Friday afternoon in mid-January 1963,1 received a phone call from a secretary in LAPD's personnel division, informing me that I was scheduled to report to their office the following Monday, January 14, at 9:00 a.m., to meet with the captain.
I was a half-hour early and very nervous as I sat on the long bench outside of room 311 at the police administration building. I knew from other applicants that the civil service standard operating procedure for acceptance or rejection to the police academy was by mail. Why then was I being called in personally to speak with the captain? At which point a heavyset man in his fifties walked down the hall, stood in front of the locked door, turned to look down at me, frowned, and asked, "Hodel?" I stood up, answering, "Yes, sir." He put his key in the lock and turned it decisively. "I'm Captain San-sing," he said over the loud clack of the deadbolt snapping back into the door lock. "You're early — come on in, we might as well get this over with before the others arrive."