If I Did It (9 page)

near Dorothy Street. There was one major problem, though. She
couldn't afford to buy it unless she sold her condo in San Francisco,
and because the timing was wrong she was worried about the tax
bite. When she looked into it, she discovered that she could avoid
that problem by claiming that the place on Bundy was a rental prop-
erty, and to indicate in her tax return that she and the kids were
actually living with me. I didn't want any part of that scheme, and I
told her so. “The last thing I need is a problem with the IRS,” I said.
“But I don't understand,” she said. “I'm going to be moving
back in with you anyway.”
“I can't do it,” I said.
She was pretty angry, and for a while the good Nicole was
nowhere in evidence. Luckily I wasn't around too often, but even
when I wasn't home she somehow managed to bring her problems
to my doorstep—literally. She would come by the house with the
kids, say, to use the pool, and she took to ordering Michele around,
acting like she still lived there. Michele tolerated it, but there were
limits. One day Nicole asked to be let into my home office, which
was locked, and Michele told her she'd have to get permission from
me. “No one is allowed in Mr. Simpson's office,” she reminded her.
“It's one of his rules.”
“I'm not asking you,” Nicole said. “I'm telling you.”
“I'm sorry, Miss Nicole. I can't let you in without Mr.
Simpson's say so.”
Nicole went off on her, cursing and calling her names, then
went out to the pool and grabbed the kids and took off in a huff
She was making friends Ieft and right.
I came home for Christmas, and we focused on the kids,
spoiling them with presents. I got a few small presents of my own,
but only one of them really meant anything to me, and that was
the fact that we didn't have a single scene or a single argument in
the course of that entire week. I don't know if that qualifies as a
present, but I appreciated it, and I made a point of telling her so.
To be honest with you, when things were good like that, I always
found myself feeling bad—always found myself thinking about
the way things might have been. Nicole had given me fifteen great
years, but that Nicole hadn't been around much recently, and the
Nicole who had taken her place was not someone I knew or even
wanted to know. At that point, I was pretty much biding my time
until the year was up. And in some ways, to be honest, I was
already gone.
I remember speaking to Nicole's mother about the various
problems—the business with the housekeeper, the questionable
friends, the drugs—and she was just as concerned as I was. Unlike
me, though, she was still hopeful. “Maybe it's just a phase,” she
said. “Maybe she'll get tired of running around with those people.”
“Well, I hope so,” I said. “But I don't know. 'Whenever I try to
talk to her about it, she gets pissed off.”
“I don't think there's anything either of us can do,” she said.
“Nicole's going to have to get through this herself.”
I wasn't exactly sure what it was she was supposed to get
through, to be honest. People fail at marriage every day, and they
either find their way back or not. The question, for me, even then,
was why did we fail--where did we go wrong? Nicole had old me

on more than one occasion that she felt as if she'd been with me for-
ever, and that she was tired of living in my shadow. Maybe that was
it. Maybe she had sabotaged the marriage so she could go off and
relive her lost childhood or something—one of these “delayed ado-
lescence” things. If I was right, and if that was what she had to get
through, I figured I had a very long wait ahead of me. 4
THE TWO
NICOLES
Nicole moved into the Bundy condo in late January and she liked it
just fine, but she was still pissed that I hadn't asked her to move
back into Rockingham. “I can't believe you made me buy my own
place,” she whined.
“Nicole, we've been through this. Give it time.”
“I'm just saying.”
“I know. You've been saying for a while.”
“Well, it makes me wonder,” she said. “I'm trying to be hope-
ful, but you're making it really hard.”
“It's January. We've got four months before Mother's Day. On
Mother's Day, it will be exactly one year.”
“I know,” she snapped. “Stop reminding me. I feel like I'm on
trial here.”

The move created one other problem for Nicole, aside from the
tax issue, and this one concerned her houseboy, Kato. At the Gretna
Green place, he'd lived in the guesthouse, but on Bundy all he had
was a little maid's room, so she asked me if I'd put him up at one of
the three guest houses on my property. It was supposed to be tempo-
rary, until Kato could find a place of his own, and I told Nicole I was
glad to help out. Within a week, Kato was living at Rockingham.
Years later, when the trial got underway, somebody floated a
crazy story about this. They said that Nicole had offered Kato the
maid's room at the Bundy condo, and that he was game, but that I
didn't want them living under the same roof. Again, people didn't
seem to understand that—by that point—I had absolutely no
interest in reconciling with Nicole. After all, if I had wanted her
back, she would never have bought the place on Bundy. She and the
kids would have moved into Rockingham, which is what she'd been
hounding me about all along.
In short order, Nicole began to resent Kato. I don't know what
it was exactly, but he was living at the house, and she wasn't, and I
think that really pissed her off. I know it makes absolutely no sense,
but a lot of the shit we went through made no sense, and I think
my theory's as good as any.
Now there were two people at Rockingham that really pissed
her off: Michele and Kato. (Three if you count me.) But she kept
coming by anyway, mostly to hang out by the pool and to torment
me with her unhappiness. At one point, she told me, “O.J., when I
come by the house, I don't want to see either Michele or Kato. Kato
shouldn't even he on the property, and Michele should hide in her
room until I'm gone. You understand? When I'm around, I don't
want either of them around.”
I looked at her, wondering if she'd lost her mind. Who was she
coming by to tell me how to run my home? If she didn't want to see
Michele and Kato, she didn't have to come by at all. She could drop
the kids off out front, and I'd be glad to hang by the pool with
them. I told her as much, and she looked at me with such hatred I
thought she was going to leap off her lounge chair and attack me.
But she didn't attack me. She picked up her copy of People maga-
zine and ignored me.
To make matters worse, several of her close friends started
coming by to express concern about the shape she was in, as if I
could do something about it. Nicole was still hanging out with that
same bad crowd, they said, drinking too much and clearly doing
drugs. Every other day, I heard variations on the same theme: “O.J.,
you gotta do something about it. She needs help.”
But what could I do? Whenever I brought it up, which was
often, believe me, she told me she didn't want to hear it. Or
worse—she stormed out. As usual, everything was my fault. In her
mind, if I'd only let her move back into Rockingham, life would be
perfect. But I hadn't let her move back in, and all she had was her
friends—and a big tax problem. The tax problem was my fault, too,
of course. It was all my fault. Nicole's life was turning to shit
because I didn't love her, and she was certainly lovable, so the prob-
lem was me—I was responsible for everything.
One afternoon, she came by the house to drop off the kids so
she could run a few errands, and I thought she looked a little

glassyeyed. When the kids were out of earshot, I asked her if she
was okay. I did it nicely—not accusing her of anything, not con-
fronting her. “You know,” I said, “I'm hearing from a lot of people—
your friends mostly—that you're fucking yourself up with drugs
and shit. You want to talk about it?”
“Fucking myself up? That's crazy? What 'friends' are telling
you this?”
“People who are worried about you.”
She got mad. She said it was bullshit, that these socalled
friends of hers didn't know what they were talking about—that she
was in complete control.
To tell you the truth, I didn't have any concrete evidence to
back up the allegations. The woman looked worn down, yes, and
she was erratic, and sometimes she seemed completely out of it, but
it's not like I really knew anything. If I had, trust me, I would have
done something about it—both for her and for the kids. But when
I looked at my kids, and I looked at them closely, believe me, they
seemed fine. They didn't look messed up or haunted or any of that
shit. On the contrary, they seemed solid and happy, and they were
as loving toward Nicole as they'd ever been, if not more so. If some-
thing really bad was going on, I figured I'd see it, but I didn't see a
thing—not in them, anyway. In Nicole, though, the changes only
became more obvious with time. She became even more erratic,
looked even more worn down, and she seemed increasingly lost. It
was hard to understand. For as long as I'd known her, Nicole's head
and heart had always been in the right place. Whenever any of her
friends had a problem, they always went o her first. She was solid
and clearthinking, and she always made the right moral decision.
But that was another Nicole, and she hadn't been much in evidence
lately. In fact, in some ways it was as if the new Nicole was taking
over, and I can't say I much liked her.
One day, right around this time, I was just back from New
York, sitting by the pool, in a lounge chair, reading, waiting for
Nicole to show up with the kids. The moment they showed up, the
kids ran off to the guest house with a note for Kato. “What was that
all about?” I asked her.
“A letter for Kato,” she said. “I want him gone.”
Kato wasn't home, but the kids left the note there and they
obviously knew what it was about: “Kato's a freeloader!” “He's a
bum!” “Kato has to find a place of his own because Mom doesn't
want him here.”
I was shocked, but I bit my tongue until they were in the pool,
out of earshot. “Why do you have to go and teach them that shit?” I
said. “They're little kids. They don't need to get in the middle of it.”
She rolled her eyes and stormed off, disappearing into the
house. A few moments later, she was back. “Man, I hate that
woman!” She was talking about Michele, of course, and I didn't
want trouble, so I went into the house and asked Michele to disap-
pear for a while. “Go down to the Brentwood Mart and get some
fresh flowers or something,” I suggested. “Nicole will be gone in an
hour or two.”
Michele looked a little upset, but she knew it was for the best.
“Okay, Mr. Simpson,” she said, barely audible. “All right. Let me
just finish cleaning up the kitchen and I'll go.”

I went outside and told Nicole that Michele was leaving for a
while, and that she could relax, but she didn't seem very relaxed.
She was full of venom. “You've got to fire that woman!” she hissed.
And I said, “Nicole, look, if we get back together, Michele
already knows that you and her—it's not going to work out. But
let's just wait and see. We're still a few months away from that.”
I thought that was a pretty reasonable thing to say, but it must
have rubbed Nicole the wrong way. She went back into the house
and returned a few minutes later, looking very worked up. “I just
hit her!” she said.
“What?!”
“I hit her! I couldn't help it. I hate her attitude!”
“What do you mean you hit her?! You can't hit her!”
I got up from the lounge chair and walked into the kitchen
and found Michele sitting there, redfaced, tears streaming down
her cheeks, trying to call the cops. “I'm calling the police!” she said.
“Look what she did to me! She slapped my face!”
She kept misdialing the number-411 instead of 911—so I
went over and apologized for Nicole's behavior and tried to calm
her down. “I'll take care of everything,” I said, setting the phone
back in its cradle. “Please don't call the police.”
“You can't just hit a person and get away with it,” Michele
said, still crying.
“I know, Michele. That's what I told her. I'm sorry. I don't
know what's gotten into Nicole lately, but I'll get it handled.”
“Well I don't know what's gotten into her, either, Mr.
Simpson, but I cant take it anymore.”
I went outside, pissed, and confronted Nicole. “How can you
do what you just did? How could you hit that poor lady? I don't care
if you don't like her attitude—you can't go around hitting people!”
“Don't tell me what to do,” Nicole snapped, then got up and
went over to the side of the pool and told the kids to get out. “We're
going home!” she said. Then she stormed off, with the kids still
dripping wet, as if it was me who had done something wrong.
I went back and looked in on Michele again, and I apologized,
again, and I told her that I was going to get everything handled
right away. I then called Cathy Randa, at the office, and she got my
lawyer on the phone. I walked them through what had just hap-
pened. “You should have let Michele call the police,” my lawyer
said. “Nothing like an assault charge to teach a person a lesson.”
“What am I going to do about Michele?” I asked.
“Talk to her. Make sure she's okay.”
When I got off the phone, I went back into the kitchen.
Michele had pulled herself together, more or less, but she was still
very upset. Before I could ask her if there was anything I could do,
she turned to me and said, “Mr. Simpson, I just can't stay here. I'm
going to resign.”
We went back and forth on this a little bit, but she was pretty
determined, so I told her not to worry about finances or any-
thing—that I would take care of her until she was settled and happy
at a new job. “Thank you, Mr. Simpson. I promise I won't leave
until I help you find someone to take my place.”
Within a few days, Michele introduced me to a friend of hers,
Gigi, and I hired her on the spot. The very next day—this is in

March 1994—Nicole called to tell me that she thought we should
all go to Cabo for a week or two. A bunch of our friends were
going, including Bruce Jenner and his wife, Chrystie, and Faye
Resnick and her fiance, Christian Reichardt, and Nicole thought it
would be fun. Fun? She'd just created all sorts of domestic havoc for
me, and now she was talking about fun!
“I can't go,” I said, and it was true: I was getting ready to do
Frogmen, a television pilot, which was going to start shooting the
following week in Malibu, and would continue shooting for several
more weeks in Puerto Rico. “I've got the show to do.”
“That's not till next week,” she said.
“I'm not in the mood,” I said.
“Honey. Come on. Please. Do it for the kids.”
So I went—I'm a pushover—and we had a pretty good time,
to be honest. The beach, good food, good drink, jetskis with the
kids, afternoon naps in the shade, and more good food and drink at
the end of the day. I had to come back that first Sunday, though, to
be on location in Malibu bright and early the next morning, and I
left Nicole behind with the kids and our friends.
That Thursday evening, as I was on my way home from the
shoot, Nicole reached me on my cell phone. “I'm back,” she said.
“I thought you were staying the whole week,” I said.
“I missed you. And I know you're going to be in Puerto Rico
for a whole month, so I wanted to spend a little time with you
before you left.”
There was something a little weird about the whole thing
Nicole was never a good liar, and when we got together that night
something told me she wasn't being completely honest with me—
but I didn't pursue it. I accepted what she told me and we had a
truly terrific weekend together. She was the old Nicole again—the
good one.
On Sunday morning, as I was packing for my trip, I suggested
hooking up in Miami in two weeks, where one of my friends was
getting married. I told her I'd fly up from Puerto Rico, and she
could fly down from L.A., and we could have ourselves another per-
fect weekend. “Just like this last weekend,” I said.
“It really was perfect, wasn't it?” she said, and I swear she had
tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “It really was.”
When I left for the airport, I was in a terrific mood, and I
remember calling Nicole's mother from the limo. “I know I wasn't
real optimistic about this whole reconciliation thing, but it looks
like I was wrong,” I said, eating my words. “Things are finally
beginning to work out.”
“I'm glad to hear it,” she said. “I always had hope.”
It was a real turning point for me. After months of telling
myself that our relationship was going absolutely nowhere, I felt as
if we were really going to make it.
When I called Nicole from Puerto Rico the next day, however,
she sounded like the other Nicole, the one I didn't like. I don't know
if it was some kind of druginduced mood swing or something, but
the real Nicole had left the building. I can't explain it any better
than that. She just sounded like that other version of herself:
Removed, irritable, miserable, venomous—and completely lost.