It is flattering to have a celebrity take an interest in you, but you have to be careful. Often, they aren’t used to the sustained effort a book requires. They will nudge you off topic on purpose, playing hooky from the hard work at hand. They can read the molecules in the air and will know if you aren’t with them. But even as you indulge them in their asides, you can’t lose focus. Be charmed but find a way to make a U-turn, never losing sight of the book, the book, the book.
Showtime. Dante sipped Dom. Mari countered her champagne buzz with a cup of tea.
“I have to finalize the collaboration paperwork,” Sigrid said.
“Speaking of,” Mari dared, “I talked with my agent, and he said the first writer, Axel, had transcripts and early drafts I might get access to—it could save us valuable time.”
“I blathered on to the poor fool for long enough,” Dante said. “I should hope it will help.”
Sigrid didn’t look up from her phone. “The poor fool is not answering emails or calls. We shall see what we can do. For now, assume you will start from scratch.”
Mari’s stomach twisted, the deadly combo of nerves and caffeine. “Got it,” she said. Then she dared to feel a bit superior—even when things had gotten gnarly with the vodka divorcée’s team, she had always been on point. The guy must be a mess. She could do this.
“I will return in a flash,” Sigrid said from the doorway.
“Sure, sure,” Dante said. Waving Sigrid away, engaged with Mari.
“To begin, I was thinking, songs are like time capsules,” Mari said. “I’d imagine that’s even truer for the songwriter. Let’s go back and talk about your early tracks. I made a playlist.”
“Well, since Jack writes the lyrics and such, the songs are more about where he’s at.”
“No, I mean the real songs, your songs. They’re not like the band’s singles that are churned out for the label. They’re all the more potent for being fewer and farther between.”
“Is that right?” Dante said. But she could tell by his tone, he wanted to agree.
“I think so, don’t you? Before I was a ghostwriter, I wrote about music.”
She was careful to avoid the word “critic,” which artists hated.
“Well, if you ever ask me in front of Jack, he’s the real songwriter in the band, but I’m not gonna argue with you. It’s not bragging if it’s in my own book, is it?”
Dante synced her phone to the room’s sound system, and his sagebrush voice serenaded them. Mari had arranged the songs chronologically. With Dante’s book to be written, she needed to know the whole story now. She was soon swept up in his rollicking tales of mid-’60s London: LSD- and brandy-fueled nights out with the Beatles, Marc Bolan, and the decade’s top dandies and beauties. There was a strong propulsive energy to such interviews, especially when the celebrity was as salty and likeable as Dante. She finally asked for a break to pee.
They agreed to take ten so Dante could do a quick phoner he’d missed earlier in the day—the journalist was calling from London, and the time zone wrangling had been intense. After using the bathroom, Mari ducked onto the balcony and admired the cinematic views of the Strip. Tempted to take a selfie, just to prove she’d been somewhere other than her desk, she glanced back inside. Sigrid and Dante were faced away from her, Dante on a landline and Sigrid leaning in, as if she was feeding Dante answers for the journalist.
Mari unlocked her phone (three missed calls from V), snapped a few selfies, backed by the monorail and palm trees. She cropped the least bloated-looking shot, then paused. Anke hadn’t thought to follow her on social media, as some clients did. And she had to accept it—Anke had already moved on. But she had better not accidentally betray Dante’s privacy.
And yet the urge to exist beyond her work was too strong to resist. As long as Mari didn’t let on which hotel she was at, or who she was with, it was probably okay. She filmed a quick story of herself, with a panorama shot that stopped just before Dante’s suite. It would be deleted by day’s end. But for a brief moment, she would be out there, in the world, with her friends, most people her age, and the celebrities—not just inside the words of her clients’ books.
Mari’s phone buzzed. Vivienne was requesting a FaceTime. If she picked up, V would know where she was. If she didn’t, V would hound her until she did. And what if she was in real trouble? Mari called her right back.
“What, V? I’m working.”
“You’re always working.”
“Where’s the producer?”
“He and his wife are getting undivorced. For the kids.”
“Lucky kids. I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’m in a meeting. The way you were abusing my phone, I thought you were dinner for sharks.”
“Yeah, cute, that pretty much sums up my life. I called to tell you that the bag you left at the condo is in a storage locker at the bus stop.”
“For real? I thought that was just a plot device in Desperately Seeking Susan.”
Neither of them laughed. Mari saw Dante finish his call and turn to Sigrid.
“I’m hanging up. I’ll call you later.”
Vivienne started to cry. Not the theatrical tears she could whip up effortlessly, but the big sucking sobs that made her look ugly, which was a luxury she didn’t have.
Her words were garbled, but Mari had known V her whole life, so she understood them anyway: “LA is over. LA is dead to me. I have to go to Vegas. That’s the only—it should work.”
Mari was struggling herself, so taking on V seemed insane. Still, Mari knew how tenuous her existence felt, most days, and she had her writing, her agent, her role as a ghost. Vivienne had her looks, her charm, and her frequent-flier miles. Guilt flared up like a bug bite.
“I’m in Vegas for a new job. Will Mr. Sin City let you stay with him?”
“Eventually, but I can’t ask right away. Or go to him, looking like this.”
Her eyes were drawn up by the power of Sigrid’s gaze, beaming into her. Dante was strumming a guitar and didn’t appear bothered in the least, but Sigrid seemed to hold everything together, and she would be an important ally if Mari could stay on her good side. Smiling, Mari waved. You never held up a one-minute symbol to a client. You just didn’t.
“V, I have to go. I’m at the Wynn, but not under my name. Text me your flight info.”
Vivienne was speaking—maybe thanking her, probably asking for another favor, but Mari was disconnecting. She reentered the suite.
Sigrid was saying, “You have heard my reservations—she does not have the experience of the others. That last writer had written four bestsellers, and even so, with all the pressure, he became a drunk and a deadbeat. And why does she come here and bother you with the problems of Anke? But if she is who you want, even with all that, you know I support your decision.”
Sigrid and Dante turned. Mari was used to having her work, and herself, evaluated. Still, Mari had gotten the message, whether she was meant to hear it or not; she had to hold it together. She had to succeed where the last writer had not. Mari knew she was lucky to be here at all. If it had been a stretch for her to be Anke’s ghost, just look at her now.
Dante was a raconteur, for sure. But his stories were all from the canon of legends that already surrounded the band. There was the time he staggered into George Harrison’s limousine. The driver had been too polite to tell him of his mistake, which he had drunkenly realized when he arrived at a country manor that was not his own and found Pattie Boyd waiting for him, instead of the model he had been married to that year. And the airport bust at LAX, when they had found a roach in his pocket, for which he had barely dodged a drug charge, and which had inspired the band to buy their first private jet. Yes, his delivery was animated and studded with clever quips and British street slang. It played nicely off his way of speaking, which was eloquent and articulate, especially given the edgy reputation he’d cultivated. These classic stories were a strong foundation for the book. But for a tell-all memoir, she had to go deeper.
Mari found herself stealing glances at Sigrid, who sat nearby, tapping on a laptop. She wore knee-high black patent leather boots and a black miniskirt and matching drapey vest, over a white-and-black geometric-print blouse with a tie at its neckline. She had the figure to pull it off, and the mod outfit made her look outside of time, especially with her dark, blunt-cut bangs and cat-eye makeup. Anke also wore retro clothes, but her Lady of the Canyon vibe had come full circle, whereas Sigrid was a mixed-decade enigma.
The tambourine stomp of the last song was replaced by a wily blues lick. It had long been understood that Dante had written this ballad for Anke during the brief, sweet months they had been a family. Mari watched Dante close his eyes. A hungry smile on his face, he reached for his guitar, always nearby, and began playing along. It was fantastic, enjoying a private concert by an undisputed guitar god. He was so immersed, Mari was a little afraid to pull him out of his reverie, but she needed to capitalize on his wide-open vulnerability.
“What are you picturing?” she asked.
“Nothing you should hear me say out loud, or my wife should read.”
“Fair enough,” Mari said with a laugh. “A safe question. Where did you write this song?”
“The piano—” Sigrid said.
“That’s right, I never could write on a guitar. It’s like I know it too well, innit? My fingers get ahead of my brain—not that it’s hard to do so.”
He laughed, winked at Mari. She laughed, too.
“Where was this piano? The band had a rehearsal space in LA, right?”
“We always have a rehearsal space,” Dante said.
“The tree—” Sigrid said.
“Oh, righto, the house we rented that summer, it was nice enough, but it was small for the band, the girls, Simon, the assistants—Siggi was there, weren’t you, luv?”
Mari gave Dante his laugh, then fell silent so he would continue.
“It seemed like every corner, someone was sleeping or shagging or smoking a spliff. But we needed a piano. We always had one at the ready, whenever we landed for more than a few days. And so, we rented one and had it unloaded under this grove of palm trees by the pool. The delivery man thought we were mad. But it worked like a charm. Inspiration never strikes except for in the middle of the night, so it kept us from driving anyone batty with our noodling.”
“Did a lot of—noodling happen in the middle of the night?”
Dante looked to Sigrid. His memory was concerning. Mari made a mental note to see if there were any old bios of Dante, as there had been of the whole band—even if they were trashy, they would have been written closer to the day’s events, so she could trust the dates and details.
The silence in the room stretched, like a bent note that begins to go out of tune. But Mari didn’t say anything to ease the tension. She wanted to understand whatever was happening between Dante and Sigrid so she could try to get a better sense of Sigrid’s influence.
“Sometimes—” Sigrid said.
As Sigrid poured Dante water, Mari caught the flash of jewelry at her neck, which had been obscured by her blouse’s tie. A series of small gold flowers ringed her well-tended skin. The pattern was familiar to Mari, but she couldn’t pull up the memory.
“Sometimes,” Dante chimed in. “It’s not like we were really sleeping. A lot of everything happened in the middle of the night.”
“Everything, like swimming?”
Mari had been expecting a furtive glance between Dante and Sigrid, but the allusion to Mal’s death propelled each into their own little world. Dante brooded into his drink. Sigrid watched Mari, as if she were the one who might give something away. Mari couldn’t let them know she had read Dante’s proposal until they gave her a copy, but since they had led with Mal’s death in its pages, Mari felt certain they would want to include it in Dante’s book.
“Mal was a grand swimmer,” Dante said, his voice wistful, even speaking of his former nemesis. “He’d do laps for hours. Like he was in a trance. Nowadays, my youngest, all his friends have ‘stuff,’ that’s what the parents call it—ADHD, processing disorders—there’s prescription pills, talk therapy, art therapy, equine therapy. Mal had drugs. Girls. Music. And the water. Not that they were sure to calm him down—nothing was ever sure with him.”
“Ja, Mal, he did not make anything easy, not for himself, not for anyone,” Sigrid said.
She wasn’t talking to Mari, but to Dante.
“If he was such a strong swimmer, it must have been a shock when he drowned,” Mari said. She could feel Mal, the man who had died, not the legend who lived on, in the room with these people who had known him so well.
“No one could swim with the drugs in his system,” Sigrid said. “Not even Mal.”
“Anke mentioned Syd buying hash for Mal that night,” Mari said.
“I do not talk about hash,” Sigrid said.
“Everyone knew Anke was taking Quaaludes for her nerves that summer, and no wonder with how Mal was bashing her about. So, he ended up with Quaaludes in his system on the night he died. And what of it? He surely begged them off her. Or stole them. He must have palmed a thousand joints from me over the years. None of us was there. We can never know for sure.”
This was a lot to process, and Mari was trying not to influence what they said about that night. Anke had implied she had doctored Mal’s tea, presumably with the Quaaludes. Even though Dante and Simon had come in late, everyone had been at practice, as the rehearsal recording had attested. So, if Anke had drugged Mal, how could anyone else have known? Anke could have told Dante later. Even in the throes of starting a post-Mal romance and a family, she had clearly had a guilty conscience. What Mari would have given to talk to Syd—after everything, his book had been a huge letdown, all dated, groovy lingo and empty innuendo, surely less of the story than he had known. Simon was the next best bet.
Mari glanced up to find Sigrid staring at her. Even though she gave Mari a broad smile, showcasing her perfect white teeth, Mari felt a sandpaper prickle down the back of her neck. She knew the term “herding cats” from her time as a music journalist—a day-to-day manager had to have the inner steel to manage the unmanageable, no matter how accommodating she seemed.
“Why wasn’t Mal at practice, with the Hollywood Bowl show the next day?”
The question hung in the air. Sigrid shrugged. Dante would not be able to remember a detail so small, and she had decided not to help Mari by answering.
“I heard Anke predicted Mal’s death with her I Ching—”
“I know we all love Anke, but remember, we are writing Dante’s book now,” Sigrid said.
Mari nodded, looked down at her computer screen to buy herself time as she weighed possible angles. “Dante, do you believe in the I Ching?”
He squinted at her, considering her question. “Don’t know. Never thought about it. We believed everything back then. It was the style. I can tell you this. I believe in Anke.”
“Which is why you wrote her that beautiful love song at the house in LA that summer,” Mari said, pivoting. “The Hollywood Bowl show was the day after Mal died, and then you all flew back to London for his funeral. Am I correct?”
“Well, look at you, Sherlock Holmes,” he said. He pointed toward the speaker in the corner as he sang the song’s final verse.
“You wrote the song at the LA house, so Mal was still alive. But Anke said your romance started with you comforting each other after Mal’s death—”
“What a peach, trying to protect me,” he said. “No one could blame her. Mal debased her with his fists, flaunted his other women, broke into shards if ever confronted. But I was his mate, and I was the fox in the henhouse. See, I’d always been half mad for her, all the way back to Berlin. But nothing ever happened until that summer. It was like a magnet between us. It’s my belief children have a strong will to be born. Maybe that was our son, moving us into position.”
It was no surprise Dante thought he was Ody’s father; that was what Anke had always led everyone to believe, and what she seemed determined to put forth in her book. But she had been very clear they hadn’t slept together before Mal’s death. Why would Dante lie about this? Or Anke? It was a small detail, compared to everything else, but still.
“How long had it been going on, before the baby?”
“There are some things a man remembers. The first time he goes to bed with Anke Berben is one of them—it was soon after we landed in Los Angeles. After it happened once, there was no going back. A bit like Lady H, you know?”
“Who?”
“Heroin,” Sigrid mouthed, like it was a bad word.
Mari kept herself from laughing. With all the muck they had to manage, heroin was the least taboo topic she could imagine. She nodded. She was itching to ask Dante if he had ever wondered if Ody might be Mal’s son, but it seemed like an intimate question for their first session. And Dante didn’t need any dirt to make his book a bestseller; this point was underlined as Mari let the conversation drift away from Mal, prompting Dante to tell her vivid stories of all the albums, concerts, and honeymoons on private beaches in the Seychelles after Mal’s death.
The five-plus hours passed in a flash, as time flew when forces aligned, and real inspiration arrived. It happened alone with the page sometimes, too. It was something to experience—like that old Renaissance idea of the muse as an external force, not an internal inspiration of the mind. And so, on some days, it felt like a possession had occurred, and when the spirit passed away, Mari was exhausted and blurred around the edges. As if she didn’t quite fit inside herself anymore, or she had multiple personalities. So it was, the secret life of a ghost.
As Mari packed up her computer and recorder, she observed the others. Izzy had come in to confirm the number of people for Dante’s dinner reservation. She leaned over the back of the couch where Sigrid was reviewing Dante’s schedule with him on her iPad.
“Excuse me,” Mari said. “Since Dante’s time is so valuable, I thought I could maybe interview Simon to get some details for the gearheads out there.”
Sigrid and Dante exchanged a look.
“He’ll convince you it’s his book you’re writing, not mine,” Dante said. “But why not?”
“I will schedule for you,” Sigrid said. “Tomorrow. Two hours before you meet Dante.”
Mari had worried mentioning Simon would make them suspicious, but if he had played a role in Mal’s death, no one seemed aware of it. The mood was relaxed and fun, like everyone was just where they wanted to be. Mari found she wanted to be there, too. She had experienced this as a journalist, when she had to leave the cosseted bubble surrounding a rock star she had interviewed and go back to her overdrawn life. The sensation was even stronger now because she was on the team. She felt fickle, but she wished this weekend could go on and on. She had been enamored of Anke and her elegant home, but this was something only the rarest few enjoyed—money, luxury, insulated grace, and the pleasure of living there in perfect ease.
Not that Dante didn’t work for it. He was off to dinner with his second eldest daughter, a fashion designer, with whom he was opening a boutique hotel. Then a late rehearsal. Mari was grateful to be headed for a fancy room service meal in bed, even if she’d be going over notes.
Mari slumped against the elevator wall, feeling the best kind of tired, the kind that has been well earned. Thinking of Dante on his way to dinner with his daughter, she tried to imagine a nice, normal rendezvous with her dad someday, somewhere. They would share a meal, catch up. It seemed far-fetched, maybe even dangerous. She pushed the thought of him away.
Before facing the international meat market of the hotel’s exclusive section, Mari smeared on fresh lip gloss as an antidote to her J.Crew blazer. She couldn’t resist the wish for a celebrity sighting, even though she was supposed to be immune to such fandom. Who would she gossip to anyhow—Dante? Izzy, maybe. As she disembarked, a familiar lean, pale figure turned down the hall. Instinctively, she retreated into the elevator. She was sure it was Ody. But then again, she was at the Wynn—most of the hotel’s guests could have stepped out of a rock video.
Her nerves jangled, but she was being paranoid—he hadn’t noticed her. To assume he had was elevating her own importance in the story, which she should never do.