Even if they lack the formal education to write a book themselves, most celebrities are inspired storytellers and quick with a clever turn of phrase—maybe from keeping company with culture’s crème de la crème and journalists seeking sound bites. It’s wonderful when they hit their stride, and you can let them run, almost seeing the book pages pile up. Sometimes that’s the key to being a good ghost, intuiting when not to talk, or when to talk just enough. Listening is also the most fun, especially when you are made to feel like you are there as their confidante, their friend.
“For maximum flake and puff, it’s all about the cut of your butter. I keep a pound of fresh-churned French gold in the freezer around the clock. In case I have need of a toot.”
Mari was taking notes, propped up on a pile of pillows on her bed. Dante’s gruff, salty voice ricocheted around inside Mari’s headphones, as if he were whispering his juiciest secrets. Mari had found it difficult to believe Dante’s skill as a baker was anything more than a publicity stunt—until he talked about heroin. It was easy to look back now and label Mal the mad one, the one set to self-destruct, but Dante had been wild, too. Luckily for him, he had also been indispensable and never allowed to get too lost. Finally, in his late thirties, he had met his current wife and seen a window into a domestic bliss he had previously lacked the patience or imagination to want. Having finally kicked junk, he had found no better antidote for staving off the midnight scratch of his dark hunger than an intricate recipe that required total precision and focus. And no better feeling than the delight on his kids’ faces upon seeing his piles of scones.
“Being Papa, it’s the best,” he said. “Playing for a sold-out arena, sure, you feel special. But your son runs up and hugs you, straight through the heart, all the clichés apply, there’s no distancing of logic or ego. It just is. Pure love. Love. That’s all you need. John had it right.”
“You were the first member of the band to become a father?” she asked.
“Nah, Mal was a rabbit. Had three kiddos when he met Anke.”
“Was that a problem?” Mari asked. “I read the Beatles had to hide their girlfriends because management didn’t want to upset their fans. A baby would flatten the fantasy.”
“We weren’t the Beatles, were we? Girls wanted to shag us, but I don’t think they had the whole castle-and-a-pony fantasy with us. Sure, there were things management wanted to keep out of the paper, especially when it came to Mal, but I don’t know if it was really for the fans. It feels weird talking about myself like some kind of fairy-tale Prince Charming.”
“Well, you must know you’re an international sex symbol.”
“Is that so?” he said, going there, as she had hoped. Flirtation could be a valuable tool.
As Mari listened to the interview, she could almost hear the sizzle. He had eased toward her, in that way men do—the confident ones—sizing up their chances of getting laid. Of course, in their dynamic, sex was theoretical. She might flirt, but she would never cross the line. There was too much at stake, and more power—always—in withholding. Being willing to put sex on the table, without acting on it, showed she wasn’t a prude. She could hang. But she wasn’t any risk to him or his family. It was safe for him to open up. It was a delicate balance to achieve.
Bored with their flirtation, Sigrid had excused herself to make a call to London. Mari wasted no time, knowing she might never be alone with Dante again.
“What kinds of things did management try to keep out of the paper?”
“Well, if I told you, that would defeat the whole point, now, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d say anything that happened fifty years ago is fair game. Wouldn’t you?”
“Believe me, babe, there’s no expiration date on secrets,” he said.
Anke had also referenced the danger of old secrets, back when Mari had been naive about the hidden truths they were discussing. Dante, too, seemed aware of the dance between being authentic and revealing too much, which Mari was struggling to master. Their wisdom was earned, she supposed. Anke and Dante had begun on the down-low, and both had remained discreet about their shared history for decades—until they had each sold a memoir.
“Sigrid was Anke’s best friend—did she help you two keep secrets?” Mari asked.
“Sigrid has been a fixer so long, she’s seen and heard it all, going back to original sin.”
“Was that one of her jobs, as a fixer, killing unfavorable news stories?”
“Who’d want to write an unfavorable news story about me?” he teased.
“Sigrid must have done something right, to rise up from assistant to manager.”
“It’s a rare thing, finding someone in the music business you can trust. Sigrid proved her loyalty to us long ago, and she continues to prove it every day. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
Mari knew all managers were fixers, but his casual reference to Sigrid’s subterranean role intrigued her. Dante had only been caught with drugs once, even though he’d been a known enthusiast for decades, and the band was constantly traveling. Had Sigrid “fixed” that for him?
“But you’re famous for being a one-woman man, and you’ve been off junk for more than thirty years,” Mari said on the recording. “What can she possibly need to fix for you?”
“The thing about a band is, the welfare of any individual member is the same as the welfare of the whole—you get my drift?”
He had said he wasn’t going to talk about it, but he was letting her into the band’s inner circle. Why? Because he resented Jack, and there was dirt he wouldn’t mind spilling.
“Jack has eight children with six women. That must have required some fixing.”
“You’re good, Little Marie,” he said. “I’ll give you that. But it’s not for my book.”
Just then, Sigrid had returned. “What is not for Dante’s book?”
“Jack’s Johnny Appleseed approach to his family tree,” Dante said.
“It most certainly is not,” Sigrid said.
Dante had disappeared behind his bumbling Rasta-man vibe, nodding to Izzy for a beer, playing air guitar in his lap. Having seen how Dante had been prepped for their earlier meetings, and how unforthcoming he was with specific memories, Mari again wondered if he could recall much. Or if he had found the perfect ruse to avoid off-limits info.
“Times have changed so much, with America’s posh pot shops,” Mari said. “Housewives microdosing, as their mother’s little helper. I think it will be important to remind readers how different it was. Back then, there was the risk of incarceration. But Mal was quite brazen.”
“I’m not sure I see the point of this line of inquiry,” Sigrid said. “I do not wish to insert myself, but we have so little time.”
She looked up into dark eyes, darker than she had ever seen before. But they were familiar. Something was wrong. They belonged to a man, and he was on top of her, pressing into her, and they were in the dark water, and his body was holding her down so she couldn’t get free. Mal.
Jerking awake, Mari knew she was late. For something, somewhere. In fits and starts, her room came into focus: the weak circle of light from her bedside lamp. She had been spending so much time with Mal and his waterlogged specter that he had entered her dreams. She pushed herself up against the pillows, closed her laptop, which had waited for her while she slept.
Mari shivered, feeling Mal recede. She was blue in a vague out-of-time way, like waking up from an after-school nap to the smell of roasting chicken at her mom’s house. Even as a kid, she’d been filled with a kind of pre-nostalgia, a sense that she’d be forever searching for the return to a belonging she had never quite felt.
Blurry with exhaustion, Mari staggered through her room, zipping her boots as she walked. Shutting the door behind her, she went downstairs in search of the strongest coffee she could find. Maybe with a shot of cognac. Her Mal dream had spooked her, made her feel like she was failing him, and she certainly didn’t need another master.
As she waited for the hotel elevator, she felt like a giant clock hung over her head, ticking down the minutes. She didn’t have much longer in close proximity to this story’s major players. Running her mind back over the interview with Dante she had just listened to and her conversation with Izzy, it struck her that both of them, although indirectly, had pointed to Jack.
Was Mal afraid of Jack? Was Dante still afraid of Jack now? It sure seemed like it. At the very least, Dante preferred to fly under Jack’s radar as much as possible. Jack was a perfectionist who insisted on the smallest details going his way. Not to mention he had stolen Dante’s woman. But when coupled with Izzy’s allusion to Jack, Mari wondered if there was more to the story than that. It came to her—the CDs of band rehearsal for their Hollywood Bowl show. Dante had been furious at Jack for disappearing for an hour. Had he left practice?
Jack had gained something from Mal’s passing—he had become the new band leader. He had decreased the number of people with whom he would have to share future publishing profits. And while Dante had gotten there first, he had won the hand of Anke, who was the crown jewel in the band’s value system in those years. Yes, Mari was interested in having a solo conversation with Jack. Before she could figure out how, her phone buzzed with a call: Unknown ID. Not expecting anyone, she figured it was the celebrity rehab doctor, wanting to approve his quotes.
“Hello again,” she said.
“Hello again,” Anke said, her tone frightening, or maybe it was the German accent.
“Anke, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
“But who else could I be?”
With dread, Mari saw the elevator car was approaching her floor. While of course she had a right to be anywhere, she felt nervous, like Anke would know where she was and why. She speed-walked the hall toward the emergency exit and the twelve flights of stairs to the lobby.
“The one and only Anke, of course,” Mari said. “I just didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I have to tell you, Magdalena, I begin to question the wisdom of this book.”
Fuck. Was she not just doubting Mari, but the entire project? Writing a memoir was a vulnerable process—having it written for you must be worse because you had only peripheral control. Mari should have been thinking about more than just her own role, her own glory.
“I hear you, and I know how grueling the experience can be. Excavating the past. Forcing yourself to get down what happened, how you felt. I imagine you are in the process of hiring another writer who will lighten your load. Is there anything I can help you with, until then?”
“Perhaps. I do not know how much you or anyone can do. My heart is not in it.”
It was bad enough that she had been fired. What if she somehow made Anke shelve the project altogether? She knew how quickly stories traveled around the publishing world—that would likely give her a reputation for chaos. She didn’t have time for this, now that Dante had hired her, but she couldn’t seem to give up on Anke’s book, even if Anke had already done so.
“I don’t mean to overstep, or make myself sound bad at my job, but you are not my only client who hated the first draft I sent them. Usually it takes several tries, at least, to get it right.”
“Okay. But you do not steal from your other clients, or you would have failed long ago.”
“Anke, I’m sorry. I wanted it so badly, I lost my mind. But I didn’t read your journal. I couldn’t.”
“What is it that you want so badly? To give my secrets to the hungry world?”
“To protect you from the hungry world.”
“You could have said. As you might guess, I am not unfamiliar with losing one’s mind.”
Mari dared a laugh. Anke joined her, which gave Mari courage.
“I will text Ody for some dates and times?” A statement, softened with a question mark. “We will sit down together and talk about all the possibilities of your book—the promise.”
There was a long pause on the line. Anke sighed. “Tomorrow afternoon, then. The new writer is supposed to start later in the week.”
Mari felt triumphant until she thought it through. Tomorrow was her last interview with Dante, and even if she flew out right after their meeting, the afternoon was impossible.
“I feel I have already wasted too much of your time,” Mari said. “I could use another day to prepare. So as not to do so again. I’ll transcribe the rest of my interviews—as a gift to you.”
“Hm.”
“I could text you some homework in the morning, questions I was eager to ask you more about during our weekend together. Write as much, or as little, as you feel moved to. Send your answers, I read them, and I reread them. We meet on Monday afternoon, both of us with an even deeper understanding of the story as spoken—and written—in your own distinctive voice.”
“I always hated homework, never did it. But for my book, that would be different. I am interested to see your transcripts. And these questions. Maybe they will help me find a way in.”
Not a moment too soon, as Mari had reached the casino level of her hotel. As soon as she opened the stairwell door, the cacophony of the slot machines would explode around her.
“Where should I text the questions?”
Anke paused. Mari feared she would tell her to text Ody. But Anke read off the numbers in her deep, languorous voice. Mari barely managed to open her laptop and type them into her doc.
Mari stood by the elevator bank with her triple cappuccino in a to-go cup. She couldn’t bring herself to go up to her room. It was eleven o’clock on Saturday evening, and she felt restless. Her drink with Izzy the previous night had been such a rare break of normality. Now it was harder to put her blinders on and squeeze the necessary discipline out of herself. She found the quietest bar in her hotel and ordered a Pinot. As she alternated coffee and wine—the ghostwriter’s deadline speedball—she wondered if Anke would ask her to return to her job, which she wasn’t sure she could accept. But she didn’t have time to think about that until it happened.
While she was near the Ramblers, her real focus was them. And her new suspicion: Had Jack gotten rid of Mal, to secure his role as the band’s leader, and to win Anke for his own? Mari had to do something to try to find out, but what? The band was rehearsing, but she couldn’t turn up a second night in a row and ask to speak to Jack. It was late enough that she would be annoying if she reached out to anyone in the band’s entourage. But it was rock ’n’ roll, and this was Vegas. She figured the person it mattered least if she pissed off was Izzy. A text was the more polite option but risked being ignored. She was hoping their burgeoning friendship wasn’t all in her mind. She dialed and let it ring until Izzy answered. “Mari, everything all right?”
“Yes, I was just thinking, Sigrid hasn’t had a chance to give me the first writer’s notes yet. But they would be so valuable. If it’s not too much trouble. Our deadline is in six weeks.”
“I’m not sure she’s been able to pull them together as of yet—there was nothing in his hotel room, so she emailed his agent. It’s eleven o’clock at night. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Yeah, after our deadline in six weeks. What about you? You’re a machine. I was sure you’d be working. I figured Dante is out, right? Sigrid is probably with him? If Sigrid does have the files, I’d be happy to go through them on my own, so as not to be in anyone’s way.”
“I have a few things to finish up,” Izzy said. “I can stay a little longer. Let me ask her.”
“Great, thank you,” Mari said. “I can come up, then?”
With the ambient noise in the bar, Mari couldn’t be positive, but she thought she heard a text come into Izzy’s phone. There was a brief pause, as if she was reading it.
“Give me thirty, please?” Izzy said. “Sigrid is texting me with her instructions.”
“Of course,” Mari said. “I appreciate it.”
“Righto,” Izzy said. “I guess I’d better order some tea. I’ll see if they have a samovar.”
Mari was feeling triumphant when she knocked on the suite. And then Sigrid opened the door.
“Come in,” she said.
Of course, even if Izzy did like Mari, she wasn’t looking to get fired. And the elder woman had wanted to chaperone. Sigrid stepped back and allowed Mari to settle on the couch. Still wearing her jacket and holding her Chanel tote, Sigrid had clearly just come in. As she sat across from Mari, she slid off her jacket and scarf. When the gauzy black fabric was removed, it revealed her gold flowered choker, dripping with small coins that shimmied with her motion.
Izzy stepped toward Sigrid, papers in hand. “Sigrid, we got some faxes from the London office about the band’s Brazil dates. The contracts seemed urgent. Since they’re about to get in for the day, I thought you might want to go over them before they call.”
Sigrid hesitated, looking annoyed. Mari also wasn’t sure what was happening.
“Izzy, please order tea and anything else Mari desires. I will take a Diet Coke.”
“With a side of lime,” Izzy completed her thought.
“Excuse me,” Sigrid said to Mari as she stood, flashing her toothy smile.
As soon as she exited the room, Izzy sat close to Mari, who listened for the faint click of Sigrid’s door. But Sigrid seemed to have left it open. Izzy slipped Mari the card containing her “research” question, which had been worded to reveal as little as possible: “Can you please write down the full names of Dante, Sigrid, Dante’s wife, and all of his children, so I’ll have them for the book? Plus, their ages and the country of their nationality/passport?”
David “Dante” Ashcombe (age 74, passport British)
Fiona Ashcombe (wife, age 53, passport American)
Odin “Ody” Ashcombe (son, age 49, passport American)
Ruby Ashcombe (daughter, age 39, passport British)
Opal Ashcombe (daughter, age 37, passport British)
Serenity Ashcombe (daughter, age 17, passport American)
Basel Ashcombe (son, age 9, passport American)
Sigrid Wagner (age 70, passport German)
Mari nodded her thanks. Her eye lingered on Sigrid’s name. Even after fifty-plus years with the band, who all lived in Britain or the States, she still had her German citizenship. Mari wondered if this was by choice.
As if realizing they had been quiet too long and might arouse suspicion, Izzy leapt up and crossed the lounge to dial the hotel phone.
“So, the usual, then?” Izzy said, her voice loud. “Pot of Earl Grey, side of almond milk?”
“Yes, thanks so much,” Mari said. She opened her computer.
Just as Izzy was hanging up, Sigrid bellowed from her room, “Izzy, come help me with this box.”
“On it,” Izzy called back.
Mari wondered about Sigrid’s citizenship status. It seemed strange, since she hadn’t lived in Germany in decades, and Mari knew from a French writer friend that it was expensive to keep renewing a US work visa. Of course the band would pay that expense, but couldn’t they just get Sigrid citizenship?
Izzy and Sigrid entered as one. Between them was the big file box she’d had Izzy carry out with her. Mari’s heart sank. At least there were notes, and maybe drafts. But the first writer really had been a mess, if he was so disorganized it required two sets of hands to move them.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet so late—I’m a perfectionist, so I can’t help but keep working.” Mari gave Sigrid a peacekeeping smile, which Sigrid returned. “Not everyone gets it.”
“I understand,” Sigrid said. “People think rock ’n’ roll is the pleasure dome. But Dante, he does twelve-hour days when he is on. After tonight’s practice, he and his wife will entertain business clients. In this band, we all work hard.”
“May I?” Mari asked, indicating the box. “And my recorder is on, just so you know—”
Sigrid nodded in assent. Mari found dozens of files organized by date. Jackpot.
“I am in the process of going through Dante’s private photos to determine those appropriate for you to see,” Sigrid said. “In the meantime, here are his publicity photos.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mari said. “But I’m not sure—I thought I made it clear to Izzy that what I need access to is the interview notes and drafts from the first writer. So I don’t end up wasting Dante’s time by asking him too many duplicate questions. Our deadline is so tight.”
“That would be a nice plan, we are agreed,” Sigrid said. “But the other writer has gone. And so has his laptop. He gave us nothing before he disappeared.”
“Not to speak badly of a peer, but that’s crazy unprofessional. I’ve never heard of anything like that in my years as a ghost. And his agent can’t help us track down the files?”
“It seems no one can help. We have been more than generous. We have kept his room at the Wynn, in case he comes back from his bender. We are concerned for his safety, of course.”
Izzy ushered in their room service. She placed Mari’s tea on the coffee table. Zero eye contact. Mari smiled to herself, feeling like she was getting the hang of this room, this world, hopefully in time to learn everything she needed for Dante, and maybe even Anke.
“Thank you, Izzy,” Sigrid said. “I am sure you are eager to return to your work.”
Sigrid opened the top file and fanned out black-and-white glossies. Mari felt a pang of nostalgia for the days when record labels sent out such promo materials, with physical CDs, to music critics like her younger self.
“I am certain Dante’s fans will be interested to learn more about his time recording in Trinidad with his side project that has sold millions of albums.”
“Of course,” Mari faked. Exhaustion set in as she examined the staged photos, which she would have to pretend to examine for at least an hour, to show her appreciation of Sigrid’s effort.
“In this particular photograph, Dante is holding his most beloved guitar, the Duchess. He has played it since 1965. And, since you have a crush on Mal, you can flip back to see the earliest photos of the band with him in the original lineup. Very rare treasures of their archive.”
“Interesting,” Mari said. She felt like Sigrid was fucking with her, but she couldn’t not seem interested, so she took both stacks of photos—the Trinidadian side project and the original lineup. She could sense Dante and his team losing patience with her frequent mentions of Mal, and she could understand why, especially if they truly weren’t hiding anything. Mari looked at the newer pictures first, trying to appear diligent, then flipped through the older ones, slowly. She was looking for anything that telegraphed tension between Jack and Mal, or even Dante and Mal. But as sexy and compelling as the images were, they came off as self-conscious and staged. She knew better than to read too much into them. This was all turning out to be a colossal waste of time she didn’t have. And then she stumbled upon a band shot from 1969, in which Jack was wearing a gold choker with dangling coins that looked familiar. Slowly, she pulled out the photo and glanced up at Sigrid, whose eyes were on her phone. Of course the gold coins were familiar: Sigrid was wearing Jack’s necklace right now.
She still wasn’t sure what Sigrid was hiding, other than all the band’s secrets, but she had to get what she could out of her, without arousing suspicion, while they were together in Vegas. Among the most valuable assets Sigrid controlled was Mari’s only access point to Jack.
“It’s interesting that you and Jack are so close, when you work for both him and Dante, and they can’t stand each other. Such good friends, in fact, that Jack gave you a gold necklace he once wore quite a lot—I would assume as a token of appreciation.”
Sigrid’s hand flew up, fingering a coin out of habit. She stalled, assessing the band photo.
“If you are such bosom buddies with Jack, you must know many intimate details from his life,” Mari continued. “Like where he was at the time Mal died.”
Sigrid’s nostrils flared. So, she had been shaken by Mari’s reference to the necklace or to Mal’s death. She patted down her jacket, as if looking for the cigarettes she no longer smoked.
“You know you are the second writer for Dante’s book, and we have a possible third in the wings,” Sigrid said. “I humor you now because I want to make sure you are very clear—Jack had nothing to do with Mal’s death. Nor did Dante. But I grow weary of you. Jack was at practice. Dante was at practice. Everyone was at practice except for Mal. Nancy. And Anke.”
“So, you wouldn’t mind if I asked Jack a few questions about practice, the set list, the band’s mood going into their big show, since Dante’s memory is a bit—well, you know—”
“Why don’t you ask Anke since she was at the house? Oh, that’s right, she fired you.”
“I did ask her, of course. She’s protective of her old friends. It would be such a shame to reopen any cold cases related to the band—their role in Mal’s death, their tax filings, or—”
“I do not know what game you are playing,” Sigrid said. “But I could make Dante’s book go away so fast. And with publishers knowing you had alienated such an important client, such an A-list celebrity, not like some meager little groupie turned jewelry maker. You would be persona non grata in the New York publishing world. You might never work again, in fact.”
“And having come to respect and admire Dante as much as I do, I would have to speak with him before I left Las Vegas,” Mari said. “To ensure he was aware of the true loyalties of those who work most intimately with him—he calls you ‘the fixer,’ but I’m not sure he understands how much this is true when it comes to your relationship with Jack.”
Sigrid flinched, as if surprised Mari had earned such candidness from Dante.
“Well, since you do appear to be doing such excellent work on Dante’s behalf, and we both share the desire of protecting his best interests, perhaps we should return to our research.”
Mari was wired with adrenaline. Sigrid was so pleasant, so obviously devoted to the band, Mari feared she had overstepped. But she had found Sigrid’s Achilles’ heel—she wasn’t as sure of her own power, or place within the band’s hierarchy, as she projected. Mari pulled out her phone and snapped a few pics of the image with Jack in the necklace Sigrid was now wearing—she wasn’t sure what it said that Jack had given it to Sigrid, but it meant they were close, potentially in a way that would have infuriated Dante if he knew everything.
“There was just one more thing. It’s tiny, so very minuscule.”
“What is this tiny, very minuscule thing?”
“It would be so helpful to have even ten minutes of Jack’s time,” Mari said. “I’m sure, if you presented it to him in this light, Jack would see it’s in his best interest to have certain events described in Dante’s book in the way that’s most favorable to him.”
“Jack could not be bothered to worry about such—”
“Jack seems quite bothered by the smallest things Dante does. I think it’s this tension that keeps the music so vital, but that’s my private observation. Not for the book.”
“I will see what I can do,” Sigrid said. “Is that all?”
Izzy leaned on the doorway. “Need anything from me, then? Photocopies? Water?”
“We are finished for the night,” Sigrid said.
Mari projected calm confidence as they confirmed her meeting with Dante the next afternoon. But once in her room, she fell onto her bed, her muscles shaking. It was all catching up with her, risking a showdown with Sigrid, making herself vulnerable with Anke—not to mention the caffeine she had been mainlining for days now. She opened a tequila, drank half. Ody had been right—she was juggling a lot of fruit—and in moments when exhaustion addled her, she felt sure she was about to drop everything and let everyone down, most of all herself.