Your client is famous, and so you probably know a great deal about them up front, but digging deeper into their real story is an art. You can’t just ask them to open up, but you can make them feel safe enough to do so. A bold supposition can sometimes do this. Trust must be earned, and the more daring your deductions, the sooner that happens. Like any type of intimacy, a ghosting relationship is a form of seduction. You’re trying to prove yourself worthy, as the object of their conquest—their original reader—while attempting to entice out all of their truth.
At two past ten, Mari ran her fingers through her hair before entering Anke’s chamber. She wore her expensive kaftan, bought at a boho consignment store owned by a friend who gave her a discount. It was too short, and she was still carrying the ten pounds of deadline weight from her last book, so she wore it over black leggings, which countered the gauzy feel of the dress.
Mari was caught tugging the fabric down over her thighs when Ody swung the door inward and greeted her with an impassive nod. Nodding back, she strove to appear collected. This was it: Mari was here to get something out of Anke that would placate their editor, maybe solve one of pop culture’s oldest mysteries, and save her ghosting career. But the trick was to act like they were already dear friends, the kind who casually told each other everything.
Holding a warm, easy smile on her face, Mari walked toward Anke, who was enthroned on a long, low daybed. To her right, a wall of sliding glass doors opened onto a courtyard. The extradimensional desert light turned a bank of Japanese oleander into a living painting. A fountain could be heard splashing, just out of sight.
Mari surveyed the room, assuming a journalist’s impassive gaze. Want filled her. It was perfect. Luxurious but comfortable—throw pillows cascaded from the couch onto the sheepskin rugs, inviting one to peruse the chunky art books and elegant poetry volumes; there was a scent of sweet incense with a cedar undertone; two enormous vases held fragrant white lilies and roses. They had been here less than eight hours—where were the flowers from, and who had arranged them? Mari appreciated the aura of magic created by these invisible hands.
Anke sat cross-legged on the divan, Rimbaud beside her. She could have been a magazine photo of herself. Her raw silk dress was sheer enough to reveal her lean, tan torso. A pale pink cashmere throw covered her shoulders. Her hair, a little damp from her morning swim, made her appear youthful and fresh. She held a china cup and saucer.
“Guten Morgen,” Anke said. “I trust you slept well.”
Ody settled into a small desk in the corner. Anke smiled at Mari, a relief, since they had parted without a proper good night, in the wake of Anke’s tears.
“I did—I was quite comfortable, thank you,” Mari said. She sat on the couch a few feet from Anke. “Your home is very beautiful.”
“Ja, it is a beautiful house.” Anke paused, as if to say more, sipped her tea.
Mari opened her computer to her waiting Word doc, typed a note to herself: “Who owns the Palm Springs house?” Smiling at Anke, she let them acclimate for a beat, then dove in.
“I hope I didn’t upset you last night,” Mari said. “You can give me feedback, not just on my writing. There’s nothing you could say that would hurt my feelings. Your book comes first.”
Mari always gave this speech to her clients, although usually not so early in the process. Most people nodded, or said something like “It’s helpful when you ask questions.” They weren’t used to the possibility of collaboration. They only cared that the writing sounded like them.
Anke poured tea, her face amused.
“There are many things I could say that would hurt your feelings,” Anke said.
Mari didn’t let herself consider the possibilities.
“Yes, I’m sure, you have a real way with words. Well, please tell me if you’re ever uncomfortable with the direction I’m taking us, or with my approach.”
“If we only write about the comfortable moments, it will be a very short book. People fear too much this idea of being uncomfortable. Sometimes, I cry.”
“Because?”
“Because I am sad. Why do you cry?”
Mari didn’t cry—she couldn’t afford the luxury, but that seemed an intense thing to say. She wasn’t here to confess. She was here to finesse candor, and maybe a confession.
“Because I miss people and moments that aren’t coming back,” Mari offered.
“Don’t get old—you won’t be able to bear it. Everything and everyone are gone.”
“You grew up in Berlin after the war. From your earliest days, much was gone.”
“Ja, no one who was not there can know that level of ruin, of being broken down, the fog of waking up from this terrible nightmare and taking the blame, being sick at ourselves.”
Mari fumbled in her bag, as unobtrusively as possible, not wanting to interrupt. She only relaxed when, along with her typing, her recorder’s red light reassured her that she was capturing the words she would need for the book. From interviews she had read, Mari understood Anke’s allusions to all she’d been running from—the desolation and shame felt by the youth of Germany after World War II. She needed more personal stories about Anke’s family and her first love, Fritz, whom she had thrown over for Mal, and then returned to after her years with the Ramblers.
“Did your father survive the war?”
“Ja. Long enough for me to be born.”
Anke did not appear moved to say more.
“What was your mother like?” Mari asked.
“My mother,” Anke said. She paused long enough that Mari debated the best follow-up question. “She tried. There is a right way. Even in the worst of times. A good lesson from her. Berlin recovered from the war, but we were still poor when I was a child. Anything we could find or barter—a cup and saucer,” Anke said, examining the items she held, as if they were artifacts from her past, “you treasured. Even when I was older and stomped around our flat, I respected our few possessions. I have always been this way. Now I am surrounded by items from all my travels, all my lives. I save them, add them up, and create a home, an oasis in the desert, a sanctuary beyond time.”
Anke’s speech tapered off. Mari considered.
“You didn’t like your mother,” Mari said. She ducked her head, as if embarrassed by her intimate inference.
Anke didn’t seem daunted. But she didn’t answer. She bent over the antique tea set, resting on a teak tray. With careful movements, she prepared the perfect cup of tea. Mari considered how some beautiful women occupied space differently; they knew how to be, not just to talk. If Anke felt Mari’s eyes, she didn’t increase her pace or look up until Mari held her drink.
“Were you close with your mother?” Anke asked. “You have a knack for the girl talk. You must have been.”
“Mostly,” Mari said.
She wasn’t being coy. She had been so startled by Anke’s observation, she couldn’t think what to say. She teetered on the edge of her temptation to draw Anke closer, and her need to maintain professional distance. And yet Mari had an implicit sense of fairness—if she was going to ask someone to strip bare, shouldn’t she risk a little exposure?
“My mother was beautiful, without ever trying,” Mari said. “She didn’t wear makeup, and she cut her own hair. It was very long, the color of liquid amber. I used to love to brush it.”
“You are pretty,” Anke said.
Mari stared at her, trying to read her words. Anke smiled. A compliment, then.
“Thank you,” Mari said. “But this was—real beauty. I think as much as we love our parents, we measure ourselves by them. Did you ever feel that with your mother?”
“I couldn’t afford to think of my mother in those terms, of competition, or love, or beauty. From an early age, I was fighting for my life. You can say I am melodramatic, the war had ended, I know nothing of danger, per se.” Anke hit the words a little harder, in the way non-native speakers do when savoring a phrase they’ve mastered in a borrowed tongue. “But I knew I was different. Unique. People hated me for it. I heard their jeers: ‘What, do you think you are so special?’ Ja, I was. Not because I say so, but because my life shows me so.”
Mari had learned from experience when to let her clients run. Ravenous, she reached for a piece of melon, trying to be as ladylike as Anke, or at least neat. Finally, Anke’s story had reached the Ramblers, but Anke fell silent. Mal and Anke were married for ten months. Much had happened between the wedding and the funeral. Much had been speculated about the death. Mari had been lulled into thinking Anke would just go there. Apparently not.
“You were a special young woman,” Mari said. “Brave enough to choose freedom. From a new generation that was daring to remake the world their parents had destroyed in the war.”
Anke met this compliment head-on. She didn’t play at modesty, as others might.
“Ja, I was special. The ordinary life is not for me. My mother lacked the imagination to see this, so I have to leave Germany, to shake her off, so I do not suffocate.”
“It sounds like Mal rescued you, from a life that was too small.”
Even if Anke dodged and feinted, Mari had to start working her for info on Mal and the band. But it required finesse. Mari leaned away from Anke, savoring her tea.
“Tell me about Mal,” Mari said. “I’ve read so many legends. But what was he like?”
“He was magic.”
“When he was with the Ramblers, in particular? Your description of the band’s summer in LA was so vivid, so thrilling, I felt like I was there. You’re a natural storyteller.”
Anke cocked her head, as if considering Mari’s words. Mari had noticed this tendency over lunch. While it made her nervous, she appreciated Anke’s care as to what she did and didn’t believe. Most people take everything at face value. Not Anke.
“If I have a talent for anything, it must be natural, gifted by the fates,” Anke said. “I never had the patience to learn from others. School?” She made a dismissive gesture. “Prison for children. I never make Ody go to school. On the boat, he study astronomy, geography, languages, and he read all of Shakespeare. What more can a person need to know?”
Math? Mari thought to herself, knowing this joke wouldn’t land with Anke.
“There’s no greater storyteller than Shakespeare,” Mari said. “It’s the details, don’t you think? The subterranean patterns, how the reader is brought to an understanding, rather than told.”
“Ja, I have watched the hidden patterns all my life.”
“The I Ching,” Mari said.
Anke nodded. Seemed to make up her mind. She stood, causing Rimbaud to jump down. “I have wondered if I should share this, but yes, I believe you can find value here.”
Mari noticed an ivory-topped cane leaning against the divan. Anke didn’t reach for it, but she did lean on a small table, then inch across the room. Understanding the extent of Anke’s performance at the Polo Lounge, Mari had greater admiration for her poised entrance.
Anke approached a tall dresser, jumbled with scarves and beaded jewelry, stacked with fabric-bound books. She grabbed one and crept over to Ody, Rimbaud her constant tail.
“Ody, please check Rosenda has lunch underway. I asked her to grill a whole fish. With mint and arugula from the garden.”
He nodded and slid out of the room. As soon as he was gone, Anke sat, pulled on her glasses, began to read aloud: “‘His cock is beautiful. His body is leonine, fierce, hungry.’”
Mari didn’t blink.
“‘His atoms are composed of helium and champagne. Supercharged. Frenetic. He hears in other frequencies. Sees in other dimensions. He is the truest artist I have ever met.’”
Looking up from the page, Anke deadpanned: “It was exhausting.”
Mari laughed cautiously. When Anke joined, with her shuffling chuckle, Mari let herself go. She had found her way in, and the relief they both felt was palpable. Anke read:
“‘Mal pushed me in front of the others. He has pushed me before. But this is the worst. Fritz would never push me. Fritz would carry me over puddles if I would let him. Mal is sicker every day. We walk up the stairs to the house, the band, Syd, Simon, Siggi, and me. I went down on my hands, my teeth rattling in my skull, my palms striking the marble and leaving specks of blood like flakes of fresh red snow. My heart was pounding out of my chest like a freight train.’”
As Mari listened, she didn’t get what was happening at first. Because Anke was recounting words from decades earlier, there was a distancing, almost performative quality. Eventually, in every project, Mari was able to coax her client past modesty or discretion, to tell her something real, which became an important moment in the book. Like any real intimacy, the revelation felt shared, and slightly charged. This was more complicated. It was almost as if Anke wasn’t confessing; she was leaving that indiscretion to her younger self. But here it was—evidence of animosity, conflict, violence even. It was known Mal hit Anke. Rumored Anke hit him back. But as far as Mari could tell, Anke had never commented on it publicly.
Anke read: “‘She was there, too, his ugly shadow. Nancy. She is always with him now. He makes a face when I fall. The girl laughs, that horrible sound, like a seagull or some other trash bird with a caw caught deep in its beak. He did it to impress her. Or because he hoped I would lose the baby. Or because he has gone mad. The why doesn’t matter if there even is one.’”
Flustered by Anke’s casual revelation of a baby in conjunction with Mal, when the public had believed Anke’d had her son with Dante, and Mal’s death had left another woman’s baby without a father, Mari felt her fingers slip onto the wrong keys. She took down a graph of all-caps gibberish before righting herself. But she didn’t stop typing, holding her focus on Anke.
“‘It is empty. As was the apology Dante shamed him into—shouldn’t disrespect a lady, all that horseshit, as if we are damsels in distress, and they our knights in velvet waistcoats—’”
Anke stopped before reading the denouement of the story. She glanced up at Mari, who kept her face a perfect mask. A word floated up in Mari’s mind out of half-remembered police procedurals: “motive.” She thought of Syd’s book, which she needed to order when she got back to her room. In the legend of the band, Syd had been a bottom-feeder, but that was often where the darkest truths lurked. She had followed enough of her former clients in the tabloids to know firsthand, there was usually a seed of truth in any gossip-mag debacle, no matter how tawdry or far-fetched, or how quickly the celebrity’s team managed to squash it. Anke had always been very clear that she had been pregnant by Dante, not Mal, and any rumors to the contrary at the time of Ody’s birth had never caught on. It had to mean something that Anke was revealing this secret about her son’s paternity now—even if she wasn’t really revealing it.
Anke flipped ahead, then backward, read about an impromptu house show the band’s first week in LA. Mal had been so stoned on Quaaludes and rum, he’d slid down an amplifier and passed out, and the band’s guitar tech, Simon, had filled in. Her voice trailing off, Anke skimmed more material. Then she looked up, and the women considered each other. Mari felt like everything—the success of the book, her career—rested on this moment. But as Ezra had suggested, she couldn’t let on how much she wanted it. Needed it. She slouched a little, smiled.
Mari’s mind raced through scenarios. Anke had been quite candid in several moments, and yet she had chosen to deliver this bombshell buried in a journal entry, without qualifying or commenting on it at all. Mari suspected if she called it out directly, Anke would shut her down. Perhaps she could convince her to read more and get near the truth that way.
“Not to overstep, Anke, but those passages you read painted such an evocative scene—the details, the emotion, your voice. I am your writer, but no one sounds more you than you.” Mari’s voice wobbled, grew strong. Anke watched her closely. She couldn’t back down. “As for your journal—I respect its personal nature. Just to have you read a few more passages—”
“I understand the value of the journal,” Anke snapped.
“Do you? To have a firsthand record of such a profound moment in rock history.”
Anke slammed the journal shut. Fuck.
“You are the groupie. Not me! Obsessing over the Ramblers. This is my story. MINE.”
“I’m not here for the Ramblers, Anke. I’m here for you. No one but you.”
The two women faced off. Mari sat very still. From the outside, it looked like she was doing nothing. But as a little girl, she had learned from interactions with her dad how to soothe, how to communicate to someone lost that they were perfectly safe. Anke was so good at reading people, she seemed to observe Mari’s technique, but she accepted it. Nodded.
“In the time of this writing, I was—how do you say—overwrought? I think it is better not to use the words of a young girl, very far from home. It is better for you to ask questions, for me to tell you how I understand the story, because you know how to build a book the right way.”
Clearly Mari had come on too strong. Thankfully it hadn’t derailed the whole conversation. Better to continue building the trust between them and work back to the secret.
“Well, thank you,” Mari said. “And yes, there’s a way to craft the narration, so the Anke of today is offering perspective on the Anke of yesterday. But please remember, no one would judge your emotionality—as you said, you were young and in a foreign country. You were also vulnerable. Upset. Trying to make sense of painful events with what tools you had.”
“It sounds like the Mari of today offers the perspective, not the Anke.”
“I’m sorry I got carried away. I was thinking about the I Ching again. You saw the future, which must have been scary, but also thrilling. What power to have.”
Anke nodded. But again, she didn’t reveal her I Ching reading. She tucked away the journal beneath a stack of books on the table beside her—clearly she had made up her mind.
“I trust fish and vegetables are good for your lunch?” Anke asked Mari.
Mari felt her anxiety spike, pulled it together by folding her hands on her keyboard.
“Yes, that sounds lovely, thank you,” she said.
“I will go and see how Rosenda and Ody get on with the preparations,” Anke said.
Mari nodded pertly, although she was forlorn. She couldn’t help but feel Anke was trying to escape her, even just for the length of a cigarette. She could have easily texted Ody about the meal. Mari had never had a moment of such high tension with a client. She had been unable to keep her cool and, more importantly, to get the information she needed—that they both needed—to help Anke, to help herself, to write the book that would be a triumph for them both. What if Mari couldn’t ever get the info? What if she failed? She told herself, No. She had never before invaded a client’s privacy. But. Before she could reason herself out of it, she stood and grabbed Anke’s journal, stuffing it deep in her bag. She would read it tonight and find a way to return it in the morning.
Her face was still flushed, her chest pinched with anxiety, when Anke returned to the room five minutes later. Mari forced herself to look up from her computer, as natural as could be. She was relieved when Anke told her they would break for lunch. Seated at the table with Anke and Ody, as they discussed something to do with the house’s gardener, Mari’s most pressing concern was her table manners. And by the time they returned to Anke’s suite, she had regained her poise. Here was the possibility of a mystery solved. A bestseller. The ladder she had seen—to everything. But it must be Anke’s story, not the band’s. She chose her first question with care.
“How did you learn of Mal’s girlfriend?” Mari stopped typing, telegraphing sympathy.
“He moved her into the house,” Anke said. “This was mid-June, after we have been there around two months. The band’s manager tells me of Mal’s new secretary. I was not born a fool.”
“That’s awful. What did you do?”
Anke stared at her for a long moment. Mari flushed, sure Anke could see through her.
“To understand Mal, I believe you have to know the whole story, back to Berlin.”
“Right, of course—Mal changed a great deal in his last summer. But you said when you first met him, he was supercharged, a true artist. Were you a big fan?”
Mari pivoted, glad for the safety of any topic that made Anke share. Anke was right, too. For readers to feel Mal’s betrayal and the black hole of his loss, they would first need to feel his genius and the passion between Anke and Mal. Maybe Anke would get carried away and drop details about her pregnancy. Well, no, Anke wouldn’t get carried away, but all intel had value.
Anke covered the androgyny of ’70s fashion, the crudeness of the term “groupie,” and the cultural legends who had graced the band’s backstage parties. But there was never a chance for Mari to dig deeper. As the light faded, Anke announced it was time for Rimbaud’s walk.
Either Anke’s makeup had faded, or she had pushed herself too hard—dark circles ringed her eyes; her skin was pale. When Anke was recounting the adventures of her youth, her face was so luminous, she appeared young. But now her frailty made her seem older than she was.
Mari felt jittery with nervous energy. She wanted to beg for another twenty minutes during Anke’s walk—but she wouldn’t be forceful again today. She had taken the journal, and she must do everything she could to make sure Anke never suspected her, of this or of any other infraction that could cause her to fall out of favor. Mari bowed and backed out, reminding Anke memories often surfaced between meetings, and she was only a text away.
As soon as Mari found herself alone, she closed the curtains, made the ridiculous move of putting a chair against the door, and pulled out the journal. Her hands were trembling, and she was almost sick with anxiety. This wasn’t her. This was self-serving, like her father. He had emulated the men in Anke’s life, the bad boys of the ’60s, leaving behind his own hurt women. He had given himself to the high-stakes rooms at the casinos. He had failed to pay child support. And he had corrupted his daughters’ values with his gambler’s fever dream. He had left Mari and V with a taste for things they couldn’t afford. Like Anke, they had built lives from what they could hold onto, which had required them to be silent witnesses to the bad behavior of the men in their orbits. Well, maybe all of them, the hurt girls, would finally grow up and have their say.
Mari willed herself to use it, to not be a weakling—not just for herself, but for Anke. For Vivienne. But she couldn’t make herself believe in this justification of betraying Anke for Anke’s own good. She simply couldn’t do it. Mari didn’t even want to hold the contraband item. She again hid the journal away at the bottom of her bag, hoping she hadn’t ruined everything.