While your client has sold a memoir, when faced with writing a book meant to reveal so much of themselves, they are often ambivalent. Unlike a regular memoirist, who craves the opportunity to be discovered, celebrities are already known. Complicating that persona is scary. They want to be someone who is candid and wry and brave, but it is more difficult to be themselves than their persona, and so the whole experience can be fraught. Today, their whim is to write a book with you. Tomorrow, if it gets too hard, that desire could change. You must not let that happen.
As Anke draped her shawl just so, Mari was again transfixed by the sure elegance of her movements. Mari wondered, as she had with other clients, if celebrities were born with this aura, or if it came from being observed and admired. She suspected it was a little of both. She had no bitterness about the special respect given to celebrities in our culture—the truth was, they were different. Most people were imperfect, ugly even, in the banal moments of their day—driving, shopping, holding a fork—but it never grew old, watching someone beautiful at ease.
Mari noticed Rimbaud asleep nearby, but they were absent their other silent companion, Ody. She didn’t mention it, certain Anke would evade her. Mari flipped open her laptop, feeling the pressure of all she must do, choosing an oblique approach.
“Can you remember any assistants besides Sigrid, during your summer in LA?”
“Ack, it was so long behind us,” Anke said. “There was an Andy. She had come from London. The others come and go. Later, in the ’70s, there was a backup singer, Izzy, who became an assistant for many years. The band is loyal. Or afraid, maybe, of new people.”
“Being that famous, it must be hard to trust additions to the entourage.”
Mari thought of Syd’s betrayal, but she didn’t dare to mention his name. Yet.
“Maybe it is about trust, maybe familiarity, maybe laziness,” Anke said. “With everything always changing—the city they play, the women they bed—they crave something the same. Sometimes, to play, they even require it. They can be very superstitious.”
“I interviewed Robert Plant once, and he used to iron before every show.”
Anke gave Mari a haughty look. The only rock stars who mattered were her rock stars.
“Superstitious?” Mari said, as if it had been her first and only response.
“Dante will play with one guitar pick only. For years, the same one. That is why, I think, they keep the same tech, Simon; the same roadies, Joel and Nigel. They stay for years. Loyal or lucky. Simon is a prick, would swagger around like the sixth member of the band. Unplug Mal. Sometimes I think he make his guitar out of tune, to have Mal look bad. Mal would embarrass himself, of course, but it is hard to see him made into a fool. Simon is never reprimanded.”
“I find that surprising, given what a perfectionist Jack is known to be.”
“Simon never is stupid enough to do something like that to Jack. He knew Mal is weak. We all know Mal is weak, damaged, so we try to placate him. But Simon, he targeted Mal.”
“Targeted him how?” Mari asked.
“Always bring a bottle to practice because Mal cannot stop and will be falling down. Maybe sabotage his equipment. I do not know for a fact. I know Mal was a genius musician, but not when Simon was in charge of him. I was not in the band, but sometimes I think you observe more from outside. I see Simon wants to replace Mal. But he underestimates Jack’s vanity. He would not have an employee take the stage beside him. I always wondered that Simon stayed after it did not go his way. But how else would he live?”
Mari bolded Anke’s comments in her notes. That sure sounded like the right setup for what seemed like the most probable sequence of events that night: Mal had ingested his usual epic quantity of drugs, and if there had been any foul play, it had been a pair of hands that had helped him into the pool, held him beneath the water, and made it look like an accident. So, there had to be someone capable of doing such a thing, with the motive to do it. Although if Simon was that intimate with the band, he would have understood Jack as well as Anke had. Unless he had been blinded by his own ambition. Mari knew a thing or two about that.
“Did you ever tell Mal or Dante your suspicions about Simon?” Mari asked.
“Nein, Mal was beyond talking that summer, and then he was gone. And when I am with Dante, we are not looking backwards, only forwards—to our new love, our baby.”
Anke had said “our” baby, which Mari noted before considering the rest of her words. It was a tantalizing premise—Anke might be able to shed more light on the intimate truths of the Ramblers than anyone inside the band. Mari wasn’t sure she believed it, but she didn’t have to in order to use it to the book’s advantage. Silently, Anke leveled her steady gaze at Mari.
“They were all so young,” Mari said. “It must be a shock, especially for someone like Mal, to suddenly have so many people working for you, depending on you for their livelihood.”
“Ja, and Los Angeles was a strange time. Not everyone came over from England. They thought they were careful about who was close to them, but their judgment was not always good. There were hippie kids that drift around like tumbleweeds, attach themselves to the band.”
“Like Syd?”
“Ja, like the driver, Syd. I hated him. He always get money from Mal to buy the drugs. He always do too many drugs, encourage Mal to do so as well. A few weeks before he died, I find Mal, asleep, choking on his sick. Syd was fired, but he kept coming around. Mal shielded him. I think it must be a relief to be near someone more fucked than you. After Mal died, Syd tried to talk to me, but I could not look at him. Dante made him go. It felt good, finally.”
“I’m sorry,” Mari said. “That sounds horrible and upsetting, to have someone use Mal like that. Do you remember anything else about Syd?”
“Nein, he drift about, work for a place to stay, for drugs, for a little pocket money.”
“You clearly didn’t trust him, but his book must have been a shock, a betrayal of the deepest kind. He was allowed to witness the band’s most intimate moments, Mal’s unraveling.”
“Ja, the book,” Anke said, her voice flat. Mari was surprised by her lack of emotion. Anke seemed like the loyal type who would have felt justified in having Syd’s head on a spike.
“Did the band know about it in advance? I’m shocked their lawyers couldn’t stop it.”
“It is more complicated than that.”
“I’m sure,” Mari said. “Major stadium rock acts are like small cities—they have economies and weather patterns all their own.”
“Ja, but back when Mal die, the band was more of a family still. It wasn’t such a machine. I saw that start in the ’70s.”
Mari didn’t want to talk about the ’70s yet. Yes, Anke’s relationship with Jack would also earn several chapters in the book, but they were teetering on the real crux of the story. And Anke was dodging her somehow—she could feel it—but she still didn’t know why. If only her copy of Syd’s book were here. She wondered at the chances of Anke possessing this detested item.
Anke had begun rewrapping her cashmere shawl, as if she was on the verge of standing. Mari threw herself back into the conversation before she lost her.
“Who else was close to Mal? Did he have an assistant before Sigrid?”
“They all quit. By then, the drugs had been harder, more street.”
“Was Mal different on harder drugs? Was he different in the weeks before his death?”
“Mal was different. Maybe because of the drugs. Maybe because of fame. Maybe because of his own dark cloud. He was a terror. No care for anything—except music. He always loved music the most. By that summer, he crossed over already, in some primal way.”
Anke had confirmed the rumors of Mal’s violence. Was it possible Anke had acted in self-defense, and that’s why she didn’t want to come out too strongly against Syd’s book?
“He became violent,” Mari said.
“He is always violent. He started—”
Mari watched Anke come to be, if possible, even more beautiful. It was the ultimate shield—an exterior so pleasing it turned the observer back from digging deeper. Anke lined up her bangles, all the stones in a row.
“He’d started to be mean,” Mari used Anke’s word, coaxing her to continue. Her mind flipped through their conversations, as if she were skimming the book, already written. In Anke’s journal entry, she had been pregnant, and she had been with Mal. Yet now she seemed to be sticking to the official record: Dante was Ody’s father. Mari wasn’t so sure, and this was her chance to possibly be certain. Mari repeated a phrase from Anke’s reading: “‘Specks of blood like flakes of fresh red snow.’ That’s how you described it in your journal when Mal pushed you.”
“Ja,” Anke said.
Mari was so close. She tuned up her senses, reading Anke’s voice and body language, finding fear, even after all these years. She leaned forward, just slightly, radiating warmth.
“When he pushed you, Mal was angrier than normal—out of his mind,” Mari said. “Something had set him off—he knew that…”
Anke surprised Mari by stepping into the silence.
“Ja, there was no more placating him. That’s why—how come I—”
Mari used all her self-control not to cross further into Anke’s space and possibly spook her. But Anke backed away from confession anyhow. Sat wearing her pretty face as a shield.
“You had no choice. Anke, I heard what you wrote in your journal. I already know.”
“There is always a choice. The question is who you make your choice for, and why.”
“Ody, who is known as Dante’s son.”
“When my son was born, he came early, in March of 1970—he is a Pisces, of course—I was with Dante,” Anke said. “In July of 1969, I am making a choice.”
Anke reached for her cigarettes. Mari felt sorry for Anke, who had not been able to hide the vulnerability or guilt in her voice. This was it, maybe—not the official record, but the truth.
“You’ve said how out of it Mal was by then. Something shifted in June. Maybe with the heavy drugs, it was like he had already died?” Mari wove statements in with her questions, normalizing their conversation, modeling for Anke there was no reason for shame or fear.
“Not dead—when he was dead, it is bad to say, I should not say, but it was a relief. We were safe, then. We breathe the sigh. Before, he was like the undead. Like in old movies, walking through glass, hungry, always hungry, never satiated, a big set of hungry, wet teeth.”
As she did for hours every day, Mari kept her eyes on Anke while her fingers sprinted over the keys, recording her shorthand notes. She glanced down long enough to turn on the bold function, so she could easily find the place where Anke admitted she was glad Mal was dead. But that was as much excitement as she allowed herself in the room, hoping her lack of reaction would normalize Anke’s confession and draw her out to admit more.
“How terrifying. What did he do when he was angry?”
Anke leaned in closer. “I don’t feel good talking bad about Mal. I am no angel. I make mistakes. And I will show that. But I lived long enough to write the history in my book. I think I must be careful how I use this power.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mari said. “But there is a way to be fair. Just tell the truth of what happened, and let the reader make their own assessment. Don’t call Mal a drug addict. Show how drugs ruined this magic artist you had fallen in love with. Don’t pretend you were an angel—no one would believe your book if you did—but be vulnerable enough to give the reader the context for your actions, to explain your choices, to absolve you.”
“You believe this is possible?”
“I have seen the power of the written word again and again. Dare to confess and the reader will dare to forgive you.”
Anke nodded. It was rare for her to acknowledge Mari had landed a point, but when she picked up her narrative, she did as Mari had suggested and led with Mal.
“To be alone with him, it was terrible. But to avoid him made him worse. To prove the point, he was stronger.”
“None of his bandmates, or management, did anything?”
“He was the band. He had the look. He gave them their name. Do you know how much that is worth, even back then? His songs from that year were not so good. But he wrote their first two dozen hits, signed their publishing. Up until then, it all went through him. Jack hated it, but still, they were trapped. And here he was, losing his mind. It was a nightmare. Do you see?”
“I think so,” Mari said, even though she knew what she understood was just one pixel in the whole complex picture. “Financially, the band was stuck with Mal.”
“Ja. No one wants to push Mal, so no matter what he does, they speak softly to him, try to make it okay. They all say, when he went dark, I was the one who could reach him. As little as I could. So, there I was, the girl in the labyrinth with the Minotaur, until I felt like I could not stand another night of his raving, lunatic self-destruction. And then, his new girl. If I am no longer the girl who can reach him, what am I? I am in danger of becoming nothing.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that. And so young. That sounds impossible.”
“Danke.”
Mari had learned to take that breath to empathize, to sit in the pain with her clients.
“He was fucked in his mind. His soul. Everywhere. He did not take the news well.”
Anke gave Mari a pointed look, then grew silent, leaving her writer to interpret what “news” she meant. Mari stared back at her, enraptured not by her beauty, but by how real she seemed. She had lived in the world in a way Mari never had—without the filter of a book, a computer, a glass of wine, a certain ironic detachment. There were faint lines around Anke’s dark eyes. She looked tired. She had earned it. She had loved. Married. Birthed a son. Seen the world. Inspired how many songs? Been a player in one of the great dramas in pop culture.
Sure, Mari envied Anke, but Mari knew things, too—how legacies were made. She not only needed to help Anke, in order to help herself, but she was moved to help Anke. She had been since she’d first noticed how Anke had only told stories peopled by famous men. Mari wanted to give her more than proximity—to give her a voice, a whole self, especially in her final chapter. If there was a buried secret that would be bad for Anke, she would help with that, too.
“On the drive out to Palm Springs, you cried. Was that for Mal?”
“For Mal, for me, for us, for how young we were, for how it could have gone.”
“With Mal?”
“With everything. The truth is, Dante and I were in love when he first brought me to the desert, the summer of 1969. He had fallen under the spell of Joshua Tree. We went there first. Then spent a week in a bungalow in Palm Springs. That is where Elvis, JFK, everyone went to feed their secrets. In the desert, everyone indulges. No one tells.”
Mari hesitated, unsure what in these old tales had made Anke cry other than Mal’s death, which, dark as it was, Anke had admitted was something of a relief. When Anke had gotten too close to her feelings, she had left the car. She had danced around Mari’s questions for days. Mari had finally broken through, at least a little. How? By being steady and receptive, by not pushing too hard, by letting Anke come to her. Mari phrased her next statement carefully.
“In 1969, you were still with Mal,” Mari said. “Mal was still in the Ramblers.”
“That is the truth, too,” Anke said. “This was August, soon after Mal died. Dante and I both needed to get away. It was a bad few months. That spring, Mal went dark. You can see it in photos. Look beneath his beauty. His eyes are tarnished. They no longer reflect the light. He had no more light within him. I think he was evil. I do. Well, he was not evil, really. He was a sweet, sensitive boy. But he have bad influences—drugs, lies, Syd—he betray me again and again.”
“It was painful for you. You loved him.”
“It was painful. He hurt me. He was kicking at whatever came near him. I was there. He didn’t see the damage he did. Or didn’t care. He was far gone. Yet we hoped to save him.”
“Dante was a knight on a white horse.”
“Dante was a court jester. He made me laugh. It is a remarkable thing, to laugh when you haven’t in a very long time. It is better than sex.”
“Yes,” Mari said. The absence of laughter was a kind of rot, along with poverty, along with loneliness.
“Did Dante know you were pregnant?”
“When I wanted him to know.”
“And Mal?”
Anke looked around, but there was no tea to be made, no assistant to order about.
“You can stop protecting him,” Mari said.
“Maybe I am protecting myself. Maybe I am protecting—”
“If you tell me, we can write it so everyone understands. If you don’t, you will always be at the mercy of stories written by Syd, by other people. It’s time for your story to be known.”
“I want for my story to be told, for this book to be written. I do.”
“Wonderful, that’s all you need—to choose it. And to be honest. I can do the rest. I am here to help you, Anke. What did Mal do?”
Anke winced, but she didn’t look away. “He kicked me.”
Staring at Mari, Anke held completely still. Mari mirrored her, willing her to continue.
“But he was stoned. He missed. I worried about the evil, but I thought I could cure it. With love. We all pour so much love into Mal, no matter what he did. A week later, he informed me one of his new girlfriends, a cow-faced girl named Nancy, was pregnant. She was sixteen. He must take care of her, their baby, so they will get married. And like Houdini, he will be gone.”
Anke lit her cigarette on a scented candle and stood. She leaned on her cane with gratitude. Mari hated seeing Anke this way, like witnessing a prize fighter wince as his ribs get taped in the locker room. But this was the real truth of Anke today, even if it would never make the book. The privilege of being allowed to view it, trusted not to reveal it, was the unspoken gift and responsibility of Mari’s job. Anke opened the slider into the garden. As soon as she took her first drag, Mari exhaled. Fuck. It was common knowledge Mal had gotten a new girlfriend, Nancy, pregnant just before his death, but it had seemed less nasty, even had a flair of the Prince Charming, when he’d announced his intention to do right by this young girl. And then it had taken on the trappings of the tragic when he died—maybe even was murdered—just days later. But only because no one knew Anke was already pregnant with Mal’s child.
Mari felt her way into Anke’s life at that time, uncovered a surprise.
“It must have been a relief to have Mal put his attentions elsewhere,” she said.
“It was embarrassing. I admit my pride took a blow. But, ja, you are correct. It was a relief. Being left by Mal I could live with. But losing the band—it was impossible. For me, they were realer than a backstage pass, or a bond forged in bed. They were my family.”
“You were relieved, but you were vulnerable. You had to do something.”
“Ja. We all stay in our house in Hollywood. Nancy, too. The band was practicing for their big show—their free concert at the Hollywood Bowl. There was tension, more than that—cracks like the cleavage that ruins a diamond. But you see, there were these papers that had been signed, for the publishing, the trademark. They were businessmen as much as artists. Even Mal. So, they would press on, pretend all was well. Anke does not do pretend.”
Mari didn’t move, she barely breathed, her eyes locked on Anke.
“It was the eve of the Bowl show. I knew after, everything will change. It was like a love triangle—Jack, Dante, Mal—and Mal was the past. Dante was the future. I have noticed how Dante looks at me, have felt the love there. I see a path forward for our future, but to take it, I have to act. I told Mal we need to talk. Even he feared he would appear too hateful, so he agreed. Now he will try to placate me, I suppose. I invited him to my room for tea, our ritual. I would bring the same teapot with us, on tour, nestled in my lingerie in my suitcase. So, he drank it.”
She leaned her back against the door frame, brooding, smoking, silent.
Mari waited. She waited some more.
“What was in the tea?” Mari kept her voice steady, not allowing any emotion to creep in, a technique she had mastered in childhood, for after her father had gone on a bender, and she’d had to talk to him like a bad dog. She was ecstatic and terrified—not just that this new revelation might make Anke’s book, but also that she was somehow going to squander the connection. After all, she had been able to talk to her dad, but what had it gotten her?
“A special blend of rose hip and cinnamon I made myself,” Anke finally said.
“And what else?”
“Mal took his tea with loads of milk and sugar, like a little boy.”
“And what else?”
Anke sucked down the final drag of her cigarette, stubbed it out. Anke’s pause grew so long, Mari’s skin began to tingle. Part of her wanted to walk out of Anke’s room, out the front door, and keep going. Anke hadn’t confessed to anything yet, certainly not to murder, but her loaded silence said more than if she’d continued. Mari had been in plenty of uncomfortable conversations with clients, but nothing this heavy. Surely this was above and beyond what it was reasonable to expect of her, armed with her journalism degree and her self-help vocabulary.
And yet she’d had a sometimes self-destructive tenacity hardwired into her in childhood. And she was fucked if she lost this job. This was her path forward. Like Anke, she must act. Standing, Mari grabbed her recorder and shook two cigarettes from Anke’s pack. She lit them as Anke had. As Anke moved aside for her, Mari took a shaky inhale, let her exhale follow Anke’s.
“Sometimes you have to say something out loud, to know if it’s true,” Mari said.
They stood side by side, smoking. She felt alive, as if everything tasted, smelled, felt a little deeper. But Anke had apparently used her few moments alone at the door to pull herself together, and she was no longer back in her bedroom with Mal and the tea. Her voice changed, took on the casual tone of a story she had told many times before, even just in her own head.
“Mal will fall asleep, wake up the day of the show, having missed yet another practice, and be unable to play, disgraced with the band. Dante will play his solos. That is all I know.”
“But there was your I Ching reading—” Mari said. “Did Mal know?”
Anke hesitated. Finally, she shook her head, as if settling an internal debate.
“No, I never tell him. How could I? Together, the coins make the hexagram K’un. Oppression. Exhaustion. First, is Tui, the joyous, lake. But then, below, is K’an. The abysmal, water. That was always the trigram for Mal. In that formation, ‘the lake is above, the water below; the lake is empty, dried up.’ Confucius himself sees a bad ending here: ‘For him who is in disgrace and danger, the hour of death draws near. How can he still see his wife?’ This man, Mal, cannot master the oppression. And he did not. After that, nothing was good for a time.”
“Oh, Anke.” Unsure what else to say, Mari tried to layer these two words with enough nuance to make Anke feel supported. It was even darker than she’d expected. She hesitated, trying to figure out what Anke needed. “You were upset by the reading. Did you believe it?”
“Ja und nein.”
Mari doubted Anke could be led to such vulnerability again, at least not right now, but it was her last day in Palm Springs, and they didn’t yet have any future meetings booked. After today, Mari was expected to be ready to write. Mari would ask questions until her time ran out.
“How often did you do readings?”
“During that summer, every day, sometimes multiple times a day,” Anke said. “Everything was at stake, and I was scared by the choices I must make.”
“Did you ever get that reading again?”
“Nein,” Anke said. “But once is enough.”
“Did you ever do a reading about what happened to Mal?”
“‘The hour of death’ happened to Mal.”
“Yes, of course,” Mari said. “What happened to you, though? How did the legend start?”
“The next year, after Mal dies, I am interviewed for a book. This was after Ody was born. I stayed clean while I was pregnant, but after, it was a free-for-all. I don’t know what I said to this writer. Dante was furious. Sued him for slander. But he was only quoting my words that he had on tape. That is how the legend started, I predict it, even though the I Ching is a subtler art.”
“I’m sorry that writer took advantage of you when you were unwell,” Mari said. “That’s why your book is so important. It’s a chance for you to set the record straight, once and for all.”
“Maybe I don’t care about this record, or what people think.”
“I don’t believe that. And I know you care about your son. What happened next?”
“Syd returned from the rehearsal space, and he came for Mal. I stay in my bed, crying.”
“To bring him to practice?”
“Syd didn’t care about that. To drink rum and smoke hash Syd buy with Mal’s money.”
“There were huge quantities of both in his blood when he died—maybe deadly amounts.”
“But hash was food. Rum was water. Mal takes it all day long, from breakfast to bedtime. To give him hash, or rum, was no sin.”
Mari grew flustered, wondering if the “sin” was what Anke had put in his tea, but hid it.
“So, according to your recollections of that night, Syd was the last person to see Mal. But that’s not what he says in his book. Did anyone try to talk to him—the police, management?”
“He disappeared, after Dante send him away.”
“That’s suspicious. Do you think he wrote the book to get even for being made to leave?”
“Perhaps,” Anke said.
“People were always around in that house,” Mari said. “What did the others say?”
“At midnight, Syd has to go back to the rehearsal space to pick up the band after practice. But they want to go to a bar, so that is Syd’s alibi. Mal goes for a swim. And—”
“The bar must have been the band’s alibi, too?”
“Syd says he passed out in the car, waiting for the band, and woke up back at the house.”
“So either he drove blacked out, or someone took the car back to the house—and Mal.”
“Syd lies for profit. Syd lies for fun. I would not pay too much mind to Syd.”
Mari raced through the possibilities. She was no police detective, and Anke had not come out and confessed to a crime, but she did seem to feel guilty about her actions. And she seemed to have taken pains to not pin Mal’s death on Syd, which would have been the safest bet, since he was dead and his book out of print. The inclusion of this story about the tea in Anke’s memoir would add a new narrative to the already suspicious events surrounding the night of Mal’s death. This would undoubtedly make the book a runaway hit. But Anke didn’t seem motivated by a desire for a bestseller in the same way other clients had been, even though Ody had invoked this need when he’d originally declined to hire Mari. Anke seemed driven by a deeper urge. The thought gave Mari pause. She was on the verge of her first official bestseller, and it would change her life—a change she desperately needed. But at what cost to Anke? Could Mari live with building her triumph on the downfall of someone she admired so much? And what if Syd hadn’t been lying and someone else had gone back to the house that night and killed Mal?
What Anke had told her was probably enough to satiate their editor, the publisher, the readers. But in case it wasn’t, Mari needed to avoid scaring Anke off so she could revisit this topic. She would not push, then, only soothe. And when she was back in LA, she would read Syd’s book and dig deeper. If she had understood what Anke was implying, there was more to be uncovered. Mari wouldn’t again be sold a version of events that could easily be verified as untrue. And she wouldn’t let Anke expose herself unless she was sure the tea was all there was to the story, no matter what substance Anke might have slipped into it. Her eyes were drawn up by Anke’s gaze. Mari wanted to give her something.
“Finally, you were free,” Mari said, her voice kind.
“I am free, but at what cost? What have I done? I am despondent. Dante felt the same. He and Mal had come to blows. Dante is a proud man. He tried to be cool but despised the chain that bound them. Maybe Jack did as well. Jack hides it better. Dante felt he’d willed the death of Mal. We fell together. When I inform him about the baby, we are not just two, we are three. A family.”
What, exactly, had Anke done? Or Dante, for that matter? Or Jack, even, as long as she was looking for band members with motive? Mari was queasy, and she felt relieved when Anke handed her an abalone-shell ashtray. As they returned to the couch, it felt like hours had passed.
“How did Dante respond to the news?”
“Dante was over the moon. As young as we are, he always loved kids and wanted a brood. He stepped up. I traded up. Mal had been falling apart, on his way out. Dante’s star was rising, along with the band’s. The sudden tragedy seems to galvanize their fans. Their free show was a happening. Their records go platinum. We make it to the other side.”
Mari wanted to ask about Mal’s publishing deal, and what had happened to the band’s profits after his death, but it seemed gauche after such emotional topics.
“You made it. But…”
“Mal’s ghost haunted me. I see him drinking tea—my tea. In my dreams. Behind my eyes, every time I blinked them closed. My whole world is a guilty conscience.”
“You struggled with heroin. You attempted suicide.”
“Ja. I am ashamed, but I take everything. I suppose I went mad. My son is beautiful, perfect. But I was afraid of him. I could not get out of bed. Dante did not know how bad it was. He was a doting papa. He woke up with the baby at night, fed him with a bottle, sang to him. I stared at the wall. Shot up in the bath. Until Jack took over. As the band’s front man, he was the leader now—he will lead us all. He decided Dante cannot handle me. I suppose he is correct. Jack took me over. For Dante’s good, really. But for my own good, too, or so we all thought.”
“So you all thought—until…”
“Jack tried to turn me respectable. Rock ’n’ roll is pure energy, freedom, but the life of a band on the road is monotony, backstage ass-kissing. The heroin made me sloppy, which Jack could not abide. If I stayed with Dante, it would not be so baroque. He was more of a free spirit, without shame, but Jack, he was of the society folk, the celebrities. I felt my smile was so fake it would break me in two. I enlist Sigrid, who I made Jack hire after Mal fire her. She books our travel, so she buys me a secret ticket. I fled Jack, took Ody home to Berlin to live clean. Fritz—my first love—would not see me. But then we spend time together. He built me a sailboat, where we lived. We travel the world, for ten perfect years. Then he drowned. My curse, it seems.”
Mari was surprised to find tears pressing against the backs of her eyelids. This was more than being spellbound by Anke’s aura. She cared about telling her story, for better or worse. Mari cleared her throat, trying to compose herself, unsure for once where to go next.
“You think I am a terrible person,” Anke said.
This surprised Mari more than anything Anke had said. She knew Fritz had been alone on the boat when he fell overboard, and Anke had never been suspected. Usually elegant and languid, Anke looked scribbled and hunched. Mari was glad to be able to help her. It was complicated, though. Anke didn’t want to be a good person. She wanted something trickier.
“I think you’re a visionary,” Mari said. “Mal was about to go over the edge. You saw a path forward where no one else would. You were young, not yet in full control of your powers.”
“Now. My bed is empty. I focus on my jewelry. My yoga. My dog. My son is a grown man. He is kind enough to help me, but he is also a talented guitarist and songwriter, like his papa. He has his own career, and he can release music and tour the world whenever he chooses. I have made a life for myself, on my own. I want to write that story.”
“Yes, and you will,” Mari said, smiling, telegraphing her acceptance of Anke’s boundaries. She felt high, ecstatic. She would have to sort the details, of course. Figure out if she could push Anke further on what, if anything, she knew of the actual moment of Mal’s death. And she couldn’t relax, not until she had completed this weekend. But she was so close. She was going to succeed—she could feel it—and with the book she cared about more than any other.
Anke nodded. Mari had passed. She wanted to grin, hug Anke, run around the house with a victory sign held aloft. But now was the most critical moment. Her clients sometimes felt safe enough to tell her their deepest, blackest truths, and then resented her for knowing them. She couldn’t let that happen with Anke because she needed these secrets for her own survival. She was exhausted. Listening hard, and filling in the gaps as she had, was like hunting with her bare hands. But she acted refreshed, as if they’d spent the day bonding at the spa. Closed her laptop.
Anke was silent. Mari surveyed the story, looking for loose ends. It came to her: Ody.
“You have always put your son first,” Mari said. She knew others might disagree, point to Anke’s drug use. She had seen her own father ruined by gambling, knew it was not a choice.
“I will always protect him, but I will not always be here to do so.”
Mari sensed a thread. Hesitated. Pitched her voice as gentle as it would go.
“Anke?”
“It is a cancer of the blood. I will live to see the book published. But not much beyond.”
“Oh, Anke.” Mari knew Anke would not forgive her if she cried. So, she did not.
“And then Ody will be—does he know who his father is?”
“Odin knows Dante is his father. That is all he should ever know.”
“Dante is Ody’s father, then,” Mari said. She would not take another father from him, especially not now. She couldn’t believe she would lose Anke. They would all lose Anke.
“How will you write it, so the reader sees?”
“There are ways,” Mari said. She pulled it together. She would do this for Anke. A lifetime was seventy years. A legacy was forever. Finally, she knew just what she had to do.