You try to spend as much time as you can, not only with your clients, but also with your recordings of your interviews, even when you are making use of a transcription service. It helps to listen repeatedly on your own, to hear their inflections, their pauses, the way they lean into a question—or don’t. You are listening for their particular tics and resonances, for any detail you missed during the conversation, which can lead to the crucial question that will unlock them.
Mari hadn’t meant to pull an all-nighter, but the spirit had moved her. She had managed to work through her sister’s rowdy return from her weekend in Malibu with the producer, and through V’s tipsy decision to do her trusty old Tracy Anderson workout, before she finally drifted off, as she always did, to classic episodes of Full House. When the condo had finally grown quiet, Mari realized her only hope of focusing enough to nail Anke’s sample material was to write while Vivienne was sleeping. So, she worked until dawn, but she wasn’t quite done.
Her knees creaked as she stood. She was in need of, well, a lot of things—but she settled for a strong cup of Earl Grey. While she boiled water, she stared into the empty fridge. As she closed the door, her eye caught on a postcard from Harrah’s Atlantic City. Already stung, she flipped it over: “Hey Tigger, enjoy that Cali sunshine and always put your money on black. Love, Dad.” Pushing down her feelings, Mari tackled the sink of gunky glasses—her sister never seemed to eat but consumed varied health drinks throughout the day. The clean citrus scent was an escape from the linear confines of her computer, which molded her ideas into neat rows. Mari had been writing the story of Anke’s early romance with Mal. The specter of his death, and Anke’s insinuation about a secret related to it, loomed just off the page. Now that Mari had almost completed a rough draft of the sample, she had a little breathing room to dig, hoping if she brought evidence to Anke, it would compel her to dare to say more. As Mari ran her mind over the events of that haunted summer in LA, looking for anything suspicious, she heard a gale of rough, handsome laughter. Who in this sad, dark tale had found a reason to laugh?
Dante. His name floated up, like a text message from Mari’s subconscious. Where had he been on the night Mal died? At band practice, at least some of the time. Had he known what Anke put in Mal’s tea, and if so, had he been involved? He and Mal had come to blows—Anke had said so herself. She and Dante had gotten together immediately after Mal’s death, becoming devoted parents to a son he adored. Anke had implied that he’d harbored feelings for her before Mal’s passing. The questions arose in Mari’s mind: Was Anke protecting Dante, and if so, what was she hiding, and at what potential cost to herself? Every character in this drama seemed to be a plausible suspect. It all came down to the truth of that night. The book needed it. Mari needed it.
With a fresh cup of tea, Mari returned to her desk. After the forced focus of trying to wrestle her inelegant rough draft into something with style and substance, she welcomed the delicious mental slackening of Google. She wasn’t sure what she was seeking—interviews with Dante, she supposed, about the night of Mal’s death, Anke, their son.
The band was so beloved, every moment of its fifty-five-year-history had been catalogued on the web. Before Mari knew it, several hours had passed. She washed up on Dante’s “personal” Twitter feed. The most recent post was from last week: a short video of his still gorgeous, still modeling third wife chasing a chicken at one of their weekend homes. Through a halo of smoke, he gave arch commentary. He seemed happy and at ease, and why shouldn’t he be? He was at the top of the world, and he had been for half a century. Something nagged at Mari—the landscape looked familiar. She noticed the hashtag: #jt. Joshua Tree. Less than fifty miles from where Anke had stayed behind in Palm Springs. The fact that they’d both been in the desert was probably a coincidence. But somehow the revelation made the story of Anke’s book feel even closer, reminded Mari it was still unfolding. She had just hit play again when Vivienne staggered out of the bedroom in a silk nightgown, her hair done up in actual rollers. Anytime Mari was tempted to feel jealous of V’s beauty, she reminded herself of the constant labor it required. V leaned over Mari’s shoulder, never conscious of personal space.
“Ah, Dante Ashcombe, too bad you didn’t get hired to write his book,” V said.
“What book?” Mari asked.
“Everyone was talking about it at the party this weekend. It’s a big deal because he’s the first Rambler to do one.”
“Huh,” Mari said, not wanting to let on how worried she was. “I made a pot of tea.”
Mari clicked tweet after tweet. She found herself a week back, in mid-January, the day she’d gone to Palm Springs. The link opened to a press release from one of the biggest NYC publishers, and trumpeted Dante’s memoir. Due to drop in six months, right before Anke’s.
She toggled over to Amazon and found Dante grinning from his jacket cover, displayed on the title’s dedicated page, along with a pub date in June. How had she not known this?
“I’d tap that,” V said.
“Ugh, please,” Mari said. “He’s Dad’s age.”
“Well, at least you’ll get a lot of press for Anke’s book. People love a he-said, she-said.”
Anke didn’t seem to be aware of Dante’s memoir, or the impact it would have on hers. There was no question he would have a runaway bestseller, and Anke could benefit from the massive burst of publicity. But even if Anke couldn’t see it that way (of course Anke was too proud to want to see it that way), it meant she really had to tell the truth.
Vivienne came out of the kitchen. Shaking up her first health drink of the day—it was always green and sometimes contained vodka—she flopped down too close to Mari.
“This is juicy. What if Dante’s book has, like, a different story than Anke’s?”
And what if Anke’s book wasn’t a bestseller, through no fault of Mari’s, after all Mari had promised Anke—and their publisher?
“This is my bedroom, V,” Mari said, trying to scoot away from her.
“In my house,” V said. “Wanna go shopping? Skip gave me a Fred Segal gift card.”
“Everything okay?” Mari asked. She tried not to put too much energy into following V’s romantic adventures, because it truly was enough fodder for its own reality show, but she had noticed that V often received an expensive gift or trip right before being cut loose.
“Yeah, why?” V’s voice had a little-girl quality that wasn’t put on. It made Mari sad.
“No reason,” Mari said. “That’s so generous of him. He must really like you.”
“What’s not to like?” V vamped, rebounding as she always did. She cued up Tracy Anderson—it seemed to level her out; maybe it was her way of feeling like she was doing everything she could to succeed, no matter how long the odds. Mari didn’t like seeing their similarities, but for once it made her soften toward V. She gave her sister a sideways hug.
“Can I make a call in your bedroom?”
“Have at it,” V said. She had stripped and was putting on her workout clothes.
It was seven in the morning; Ezra would be arriving at his New York office. Mari sent the link to Dante’s press release, asking for his help. Then she brought a fresh cup of tea into V’s room and closed the door, trying to see all the angles.
Thirty minutes later, she heard the telltale chime of an incoming email. Her agent had snaked a copy of Dante’s book proposal, which he’d attached. His message read: “Call me.”
As Mari dialed his office, she was skimming the attached doc with growing alarm. Given Dante’s fifty-plus years as a rock hero, his three marriages to stunning, accomplished women, his five children, his homes in four countries, his chart-topping duets with every guitar god from Chuck Berry to Jack White—and given the proposal was thirty pages, including a chapter outline, a marketing plan, and a comps list of recent best-selling memoirs by other old-school rockers—an alarming percentage of the material was about Anke. More specifically, it was about that troubled summer in Los Angeles. Its sample chapter was set at the band’s house, the night Mal died, lingering on the damning revelation that the only people not at the practice space all night had been Anke, Syd, and Nancy, who’d been laid up in bed with vicious nausea since she’d become pregnant. Dante’s description of the band’s LA driver wasn’t any more flattering than Anke’s had been, but he also stated Syd had been away from the house for several hours, ferrying the band to and from practice and running errands for them in between. His description of Mal was even grimmer than Anke’s, but instead of being gone on drugs, he seemed energized with evil intent, exposing himself at dinner when their manager suggested he lay off the wine. Dante had gone into vivid detail about how Mal had screamed at Anke outside the restaurant, before telling the others to piss off—unlike them, he didn’t need to practice—and bounding into the limo, which had run him home before returning to take them to rehearsal.
Dante, or someone in his camp, was quite clear on the dirt that needed digging, for maximum sales. Unlike Anke, who had danced around this painful season of her life for days, before she’d been coaxed to almost confess to manslaughter, Dante seemed downright chatty.
But it had been like he and Anke were describing two different men. So, who was accurate when it came to Mal’s state of mind and his drug tolerance at the end of his life?
Mari needed a tiebreaker, but not another member of the band’s entourage with a subjective perspective. She needed an expert who could give her an informed opinion. She thought back to her past clients. There had been a sweet former porn star who’d done a stint on a celebrity rehab show, hosted by an addiction specialist. Mari had talked to him a few times, as her client’s memories of treatment had been garbled. He had seemed down to earth and fair-minded for a TV doctor. She looked up his number as her agent’s assistant put her through.
“You okay, dude?” Ezra asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t already know about Dante’s book.”
She was embarrassed to tell him the truth, but she knew it was her best hope of salvaging this high-stakes mess: “Well, Dante’s proposal has more vivid details in it about Mal’s death than Anke has told me—this from someone who wasn’t even at the house for most of that night. I’ve only slept a few hours in the past three days, and I can’t seem to finish Anke’s sample.”
“Ugh, I’m sorry. But the sample is always the trickiest part, right?”
“Yes.” Mari sighed. It was one of the most exhausting aspects of her job—having to be okay with doing her best work, having it torn apart, again and again, until she finally broke through.
“Remember, Anke threatened to walk if she couldn’t have you. And you’ve already spent days with her. No one wants to replace you at this stage. It’s expensive. Disruptive. You’ll nail it. I know you will. I don’t want to add to your stress, but that’s the least of your worries.”
“Dante’s proposal?”
“Yeah, that proposal was an exclusive submission,” he said. “It’s not something that went out to everyone in New York, which is why I hadn’t heard about it until now. I had some leverage, but it’s super top secret.”
“Am I right it’s bad news for Anke?”
“Could be,” he said. “With both books coming out in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of Mal’s death, his version of the story is going to be considered the official record. And his book will undoubtedly bring more attention to her book, which will backfire on her if she contradicts what he writes. Controversy will drive sales, but her reputation could suffer. And if she gets caught in an outright lie, her publisher could be pressured to pull the book.”
Mari felt the borders of her vision go black like in an antique photo. Her breath grew shallow. She was mortified, as if the worst had already happened. And she was scared. Mari’s eyes stung with exhaustion and tears, but she wasn’t going to cry on a business call, even with her agent. She pictured the flowers Dante had sent Anke, celebrating her book deal. Given this thoughtful gesture, and the son they shared, she couldn’t imagine him wanting to harm Anke. Yet he seemed indifferent to the damage his book might cause her. At the same time, Anke was ambivalent about her own memoir, and she didn’t seem in any hurry to be transparent, with Mari or her readers. Still, Mari wasn’t about to go down that easily. Not when she was this close to breaking through, and when the alternative was—what? Mari looked around at the tacky nouveau riche room and her sister’s belongings, also held in a single suitcase. There was no alternative.
Mari had been thinking about trying to push to see Anke ASAP. But she had to be bolder.
“I need to do some outside research, maybe even talk to Dante,” Mari said.
“Hm,” Ezra said. It was daring, especially so early in the project. “Will Anke go for it?”
“No, but if I can find out what we need for her book, she can’t help but be happy.”
“Outside interviews do happen all the time. But that sounds risky.”
“I know.”
Mari had never attempted anything so aggressive. But she had never been this close to her first international bestseller. Or to the end of her career, if she couldn’t deliver this book.
Anke was so sure she had them in her thrall. Even after all she had lived, she was naive. Dante was looking out for himself and his own bestseller—and why shouldn’t he be?
“Everything with Anke goes through Ody, her son. Dante’s son. What if I ask him?”
“Maybe. It’s not like we can have both teams sit down and agree to what’s going to be in the books. Acting like it’s no big deal, and you’re just doing research, could be the best option.”
Mari read out loud as she texted Ody, not overthinking it, putting herself in the liminal space where she always seemed to know the right words: “‘Ody, am lining up a few outside interviews for A’s book. Totally standard. Can you please put me in touch with Dante’s assistant?’”
“You’re absolutely sure about this?” Ezra asked.
“I’m sure there’s something she’s not telling me. And it could sink her book, our book.”
“Ah, all right, dude, send it.”
“He just wrote back: ‘Anke is indisposed and cannot be bothered. Don’t make me regret this.’ He shared the contact info for Izzy. Anke mentioned her. She’s one of the band assistants.”
“‘Indisposed’?” Ezra said. “That’s not code for vodka, like last time, is it?”
Mari was surprised by the rock dropped on her heart at the thought of Anke’s illness, her death. She knew she should probably tell her agent. But she respected Anke’s dignity too much.
“She’s really serious about her yoga.”
In the celebrity world, that was explanation enough. So, Mari had her next step. After they hung up, Mari felt the vertigo of self-doubt. But she knew she could see the whole picture, at least when it came to the two books, in ways Dante and Anke couldn’t. Yes, Mari had been replaced on her last book—maybe because she had failed so spectacularly, maybe as punishment. Either way, Mari had failed. She wouldn’t fail again.
Before Mari could lose her nerve, she emailed Dante’s proposal to Anke, without a message. Calls were verboten unless scheduled. Texts had to be planned, so as to not disturb. Emails could be (and often were) ignored—or dealt with when time and spirit allowed. Every move was tactical. Then Mari opened a second email, typed out a short, bright message, said a silent prayer, and hit send.
Vivienne flapped around, putting as much care into her toilette to go shopping at Fred Segal as she did for a fancy date. Finally, smelling like a sex flower and looking like a young Cher on a curly-hair day, V flounced out to spend. Mari had craved the silence, but now it was stifling. The next hour crawled by as Mari compulsively checked her in-box. She knew she should be focusing on Anke’s sample material. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what Mal had been on when he died, and how whatever Anke had given him had acted on his system. Mari reread every article about Mal’s death, especially those that referenced the original autopsy and its findings: significant quantities of Quaaludes, acid, alcohol, and cannabis. Mari didn’t know much about Quaaludes, but off the top of her head, it seemed like the most likely thing for Anke to have snuck into his tea. This was something the addiction specialist could hopefully clarify.
She forced herself to work on Anke’s sample a bit more. Finally, when it was ten a.m. in LA, she sent the doctor a text, asking if they could speak. He surprised her by responding immediately to say he was available. His schedule was punishing, but he was type A and smelled publicity. Or maybe he wanted to help. Either way, she was glad to be able to call him.
After a warm hello, she got down to it, asking what he could tell her about Quaaludes and how they would have impacted a known drug addict, laughing at the doctor’s obligatory bell-bottoms joke. She agreed to his disclaimer that he couldn’t be sure without seeing psychiatric evaluations or bloodwork for the individual. Just before asking her central question, she realized she should be taping all this. Digging out her recorder, she put him on speaker.
“Hypothetically, is it possible this man could have metabolized a number of Quaaludes?”
“Yes, they were just very strong, highly addictive sedatives. Casual users quickly formed a tolerance. If he took Quaaludes with regularity, for even a few weeks, maybe he metabolized them in a way that would have seemed superhuman to anyone taking their first dose.”
“What if he also took acid, hash, and booze at the same time?”
“Here’s the thing, autopsies measure what quantities were in the person’s system at the time of death, not the system’s tolerance for those amounts,” he concluded. “Hypothetically, all of that could have been a regular dose for a heavy user, just doing their thing, feeling groovy. Now, of course, alcohol would have exacerbated the Quaaludes, as with any sedative.”
She thanked him and signed off. It felt good to amend the story, to have an alternative perspective to bring to Anke and whomever else she would interview. She would find out what had happened to Mal, most likely by his own hand in the end. No one had poured booze down his throat, right? Feeling galvanized, Mari returned to Anke’s sample. Tomorrow, she would investigate. Today, she would write. Her first job, on which everything depended: don’t get fired.
Finally, at seven o’clock the next morning, Mari closed her laptop. She’d been so exhausted that she’d napped through V’s preparations for her date, which didn’t seem to be with the record producer. Mari knew better than to ask. As the hours ticked by, Mari had stayed up, surprised to find herself feeling protective. She had figured V would be back any minute, until at three, she’d realized V wasn’t coming home. The upside was that her anxiety about her sister had put her into a kind of fugue state that had deadened her worry about whether or not she was getting Anke’s sample material right and had allowed her to finally finish it and send it off to Anke.
The sudden freedom blasted Mari open with joy. The three French presses of coffee in her bloodstream made her skin feel hot and prickly, and her feet seemed to float above the ground. She had decided to surprise V by stocking the fridge with all of her sister’s favorites, from pressed juices to sparkling rosé. The bins of fresh flowers at the entrance to the West Hollywood Trader Joe’s were all but pulsing—red, orange, purple, pink—like the high-tech visuals at a dance club. Was there anything so delicious as the feeling right after you handed in a big chunk of writing? Perhaps the glory of trawling her favorite grocery store, with $60 to spend. She was humming along to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” when her phone buzzed. Scrambling for it, she dug in her purse. She hadn’t expected notes for hours, days, depending on Anke’s schedule. And it was barely eight in the morning. Mari put her hands on her device, right before it stopped ringing: Unknown ID.
“Hi, Ody,” she said, too wired to play upmarket young professional. “Good morning.”
“Hello, Mari,” he said. “Anke has read your pages.”
“Fantastic,” Mari said. Trying to sound like she was at her desk, ready to take notes, she sought out a quiet corner of the parking lot. “I’m impressed by her diligence.”
“We wish we could say the same,” he said. “Anke detests the writing. It made her sob. We took a risk on you, even when David tried to blackball you. And you led us to believe you knew what you were doing, but clearly you don’t. Given everything, I felt I had no choice but to tell Anke about your indiscretion with her journal. She is disappointed, hurt, betrayed.”
Everything pressed down on her at once. Mari could hardly stand. “Okay…” Mari took a breath to steady herself. “I’m so sorry. But—can you say more, please? I mean, it’s not uncommon for the author to give the ghostwriter extensive notes on the sample material, especially the first draft. I’d be delighted to talk to Anke and redo the draft to her liking.”
Mari was floundering. She had heard Anke. She had understood Anke. Hadn’t she?
“I mean, she was happy with the email I sent to our editor as her.”
“I’m sure she was, but an email is not a life’s work.”
This was a disaster. Mari quickly dropped any thought of confessing to how far her ongoing research on Anke’s behalf had already progressed. “Of course, that is true—”
“We have begun looking for a new writer,” he interrupted.
Mari faced a bank of shopping carts. Fuck. This was catastrophic. She’d never heard of a writer getting fired this quickly. What could she even say? She couldn’t admit how much she needed this job, any more than she could admit that she had already chosen her outfit for their next meeting. Or that she’d bought a round-trip ticket to Las Vegas, in order to seek the truth of how Mal had died—although it was an extreme leap, even when Anke had still believed in her.
“Ody, I have to admit, I’m not surprised. Anke is so exacting, of course she wants to rework the material. Like I said, I’d love to be able to do this for her. I can do this for her. If I could only get some feedback…” Mari knew what she had sent them wasn’t a polished draft—but it was an improved version of Anke’s Germanic English. It expressed her mélange of Old World manners and joie de vivre, while toning down her exuberant purple prose enough for the more sophisticated readers at most airport bookstores. Just like that, it hit Mari: She had toned Anke down. This wasn’t a literary work. It was Anke’s life’s work. She had been trying to show off, to impress Anke, and David, and everyone with her own writing skill. She had gone too far. Mari was too smart to confess to this, or to disagree with Anke at this moment. Ody hadn’t responded yet, giving her some hope. She pulled it together, tried a new tack and went bright, as if they had loved the pages. “I’m sorry Anke is upset. Of course she is. This book is everything. I understand how—”
“You say you do, but your writing does not reflect such care.”
“It’s truly not uncommon for the first attempt to be far off,” Mari said, adopting the calm authority of a lion tamer. “Finding the talent’s voice is the biggest challenge. Always. That’s why I stupidly overstepped with the journal. I am very sorry. Please apologize to Anke for me.”
“I will apologize on your behalf.”
“You can imagine—no one is like Anke, so to try to be her, it’s an art.”
She had returned his sortie, as if they were fencing. And then she fell silent. You can’t change the mind of someone like Anke. You must lead her to the decision but let her feel like she has made it for herself. Was Mari imagining it, or did she hear the faint chime of Anke’s bracelets, somewhere in the background of their call? Her dusky rose scent came back to Mari, as if she were leaning close, exerting her will. Mari’s eyes watered with the shame of having hurt her. And the fear of losing that money and what it would mean for herself, and for V.
“Perhaps.”
“I can fix it. I can make it perfect. If Anke wishes me to do so, of course.”
“I’m sorry, but that is not Anke’s wish,” he said. “I am sorry, Mari. But it’s done.”
He hung up the phone, and that was it. Anke was gone.
Fuck. Mari’s mind flashed to her nonrefundable round-trip flight to Vegas. If she was going, she needed to get to LAX soon. At least the trip was something. Beyond that was nothing—no prospects, no money, no hope. Surrendering her cart of beautiful groceries, Mari climbed into her car. She slammed the door, her shoulders heaving, tears exploding. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard, her nails cut into her palms. When she was cried out, she reversed without checking her mirrors. A horn blared. She hit her brakes. The jolt of adrenaline slapped her out of her hysteria. Salvaging any of this was up to her—she had the savvy and the skills; now she must find the focus and courage.
Entering the silent condo, Mari sighed. Her bones had turned to concrete, her mind clogged with coffee grinds—the dark side of her late night kicking in when she needed energy and clarity of thought. She was so tired. She surveyed her living/writing area: Her laptop was open, waiting, always waiting for her. On the floor was the electric kettle, which she had moved to her work space around three a.m. Half a dozen orphaned mugs, draped by tea bag strings.
While brewing fresh coffee, she skimmed her sample pages. She was still a little in love with them, but she knew better. What she had written read well. So what?
Mari’s phone rang. Her stomach churned. It could only be Ezra.
“Hey, dude,” he said, the word taking on a melancholy lilt. “What happened?”
Tears leaked with a coppery taste at the back of her throat. She didn’t know how honest to be. But did she really have any other cards left to play? He was her only ally.
“I fucked up,” she said.
“Mari, you told me you could do this,” he said. “I didn’t ask to read the sample material because you’re seasoned. And it always gets rewritten ad nauseam anyhow. But I can’t believe this is only about the writing. Did something go down in Palm Springs?”
Mari thought about Anke’s most vulnerable secret: her death sentence. Had Anke regretted telling her? An editor had recounted this happening once: a client who had felt too exposed with her first writer and wanted them off the job. Maybe. Mari couldn’t tell him that.
“Yes, I can do it. I misjudged Anke, thought she wanted to sound smarter, more polished. Anke doesn’t care if her lack of education pokes through. She’s comfortable being an original, and rightly so. Can’t you make them let me rewrite, even just once? I know how to fix it now.”
“Contractually, yes,” Ezra said. “But David mentioned something about a journal.”
Tears fell, and it took all her will to hold her voice steady, so Ezra wouldn’t know. She paced into the kitchen, poured more coffee, went back to the living room to pack.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was so much pressure, I cracked. I didn’t read it. I put it back.”
“Well, it was the wrong second to crack, dude. I don’t know if I can save this for you.”
“You don’t have to,” Mari said. “I can save it. I know exactly what to do. I spent three hundred dollars on a round-trip flight to Las Vegas, which boards soon. I’ll start there.”
“Eat the cost of the ticket and stay in LA.”
“I can’t lose this book. And to write this book, I have to know how much Anke could truly reveal—or not. I have to learn the whole story of Mal’s death. If I can protect Anke, she’ll be sure I’m her writer. David will be sure I’m her writer.”
Mari would be sure. For once, she would have taken a risk on herself, on her life, rather than hiding out at her computer, recounting the lives of others.
“I know this feels like the end of the world,” Ezra said. “But it’s not. Hold tight. I’ll call you back as soon as I get through to David again.”
“Okay, thanks,” Mari said.
As Mari hung up, she grabbed her luggage to head to the airport and show everyone, especially her growing number of doubters, just how to be a ghost.