The Ghostwriter Read online

  A few months. Once I retire. A few months is too soon. Too sudden. The tsunami grows closer, and the foreboding feeling mounts. “How much will be done by then? How much will I have to use?”

  “All of it.” She says the words with quiet finality, as if she’s tired of talking, her mind distracted by something else. “I’ve got to go.”

  Helena can’t hang up. Not now, not when she just dumped a mountain of work on Kate. “Wait,” Kate says wildly, searching through all of the questions she still needs to ask. “Talk to you next Wednesday?” A huge waste of a question, their Wednesday phone date so regular she could set her ovulation schedule to it.

  “Wednesday?” Helena says faintly. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  There is the click of the receiver, and Kate’s worry blooms into full-fledged panic.

  My rules for visitors are simple, printed clearly in size 16 font, laminated and nailed to the center of the door, in an impossible to miss spot. The first rule, as always, is the most important.

  1. Do not ring the doorbell.

  2. Do not park in the driveway.

  3. If you are a solicitor, leave.

  4. If you are a religious or political advocate, quietly place your collateral materials underneath the mat.

  5. If you are here on a social call, go away.

  6. If you are here for business or legal purposes, please contact my agent or attorney.

  7. Package deliveries—you have my authorization to leave packages without a signature.

  I check the peephole, then crack open my front door and glare at the doorbell ringer, a young woman foolish enough to ignore my sign. She’s probably the nanny of those kids, the ones who have shrieked in the street for almost two hours now. I had incorrectly assumed, three years ago, when I bought every other cul-de-sac lot, that I would be guaranteeing myself exclusive use of the giant round space. Apparently, that isn’t the case, my complaints to the homeowners association met with stubborn denials. “Yes?”

  “Helena Parks?” I almost flinch at the use of my married name, one so rarely used. “My name is Charlotte Blanton. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  I’d like to ask you a few questions. The police officer, his eyes grim, the smell of October in the air. I have just a few questions. The mortician, his thin fingers, the tap of them against a display of coffins.

  I stay hidden behind the door and watch the movement of her throat as she swallows, her hands flexing around a stack of papers.

  “Are you Helena Parks?” She is less sure of herself, and I enjoy the unease. Maybe she’s a fan, a reader who hunted past publishing records and marriage licenses. It’s happened before. The last one required the police. This woman, her thin shoulders jutting through a cardigan, I can probably handle.

  “I’m not interested in visitors.” My words are scratchy, and I clear my throat.

  “It will only take a moment.”

  “No.” I start to shut the door and she places her palm on it. I pause, and I really need to amend the rules and add Visitors will not touch the door. Then again, this girl obviously has no regard for authority, her eyes skipping right past my laminated list in her ring of the bell.

  “Please,” she says. “It’s about your husband.”

  My husband. I hate those words falling from another person’s lips. They are so bland, so weak for everything that he was. My fingers tighten on the knob. I made my statements to the police, answered hundreds of their questions. I had passed that test. To go through it again now, with this new woman, isn’t something I am interested in. Especially not today, the giggle of children still scraping on my nerves.

  I say nothing, avoiding her eyes as I close the door and flip the deadbolt, the click satisfying as it locks her outside.

  I turn away from the door, hurrying toward the stairs, intent on getting away, to my office where I can shut the door, turn up my music, and drown out the sound of her intrusion.

  She knocks, a rap-rap-rap that stabs at my psyche, my breath coming hard as I attempt to jog up the stairs, my muscles resisting, my body’s weakness showing.

  Over four years since that day. What loose thread could this woman have found?

  My oncologist has prescribed me fourteen different medications, a mountain of orange pill bottles that cover every symptom my body could think of producing. Not one of them treats the pain in the ass which I currently battle. Marka Vantly: International Bestselling Author. She sucks, and in more than just the biblical sense. I inhale deeply, and stare at her latest email.

  Helena,

  I just had the displeasure of reading Drumbeat. It’s interesting what passes for successful literature in this day and age. I’m so sorry about your Publisher’s Weekly review, though I certainly understand their opinions on the novel. Congratulations on your release!

  Marka

  The bitch. This email has taken longer to come than the others, two months passing since my pub date. Marka had probably been too distracted by gangbangs and shopping sprees to bother with something like reading. In her last interview, she’d been stretched out naked on a pile of her paperbacks, her blonde hair tumbling over their covers. For an author, she doesn’t have a spare ounce of fat, no dark roots showing, her eyes lazy and seductive as they’d stared up into the camera. It had been disgusting. So disgusting that I’d called The New Yorker and cancelled my subscription. Writers aren’t supposed to be sex objects. We’re supposed to be valued for our words, our stories, and the impact that we leave on a reader’s heart. Then again, Marka’s books don’t quite have that effect, their target focused more on arousal and less on emotional resonations. I rip off the head of a banana and chew, my fingers a bit slimy as I fire back a response.

  Ms. Vantly,

  I’m not going to take criticism from someone whose last book was titled The Fireman’s Hose. Please return to your trashy smut and let the real authors work in peace.

  Helena Ross

  Ha. Short and deadly. I send the email and smile, returning to my inbox, my mouse quick as I scroll past the other emails. A collection of uselessness. I unsubscribe to several solicitors, then chide myself for wasting my time. Three months left, and I’m cleaning up my inbox now? Stupid.

  I take a final bite of the banana and toss the peel in the direction of the trash, watching as it settles into the white plastic bag. My headache, one that began this morning, is getting increasingly worse, a vise grip tightening on my temples. I let the email fester for a moment and stand, heading for the Vicodin upstairs in my desk, the banana enough food to keep it from hitting an empty stomach. I climb the stairs, and when I reach the top, the landing spins. I grip the banister for a moment and wait for everything to refocus. Maybe I should sit.

  Lightheadedness, as of late, has become common. As has vertigo and blurred vision, the combination a bitch to my productivity levels. Another wave of lightheadedness hits and my hand loosens, not listening to my brain. I try to re-grip the banister, stumble hurriedly up the final steps, but everything becomes a kaleidoscope of gray and white and slick polished stairs.

  My knees buckle.

  KATE

  Kate opens the door to her Manhattan condo, pulling off her flats as she enters, the dark room filling her with a moment of fear before her hand hits the switch and the space flickers to light. Two years since her divorce, and she still hasn’t gotten used to the eeriness of living alone, the feeling that someone is there, hiding and waiting.

  She opens a can of soup, dumping the thick mixture into a small pot and turning the burner on, her mind filled with thoughts of Helena. She put off calling the publishers, hoping that Helena will call her back, her sanity restored.

  Of course she hasn’t. Helena isn’t the type to waffle over a decision or change her mind. The minute she gave Kate the order to pull out of Broken, it was done. Game over. Dead book walking.

  It hasn’t always
been this hard. With Helena’s first novel, she’d been almost pleasant to work with. Of course, she’d been younger then. A nineteen-year-old baby, one with big eyes and a solemn face, one who had driven from Connecticut for the sole purpose of terrorizing the Big Apple with her words. As a favor to a friend, Kate had met her at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. She’d watched the mousey brunette pick at a muffin as she’d described her novel… a second-chance romance that sounded exactly like half of Kate’s slush pile. Kate had grown distracted, eavesdropping on a fight brewing at the next table, when she realized that the girl had grown quiet. Kate had flipped over the top page of the manuscript, her eyes sneaking down to her watch.

  Then she’d read the first line.

  The first paragraph.

  The first chapter.

  She, like all of America eventually would, devoured the words. From that plain, pale creature, one with ears and eyes a bit too big… came magic. She had forced herself to stop on the fourth page, her gaze darting up to Helena’s. “You wrote this?”

  Helena had nodded, then asked if she liked it.

  “Yes.” The answer had been too weak, and she had run her hand, almost reverently, across the page, trying to contain her excitement. “I need to read the rest of it. Tonight.”

  The girl had produced a CD-ROM from her messenger bag, pushing it across the table at Kate. “I’ve given this to five other agents.” She’d said the words as if they were a gift, relieving the pressure off Kate, no need for her to pretend to like the material. But they’d had the opposite effect, the innocent information a threat, each minute that passed a possible opportunity for her phone to ring, the opportunity snatched from Kate.

  “Okay.” Kate had smiled weakly, her fingers lingering on the pages as she passed them back to the girl, the loss one she could feel in her chest. In contrast, the receipt of the CD had felt hollow, the case too light for the words which had already stamped themselves on her heart.

  Kate had known, even before she opened the file, that she wanted it. She read the manuscript at her kitchen counter, peering at the screen over leftover Chinese and hot tea, her mouse constantly scrolling, the file re-saved and sent to her boss by ten PM. At ten-fifteen, she’d called Helena and left a voicemail. The voicemail she followed up with an email, one that promised a ten percent commission rate, a five percent discount that would risk her job but was worth it. She’d also guaranteed that the novel would go to auction in the six figures, another lofty promise that she couldn’t back up, a figure she had never managed before. But she’d never represented a book like it before. This book could make her. This book could fix everything—their struggle to pay rent, her looming unemployment, the weak shelf her marriage balanced on.

  In their dreary apartment, sending off that ridiculous beg for business… she hadn’t known how high-maintenance Helena would turn out to be. She had grabbed ahold of the shiny novel, and hadn’t even considered the headaches that might accompany its creator.

  And the headaches have been plentiful. It isn’t that Helena sets out to be high-maintenance, she is just very particular about what she wants, her quirks growing stronger over the last few years, and transitioning from requests to demands. The pleasant girl from that coffee shop has all but disappeared, withdrawing from Kate, the publishers, from any interaction with anyone. In her place, there has emerged a new Helena, one with which interactions are mine fields and keeping her happy? A balancing act.

  On rare days, Kate regrets ever meeting the woman. But on most days, she just wonders about her. They say all geniuses are a little mad. Maybe Helena’s madness just took longer to come out.

  Kate opens a drawer and grabs a long wooden spoon, leaning against the edge of the counter and stirring the soup. Tomorrow, she decides. Tomorrow, she will call—or maybe email—the publisher and inform them of Helena’s decision. An email will suffice, right? Something short and professional. If only she had more information, an excuse of some sort. She can’t tell them the truth—that Helena is abandoning Broken for a new novel, one she wants to send to one of their competitors. Talk about burning a bridge. Word of this will spread through the publishing community like lice at a summer camp, every head infected with negative thoughts of Helena before the end of the week. She’ll never be able to sell another one of her novels. Not that it really matters, since the woman is retiring.

  She coughs out a laugh at the thought, and opens the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of Moscato and setting it on the corner. Vodka would be more appropriate, something to toast the end of her career with. But she threw out all of the vodka when Rod left. The vodka, the bourbon, the small bottles she’d found tucked in every corner of their apartment. Turns out her husband had been quite the alcoholic, a trait she hadn’t discovered until he’d left. Funny what you find out about people when they leave you. Or when your mind stops making excuses for all of their clues. The counselor had called those clues—his womanizing, his sloppy drinking, his lies—a call for help. “He was standing there, screaming at you with his actions,” she’d explained. “He was begging you for help.”

  It was bullshit. He was begging Captain Morgan for help. Not her. That woman, with all those fancy initials after her name, with her knowing smile and condescending tone, didn’t know shit about real people, real problems, and real relationships.

  She thinks of Helena, and of her stiff tone, her prickly demeanor that had poked at Kate through the phone line. Did Helena drink her problems away, or have any problems to begin with? Probably not. How many problems could someone like her have? She lounged around with all the talent and the money in the world. The damn woman is planning retirement at thirty-two, will spend the rest of her life sunning in the Caribbean, making early morning love to her husband, and growing fat with babies.

  She turns off the burner, and taps the spoon against the edge of the pot. She tries to imagine Helena, screaming in the middle of the room, asking someone for help.

  It will never happen. The woman would die first.

  “Tell me about your books.” His arm brushes against my shoulder when we walk, and I tuck my hands into my pockets, nervous at the thought of him reaching out, the uncomfortable join of sweaty palms.

  I glance over at him, the wind rustling through the soft flop of his hair, the light from the bar’s neon sign painting his face a rosy glow. “They’re romance novels. You know. Boy meets girl.”

  He chuckles, and I like the curve of his lips, the way that his eyes light up when they look at me. “That simple, huh?”

  I shrug, my own mouth lifting a little. “Love is pretty simple, Simon.”

  A dumb statement. But back then, I only dreamed about, yearned for, and wrote about love. I didn’t realize what a brutal beast it could become.

  There’s a mouse in my house. I lie on my belly and hold out the piece of cheese, pushing it further underneath the couch, holding my breath as I hear the skitter of tiny paws across the floor.

  I wish Bethany was here. If only… If only Mom could strap her into the car seat and bring her here, could walk in the door without knocking, just like she used to. Bethany could worm onto her stomach next to me, her tiny elbows against the wood floor, her eyes big. She would cover her mouth and giggle. Lower her chin to the floor and peer under the heavy leather couch. I could tell her that mice tails can grow as long as their bodies and that they eat 15 to 20 times per day.

  I push the cheese with the tip of my nail and pull back my hand, waiting to see if the tiny creature will appear. Maybe he has a family, a tiny nest somewhere with five or six tiny pink bodies tucked in a cluster of scrap paper and misplaced threads, their miniscule mouths gaping open and begging for food. This piece of cheese can be their dinner, can pair nicely with the chunk of bread I left yesterday.

  Maybe I should have let Charlotte WhatsHerFace in. The girl who showed up yesterday, armed with her questions, intent on ruining my day. Maybe her visit was
just routine, a cop following up on Simon’s death, a four-year check-in, and not an intensive investigation into the circumstances. Or maybe the Simon reference was an excuse, and she is actually my long lost sister. Our conversation might have unveiled a story of fire station abandonment, her youth spent in foster homes before she was finally adopted—probably by a wealthy sheik, one who crowned her a princess and is now marrying her off. She might need my help, wanting to run away to a happier life, one of freedom and sisterhood.

  Ha. A terrible plot, full of holes, the first being that my mother would never abandon a child. She would have embraced a second child, especially one with Charlotte’s delicate features and blonde hair. I bet she was a pretty baby. I bet she didn’t refuse pacifiers or request more nutritious meals at preschool.

  I turn my head, resting my ear against the wood floor, and watch the white chunk, waiting for the tremor of whiskers, a tiny nose peeking out, hesitant steps taken toward the food. I’ve never had a pet. Mother always crushed that possibility, appalled at the idea of drool, pet dander, urine and feces.

  I shift on the floor, and close my eyes, a headache pinching hard, the pain almost blinding in its stab.

  I push back from the laptop, my fingers trembling when I fumble with the edge of the drawer, pulling it open. I twist the cap off of the medicine bottle, shaking out two pain pills and popping them into my mouth. Another headache, my vision spotty from it. This morning there was a doctor’s appointment, one where I laid out my symptoms and the doctor assured me they will only get worse. He gave me a sales pitch on chemo, along with a fresh script for pain meds. The chemo I passed on, but the meds I accepted.

  I eye the bottom of my computer screen. Seventeen hundred words. Barely a chapter, and my fingers are stalling, my sentences grinding to a halt, my mind tripping over simple words it knows by heart. I’ve written fifteen books and never had such a complete whitening of thought, like a blizzard against your windshield, no options available but to pull over and stop. I push away from the desk, settling back in the chair and swinging my feet up, resting my socked heels against the wooden surface.