The Perfect Ghost (7 page)

More than once I thought the cart would careen out of control and overturn on the hilly, uneven ground. I clutched my handbag to my chest while the salty wind blew my hair in my face. Kalver chose a path that rolled steeply down to the shore where the Amphitheater sat beside the ice blue Atlantic. In other circumstances, the perfection of the setting might have touched me, but his erratic driving made me so queasy I could barely admire the view.

The Big House was larger than I’d imagined, a traditional Cape that seemed to have grown via various additions into a rambling hotel with a steep-pitched, cross-gabled roof and enough bay windows to keep a cleaning staff permanently spraying and polishing. Kalver ushered me inside, nodded curtly toward a chair in the foyer, and disappeared. I waited for Act Two to begin, trying not to take the long intermission as a deliberate insult, but feeling that someone definitely wanted to put me in my place.

A formal living room opened on the right; framed and forbidding ancestors confronted well-worn Oriental rugs and prim blue velvet sofas. Closed doors, papered with old theatrical posters, studded the remaining foyer walls. I fiddled with the tape recorder and tried to regulate my heartbeat.
Breathe,
I ordered myself. In through the nose, out through the mouth. As the rasp of my inhalations diminished, I gradually became aware of a vocal rumbling behind one of the doors, recognized the timbre and tone as Garrett Malcolm’s, increasing in volume, reaching a crescendo of anger.

“I don’t know what the hell you were thinking.”

There was an abrupt click, then silence, during which I considered escape. My legs were tensed to run when Kalver reappeared and ordered me to go right in.

Act Two: Time: Forty-eight minutes after our scheduled appointment was slated to begin. Place: The Great Room. I don’t know what else to call it. You didn’t mention that room, Teddy, not its intimidating size or
Architectural Digest
grandeur, not the wall of windows opening over the ocean, or the wide veranda, or the tall Chinese vases filled with forsythia, tulips, and daffodils. I felt awed and diminished, undersized, unprepared. Like I’d come to apply for the position of governess.

“So you’re Teddy’s girl.” The voice came from a desk near a monumental stone fireplace, a calibrated voice, a trained instrument. No effort behind it, but you could have heard it in the second balcony.

Teddy, the tapes fail to convey the impact of Garrett Malcolm.

High cheekbones, a bit of hawk to the nose, a prominent forehead, a big, flexible mouth. Those were the key parts, but the whole was more impressive, like a painting of a Cardinal done by an Old Master. I’d seen photographs that narrowed his eyes to slits, but they were wide now, blue and piercingly intelligent.

I gave my name since the PA hadn’t bothered, and added a muttered, “Pleased to meet you.”

He lowered his gaze to a scrapbook centered on his desk. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t manage this today.”

“Teddy’s girl,” and now this curt rejection. My eyes stung. I made them focus on the desk, an elegant cherry writing table, scrapbook dead center, a stack of bound manuscripts at one end, a decanter and glasses at the other. Behind the table, the fireplace and stone chimney. To the left, a portrait of Claire Gregory, a heavily framed, museum-quality oil, gleamed softly under a spotlight. You didn’t mention that, either.

I swallowed. “We have an appointment.”

“Excuse me for asking, but how old are you?”

I should have worn a dark suit and high heels. I could feel my cheeks color.

The famed director tapped the fingers of his right hand impatiently on the desktop. “I suppose I can spare five minutes.”

“That won’t be enough.”

“Young lady—”

I could have melted under his dismissive gaze, Teddy. I could have seeped into a marshmallow puddle and oozed under the closed door, but by that time I’d done too much, risked too much. I was so far from my comfort zone, such a stranger to myself, that I heard my own voice as though it came from a distance.

“You can give me exactly what you’d have given my partner, the same time, the same thoughtful answers, the same respect.”

His chin jerked as though I’d yanked it by a string. “Teddy earned it.”

“You and Teddy had three sessions left, three two-hour slots. I’m ready to go.”

“And I’m not.” He stood, tall and whip-thin. Deep gray fabric hugged his chest, a cross between a sweater and a tee, spun from yarn too fine to have anything to do with sheep.

“Jonathan told you to brush me off.”

“Why would you assume that?”

Heat flooded my face. It wasn’t Jonathan he’d yelled at on the phone and now he’d suspect I’d listened at the door, eavesdropped like a housemaid gathering crumbs for a gossip column. I was searching my mind frantically, scrabbling for anything I could offer that might change his mind about working with me, when he slammed the scrapbook shut and said, “Christ, they all want to play Hamlet.”

“‘They have not exactly seen their fathers killed,’” I responded automatically. “‘Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,…’”

“‘Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,…”

“‘… because it is sad like all actors are sad.…’”

“You skipped some lines.”

“I know. That’s because I wanted to ask if you agreed with Sandburg. That all actors are sad?”

“Do you know your
Hamlet,
too? In addition to your modern verse?” He seemed, if not impressed, amused.

“I can give you a soliloquy or two. But you’ve already played Hamlet. Successfully, too. A Broadway triumph, a Tony nod.”

“I didn’t win.”

“No.”

“Well, then, in my case, you might say they all want to direct
Hamlet.
” He moved closer to the windows and stared out at the gray-green sea. “It’s stuck in the back of my brain, a kind of obsession, a kind of itch. I’ve already waited too long to scratch it. If I’d done it when I was younger, I could have mounted a production with some kind of integrity. Now it’s turning into a freak show. I just got off the phone with an ass of an agent who wants me to cast Gina Paris Graham as Ophelia. Can you imagine? Straight from showing her boobs on the cover of
Maxim
to the classic stage? My God, it was different when I started. It makes me feel old.”

At forty-three, he looked ten years younger, vital, not in any way old.

“They want me to do a hip-hop
Hamlet,
too cool for words. Add a musical score. Cast rappers and movie stars and throw away the script. Gina Paris Graham!”

He went on in that vein, working himself up to a fine rant, pacing to and fro, waving his hands, and I watched him the way an audience ogles a star, because he demanded it, not with his words but with his presence, his magnetism. Even if I hadn’t studied his parentage or noticed the posters on the walls, it was clear that he’d been born to theatrical royalty. His father, the famous Ralph, had paced the same way, flinging his arms high and low; probably the great Harrison, his storied grandfather, had flaunted similar mannerisms.

“I’m interested in the undercurrents, the subtext. The gossip, the courtiers, scurrying around, currying favor. The liars. Hamlet is surrounded by people he can’t trust.”

He paused and regarded me as though it were high time for me to speak my line.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” I said.

“Gertrude and Claudius.”

“The Ghost.”

“Yes, exactly, the whole procrastination foolishness. A ghost, a walking shadow, and it instructs you to do murder, to avenge your father’s death. So why the hell doesn’t he leap into his mother’s bedchamber and kill the usurper then and there, skipping all those soliloquies?”

The long pause demanded an answer, and I gave the best one I could summon. “Because of evil. Because of hell.”

He looked at me then, focused on me, acknowledged me, his blue eyes alight. “Yes. Yes, it’s a damn serious step, murder, especially if you believe in your immortal soul, if you believe in justice before the final judge, the way Hamlet does.”

He lapsed into silence, and this time I didn’t speak, so captivated was I by the intensity of the performance. I considered applauding, but it wasn’t a show. He was an outsized personality, one of nature’s focal points.

“If I didn’t think I’d be compromising a minor, I’d offer you a shot of bourbon,” he said.

“I’m of age.”

“Bullshit you are.”

Filled with star-power charisma, he had self-deprecating charm as well. His level gaze flustered me. I found it hard to meet his eyes.

He poured himself a drink from the tray on the desk. “Didn’t Teddy get enough? I really don’t have time for this.”

“What’s important is not so much what’s in the book as what’s not,” I said. “The interviewer gathers hours and hours of tape, from you, your colleagues, your friends, but the writer makes the choices, shapes the cut. Think of me as your editor.”

“You seem a clever enough child.”

“I’m not a child. Teddy trusted me completely. You won’t need to repeat anything or bring me up to speed.”

He sipped his drink. “I promised Darren I’d get rid of you.”

“Why?”

“He schedules me. He’s filled all Teddy’s slots with board meetings and legal business. So dreary, and now he says I have no available time.”

“I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll work around your schedule.” I smiled to show him I wouldn’t be dreary.

“So I promised to send you away and pull up the drawbridge. Already rehearsed the scene.”

Oh, God, I’d rented the car, moved into the house, hung my clothes in the closet. Big as it was, the room didn’t hold enough air to fill my lungs. The lights seemed to dim, and I thought I was going to faint. Then I realized he’d said “promised” and “rehearsed.” In the past tense. As though he’d changed his mind.

“Was it a good one?” I said evenly.

He shrugged. “The words ‘when hell freezes over’ were in there somewhere.”

“You were playing it from memory.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remembering all those studio hotshots who told you to come back when hell freezes over. When you wanted funding for the Justice films.” I would not faint. I wouldn’t.

“I was almost as young as you are.” He regarded me speculatively. “Which hotshots?”

I ticked the names off on my fingers. “Hugo Esterhaz, Javier Blanco, Gregory Albert Smith.”

“You’ve done your homework.”

“I’ve listened to every tape.”

He passed his hand over his upper lip like he was checking to see whether he’d sprouted a mustache. “I suppose you’d have to be tougher than you look. Three sessions left?”

“Possibly four.”

“Three. You’ve heard all the tapes?”

“Teddy sent everything straight to me.”

“You seem determined.”

“No more than you were when you got the funding for
Rip Tide.
”

“From?” It was a direct challenge, a gauntlet hurled.

“Byron Applebee. Twentieth Century–Fox. April 4, 1995.”

He stood still for a heartbeat. Then his eyes crinkled into tiny folds and he lifted his glass in a silent toast. He laughed, Teddy.

He laughed, and I fell in love.

CHAPTER

ten

The golf cart wasn’t waiting like my personal chariot at the front door of the Big House, and I had no desire to hunt for the disapproving PA. Afraid Malcolm might change his mind, I took off walking, almost running, ignoring the chilly wind, trusting the map in my head to lead me in the general direction of the barn.

Pretty good, don’t you think, Teddy? Rattling off the Carl Sandburg poem like that? Pretty good for me, anyway. You probably had him eating from your hand in two minutes. You were such an empathetic man; compassion seeped from your pores. People talked to you the way they’d speak to a trusted family doctor, an old friend, a psychiatrist. You inspired confession like the sight of an upturned collar. You had the gift of ease, of gentle persuasion. My skill is in disappearing, losing myself, clarifying famous people’s thoughts in their own authentic voices. I know I have a long way to go before I’m as good as you were.

Soon the peaked barn roof was visible, but it appeared and disappeared with the gradations of the hills, seeming closer one minute, then farther away, like a mirage. The grass was soft and muddy from the early April rains. My boot heels sank into mush.

I felt like a battered rag doll by the time I collapsed behind the wheel, legs shaking, cheeks crinkled from smiling idiotically to myself. I slammed the door, grateful to be alone, surrounded by a precious bubble of silence. Malcolm and I had set a new time: tomorrow at three o’clock.

I was unsettled by the director in person. No matter how well I knew his voice, his actual physical presence was intoxicating, overwhelming. Query: Can the writer ever stay out of the story, keep her opinion of the subject wholly secret? I didn’t exactly venerate one of the musicians we ghosted. I won’t give her name, but you know who I mean, Teddy, the alto with the ego. I scrupulously used her exact words, but I left in a lot of grandiose statements I might have eliminated if I’d liked her better and wanted her to appear more sympathetic. She, of course, didn’t seem to mind; I doubt she noticed.

Garrett Malcolm seemed like a man who’d notice.

He wore the subtlest cologne I’ve ever smelled, a faint fragrance of fresh pine needles; either that or he had a natural scent that ought to be bottled.

I think he admired my persistence, Teddy. Once I got his attention, well, it was complete and total focus, like a searchlight. As though we had plenty of time, as though all his other work had screeched to a halt. I could still feel his eyes on my face.

I’m not used to such attention. Thinking about it gave me a pleasant shiver. He was magnetic. He was sexy. That’s what you didn’t get across. Maybe it only feels that way to a woman.

I am a woman, Teddy.

Oh, God, right there in the car, I gave myself a lecture. He’s handsome, he’s well-off, he’s famous, he works with actresses, for Christ’s sake. I shifted till I could see my colorless face reflected in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t good-looking or famous or rich. I forced myself to remember the painting of his ex-wife to the left of the stone chimney.