The Perfect Ghost

by Linda Barnes

  If it hadn’t been the bloated shade of Ben Justice lying at my feet, or if I’d had less experience of drunks, I might have called 911. 911 would bring ambulances. Ambulances would bring attention, cameras. I listened to his stentorian breathing and opted for privacy. I’d find a blanket, cover him, and leave. I’d seen sufficient drunks to know he’d sleep it off.

  Anger surged unexpectedly. Ben Justice, gallant and true, would never be found like this, sprawled stinking drunk on a bare floor. When Justice drank, he stayed cool and capable, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. It was ridiculous, I knew, but I felt betrayed.

  Look for the rest of the bottles. Spill their contents in the sink, but not every drop. Leave enough for one more drink, “hair of the dog.” My heart pounded, but I knew my task wasn’t finished. Clear up the broken glass. Look for the prescription vials, the drugs, dump those with the liquor, down the sink.

  I didn’t find any small brown vials, but the manuscript sat in plain view on the table.

  It looked, in every detail, from thickness to deep green cover, like one of the manuscripts I’d seen on the corner of Malcolm’s ornate desk in the Great Room. It held me there, motionless and gawking. That, and the almost naked body of a man once voted one of the handsomest in the world, clad in nothing more than plaid boxers that had ridden up the side of his right thigh. I averted my eyes, moved them to the fine golden hairs on his chest, thought again about finding some kind of blanket, but stayed rooted to the spot.

  Staring at the manuscript, then at the unkempt star, I was aware on some subterranean level of Garrett Malcolm’s treachery. Brooklyn Pierce wouldn’t be staying here without Malcolm’s permission, without his invitation. Which meant Malcolm had lied to me, touched his finger to my lips and lied.

  Hamlet, Act One, scene 5: Meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

  If Pierce was not Malcolm’s Prince of Denmark, what was he? Didn’t I owe it to my readers—our readers—to find out?

  Had you posited this very situation, given my fervent desire to know what Pierce had said on your missing tape, given even my consciousness of Malcolm’s deceit, I’d have said that basic decency would have prevented me from snooping, violating a fellow human’s privacy, touching, much less reading, that manuscript.

  I pressed my lips together and attempted to slow my breath by forcing it through my nose. The possibility of hyperventilating, fainting in the middle of this impossible scene, terrified me. What a perfect blend: a snoring drunk, a panic-attack fainter, and somewhere out there, Glenn McKenna, gossipmonger, to photograph the whole graceless mess.

  I stumbled, making such a clatter I feared Pierce’s eyes would pop open. His harsh breathing kept up its inexorable rhythm; his chest rose and fell. He, at least, was breathing. The manuscript exerted an enormous pull, an intense and magnetic attraction. My hand reached out, snatched up the folder, and flipped quickly to the opening page.

  The Black Stone

  The Fourth Ben Justice Film

  screenplay by Brooklyn Pierce

  I turned the page. I turned many pages. I know I did, but my vision seemed oddly blurred, my breath a racing engine on a high-speed track, veering out of control. I knew the routine, knew I should sit, lower my head between my knees, but to sit here, on these floorboards, was impossible. Pierce moaned and moved, and I took off as though pursued by the spirits of drunken stepfathers.

  CHAPTER

  thirty-one

  My toe caught on a riser near the bottom of the flight. I fell hard, then scrambled to my feet, hands stinging, and raced through beach grass onto the harsh-grained sand. My central nervous system ignited; badly wired impulses blinked on and off like tiny neon signs in a crazed video arcade. The clanging pulse of terror shrieked through my veins and demanded escape, but the faster my legs pumped, the slower my progress seemed and the more I flailed in the deepening sand. My knotted sneakers swung from my shoulder, pounding my chest and back with each propulsive step. Panic seized me, and none of my remedies were at hand. My Xanax was locked with my purse in the trunk of the car, along with my recorder and notebook. In my apartment, I’d have grabbed a paper bag from the drawer next to the sink, sunk to the floor, breathed into the bag. Here, the unfamiliar landscape, the terrible immensity of ocean, belonged to an alien planet that offered no relief.

  Ten minutes, ten minutes, ten, ten, ten. The number became a refrain. Ten, ten, ten. Panic attacks last only ten minutes, most of them, but this one, I knew, I knew, I knew, was timeless, this one would be the last, the one that killed me, the one that drove me howling into the sea. I glanced behind me, slipped, and almost stumbled to my knees. Yes, I’d remembered to shut the beach shack’s door. I’d left Pierce uncovered, but it was better that way. How shaming to wake tucked in like a drooling infant, to realize an unknown hand had covered your nakedness.

  Clouds formed a layer over the sea, the sky darkened eerily, and I ran. It was like a scene in a horror movie; there should have been cameras arranged along the shoreline, a production assistant shouting the number of the take. I felt nauseated, dizzy, I couldn’t swallow or breathe, and still I ran, ran as though old Hamlet’s Ghost snapped at my heels, demanding that I swear, swear, swear my promise of revenge.

  “O villain, villain, smiling damned villain.” But wait: Couldn’t Pierce be the villain of the piece instead of Malcolm? Why trust the word of an alcoholic? Maybe you hadn’t interviewed Pierce after all; maybe there was no missing tape. Malcolm would still be a liar, yes, for not telling me that Pierce had taken up residence at the beach shack. But the omission could have been Pierce’s idea, to keep secret his presence on the Cape. Malcolm might simply have kept his word to a guest. If I could believe that …

  Maybe Pierce was at the shack as part of a detox program, here to kick his alcohol demon. Malcolm could be aiding a friend rather than trying to dupe me out of an interview. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me. It wasn’t that he was treating me with less respect than he’d treated you.

  If Malcolm had invited you for a drink, you’d have accepted, no doubt about it. How bitterly I regretted my decision to refuse. Which foster mother had dictated the terms of my hasty retreat? The one who foretold I’d never be pretty enough to date, much less wed a man?

  On ran my thoughts till they came up against Hamlet’s dilemma: Was the Ghost a heavenly messenger sent to tell the truth, or a deceitful vision from hell? How do you interpret the evidence of your own eyes? Fact: Brooklyn Pierce lay drunk on the floor of the beach shack. Everything else was speculation. Except the manuscript, the new Ben Justice screenplay. Was that the secret of the tape, Teddy? Was that the revelation Pierce wanted to retract?

  How far, how far, had I run? Should I turn away from the shore, strike across the dunes, up and over the gentle hills? Spiders crawled through my veins, numbing my legs. Where was the barn, the parking lot, the car?

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The voice came from behind me, but at first I didn’t know if it was inside my head or outside it, real or imaginary, separate from or part of my terror.

  “I said you could interview me, not spy on me. Where the hell have you been? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  With no breath I couldn’t form any words, let alone the right ones.

  Garrett Malcolm looked as full of wrath as any angry stepfather. I wanted to warn him—that Brooklyn Pierce was lying on the floor, drunk and vulnerable, that a man named Glenn McKenna had a nasty habit of photographing Brooklyn’s refuge—but my tongue was a dead, twisted stump that had withered in my mouth.

  “What are you holding? What have you got there?”

  Not till he asked did I realize I had tucked the new Ben Justice manuscript under my arm, carried it away from the shack like a prize. In an instant, I felt my skin go clammy and cold. I would be accused of stealing. I hadn’t stolen it, not really, not intentionally. I’d only wanted to keep it safe. Really I hadn’t t
hought. I didn’t know. I couldn’t speak.

  “Give it to me.”

  My arms were pegs glued to the sides of a wooden statue. I tried to move them, to give the towering, raging man what he wanted, whatever he wanted. He grabbed at me, at the manuscript, and I heard it, felt it rip, saw the pages spew onto the ground, scatter with the wind.

  He swore at me. He stormed. Words were at the center of the cyclone, dimly heard and slowly perceived, heard as if from a great distance, and they said I was incompetent and a fool. They said the project was over, cancelled, that this was the end of the line.

  CHAPTER

  thirty-two

  I don’t know how I found the car or fumbled open the door or drove to the rented house. My face, unrecognizable in the rearview mirror, was pink and red and blotchy. I couldn’t stop staring at my wrist, which was marked by a livid bracelet of white and a stinging scratch, fierce keepsakes of the struggle for the manuscript, shameful reminders of Malcolm’s steel grip and my complete inability to defuse the situation, to defend myself, to state the facts. So totally focused was I on my wrist that I should have driven off an embankment or into a ditch. Even after the bracelet faded, I felt it like a burn, like a ring of flame, as though the outline of his thumb and fingers were tattooed on my skin. I could feel it, and I couldn’t feel anything else. I couldn’t hear. I saw only the road immediately ahead of me, as though I wore blinders, and the road was a path to ruin.

  I floated out of the car, carefully locked the doors, outside of my own body, watching myself, and then I was inside the house, tossing clothes in the direction of my duffel. Gathering scattered papers, sorting them into haphazard piles, disconnecting my computer. My mind seemed to shift—in control, then out of control. I could imagine myself calmly finishing the book, turning it in to Jonathan, saying nothing about any problem, Malcolm saying nothing. I could see myself naked, surrounded by whispering strangers who muttered and stared and said that once I had been half of T. E. Blakemore, once I had owned a name, even if only half a name, but then I had done something so vile, so reprehensible, that no one hired me again. I saw myself as a bag lady, limping over a smelly sewer near the bus station, muttering to myself. As a suicide, hanging from a tree.

  My cell phone rang and I started, then froze. I thought, I should I answer it. I thought, Who would call me?

  Teddy, you called me. You were the only one. How I missed you. I could have gone home to you, confessed, and been forgiven. I could have crushed you in my arms and you would have Teddy-bear-hugged me in return and it would have been all right. You deserted me. You left when I still needed you.

  The phone rang again and panic rose in my chest, surging, cresting and subsiding, breaking off pieces of me with its rise and fall. I felt as insubstantial as sea foam, battered and crushed. I sank to the floor and yanked the ringing phone from my pocket, and for a moment I thought it would have to be you.

  “Hey.” The voice was Jonathan’s. I checked the screen. The number was Henniman’s. I tried to speak, but my voice was lost in my throat.

  “Em? Hey, it’s Jonathan. We did a deal with the Literary Book Club. Marcy thought you might like to hear it from me. Hey, are you there?”

  “Hi. Yes.” I sounded like a mouse, a strangled mouse.

  “It’s not a great deal, okay? Not as much as the last one, but you know what’s going on in the industry. Marcy’s got the figures.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you’re good with the manuscript on the twenty-fifth? You can send a disc. That’s better than paper. We’re going to run with T. E. Blakemore on this one. Do you have a definite title yet?”

  Tears started down my face. I whispered something about calling him back and punched the button to end the call. I pressed both hands to my eyes and thought, this can’t be happening. I would have to call Marcy, tell her it was over. I would have to—

  There was a sharp rap at the door and I realized I hadn’t locked it just as the name “McKenna” solidified into a scary, threatening shape in my mind. Somehow he’d been watching, somehow he knew. He’d been in a boat with a camera trained on the beach shack. I anticipated the smelly gossipmonger charging into the room. He knew everything. He had photos of my wild rush down the staircase, my theft of the screenplay, video he’d splash across the Web site. Then the doorknob turned and Garrett Malcolm called my name.

  And he was across the room before I could say a word and his long arms hauled me to my feet and I thought for a minute he was going to kill me and then I clung to him the way I used to cling to you, Teddy. And he killed me, Teddy. He killed me and gave me a new birth and I clung to him and he smothered me and we stumbled toward the door and closed it and locked it and pulled the shades.

  We did all that, but our lips never parted. We never stopped kissing each other. We never stopped kissing as we stripped off layers of clothing, mine damp and sandy where I’d fallen to the ground. We never stopped kissing until we’d climbed the stairs and used the bed for what it was made for. He kept saying how sorry he was that he’d made me cry, that I was too young, too sweet, too innocent.

  There must have been awkward intervals, even brutal ones. I’m usually shy about exposing my breasts, so far removed from centerfold proportions, but I don’t remember a moment of hesitation.

  Teddy, it was a hunger, a need. I could say I didn’t know what came over me, what I was doing, but I did, and it was like a wave, a deluge, a tsunami after a roiling earthquake. It was a spreading fog, a haze, and its color was red, veering into violet. It was the ozone smell of a thunderstorm before lightning strikes, a mouthful of red wine. My hands grazed the electric hair on his chest and came alive, each separate finger thrilled by its discoveries. Rough sheets rubbed the satin of salty skin, and his eyes, oh, his eyes were the melted indigo of ice crocuses. And I was a dry spring flooded and refreshed, bubbling with life, spilling over with icy water and boiling water and all the currents of an unfathomable sea.

  PART

  two

  Whoever turns biographer commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to embellishments, and even to dissembling his own lack of understanding. Biographical truth is not to be had, and even if one had it, one could not use it.

  Sigmund Freud,

  in a letter to a friend

  UMass Memorial Labs

  UMass Medical Center, Inc.

  365 Plantation Street

  Worcester, MA 01605

  DRUG SCREEN RESULT: TRACE OF HYDROXYZINE

  CANNABINOID SCREEN: NEGATIVE

  BLOOD ALCOHOL: .02

  SPECIMEN IDENTIFICATION: THEODORE BLAKE

  DATE SPECIMEN RECEIVED: 3/23

  DATE TEST PERFORMED: 4/25

  SPECIMEN SUBMITTED BY: L. Hirshoff, M.D., pathologist

  TECHNOLOGIST: R. L. MacKenzie

  CHAPTER

  thirty-three

  Forgive me, Teddy, you’ve been largely absent from my thoughts for weeks, but I’ve been such a busy girl and I’m working so hard—honestly, I am—sprinting toward the finish line. Jonathan extended the deadline once Garrett put his foot down, which was so kind of him, of both of them, and I have been a trifle wicked, taking advantage of unseasonably warm weather, lying on the beach, soaking in the early spring sunshine when I should have been dutifully pecking at the keyboard.

  God, Teddy, doesn’t the previous graph read like a sweet little Catholic girl talking to her priest? “Father, forgive me, it has been two weeks since my last confession, and during that time I have…” Enough of that. Let me state instead that the days have been incredibly sunny and the sky a cloudless robin’s-egg blue. It would be utterly perfect if you were here.

  But then if you were here, I wouldn’t be.

  Weighed in the balance, I know my exquisite happiness doesn’t compensate for your death. I know you didn’t willingly die for me. Who would sacrifice their only, their unique life for someone else’s? I’ve read tales of loving parents tenderly laying down their lives for their
children, fathers for daughters, mothers for sons, but I never met such parents.

  My estate has changed: I’ve moved up in the world, ascended to the Big House. I have to pinch myself, to make sure I’m fully conscious, especially when I wake in my bedroom, my head cushioned by the coolness of an embroidered pillowcase, and lie quite still, looking out at a vast sweep of ocean instead of a cracked plaster wall.

  It’s not “my” bedroom; I’m aware of that. It’s formally designated a “guest room,” and I often speculate, late at night, concerning the identity of previous tenants. Was this once Claire Gregory’s boudoir? It shares the same dramatic ocean view as the small office with the mechanical shades, although in some ways this view, elevated as it is on the second floor, is superior. Furnished for visiting royalty in pink and gold, the room has a huge brass bedstead and carpeting so thick it tickles my feet. I spend an immense amount of time here. There’s an elegant writing desk, but I prefer writing in bed, nested in crisp percale and soft down, pounding diligently at my laptop, inhaling Garrett’s piney scent.

  While it lacks a connecting door to Garrett’s bedroom, it opens off the same short corridor, so the two rooms form a kind of suite, each with its own bath. Jonathan is terribly impressed by my “access” to the subject. What would he say if he knew?

  Teddy, I have qualms, a jittery feeling in my stomach that registers somewhere in between too much champagne and incipient nausea. All my dithering about whether knowing the subject would influence my writing, and now this. Occasionally I convince myself that it’s helping me paint a fuller, truer portrait of the man, but I know I’m justifying behavior I would label unconscionable in anyone else. What can I say? It happened, and I’m not sorry it happened. It’s transformational, this closeness, almost like he’s my working partner now, my writing partner, like we’re truly in this together. Oh, it would have been better if he’d waited, better if the book were already done and published. So we’re keeping it quiet, as quiet and secret as mice. I’m completely invisible here, but then I’m used to being invisible.