LIKE SOMEONE CRYING
Amanda Eston was buried in a pink marble garden crypt, surrounded by a lawn that was probably as trimmed and green as a U.S. Open course. You couldn’t tell today, though, because the grass was filled with flowers and stuffed animals and candles and handmade cards. With censored parts of her full video getting millions of hits a day on the Real Story site, she’d been officially rediscovered. Signs of her renewed celebrity, in fact, could be found all over the country: The Crazy Face label was reporting that its limited edition Amanda Eston T-shirt had sold out.
Beautiful sunny day. Clear sky, long-leafed willow trees lining the cemetery. Tasha, smelling like mango and lavender, was carrying two wreathes made of marigolds. I was walking with a cane. I thought of it as a tribute to Pear Wicinski.
Tasha placed one of her wreathes on the grave pile. We stood staring at the marble block, the name etched on its surface.
“I keep thinking of the morning after,” she said. “The morning after she died, the morning after I heard. I woke up thinking, this is the first morning of my life where my sister is no longer part of this world.”
She was still shaken by L.C.’s arrest. For five years she’d believed that Amanda had taken her own life. Now she knew it wasn’t true. In a twisted and tragic way, her sister had escaped the family history, eluded the genetic trap. Now Tasha had a five-year block of belief to demolish.
L.C. Martin was in jail, the medical wing, held as a suspect in the deaths of Amanda Eston and Pear Wicinski.
Robby Walsh was being investigated on various charges of conspiracy to commit assault and battery, and, with the cooperation of the van de Politie Amsterdam-Amstelland, for conspiracy in the death of Arnoud Shuyler. His wife had left him, he’d lost his lobbying jobs and he was now living in the condo near the Firecreek Crossing Mall with Lisa Kohler and their two kids.
I guess at least one person—Lisa—was happy.
Maybe Grady Alexander too. We’d made the deal for the video--$12 million. No negotiation. He’d just wanted to get it over.
“It’s weird,” said Tasha, “how you can caught on a thought. I thought one thing, and I got used to it. I got used to the physical sensation of it, to all the emotions attached to it.”
“That’s what happens. Even with an idea. You get used to it, habituated to it, addicted to it.”
“So what do I do now? Is the truth better than what I thought? Is the truth better or worse? I can’t decide.”
“No better, no worse. It’s just the truth.”
“It feels pretty strange to me. It’s almost something I want to hide away, cause I don’t understand it.”
“That strangeness? That weirdness? That’s us.”
We walked over to Aunt Renee’s crypt nearby. Or she walked. I limped along.
I was thinking about the past and its powers to haunt. I’d once done a story on a guy who’d shot and killed another guy over an argument they’d had 25 years ago. They hadn’t seen each other since. So the big question, of course, was why after all this time. The guy said he’d recently retired and had plenty of time to brood.
But after 25 years? I’d said.
The guy shrugged. It always bothered me.
Tasha put her other wreath at the foot of Aunt Renee’s pink marble. There was a bench a few feet away, under the drooping leaves of a willow tree. We sat, Tasha looking at her sister’s grave.
“Something she said to me once. She was in one of her morbid periods, she made me promise that if she died, I’d put her in an open casket at the funeral. She wanted people to see her. She always wanted to be seen. So that’s what we did. Open casket, champagne colored lining, satin and silk.”
I held her hand.
“The day was just like this,” she said. “It was a beautiful ceremony. Only thing that went wrong, L.C.’d hired this woman to sing. She sounded fine for a minute or so, then her microphone went. Just completely shut down. We couldn’t hear the words, but you could still her voice. Just her voice, just this sad sound. It was beautiful, maybe even more beautiful than with the words. It sounded like someone crying.”
I thought about something I’d told her that first night in her apartment, about the old rites of initiation. How they all ended the same way, with an acceptance of ordinary reality, with an embrace of the everyday world.
It must’ve felt just like this. The willow tree was still a willow tree, but it was a tree multiplied by a million. The sun was the sun but it was more than before. The sky was the sky but it was more than before. Everything was ordinary, but unlike anything it had ever been before.
###
WHO THE HELL WROTE THIS?
I worked as an Executive Editor at Entertainment Weekly for 11 years and (in two separate stints) at People magazine and people.com for 12 years. I often speak to young journalists and try to use myself as an example for inspiration—a guy who spent time in jail, rehab and a psych ward and somehow went on to become a successful editor at Time Inc. and managed to keep himself sane and alive. I’ve tried to reflect those experiences in this book.
My wife, Laurie, and I live in Garden City, N.Y.
THE QUINN MCSHANE BOOKS
[All available at Amazon, Kindle, iPad, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.com]
SEX DEATH DREAM TALK
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven thriller, centering on themes of redemption, revelation and the power of the unknown.
The pure plot pitch: What do you do when clues to an unsolved murder have been coded in a stolen $50 million painting? You try to steal it back. Only you have to deal with corrupt collectors, crazy thieves, lust-powered women, shootouts, betrayals, double-crosses and surprises. And a psychic dog named Hillary. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/p5CI3Y
THE DEAD HAVE A THOUSAND DREAMS
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven thriller, centering on themes of prophecy, mortality and salvation.
The pure plot pitch: He was told he had exactly eight days to live. By a blind psychic photographer. Okay, Wooly Cornell was plenty crazy—not to mention a huge asshole—but he asked me to help him. So I did. And as the countdown to his death started and I found myself facing threats, shootouts, a mysterious scarred woman and weird predictions that somehow managed to come true, I could only come to one conclusion: Fate is one strange thing to fight.
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/oQ43KK
TELL NO LIE, WE WATCHED HER DIE
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven thriller, centering on themes of celebrity, addiction and survival.
The pure plot pitch: The sex tape of a famous actress suddenly turns up on the internet, showing her on the last night of her life. The full version is being offered for sale, and the reason for its high price goes way beyond celeb voyeurism. The video also contains a clue to who killed her. That's why everyone is--literally--dying to see it.
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/orJgQu
THE LOWER MANHATTAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven thriller, centering on themes of redemption, responsibility and spiritual freedom.
The pure plot pitch: Just before he dies in a downtown hospital, a doctor passes along the half-formula for a powerful new hallucinogenic drug. Find the other half, and you’ve got a miracle drug—one that can save lives, save the world, and make a lot of money. Which, of course, makes it worth killing for.
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/pjE5Sy
THE SEVENTH COMPASS POINT OF DEATH
The lit-crit take: A character-driven thriller, centering on the themes of terrorism, understanding and hope.
The pure plot pitch: Here’s bad day: Guy sets out to rob a bank but ends up pulling a carjacking, and when he’s arrested a body is found in the trunk. The victim is a Sunni community leader, and why was he killed? Who killed him? The search for answers
takes me into a homegrown Islamic terror underground, into plots, counterplots, deceptions and love affairs, all leading to an attack on a major NYC landmark.
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/pjE5Sy
DEAD LINE
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven, word-burning thriller about memory, identity and making peace with the past.
The pure plot pitch: Sure, we all know about arrogant, self-centered media executives. But how about one who served time as a teen for murdering her sister? And who suddenly believes she’s possessed by the spirit of Indira Gandhi? And now, at the height of her power, a secret from her past is threatening to destroy her empire, while someone from that past is trying to take her life. Stop the damn presses!
For a quick taste, please go to: http://bit.ly/kHVjSl
DEAD HEAT
The lit-crit take: A genre-bending, character-driven, word-burning literary thriller about politics, love and the haunting pain of memory.
The pure plot pitch: I didn’t know—or care—much about the tight race for governor of New York until someone took a shot at one of the candidates and killed his wife instead. The main suspect, it turns out, was an anti-government crazy (and a devoted quilter—yes, you heard that right) who once did time with me. So suddenly I’m trying to track him down, getting sucked into the panicky heart of a closely fought election campaign, into an affair with a troubled political operative, and into the dangerously surreal world of people who prefer casting their vote with a sniper’s bullet.
For a quick taste, please go to http://bit.ly/nVXk6Y
DEAD TIME STORY
Who killed JFK? Did Hitler really commit suicide? Was Kurt Cobain murdered? Hell, as long as we’re asking, did Jesus actually live and if so how did he die? I didn’t think we’d ever answer those questions, until I met a savant physicist who could unlock memories coded in DNA and bring dead time alive. The results were world shaking, to say the least. Too bad the secrets in his own past were just as mysterious, just as deadly.
For photos, quotes, more info, please go to Pinterest
http://bit.ly/KCA9na
For a sample chapter, Let’s Say You Live In A Galaxy 100 Light-Years Away, please go to
http://on.fb.me/KaTvm5
Tell No Lie, We Watched Her Die Page 14
