Ghost writer, p.2
Ghost Writer, page 2
Jonathan slowly moved the top page off the manuscript.
It had started with an innocent dare.
The view from the rear window of the tractor had been obscured by mud that had accumulated over the years, making it easy to climb aboard the plow with no one knowing. The two boys watched from the tree line, waiting for the tractor to make another round.
“You gonna do it, Jon?”
“No way!” Jon laughed, and they pushed each other as boys always do.
“Come on. You get to pick anything from my room you want if you do it.”
“I ain’t doin’ it, Jason.”
“Scaredy-cat.”
“You do it, then.”
Jason’s eyes watched the tractor as it made its final turn in the field and began to head toward them. “A’right. I’ll do it.”
The two boys stood breathlessly as the roar of the tractor thundered toward them, blowing debris high into the air. Their hearts pounded with the rush of the excitement. The tractor was so close now they could feel the earth tremble under their small feet.
“Don’t do it, Jas,” the younger one pleaded.
But Jason’s eyes were set forward like a soldier on a battlefield. The fear was gone, and if not gone, then hidden. . . .
Jonathan threw himself back into his chair, causing the chair and himself to roll backward into the wall behind him. His whole body trembled in astonishment. How could this be? This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? The boys’ ages were wrong, but the names were right. His brother’s name was Jason. The events didn’t exactly unfold as told in this story, for they had hidden behind some hay bales, not trees, and whoever won the dare got to keep the pet turtle in his room, but still . . . this was so unbelievably close to what had happened.
He rolled forward a little to grab his tea and take a drink, holding the cup with two hands in order to steady it. What was going on? Was this some cruel joke? But how could it be a cruel joke? No one he knew now knew about this. He was only five when it happened. It was long ago and long forgotten . . . wasn’t it?
“Mr. Harper . . . Mr. Harper . . . ?”
Jonathan jerked his eyes upward to find Edie standing in the doorway. “What?”
“You okay?” she asked, her beady eyes narrowing.
Jonathan straightened himself in his chair, flattening his tie against his chest. “What is it, Edie?”
“Your wife’s on line three.”
Jonathan could hardly think straight, but one thing he knew for certain was that he didn’t want to talk to Kathy right now.
“I’ll have to call her back.”
“She sounded as if she really needed to talk to you.”
Jonathan’s face snapped into a harsh expression. “And what’s your point?”
Edie swallowed uncomfortably, waited a second longer for him to change his mind, then quickly turned and left.
Jonathan looked down at the manuscript, angered at how he reacted, angered at the thought of this memory so unexpectedly coming back to violate him. He hadn’t thought of Jason in years. Without pictures, it was hard for him to even remember what he looked like.
Who was this from? Jonathan grabbed the manila envelope it came in, but there was absolutely no indication of an address. He grabbed the corner of it, where the postage was, to see where it was sent from. New York? Why would someone in New York send a manuscript for him to Kansas?
He needed a strong drink. He looked at his watch. It was only 10:30 A.M. He’d have to kill thirty minutes before any of the sports bars opened and he could get at least a beer. He hesitated. Kathy hated it when he drank. And he hated it, too. But . . .
Grabbing his jacket, he quickly walked out of his office, passing by Edie’s desk in a manner that would repel any questions of where he was going. He glanced down the hallway for Sydney as he headed for the elevator, but she wasn’t there.
The elevator door opened with the green Down arrow dinging. The doors simply wouldn’t shut fast enough for him.
chapter 2
The drink Jonathan downed near lunchtime calmed him enough to return to work for a few hours before his meeting with Clyde. Edie dutifully handed him his messages as he strolled past her desk without hesitation. Kathy had called twice since he was out. His jaw muscles tightened at the thought of having to talk with her about being gone again this night. A few more messages from authors and agents followed, and he thought it was awfully deliberate of Edie to put the two messages from Kathy on top. Edie had a bad habit of sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, and he could sense she was just about to do it again.
“Call your—”
He slammed the door to his office but finished her command in his head. Wife. Wife. Wife. He flopped into his chair and stared at the phone. Not returning phone calls was a cardinal sin in their relationship. Once, about ten years ago, she had called him at the office in the morning. He’d had a busy day and forgotten to tell her about a meeting he had following work. When he came home, he never heard the end of it, especially since she’d been counting on him picking Meg up from the baby-sitter’s. Ever since then, no matter what, he returned calls. If he didn’t, she was to presume he was dead.
He slid his hand from the top of his forehead firmly down the front of his face until it dropped off at his chin. The phone seemed to scream his name, yet picking it up would be like picking up lead. Why were they like this now? Why couldn’t he just call and take the heat? Why couldn’t she understand a little more?
While Jonathan mulled over that thought, his eyes locked onto the strange manuscript in the middle of his desk. Even with the alcohol’s related effect, the words on those pages still bothered him. He then decided the best way to rid himself of the worry from this was to call his wife and create whole new worries. He was just picking up the phone when his door opened and Zippy walked in.
Zippy was a private nickname, unbeknownst to the poor man, who bore the name of Francis Flowers. Francis was a short man with a narrow, pasty face, large eyes, and thinning red-blond hair. His lips always seemed too tight, his cheeks too saggy. He was only in his forties, but he looked more like sixty.
The nickname “Zippy” first came about when Francis had accidentally come to an important meeting with his zipper down. But it also was appropriate because Francis had bad allergies, which ignited when he got agitated or angry or had any other extreme emotion, which was about all the time. So he was known to carry Ziploc bags full of tissues in his dress shirt, just in case. And third, he talked fast. So he was known to all but him as Zippy, and as far as Jonathan knew, no one had slipped yet.
“The door is closed for a reason, Francis,” Jonathan said hostilely. One was always on the defensive with Zippy because Zippy was always on the aggressive. And when he was in the office somewhere, the air always seemed to thicken and cloud up like a cheap air deodorizer.
“Jonathan, always such a delight,” Zippy said dryly, adjusting his thick glasses and pulling at the long wisp of hair that hung down past his brow. On a good hair day, that piece of hair was supposed to cover the bald spot on the top of his head. But Jonathan could not recall Zippy ever having a good hair day. “It’s important. We need to talk.”
“Francis, I don’t have the time today. Look at this stack,” Jonathan said, pointing to the slush pile next to his desk.
“You don’t fool me,” Zippy said quickly, scanning the desk with a narrow eye. Jonathan thought Zippy might be the closest thing to a troll he’d ever seen. “You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?” His eyes scrunched up and blinked rapidly.
Jonathan threw up his hands in innocence. “Avoiding you?”
Zippy pointed a short, thin finger at him. “Don’t give me that. You know I’m around. I’ve been wanting to speak to you for several weeks about this.”
“This?” Jonathan again tried to mirror perfect innocence. He had, however, been warned by Carl Osburg, a nonfiction editor with the house, that Zippy had been wanting to abandon post.
Zippy, by occupation, was what is known as a ghostwriter. Admittedly, Zippy was a brilliant writer. He had ghostwritten nearly forty nonfiction pieces in their house alone. He was in demand by many celebrities whose names would sell but whose writing wouldn’t.
Ghostwriting had sparked quite a controversy a few years ago when Newsweek interviewed a famous psychologist, who had written nine books on parenting, and ended up misquoting his writing throughout the entire interview. Newsweek, of course, uncovered the fact that this psychologist hadn’t written a single word of the books he was selling, and not only that, on five of them he had not even been involved in so much as an outline. Dateline hit every ethical angle of it for a week.
Ghostwriters can make an exceptional living, especially if they’re content writing namelessly and never getting credit when the sales soar. A few have tried coming out of the closet, so to speak, but most are not successful, because even if they’ve written a hundred books, they have to start over as if they’ve never written a book before in their lives, at least in the eyes of the marketing department. No house is going to be stupid enough to spill the beans on one successful author in order to launch one that, though talented, is virtually unknown.
Zippy had worked diligently for the publishing house for over twelve years. He was not only known for his impeccable writing style, but also for his ability to crank out a book in about half the time it takes other writers. He was brilliant to a fault, which was one reason he made such a good ghostwriter. His social skills were nil, but he could write on any subject handed to him.
But because of Zippy’s inability to coexist with the human race, just a simple office visit from him was dreaded by all. His qualities—abrasiveness, defensiveness, and bitterness—were sometimes overlooked by the fact that he just couldn’t seem to understand the concept of “personal space.” And because his breath was on the verge of toxic, most everyone had developed an amazing skill of disappearing into bathrooms and cleaning closets just in the nick of time.
Jonathan carefully guarded himself behind his desk as Zippy approached and swiped a chair from the middle of the office, bringing it as close to the front of the desk as possible.
Zippy looked down his thin nose at Jonathan. “I suppose you are going to tell me you have no idea why I’m here.”
“Sorry, it’s true,” Jonathan lied. Carl had forewarned him that Zippy had mentioned to him last month that he felt it was time to abandon ghostwriting and pursue the great American novel.
Jonathan nervously stuck a finger into the deep pits of his left ear and rattled it around as if that were his primary concern for the moment. Zippy crossed his arms and twisted his little face into a messy scowl. “Jonathan, you are lying. But I will overlook that shortcoming of yours for now. We have big plans to discuss.”
“Well, if you talk as fast as you type, we should be done in thirty seconds.”
The problem with Zippy was that he rarely caught an insult. “I’m from Iowa, Jonathan. We talk fast. And I type one hundred and twenty words a minute. Now, about my novel—”
Jonathan held up his hands. “Not now, Francis. I’ve got things to do. We’ll have to discuss this later.”
“Now! Now!” Zippy squealed, almost Yoda-like. Jonathan winced at the man’s complete social depravity. He could quote entire passages of literature but couldn’t ever seem to carry on a normal conversation or find a comfortable pitch to his voice. Jonathan’s head pounded with intolerance.
“No, Francis. Not now. I told you, you can’t just come waltzing into my office and expect my time to be available to you.”
Zippy bit off a fingernail and spit it out onto the carpet as an afterthought. His eyes never left Jonathan’s. “I’ve got a novel.”
Jonathan spread a sneering smile across his face. “And I’ve got a headache. See Edie outside and we’ll schedule an appointment, all right?”
“You’re putting me off again, aren’t you?”
Jonathan gulped quietly. Maybe it was the tone and pitch of Zippy’s voice, but all indications were that Zippy was getting agitated. The end of his nose was twitching and his eyes were starting to water. When Zippy had an allergy attack, you were the one that needed an inhaler.
“Francis,” Jonathan said smoothly, rising from his chair and sliding to the side of his desk. “Look, you and I will talk about this. I’m not putting you off. I’m just having a remarkably bad day, and I want to give you my full attention.”
Zippy cocked his head to the side, tightened the muscles around his eyes, and pulled at his hair again. “It’s going to be brilliant.”
“Of course it is,” Jonathan said, gently guiding him out of his office by the shoulder. “We’ll talk soon.”
Zippy pulled a tissue out of his Ziploc bag, blew his nose with enormous force, and then offered a hand to Jonathan as he said, “Of course we will. I’ll be back. Count on it.”
Zippy set his dirty tissue on Edie’s desk, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and abruptly turned to walk down the long hallway. Edie handed Jonathan antibacterial gel before he even had a chance to think about what germs were now crawling on his right hand.
“Thanks,” Jonathan sighed, squirting a few drops out. He still had three hours before he had to meet Clyde. He felt dizzy, despondent, and emotionally drained. His chest tightened in reaction to Edie’s watchful eyes. But now that Zippy was gone, all he could truly think about was his brother’s death and the manuscript that seemed to bring the whole incident back to life.
“You okay?” she asked. “You look like you just quit smoking.”
“I don’t smoke, Edie.”
“Maybe you should start.”
Jonathan sighed, walked back into his office, and prayed the rest of the day would go by in a blur.
------
Jonathan conveniently arrived at the Sienna an hour early and was on his second rum and Coke. He’d spent the afternoon buried deep in his work. Several times he found himself wanting to read the mysterious manuscript that now sat on the edge of his desk, but he fought the temptation, at least for now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the next paragraph held.
The short passage he’d read wrecked him in such a way that all he could think about was Jason and that horrible Sunday afternoon. In fact, that memory was one of his earliest. Whatever had happened before in his life melted away at the tragedy he witnessed at the age of five.
But now, several drinks later, any memory that might have wanted to survive in his mind was swimming in a pleasurable pool of alcohol. In college he had been a big drinker, but when he met Kathy, suddenly his party days didn’t seem that glamorous. She’d insisted he come to church with her when they were dating, and the stability of that, along with her family and even their first daughter, Meg, had kept him away from the bottle for twenty years. Nearly twenty years, anyway.
He was just about to entertain some thoughts about Sydney when a large hand grabbed his shoulder. He didn’t even have to turn around. He knew it was Clyde.
“Hey there, Clyde,” Jonathan said as Clyde pulled up a stool next to him.
Clyde Baxter topped six feet, with silver-gray hair, a nice, intellectual-looking face, piercing blue eyes, and a mannerism that reminded you of your favorite great uncle. His always crooked bolo tie never looked quite right on him, and his western shirts made a tight fit over his large belly.
Whenever he entered a room, he always tipped his large-rimmed cowboy hat at all the ladies and gave them a special wink, and though Jonathan always felt embarrassed by his lack of style, it somehow never seemed to bother anyone else. He wore old Wranglers that were always too tight and was never, ever seen without his snakeskin boots.
At sixty-seven he had written thirty-six western novels, a genre that had been less than popular in the past few years but had not limited him the least bit. Twelve of those novels landed on the New York Times Bestsellers List, and the other twenty-four had sold over one million copies. To say the least, he had been Bromahn & Hutch’s most successful novelist, and not only had Jonathan been responsible for finding him, he’d also been responsible for keeping him loyal to the house.
Over the past fourteen years, he and Clyde had become good friends, and admittedly, Clyde had been much of a father figure for him. In fact, there was really no one Jonathan respected more, although he’d been careful to always maintain a little bit of authority in the relationship, which for some reason, Clyde had been happy to afford him.
And so, throughout the years, Clyde had become part of the family. He’d attended all three of his children’s baptisms and was even present for his youngest daughter’s birth. Kathy loved cooking for him, and Clyde always enjoyed being cooked for. His wife had died of breast cancer shortly before his first novel was published, which allowed a lot of time for Clyde to write. On his thirty-sixth novel, he’d decided to retire after writing one final story in the life of his hero, Bartholomew Callahan. That single book had sold three million copies thus far and was still at number three on the bestsellers list.
“How’s retirement, Clyde?” Jonathan asked him, pushing the last of his rum and Coke aside, as if Clyde wouldn’t notice.
Clyde smiled, made a deliberate glance at the drink, and then said in his typical midwestern drawl, “Well, I’m comin’ out of it for a short while.”
“What?” Jonathan asked, trying to focus on the conversation. It would take him a moment, but eventually he’d be able to shake the buzz. Food. He just needed food.
