Ghost writer, p.3
Ghost Writer, page 3
“Yesiree! That’s why I wanted to see—”
“Let’s grab a table, shall we?” Jonathan said as he slid off the barstool and wandered into another section of tables. He found an empty one and sat down without bothering to ask a waiter. Clyde quietly followed him and took a seat across the table. Jonathan unfolded a napkin so he wouldn’t have to focus his eyes on something steady, like Clyde, the saint of all saints. He decided to keep it light.
“Clyde, you can’t come out of retirement. You killed Bart Callahan in your last novel, remember? The only people that get away with resurrecting the dead are those daytime soaps. By the way, we’re still getting letters about his death. You crushed the hearts of about a million ladies, you know.”
Clyde smiled but was unable to respond before a waiter approached with menus. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Eat,” Jonathan blurted. “I need something to eat.” He glanced up at Clyde, who just looked at him curiously. “I mean, yeah, a drink—water’s fine. But bring us an appetizer, okay?”
“Uh, yes sir, which one—”
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Just something.”
The waiter looked at Clyde, who quietly ordered tea. When the waiter stepped away, Clyde leaned forward on the table. “Jonny, you’ve been drinkin’. ”
“I hate when you call me that,” Jonathan said in a mild, unthreatening tone, the best he could come up with at the moment. “I am of age, you know.”
Clyde laughed a little, but concern lingered in his eyes. “I feel bad for takin’ you away from your family tonight.”
“Don’t.”
“Give Kathy my apologies. I should’ve called her to meet us.”
“Well, the kids, you know, Clyde. It’s hard to find a baby-sitter. And Meg refuses to baby-sit more than two times a week.”
“You’ve got three beautiful daughters. Hope you know that.”
“Thank you, Clyde. You know they love you.”
Clyde nodded, and he seemed to gush at that statement. Every time Clyde would come over, he’d always give them each a ten-dollar bill. Of course, Sophie was still too young to know the significance. But Meg, twelve, and Leesol, eight, would always jump up and down and scream with giddiness. The waiter returned with the drinks and an order of chicken wings, then said, “Mr. Baxter, I’m a big fan. May I have an autograph?” The waiter held out a pen and a napkin.
Jonathan waved his hand. “Give the man his priv—”
“Sure, sure,” Clyde chuckled and quickly signed the napkin.
The waiter gratefully thanked Clyde, took their orders, and left.
“Jonny, I don’t wanna keep you long. I know you wanna get back to your family. But what I have to tell you is quite significant. To me, at any rate.”
“You say you’re coming out of retirement?” Jonathan said as he grabbed as many chicken wings as his hand could hold and proceeded to eat them as fast as he could. If they were going to talk business, he was going to have to be alert. It wasn’t until after he’d downed three of them that he realized they were spicy chicken wings. He grabbed his water and poured it down his throat.
Clyde watched with amusement. “You okay, big guy?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said as he tried to flag down the waiter for another glass. “Continue, please.”
Clyde took a dramatic pause, either to punctuate the fact that Jonathan was not himself or to emphasize his next statement. “I’m writin’ one final book.”
Jonathan focused on Clyde and nodded his head for him to go on. In his normal quirkiness, Clyde grabbed a chicken wing, took a bite, and licked his fingers one by one as if he were alone in his house and no one was around to care. “I had to write this, Jonny. It’s something I had to write before I die.”
Jonathan smiled at his mixture of passion and boyish quirkiness. The passion was something that had kept Clyde’s last novels as good as his first ones. The quirkiness had somehow made him an American icon. “You’re not planning on leaving us soon, are you, Clyde?”
“ ’Course not!” he replied in that famously loud, boisterous voice. “If the good Lord’s willin’, I’d like to stay another twenty years.”
“Well, you look great. I wouldn’t doubt if you lived to be a hundred.”
Clyde smiled, but Jonathan could tell he wanted to go on about the book. “So what’s this novel you have to write? Bart Callahan’s dead. Are you going to do one with Cassandra? Make her the hero? You know how all the female readers loved her.”
Clyde shook his head. “This ain’t a western.”
Jonathan paused, mid-chew. “Clyde . . . um . . . you don’t write anything but westerns.”
“How do ya know?” he said with a tilt of his large head. He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Maybe I write romance novels under a pen name.” He laughed. “Maybe I’m Danielle Steele!”
“Clyde, seriously,” Jonathan said, quickly sobering up, “westerns are what made you famous. No offense, but I’d hate to see your very last novel bomb because you tried to get into a new genre. Ask Embeth Wilkes. She’s trying for political thrillers and, well, quite frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to work.”
“I understand.” Clyde smiled softly, but his eyes were focused and demanding. “Jonny, I ain’t tryin’ to get into a new genre here. Believe me. I love westerns. But this story—well, it was inside me and I had to get it out. It’s a story that needs to be told.”
Jonathan, not meaning to, laughed out loud at his sudden seriousness. “Clyde! You’re reminding me of some of these young writers that come through the house. They’ve got these stories ‘living inside them’ and they’re just going to die if they don’t ‘come out.’ That’s another thing I like about you. Your stories are just stories. You don’t write to hide an agenda, know what I mean?”
Clyde acknowledged the statement by laughing along and shrugging his broad shoulders a bit. Still, he seemed so determined. “I know it perhaps sounds foolish. I ain’t a spring chicken. I should put my pen away and leave the writing world forever.”
“You should have put your pen away a long time ago and gotten a computer, but that’s beside the point. I never said you should retire. That was your idea. I could’ve stood you making us a couple more million. Nellie’s having a nervous breakdown, you know.”
Clyde laughed. “Yeah, well, there comes a time when you know it’s over. I knew that Mahogany Hills would be it for me. At least as far as Bart Callahan goes.”
“So what’s this story you have to write?”
Clyde took out a manuscript from his briefcase. “It’s got no title. Not yet.” Clyde stacked the papers neatly in front of him, staring at the first page like he was looking at a newborn baby.
“It’s a . . . thriller, I guess you would call it. A mystery. But it’s about relationships, as well. It’s not complete, not nearly, but I thought I’d give you what I have so you could start readin’. ”
“Clyde, listen. I’m sure it’s a good story and everything, but you’ve never written a thriller. Why would you want to write one now?”
“Jonny, you’ve known me for a long time. And I’ve always appreciated your professional advice. A writer could have never hoped for a better editor than you.”
“Thank you.”
“And I know this is gonna be a gigantic risk for you and the publishing house. But I gotta do this.”
The solemnness of Clyde’s tone finally made Jonathan realize he was serious. He rubbed his brow and took a deep breath.
“All right. Fine. What’s it about?”
Clyde bowed his head, then finally looked up at him. “I just want you to read it. I don’t want you to know what it’s about before you start readin’. I just want you to read.”
Jonathan shook his head. “Clyde, you’re acting very mysterious here.”
“It’s not mysterious. It’s just that I think this is the most pure story that I could ever tell. And the most important.” Clyde handed the manuscript across the table. “Please read it.”
Jonathan sighed as he placed it carefully in front of him. “I’ll read it, Clyde, but I’m not promising publication. Embeth Wilkes’s attempt at political thrillers has everyone real nervous on this crossover thing.”
“I understand. Just read it. That’s all I ask.”
Jonathan smiled. “Of course I will.”
The waiter arrived with their meals, but Clyde stopped him. “I’ll need a to-go box.”
“What? You’re not staying to eat?”
Clyde smiled as the waiter quickly returned with the box. “It was wrong of me to take you away from your family tonight. I was just overly anxious about this novel. Go home. Be with them. I’ll talk to you later about it. And stick to water. It suits you much better.”
“But—”
Clyde waved his hand up, refusing to hear his complaint. He took his box, said a quick good-bye, and left Jonathan sitting at the table alone.
The waiter stood over Jonathan and finally asked, “Would you like yours to go, as well?” He smiled a little and added, “Or would you like your privacy?”
Jonathan paused, then said, “I’ll eat here.” He hadn’t called Kathy back, so he might as well be dead on the side of the road somewhere.
The waiter left, and Jonathan looked down at the manuscript. He turned to the first page of the novel, eager to read the first sentence. Clyde Baxter was famous for his first sentences. A few years ago, Jonathan had learned that in his spare time Clyde would go to bookstores, open up books, and read the first sentence of as many as he had time for. Clyde had the ability to capture his readers with his very first sentence because, perhaps, he spent more time on that first sentence than he did the whole first chapter.
Jonathan took a bite of his sandwich and began to read.
Chapter One
I suppose more than anything I wish I had known that Dietrich Donomar had decided a long time ago, from the solitude of his prison cell, to kill the innocent; he was, after all, already condemned . . . and apparently bored.
Jonathan smiled. Clyde never ceased to amaze him.
chapter 3
Jonathan sat at the table and watched Kathy silently place the dirty dinner dishes into the dishwasher. He tired of this routine, but nevertheless he had accepted it. And perhaps it favored a shouting match.
It was always the same. A single cold plate would be left on the table for him when he arrived home. Kathy would always refuse to warm it up to make her point. And Jonathan always refused to eat it, to make his.
Tonight was no different, although Jonathan did feel different inside. The manuscript he had received in the morning still echoed powerfully and redundantly in his head. A part of him wanted to go back to the office and continue reading, but he wasn’t about to make that mistake. Another part of him wanted to tell Kathy, but the timing was all wrong. Besides, not even Kathy knew about what had happened to Jason, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it with her or anyone, for that matter. So he just sat there, trying to give the children the impression that everything was okay.
When they finally left, Meg to her room, Leesol to the living room TV, and Sophie to bed, Jonathan rose from the table and his untouched plate of food and entered the kitchen, where Kathy emphasized every move she made with an edge of harshness.
“Kathy, I—”
“I know, I know, Jonathan. You had to work late.”
“It was Clyde. He said he had to meet with me. He told me to tell you he apologized for taking me away from my family.”
Kathy softened a bit at that moment. She loved Clyde. But her body soon stiffened again, and she turned her back, deliberately avoiding eye contact, to put the leftovers in the fridge.
“Kathy, what do you want me to do? It was Clyde.”
Kathy finally whirled around, her fists punched into her hips. “So? So what, Jonathan! So what!” She lowered her voice when Leesol’s giddy laugh at some sitcom made them realize they were not alone. “This is the fourth night in a row! And to top that off, you don’t call me back?!”
“I know.” He was tired and weary and longed for the day when Kathy was “Katherine” and their marriage was a fairy tale. Even at a time like this, when she was cold, her eyes dark with fury, he would never forget how it used to be.
He sighed and leaned against the counter. Her once light brown, shiny hair was now darker, shorter, grayer, pulled back out of convenience, where it tended to stay most of the time. He watched her tug at her old ragged T-shirt, pulling it over what used to be model-thin hips. And as she wiped away the sweat from her face and turned the oven off, he wondered when was the last time he’d seen her in makeup.
They heard Leesol giggle again from the living room, and Jonathan couldn’t help but smile. Leesol most reminded him of Kathy, back many years ago, that is. Kathy had been happy and vivacious, free-spirited and passionate. That was one of the things that attracted him. She laughed. All the time she laughed. He missed that.
He glanced over at the trash, overflowing, squeezed to the maximum. That was one of his jobs, but he rarely did it. Should he do it now? That might make her angrier. He knew taking out the trash wasn’t going to reconcile anything anytime soon. And he figured if he tried to do it now, it would send some sort of mixed-up, coded message that he couldn’t interpret. He seemed to send those awful messages more and more these days. So he decided to just leave it alone for now.
“Well, don’t just stare at it, Jonathan. It’s not going to get up and take itself out, you know.”
Jonathan sighed heavily. Okay, bad call. He should’ve gone for it.
“Oh, thanks for the big sigh,” Kathy growled, nearly pushing him out of the way. “I’ll do it if it’s that big of a burden for you.”
That’s not what he meant! He wasn’t sighing because—
Kathy stormed past him with the full trash can, pieces of it dropping in a trail behind her. Forget it. There was nothing he could do. He heard the garage door slam and decided to go into the living room to see what Leesol was up to.
He sat down next to her on the couch, but she didn’t budge. She was watching an episode of I Love Lucy. Jonathan watched it for a little bit, and when a commercial came up, he grabbed Leesol and threw her into his lap. She looked up at him with her large brown eyes and laughed, not resisting his insistence that she lay her head in his lap.
“How was your day?” she asked in her pretend mature voice. She had been doing that lately, trying to be a woman. In reality, it wasn’t too far off. At eight, and being the middle child, Leesol had for some reason chosen to skip Barbies and tea parties. At four she announced she wanted to be an architect, and she had spent hours since then drawing houses of her dreams.
Jonathan smiled down at her and ran his fingers through her long, curly hair. “It was okay, honey.”
“Anything exciting happen?” she asked with very real curiosity . . . the kind that only comes from the purity of an eight-year-old.
Jonathan paused. It sickened him to think that the only exciting thing that had happened to him was a twenty-eight-year-old named Sydney Kasdan walked into his office that morning. How could he explain that to a child? And the manuscript—well, he would hardly call that exciting. More like . . . disturbing.
“Just the same old stuff.”
“Sounds boring.”
“How was your day?” He noticed Leesol fiddling with something small in her hand. “What’s that?”
“Uncle Earl sent it to me today.” She opened up her hand. “It’s a miniature voice-activated recorder. See? It’s so small it can fit in a pocket! And it doesn’t even have a tape. It records it digitally,” she said proudly.
Jonathan smiled at her enthusiasm. Uncle Earl, the husband of his only living aunt, his mother’s sister Eleanor, loved to spoil the girls. He was always sending them obscure gifts that Jonathan guessed he bought on the Home Shopping Network. Eleanor always complained he stayed up late, “watching that silly channel.”
Leesol went on excitedly. “He bought Meg an alarm clock that tells the time in every country in the world and says it in the language spoken there! He got Sophie a microwave bacon cooker, but Mom says she’s too little for it.”
The commercial finished, and she rolled off his lap and propped herself up on her elbows to watch the rest of the show and play with her new toy. He kissed Leesol and went upstairs to see Meg.
On his way to her room, he peeked in on Sophie, who was finally in her “big girl” bed. She held on tight to her stuffed tiger and had two of her free fingers stuck in her mouth. He suddenly longed for the days when he could sleep without worry as she did.
A few steps down the hallway led him to Meg’s room. He quietly knocked on the door before entering. Meg was on her bed, reading something. She looked up at him, then looked back down.
“Hi, Meg.”
“Hi.” She didn’t bother looking up. Jonathan sat down next to her on the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Studying.”
“Already? You’ve only been back to school two days.”
“I’m studying my Sunday school lesson, Dad.”
“You have homework in Sunday school?”
Meg sighed and set down her pen. “You would know these things if you came to church with us.”
Jonathan bit his lip and looked away. He hadn’t been in a while. At first it started out a week here, a week there. Then a month at a time. Now, as he tallied it up in his head, he guessed it had been over a year.
Meg continued, leaning back against the soft pillows that lined her headboard. “Mother’s mad at you.”
Mother? Jonathan shifted uncomfortably. She was growing up too fast. A year ago she would’ve never picked up on this. “I know, baby. She should be.”
