Ghostwright Read online

  Without Sarah he would have gone up in smoke. Many times she had cut him off in the middle of a call to handle the call herself, and salvage with her warm honey voice what Speke had been about to wreck.

  He couldn’t, on this worst of all mornings, find a single pill. An aspirin. One. And absolutely nothing else.

  I’ll have to make short work of Asquith. Tell him how great he looks, take him over to the Outer Office, and—

  Then Speke had no pictures in his head. When had he ever been able to control anything Asquith said or did? The man actually used to play with guns. Why hadn’t a twelve-bore at some point whisked away just a little portion of the old cranial vault? Everyone else seemed to shoot themselves, that is, every other drug addict who fooled with guns. It wasn’t right—it was unholy that someone who was addicted to six major poisons at once could still be alive.

  It would be wonderful to see Asquith again, he reminded himself. They would have a nice long talk about writing songs in North Beach, using that cheap little Panasonic that, for some reason, tended to eat tapes, gobbling them into knots, a night’s work turned into plastic confetti.

  Will I disappoint Asquith, he wondered, and seem too sleek, too complacent? Maybe I’ve lost my edge.

  There was a distant clatter. Clara would be up and about, attacking flour in the kitchen in the process of making her blueberry muffins. Life couldn’t really be terrible, he told himself, if a kind woman was up making muffins.

  It was going to be great to see Asquith again. They would indeed have a nice talk, but it would be in the Outer Office, far from the house.

  First he would find out what it was Asquith wanted, before he would let the man into these walls, before he would let the old friend into the sanctuary, the world he wanted to keep safe.

  6

  Asquith was late.

  Naturally. It was just like him, Speke muttered to himself. Why not torture me as long as you can? Why be punctual when you can drag this out forever?

  Now and then there was the workaday sound of Sarah’s office, the trill of the phone, the rattle of a printer, his career firing on all cylinders without his help. The sounds were muted, far away, muffled, as though he could not really hear them at all, but merely wished them into being.

  Speke roamed the large house, paced the library, gazed at the piranha, that stainless-steel-pale fish that did not appear murderous as much as trapped. He organized his collection of antique blues recordings into alphabetical order. While fussing with the records, he discovered the rare Blind Willie McTell he had been sure a guest had filched at some point during those long drug-and-booze marathons in his pre-Maria days.

  He poured a drink, and emptied it untasted down the drain, all the while feeling his insides blister and twist, scalded and punished into what he knew must be the beginnings of another ulcer.

  It was no wonder. The body knew what to do: work hard. The result was a hole in the stomach, a crater in one’s life.

  Clara was in the kitchen, sorting through index cards beside an old-fashioned, compact Olivetti. The air was yeasty with the smell of bread. A lovely woman with a flash of gray in her dark hair, she smiled at him. Her family had lived in these hills since the eighteenth century, and Clara was one of those people who do not require speech in order to have presence.

  Basil, a sheaf of fresh leaves, stood in a vase beside the sink. She was, Speke saw, typing her recipes for pesto. He had always told her she should write a cookbook, and she had always smiled and said that she could remember everything she needed to know. And yet here she was, “Spinach pesto” on the card waiting in the typewriter. It was one of his favorites, a blend of fresh spinach, pine nuts, blanched almonds, romano and what Clara had always called “mysteries.” It was like blundering upon a woman writing her will.

  He apologized for intruding, and Clara said, “I decided to make a file.”

  “Write a book. I’ll put you on all the talk shows.”

  She looked down, smiling inwardly. “I would hate that.” Then, more seriously, she added, “I just thought I might take your advice and get them on paper.”

  “Things written down do seem more lasting,” he said. But he rarely knew what to say to Clara. She seemed always right, silent and rooted and, despite her apparent shyness, sure of everything she needed to know.

  She did not meet his eyes, smiling down at her index cards. “It seemed like the right time,” she said.

  He wanted to linger in the kitchen, that sunny place, but he left the house entirely. Sometimes he believed that he could make things happen by a kind of magic. Sometimes he thought of someone and stepped toward the telephone and they called, right then, that very instant. Granted, that almost never happened, but it only took a time or two to make a man feel that he had a little more power than other people over the unseen.

  And then, with perfect timing, as soon as he abandoned his faith in his power to make the invisible visible, as soon as he sighed and turned back toward the house, like something that had been preordained, something they had rehearsed, Asquith arrived.

  Sun gleamed off a helmet, and surely this lean figure, kicking a Kawasaki into silent attention, was that of a stranger. Too agile, too young, Speke nearly thought, but then neither of them were old. And yet, this was an athletic figure, one that stepped with the loose limbs of a swimmer, or someone accustomed to hours of handball.

  And that gesture, the lifting of the insectlike helmet away from the sandy hair—what was wrong with that? It was obvious after a moment. The old Asquith would never have worn a helmet.

  Parking the motorcycle here would sure attract Maria’s attention, and her eventual questions. Who was that tall man with the motorcycle?

  Asquith looked taller, and although as thin as ever, thin the way a runner might be. His handshake was strong. A handshake—even that was a surprise. Asquith had always greeted people with a stare, and offered them, if they were lucky, a cigarette.

  And it was wonderful—it really was. To see his friend standing with his half-smile, his quick eyes, was more than a delight. Speke wanted to dance, cry out to the heavens. It was true—Asquith was alive!

  Asquith studied him, and then said, with something like humor, “Here I am, back from the dead.”

  Speke embraced him, and he could feel within Asquith’s frame a strength, a muscular thinness that made him think Asquith must run to stay in this sort of shape. He managed to utter some pleasantries as Asquith rolled the motorcycle under one of the live oaks, over the great roots.

  Asquith cut him off by describing, in a calm voice, an accident he had passed on 101. “And there was a dead deer beside your gate, up by the road,” he said. “A buck.”

  It’s like him, Speke thought, to mention something violent, something dead.

  There was something he had forgotten about Asquith, something all his midnight jaunts to score narcotics on Market Street had obscured. Asquith had loved the outdoors, and had, during his acting stints in Oregon, enjoyed camping near Crater Lake. So the man was not only alive, he was healthy. Speke licked his lips, and shook his fingers to get some feeling back into his body. He felt numb, unreal.

  Asquith left the helmet on the motorcycle, and without this piece of armor he was more the old Asquith, wearing only a baggy shirt and jeans.

  He had a way of walking that Speke recognized at once. He took his steps carefully, as though choosing to leave no footprints. He had an athlete’s way of moving his arms, the limbs easy and relaxed but with a hint of inner tension.

  Christ, thought Speke, people don’t really change that much.

  He welcomed Asquith into the Outer Office. It was a separate, remote cottage, ideal for interviews. Complete with a wet bar and a sound system, it gave the visitor the impression that he was visiting the great man in his lair.

  The truth was that Speke rarely used what was, in a sense, his Oval Office. It was a stage office, not quite a fake, because once in a while he came out here to read a contract, and onc
e a few years ago he had come out here with a bottle of ouzo and had drunk until he puked blood.

  But it looked, with its ash panel, and its leather-bound Goethe, like the refuge of a noble mind, and at the same time a place of work, with a desk and a telephone. A large fireplace of green serpentine dominated the far wall, its jutting, sharp-cornered mantelpiece decorated with a single bronze Pallas Athena. Only a subtle eye would detect that the poker was in mint, unused condition. The mantelpiece itself was worth study. Its corners jutted out so sharply that Speke had hurt himself more than once bumping into them. The designer of the mantel was unknown, and Speke had decided that the spikes of green stone represented the rays of a stylized sun which supported the slab at each corner.

  Asquith gazed around, with an imitation of respect. Or was it the real thing? Surely he would recognize the framed letter on the wall, a note from Hemingway to Charles Scribner, as authentic. And the Degas over the desk, all sepia and iron gray, would have silenced the Asquith of old into a long meditation. There were other things here, things that perhaps Speke would be able to show his visitor. Even the closet held its charms, never-used fishing tackle, handcrafted in Scotland, and a map of the estate rolled up into a leather case as tall as a man.

  Asquith fell onto the leather sofa. His eyes were bright, and he was tanned.

  Asquith had always been a secretive individual. Speke had never known the details of Asquith’s childhood or his family. Maybe, Speke thought, this isn’t the real thing—not Asquith at all. But there, just at the cuff of his shirt, was the scar from that frenzied walk up Grant Street all those years ago.

  A silence, one that Asquith no doubt relished, and which needled Speke’s insides. Asquith studied him, with the expression one would wear if spying an old movie on television, cherished but also charmingly dated.

  Speke gestured toward the crystal decanter of single-malt; Asquith shook his head. But the time for casual greetings was drawing to a close. It was time for Act one, Scene one.

  “You look well,” said Speke.

  Asquith closed his eyes for a moment against what he seemed to take as flattery. “You’re keeping me secret,” he said, and then, after a long pause, letting the word “secret” sizzle for a moment, he added, “so that no one will know I was here.”

  So, thought Speke, we are underway. At last it was the Asquith he remembered, the acerbic voice, the alert mind disguised by a mask of boredom. Although this tone was unpleasant, it was familiar, and Speke was grateful for the return of his old acquaintance, both because he was a friend and because Speke knew that he could manage this visitor after all.

  “We can go up to the house for lunch later, if you like.”

  “You don’t use this office.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s not nearly messy enough.”

  “I’ve changed a lot.” Speke offered what he intended to be a disarming smile. “I’m more patient. Less messy—”

  “You’re a success!” Said with just the slightest tilt of the head.

  Speke lowered his eyes. He would have to be very careful. Asquith was intelligent. I knew that, of course, Speke told himself. But he meant: really intelligent, much smarter than he himself would ever be.

  “I am so happy to see you,” Speke said. “But I want to be honest with you.” He was tingling, and beginning to feel a clammy sweat that surprised him. “I think I was just a little bit nervous about your visit.”

  “You were always a nervous ruin, in private. People think you’re a man of action, ready for anything. But I know.”

  “I think I know what you want,” said Speke. Forget opening gambits, he thought. Let’s talk.

  “You thought I was dead,” said Asquith, an oblique response to Speke’s statement, but very much a response.

  “I thought it very possible.”

  “Possible,” said Asquith, as though disliking the flavor of the word. “You thought that something”—he made an airy gesture—“had carried me off.”

  “Life is confusing. I never know what to expect. And I did try to locate you.”

  Asquith smiled.

  “If you want money, Timothy, I would hardly blame you. You deserve money.” This was blunt, but Speke thought that by exposing the subject now he would render it less potent.

  Asquith did not answer at once, but seemed amused. “Don’t be silly.”

  Speke clasped his hands together, and worked his lips. This was not going to be easy. Big surprise. “Then what do you want?”

  “I wanted to pay you a courtesy.”

  “How nice.” Be careful, he told himself. Don’t be sarcastic with this man. “What sort of courtesy?”

  Asquith closed his eyes with a silent laugh. “Forgive me. I can’t help feeling a certain amusement. You think I came here for money.”

  “It would be reasonable of you to expect some sort of reward for—let’s face it—being such an inspiration to me.”

  “An inspiration?”

  “Just being around you was exciting. If I needed a phrase for a song, or a splash of dialogue, I would just think of something you had said, or something you had done.”

  “You found me helpful, then,” said Asquith, an airy half-question.

  “Of course I did,” said Speke. “You were someone I thought of as alive—fully alive, not one of these poor, pallid people you see everywhere.”

  Asquith’s eyes glinted at this statement, and he took a moment before he said, “You thought of me as someone who was more alive than you were.”

  “Of course.”

  “And now you think that I’ve come back to claim my part of your success—my due share.”

  “I don’t know how much I actually, legally owe you.…”

  Asquith studied Speke with a slight smile.

  “But I’ll share what I have with you, Timothy. Out of friendship. I’ll set you up somewhere. If you want a house, swimming pool, staff of helpful aides—that’s what you’ll have.”

  “You don’t understand at all, do you?” said Asquith.

  “I don’t really have to give you anything, Timothy.”

  “That’s right. You kept me alive when I was really unsound of mind. Counted out my aspirin, washed the puke out of my blankets. And I appreciate it.”

  “If you still need medical help, Timothy, I will be happy to provide it.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  “Tell me. I want to do what I can. Anything reasonable.”

  “It’s not money, Ham. It’s not anything that can be resolved by screwing off the top of one of those hand-lacquered fountain pens and scribbling a check.”

  “I want to be fair—”

  “Years went by, and I was too sick, mentally, to even remember the plays. And when I did see you in Newsweek, it didn’t bother me at all, or even interest me. But recently I have come to see that what you have done is stolen my immortal part—my life. I wasn’t the inspiration for your plays. I didn’t give you the idea for your songs. I gave you everything. All of it.”

  This was said in a quiet voice, Asquith’s gaze wandering the room, as though seeing through the boards and plaster of the office to all the places he would never visit.

  Speke could not respond.

  “You were on television,” Asquith continued. “In makeup so thick you couldn’t sweat, talking about the black cat, my cat, the one I found. You felt, with your own brand of reasoning, that you could take credit for all the other stories. But that story, Hamilton, is mine.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Speke.

  “Don’t you?”

  Once again, Speke could not make a sound.

  “I want it all. Everything that you have become.”

  “You’re hardly being rational, Timothy. I’ve worked hard. I’ve spent years on this work-in-progress. I’ll give you credit. I’ll have my agent put out a press release today. I’ll tell the world all about our friendship. I want that, Timothy—I really do.”

/>   Asquith watched him and did not respond.

  Speke recovered himself, and continued, “But you won’t take that play away from me. You won’t take the plays, or the songs. They are my work. You lived the stories, but I wrote them, and they are mine.”

  Asquith crossed his legs.

  Speke leaned forward. “You haven’t written a word. You could never write without me standing over you, pouring the coffee and looking up words you couldn’t spell.”

  Asquith began to speak in a new voice, a narrator’s steady cadence. He began to tell the story, began the opening dialogue, the stronger, muscular young man too sick to continue through the jungle, the Indian turning to say, “If you’re so weak we will go back.” The thin, ironic young man threatening the Indian, the scenes unfolding as Speke sat, open-mouthed, unable to make a sound.

  He told the story of the cat.

  “No!” Speke cried at last. “That’s not what happened. You can’t do that to the story, Timothy. It’s wrong! Those are all lies!”

  Speke paused to steady his voice. “I’ll help you, Timothy. In any way I can. But I want that play. I won’t let you twist the story up like that. That’s the most important play of my career, and besides—it’s my life, my actual life, the one I lived. And as for those old plays, I was the one who really wrestled them into existence. You weren’t there. You were gone!”

  Speke was on his feet, pacing. “I carried those plays from door to door. I saw those plays from the days when they were so many sheets of Walgreen’s typing paper in the bottom of a closet, to the nights when at last they were big words in lights. Writing them was nothing! Nothing! That was the easy part, the fun part. That was the joy! The rest of it, and the stuff you wouldn’t have had the stomach for, the grind of getting these things out of the cardboard box and into the public psyche—I did that! I did it. I gave birth to these plays, and you—where were you? I put those songs on the radio, Timothy. It was all me.”

  “I’m calling my old friend at UPI. You remember Jessica Moe. She’ll believe me.”