I didn’t ask why an agent would be handling funeral arrangements for his client, even one as celebrated as Mona Dart, instead of those members of her family who still lived in Alabama. Neither did I spend too much time wondering why he had gone to the trouble and expense of shipping the author’s body to a mortician in New York and then back to Alabama in a casket. I simply assumed that Wilde wanted to milk the tragic circumstances for all they were worth by showing how much he would do for one of his writers.
That assumption, as far as it went, was right on the money.
The novel I was writing had been resisting me for nearly two years. I would become its willing instrument for a while, only to wake up one day to find that I was deaf to its narrative voice. The clear and complete vision that had once seized me had been reduced to a few anecdotal scraps, digressions that had come to dead ends, and characters whose motivations remained completely opaque to me. Rob Saperstein, after a couple of phone calls and a few emails gently asking how my book was coming along, had long since stopped inquiring about it. Perhaps that was because I had no deadline for the novel, since Rob had been unable to interest any publisher in the project, so I was writing “on spec,” in the hope that eventually an editor might be moved to buy a completed book. But I could not help thinking that Rob might also believe that I was washed up as a writer, that I might never sell anything again.
Once more, I tapped my parents for a loan. “This is the last time,” my father said, which was what he always told me, but this time he sounded as though he meant it. “You ought to think of coming home,” my mother added, which was what she always said, and for one despairing moment, I seriously considered her perennial suggestion.
And then, suddenly and miraculously, my long-banked creative fires were ablaze. All of the false starts and self-doubt were burned away, allowing new growth to take root and flower. I rose in the morning ready to write, even begrudging the time it took me to make a pot of coffee before I sat down at the keyboard. The scraps and digressions assumed their appropriate places in my novel’s structure, while my narrative voice seemed to be shouting at me through a megaphone.
A phone call from Joanne Montoya, the features editor of the Wilsey Gazette, interrupted me during one of my manic bouts of writing. Hearing her voice on my machine reminded me that my bank account was getting perilously low and that I could probably use an assignment or two to patch me through to the end of my novel.
“What?” I hollered as I picked up the phone, having long since dispensed with such greetings as “Shanna Youngerman here” or “Hello,” which would only encourage callers to stay on the line and take even more time away from my work.
“I could use a piece from you for next Sunday’s ‘Book Beat’ section,” Joanne replied.
“Oh,” I said. That meant I’d have to write the thing in one day to make the deadline. “This is awfully short notice for one of those Sunday supplement deals.” Usually the Gazette planned ahead for those.
“I know,” Joanne said, “but I just found out about Wilhelm Edwardson.”
That got my attention. “What about Wilhelm Edwardson?”
“Didn’t you know? I thought you would have heard by now. He died last night. His wife came home and found him in his study, but he was gone by the time the paramedics arrived.”
For a moment, I could not speak. “No, I didn’t know,” I said at last, hearing the tremor in my voice. I thought of the first time I had met Wilhelm Edwardson at a writers’ workshop, just after my divorce from a man who had accused me of being far too self-absorbed for him to endure any longer and who had left me with no assets except a wealth of material on all of the ways close relationships could go wrong. Willy and I had become writing buddies, meeting in bars and coffee houses to discuss our work, and mailing manuscripts back and forth to each other after he and his wife had moved to Toronto. When our first novels were published, Rob Saperstein had represented both of us, and had taken us out to lunch together in New York to celebrate. The lunch had turned into a nearly four-hour session, with Willy and me gorging on lobster ravioli, Kobe beef, and two bottles of a costly Cabernet at Rob’s expense while he spoke of his high hopes for our future careers.
At least Willy had lived up to his promise. By the time I ran into him again in New York, two years later, his first novel, Hyperphysicist, had been optioned for film for an inordinate sum, his second novel had been featured in the New York Times Book Review and was rapidly climbing the bestseller lists, and he was being paid by Wired to pretty much travel wherever he wanted to go and report on whatever techie subjects interested him. Rob didn’t take us out to lunch that time, because by then Willy had left Rob’s agency to become a client of Andrew Wilde’s. So Willy and I got together for borscht and sandwiches at the Stage Door Deli while he told me that he was on his way from Toronto to Spain for a book tour, and then off to an arts festival in Venice. At his urging, I promised to send him a copy of my new novel, which had already been remaindered, and didn’t reveal that I had sold my autographed copy of Hyperphysicist to a rare book and manuscript dealer on the lower East Side in order to pay my rent.
We drifted apart after that, sending each other ever more infrequent letters and, later on, emails until we were reduced to only the annual Christmas card exchange. I sold his signed cards to the dealer, too.
Now he was gone. There would be no chance for me to acquire a literary rep that might make me once again worthy of his friendship. I suddenly wanted to drop the phone and weep.
“Jesus, I am sorry,” Joanne said, interrupting my reverie. “I thought you would have heard, given that you were, like, a friend of his.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I thought you could do about eight hundred words for us, but we’ve got to have it fast.”
“I’ll do it,” I said absently, fairly certain that I could bang out the requisite wordage. “But I’m not really that big a friend of Willy’s. I mean, I haven’t seen him for years now, and I wasn’t really that close a friend to begin with.” When the income gap between two people yawns too wide, any real friendship becomes difficult. The difference between writers and other people, though, is that it’s usually the poor friend who shuns the better-off one.
“So you can write about him when he was just starting out,” Joanne said.
That was exactly what I intended to do, a portrait of Willy Edwardson, skinny and insecure and in love with literature, fully expecting to live the impoverished life of a Bohemian, before he had unexpectedly become an iconic figure in popular culture as the Poet Laureate of the Geeks. Willy had retained his cult following even after the failure of his new novel, which had been three years late in getting to its publisher and had disappeared from the bestseller lists only a month after publication.
“What happened to him?” I asked. “You didn’t say.”
“They won’t know for sure until after the autopsy, but it looks like an OD. They found works and syringes and shit in the study.”
“Oh my God,” I said. That news hit me hard. I knew Willy had dabbled in drugs, it was part of his legend, but he had given that up years ago, or so I had always thought. “Did you hear anything about whether or not he finished his new novel?”
“No, I didn’t, and I’ve got to get going.”
“I’ll email you the story by noon tomorrow,” I said before hanging up.
By the time I had recovered enough to sit down to write my piece for Joanne, I had found out from a couple of online stories that Willy’s novel was still a work in progress, that he had died after fixing with some extremely potent and pure heroin, and that Andrew Wilde had flown to Toronto to help with the funeral arrangements.
I wrote up my feature story, sent a copy along with a letter of condolence to Willy’s widow and kids, and went back to my novel. About three weeks after my piece was published, I had a phone call from Andrew Wilde. His voice was instantly recognizable, given all of his guest shots on NPR and Charlie Rose.
“I just wanted you to know,” he said,
“how much I appreciated your remembrance of Wilhelm Edwardson.”
“Thanks,” I replied, wondering why Wilde, who surely had more important matters to occupy his time, had bothered to call me about that.
“I was also moved by your allusion to the personal losses I’ve suffered. Most people don’t think of the agent when a writer passes on, or are that sensitive to the fact that he has often lost more than just a client, that the agent and author relationship can be more than purely business.”
“I think most writers would understand that,” I said.
“Some would and some wouldn’t. The business of literature has become much more impersonal.”
“You have my sympathy,” I said. “You’ve certainly had more than your share of grief. Willy was a friend of mine way back, but to lose Mona Dart and Dechen Thorsten as well–” I heaved a sigh. “I know Todd Thorsten, and I know how sorry he was not to have had the chance to know his brother better.” As long as I had Wilde on the phone, it wouldn’t hurt to get that in, especially if he might be trolling for someone to ghostwrite a memoir for Todd.
“You know Todd? But I suppose you would, in a small town like Wilsey. Know more about your neighbors, I mean.”
“Writing for the Gazette, I do,” I said. “I did a couple of feature pieces about Todd, one about his funeral home and another one about his reaction to Dechen’s success. That’s how I got to know him. He really is a good guy, didn’t resent his brother at all.”
“You know Todd well?” Wilde asked.
“Well enough for him to tell me where his brother is buried.” Knowing that I wouldn’t get an opportunity like this again, I was intent on impressing Andrew Wilde while I had the chance. “But he knew I’d keep that in confidence. I only mention it because you already know about it, Todd did say that you took care of the burial arrangements. But I swore I wouldn’t write about it, or even talk about it. I mean, I can see why it might be better to keep it a secret.”
“Odd that Todd would have told you,” Wilde said.
“He knows he can trust me. He probably wouldn’t have mentioned it at all except for Dechen’s grave being disturbed.”
“Dechen’s grave disturbed?” Wilde’s voice had dropped an octave.
“I thought Todd might have mentioned that to you,” I said. “He said some patches of grass had been pulled up and put back, but it was such a minor thing. There didn’t seem much point in reporting it to the police, and as far as I know, nothing like that has happened again.”
“There wasn’t much point in his reporting it to a journalist, either.”
A journalist, I thought, much preferring that term to stringer. “Maybe he just wanted someone to talk to about his brother, someone he could trust. I mean, having Dechen die so suddenly and burying him in secret and then having the grave disturbed is a lot to handle in such a short time.”
Andrew Wilde was silent for a few moments. “The line about you at the end of your piece mentioned that you were completing a novel,” he said at last.
“Oh, it’s done,” I said. “About all that’s left to do is some touching up, and then off it goes to my agent.”
“And your publisher?”
“Well, I don’t actually have a publisher yet,” I said. “I wanted to write it without the pressure of a deadline, let the novel develop organically.” It was a common strategy to deal with bad times and reluctant publishers, and sometimes, much as I hate to admit this, it was also best for the novel.
Wilde said, “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the manuscript.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was no reason for him to read my novel; he was probably overworked as it was, and I had revealed to him that I already had an agent. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Wilde.”
“Andrew, please.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said uneasily.
“You do that.”
“I mean, I’m extremely grateful for your interest.”
“As I said, I’d be interested in taking a look at it as long as you don’t mind sending it to me.” We exchanged addresses and email addresses, he gave me his office phone number, and then he, already late for lunch with Minty Arban, had to hang up.
This was somewhat unethical behavior on both his part and mine. My novel was, after all, my agent’s business and not his. I could rationalize that, since Rob was technically employed by me, I had a perfect right to explore other possibilities, even to let him go and retain another agent’s services. But Rob and I went back a long way; he had taken me on as a client when my only credits were a writing fellowship, one short story in a highly regarded literary magazine that paid authors in copies, and two short articles in The Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times Magazine. He had done some heavy editorial lifting on my first novel, making me rewrite it twice before he deemed it ready for submission. He had believed in me and encouraged me even when I was ready to give up entirely; if anybody deserved to reap the benefits of what might be my breakthrough novel, Rob did.
But I hadn’t really decided anything, had I? Perhaps Wilde simply wanted to see more of my writing before deciding on whether or not Todd Thorsten might be worth a memoir with me as a ghostwriter. Probably nothing would come of sending him the book, so there was no reason to say anything to Rob about the matter.
So I told myself, while hoping against hope that something would come of it and wondering if Wilde had some hidden motive for trying to get on my good side. Could he be running out of clients? He had, after all, lost three prominent ones. Or was I really that good?
I was midway through revisions on my novel when I heard the news about Joe Waldo Bender. Another literary figure had bitten the dust, although Joe Waldo Bender’s accomplishments were hardly the equal of Willy Edwardson’s. Joe Waldo, as everybody had called him at the height of his fame, had written the shamelessly gory thriller Blue Lizard, followed that up with an even more horrific tale of a serial killer, Stillness of the Swans, sold the rights to that book to a film producer for a bundle, seen Stillness of the Swans become a major box-office hit, and then had lapsed into utter silence for five years before coming out with a new novel, Scipio, a sequel to Stillness of the Swans and another total gross-out that had sold to the movies even before publication. In an interview with Larry King, Joe Waldo had allowed as how Scipio was probably going to be his last novel, as he preferred to devote his remaining years to refurbishing a villa he had recently purchased in Tuscany. Whether the almost universally bad reviews his third novel had received had influenced that decision, he did not say.
And then suddenly he was gone, the victim of a hunting accident, having accidentally discharged his weapon under his chin.
At least Andrew Wilde would not be the bereaved agent this time. Joe Waldo Bender was represented by Minty Arban, whose list of clients was heavily weighted toward the bestselling blockbuster side of the scales. But I did note that Andrew Wilde was apparently helping his inamorata Minty and Joe Waldo’s widow Janey Beth with the arrangements for the funeral. Bender’s body had been flown from his Florida residence to a funeral home in Manhattan, the Carstairs and Barbieri Memorial Home, where mourners could come to pay their last respects before Joe Waldo was shipped back to his final resting place in Tallahassee.
I had, I recalled, seen the name of that particular mortuary establishment before.
It took only a little while to track down exactly where. A lot of news stories don’t mention funeral homes, but obituaries do, and the Internet finally turned up the references. The Carstairs and Barbieri Memorial Home, as it happened, had also handled all the arrangements for Willy Edwardson, Mona Dart, and Dechen Thorsten.
“What do you know about the Carstairs and Barbieri Memorial Home?” I asked Todd Thorsten.
He raised his brows. “They seem reputable, they took care of everything for Dechen, and they charge at the high end of the scale. Luckily, I didn’t have to pay the bill.”
“Really?”
“Andrew took car
e of that, said it was the least he could do.”
I managed a smile. “Not too many agents would foot the bill for a writer’s funeral, but I suppose Wilde can always reimburse himself from Dechen’s future earnings.”
“I wouldn’t begrudge him that.”
We were standing just outside Todd’s office, in the front hallway of his funeral home, and the pounding of hammers and occasional shrieking of drills behind the closed door across the way were becoming too loud for me to ignore. “Doing renovations?” I asked.
“Actually, I’ve decided to open a gift shop. It’s a new trend in the industry.”
“A gift shop? What would anybody want to buy at a funeral home?”
“Crucifixes or other religious symbols, special frames for photos of the deceased, maybe a small memorial plaque or a reproduction of the actual monument. Jewelry holding a few of the departed’s ashes, or a pendant with the thumbprint of the deceased – you just make the impression in wax, and use that to cast the keepsake in gold or silver.”
I shivered. “Sounds morbid to me.”
“Actually, a couple of my colleagues in other parts of the state say it’s quite comforting to people, being able to get some kind of concrete remembrance, especially something as unique as a fingerprint.” Todd paused. “Maybe you could write something about the shop for the Gazette when it opens.”
“Sure.” The Gazette welcomed puff pieces about local businesses, especially those that took out ads regularly. “Anyway, wish me luck. I’m on my way to the post office to mail my novel.” I had packed up two copies, one for Rob and the other for Andrew Wilde, although I was sure Wilde had forgotten his promise to me.
Todd nodded. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
A month after I had sent off my manuscripts, Rob called to say that he was going to try a new editor at the publishing house that had brought out my last book. Since there was an option clause in my last contract, that house technically had the right to see the book first, and Rob had talked up my new effort enough to spark some interest. “I’ll try to get you what you got last time,” he told me, “but if we have to settle for less, I’ll ask to have it all paid up front and try to get more concessions on other rights.”
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