Ghost Writer - Part I
I had just moved back to New York City and was staying with my parents temporarily while waiting for my own apartment to be ready. I was also desperately looking for a job. Eventually I had the luck of meeting a very unusual woman who was looking for a ghostwriter.
THIS IS PART 1 of a SEVEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Image: Mikhail Nilov
The events in this story took place in the early Eighties, but easily could have happened today. At the time, I had just moved back to Manhattan, city of my birth, after four long, difficult years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’d been an MFA student at Boston University. I was staying at my parents’ apartment on the Upper East Side while waiting to move into my own place a few blocks away on Third Avenue. My six-year-old daughter, Jofka, and I were crammed in the guest bedroom. She had just entered first grade at Rudolf Steiner, a nearby private school. I was looking for a job.
But hey, what kind of job could you get as a writer? I was well-educated, but not well-connected. I’d published poems and short stories in small press, but no one had ever heard of me. My most recent job as a technical writer for a commodities firm had been a bust – I would definitely have preferred selling handbags or cosmetics at Saks to repeating the experience. But I needed a job, and hoped I could find one in my own field. After I’d pounded the pavement a few weeks, my father told me he’d heard of a woman who was looking for a writer to help collaborate on a novel. Her name was Lauren Shapiro (pronounced with a long I, Shup-eye-row), and if I showed up at her apartment at eleven the following Tuesday, she’d be happy to meet with me.
She lived midtown, my least favorite neighborhood, in a luxurious but drably decorated apartment. When I pressed the buzzer, the door opened to a thin blond woman with an extremely intelligent face. She was in her early forties, dressed in a plush sweatsuit. She looked as if she’d just blown out her hair, and from the first moment she was talking, talking, talking … What name did I prefer, Nicky or Nicole? What was I reading? What had I had for breakfast? Where did I live exactly? Did I have children?
The questions were endless but friendly and I quickly discovered I enjoyed conversation with her. She acted like an older sister, concerned about me and my life, constantly giving advice, querying decisions, checking my hair, my clothes, the look on my face.
She was as direct and determined as a can opener prying open a lid, digging for information that I’d happily offer up. But after several weeks of these very pleasant meetings, we still had no idea what story we wanted to tell. Lauren didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and many mornings passed with us chit chatting and gossiping and having a good time. The only problem was I needed a job, and this one didn’t pay.
Cover Image: Michael Discenza