GHOSTWRITER HOLLYWOOD CONFIDENTIAL

Chapter One:

     I'm staying with my Aunt Jerusha, near where I grew up, in L.A., at the apartment she has had forever.  I wish I were at Georgie's parents, but it just isn't practical.  My Benefactor is dead.  We have to empty out Mel's office -he was her literary agent - where I've been storing everything for the past two years, since Mel died of a heart attack.  

    FYI: Mel was my "dad," my adopted dad anyway, after my real parents died in a car accident. When Mel died, there was no one left to support me. Then suddenly a Benefactor appeared, who turned out to be Mel's last client.  She started sending money.  It saved my ass.  Now my Benefactor is gone, along with all the rest of them.  So we have to empty out the storage unit, aka: Mel's office, that she paid for, besides supporting me, while I was in school.

    A lot of pieces are coming together.  Things I always wondered about.  But didn't dare to try to understand.  There was nothing obvious where we lived all those years, where I grew up, except what was in plain sight.  And most of that was boxed up and given away or sold at a yard sale after Mel died.  My personal things and what I wanted from Mel -I always called him Mel- we stored in his office a couple of blocks away, figuring it could wait until summer.  But somehow we just kept putting it off and the rent kept getting paid, so we put it off some more.

    I finished college in January. My Benefactor had given me an amazing gift:  a trip to Europe, complete with a rail pass.  I planned to return in September. Then Aunt Jerusha texted me she had passed away. Jerusha didn't want to while I was traveling, but now that the rent had stopped being paid at Mel's office, I needed to come back and deal with it.  
    I wish this hadn't happened during my trip, but I guess there is never a good time for people to die.  At least I got to finish college and go to Europe, which was amazing. At least I was already near the end of my travels when I got the news about my Benefactor.  I got two years to adjust, before having to finish sorting everything out from Mel.                                                        _______________________________________________________

    What a mess!  I forgot how much crap we stuffed into Mel's office.  There are boxes stacked to the ceiling!  Mostly junk.  Endless piles of old scripts and client contract folders.  Mel was a talent agent in his heyday. It was only later that he became a literary agent and then to only one client, my Benefactor.  There are mountains of books.  Mel liked to read, and there are books from his last client, the one who was helping me financially.  She was a Ghostwriter, for romance novels.  Mel had multiple copies of everything she wrote, only under different names.  That's how I know they are hers.  Why else would Mel have multiple copies of cheesy romances?

    There are pieces of the frame from my childhood bed, stacked against a wall.  There are kitchen items.  My grade school papers and science fair projects.  Boy was Mel a sentimental packrat!  And dust.  How so much dust could get into an office suite that has been closed for two years with the blinds drawn is beyond me.  Aunt Jerusha and I keep coughing and sneezing, going through everything.  

    She lives in a huge 1930s stucco apartment so some of this stuff, we've agreed, I can
store there, but most of it has to go.  We've already taken 25 boxes to Goodwill and I don't know
how many more to the dumpsters outside.  Thank God this building has an elevator.                                                           _______________________________________________________

    I am feeling so stressed.  We have two days left to finish emptying and cleaning out Mel's office.  I guess if you store boxes from floor to ceiling in three rooms, it turns out to be a lot of crap.  Some of it is of no practical use, but it's so emotional.  We found a box of photo albums yesterday I had forgotten about.  Well, that wasted two hours.  I got lost in the imagery as Aunt Jerusha recalled stories about when her brother, my adopted dad Mel, was alive.  Then there was a box of my dolls.  If it didn't cost so much, I would just keep paying the rent and put this off. Forever.

    Georgie came, which is good, because it's an extra pair of hands, and she and Aunt Jerusha are not as emotionally involved.  They're are better at chucking stuff that I am never going to use, that I didn't even think about until I saw it again. Aunt Jerusha keeps saying because she's old, "You can't take it with you!  Not a ring.  Not even one hair, when you're dead."  Which is a creed she apparently lives by because that is why there is actually room for me to store a fair amount of memorabilia.                                                                  _______________________________________________________

    So yesterday, we were punch drunk tired, about to tackle the last room, which I thought would go pretty fast.  I figured this because it was more like a closet being used as the office supply room.  The door had a lock on it.  It was a cheap little padlock like the kind people used to have on suitcases.  We just got a screwdriver and removed it.  

     Inside were some shelves and an old printer, some binders, pencils, note pads, that kind of stuff.  The dust, I expected, and the cobwebs, even though it was a small space that had obviously been shut up for a long time.  What I was not prepared for was a stack of paper on a rug that had probably not been vacuumed in thirty-odd years.  It went up to a shelf where this ancient printer was; a scroll of old computer paper that has the tiny holes on each side. On the paper was typing.  Not a script or faxes, just entries.  Like a journal, plus some letters, personal stuff like that.  It went on and on.  

    Aunt Jerusha was about to tear off the pages and scoop it up.  We were that wiped out.  But something made me ask her to stop.  It was late.  She and Georgie were exhausted.  I wanted a few more minutes before leaving for the last time.  I'd take it down to the recycle bin and go back with an Uber.  The security guard downstairs, I assured them, meant it would be safe for me to stay.  This was good-bye to the last place Mel really spent his life in.  I felt I owed it to him and his memory to be there with him, in spirit anyway.  So I sat down in the middle of the dirty, now empty office, with a mountain of that paper scroll in my arms and began to read.