The Perfect Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

his. I’d intended to, but my hand had stayed frozen above the receiver. I wondered whether Detective Snow had attended your funeral, ill as he sounded.
    “Were they in uniform?” I asked. “The policemen?”
    I hadn’t called him back.
    “No, but you could tell. Shiny suits and lace-up shoes. And one introduced himself, a little gray man? Detective Snow?”
    “I never met him.”
    “No, you weren’t there.”
    It’s true; I didn’t attend your funeral. It’s not like Caroline would have welcomed my presence.
    If we’d been part of a diorama in a natural history museum, you could have entitled it “The Wronged Wife.” We maintained our frozen tableau until the Town Taxi driver sounded his horn. The noise broke the spell; I grabbed my duffel with one hand, snatched the Bloomie’s bag with the other, charged through the vestibule and out the door.
    I yelled at the cabbie to drive, drive fast, and he did, screeching his brakes at the corner while I fumbled in my bag for a Xanax and choked it down dry.

 
     
    CHAPTER
    five
     
    Tape 022
    Sylvie Duchaine
    1/28/10
     
    Teddy Blake: You were Garrett Malcolm’s first editor, Ms. Duchaine, weren’t you? On Blue Flame ?
     
    Sylvie Duchaine: My claim to fame and fortune, my dear, and do call me Sylvie, please. No matter what else I may do, I will always be associated with Garrett, and Blue Flame will certainly be mentioned in the first line of my obituary. Yes, even when he was starting out, he seemed to know exactly, but I mean exactly, what he was doing. I was at the very beginning of my career, too, so I had no idea what a rare talent he was, how lucky I was. I was—I am so spoiled by having had him as one of my very first directors.
     
    TB: What sets him apart from other directors you’ve worked with?
     
    SD: From the beginning, he has a plan, a carefully thought-out plan, but—how can I say this? One that frees him rather than captures him, if you know what I mean. He knows what he wants, and yet he can make changes in the moment to get where he wants to go by a different path. Like when you’re walking through a busy neighborhood and you hit a dead end. Some directors, some writers, don’t know what to do, but Malcolm always senses his way around the obstacles. He’s adaptable, but he’s focused. Because Garrett works with the actors before he shoots, because he takes the time to know them, he gets beautiful film. It’s so easy to make a film with a director who has vision, who edits through the writing.
     
    TB: How did your relationship with Malcolm begin?
     
    SD: Pure luck. He intended to make Blue Flame with my friend, George Terry, as editor, but then there was trouble scraping together the money to start filming and George accepted another film, a dream job in Norway. He recommended me before he left. So Malcolm and I went to lunch and talked about what kind of light he wanted, the speed, the spirit of the film, and before we knew it, it was dark, way past dinnertime. We spoke the same language, we listened to the same music, we loved the same films. We didn’t finish each other’s sentences or anything, but it was like I’d unexpectedly met someone from my hometown, a missing family member. We were both young, filled with enthusiasm.
     
    TB: Blue Flame was a small-budget baby, wasn’t it?
     
    SD: My God, yes. There was no time and less money. Not a lot of film to leave on the cutting-room floor. But what he got from the actors was extraordinary.
     
    TB: You never saw the set, did you? I remember reading that you don’t like to visit the set.
     
    SD: It’s not my way, no. First of all, I hate locations. I hate traveling. I think of myself as audience, as the audience’s representative, in a way, so I don’t like to see anything that reminds me that the film isn’t real. I want the film, I want only to see the film, and to know where the story’s going, and to work with that knowledge.
     
    TB: And Malcolm was fine with