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    Marlowe's Ghost
    Marlowe's Ghost
    Marlowe's Ghost
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Marlowe's Ghost

    By Sarah Black

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Former Marine Will Marlowe dreams of being a great classics scholar, but his subversive street art, Bad Toys, is what he does best. When he’s sent to London to retrieve Tommy Jones, what he’s really interested in is a chance to take Bad Toys global. He doesn’t expect cancer survivor Tommy to captivate him or to become the pet project of a real live—dead—author.

    Meanwhile, Tommy is struggling to write a dissertation about Christopher Marlowe while conveniently ignoring the fact that he knows Marlowe didn’t die in 1593. And Marlowe’s ghost? He has an agenda all his own that seems to involve two parts mystery, one part romance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateJan 25, 2012
    ISBN9781613723456
    Marlowe's Ghost
    Author

    Sarah Black

    SARAH BLACK is a baker and baking instructor with 25 years of professional baking experience in New York City, having worked at such legendary bakeries as Tom Cat Bakery and Amy’s Bread and consulted with companies such as Whole Foods Market and Pepperidge Farm. Her future plans include teaching bread classes at The Seasoned Farmhouse and opening a recreational bread and baking school called Flowers and Bread in the spring of 2016, both in Clintonville, Ohio.

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    • 5/5
      If I could rate this story 10 stars, I would. It is such a beautifully written romance with one of the most interesting plots I've read in a while. Tommy and Will are on a quest to find the answer to the much debated question of whether Christopher Marlowe, the playwright, actually died an early death or faked his demise so he could start a new life and continue his writing under the pen name William Shakespeare? The author obviously put a lot of research into this legend, and the story is so much richer for it.Both Tommy and Will were wonderfully drawn and will live in my memory for a long time. Tommy is in remission from Leukemia, while Will is recovering from serving as a Marine in the Middle East. I was so happy for them as I finished the book that I nearly cried happy tears. Published in January 2012, I have no doubt this book will be nominated for numerous awards by year end, if not before. Highly recommend.

    Book preview

    Marlowe's Ghost - Sarah Black

    Marlowe’s Ghost

    WILL unpacked his duffel bag on a park bench. Malibu Barbie was wearing a bright yellow sundress with yellow strappy sandals, and he carefully positioned pink sunglasses shaped like tiny hearts on her nose. Next was the hat, a wide-brimmed straw hat with yellow and pink ribbons that curled onto her bare shoulder. Excellent. The hat was critical, since it would keep Barbie from spotting what Mr. Potato Head, sitting next to her on the bench, was doing.

    Mr. Potato Head was carrying a small cane, and he was using the tip to stealthily slide Barbie’s skirt up her tanned thigh. His face was a masterpiece of dumb lust. He didn’t see Mrs. Potato Head behind the bench, snarling, her red patent leather purse ready to descend on his head.

    He photographed the scene, packed up the toys, and was out of the park and back home before the dew had dried on the sweet summer grass.

    WILL had started Bad Toys as a joke while he was still in Afghanistan. The unit had received a care package from a small town in Kansas. PFC Braddock and Corporal Binns had pulled everything out, looking for copies of Maxim, cookies, or microwave popcorn. The rest of the unit had watched the unpacking in disbelief. Barbie and Ken, Mr. Potato Head, GI Joe, Humpty Dumpty, a plastic bag of small green soldiers, another of cowboys and Indians. Some soft little stuffed animals from the zoo, giraffes and hippos and lions.

    The plastic warriors had quickly found homes in BDU pockets, but the rest of the toys had sat in the mess tent, on the table with the silverware, staring at them with painted eyes like some bizarre raspberry blown from America. Until Will had carefully positioned Barbie kneeling on Humpty Dumpty’s face, her head thrown back in passion. Barbie was surprisingly limber. Ken and GI Joe had their own fling on top of the salad bar, tiny erections made from elbow macaroni filched from the kitchen. Will never stopped to analyze what he was doing, but from that strange beginning, Bad Toys became an Internet sensation, and Will grew the heart of an outlaw.

    HE WAS a year out of the Corps, finishing up a degree in classical history at George Mason. Will thought he might go to law school since he felt like a cynical asshole all the time. Law seemed to be the proper career for a person with his outlook on life. His mother had suggested he might want to talk to someone at the VA. He’d assured her it wasn’t PTSD, just a bad mood that had lasted three years. He kept forgetting to schedule the LSAT, though, and when he should have been doing research and filling out applications, he found himself roaming the city with a bag full of toys, planning a little street art. So he was ripe for it when one of his professors pulled him into his office. William, I’ve got a problem.

    What’s the matter, Dr. Jones? You don’t have another flat tire, do you? Will wasn’t sure how a grown man with a PhD and a head full of gray hair had managed to not learn how to change a flat, but he had spotted him in a downpour, wringing his hands and trying to figure out which end of the jack was up.

    No, it’s a bit more serious this time. His office was crowded with overflowing bookshelves, the only visitor’s chair holding a pile of files in primary colors. Just move those, William. I need to tell you a story.

    Will put the files on the floor, sat down. What’s up?

    Dr. Jones stared out the window, his hands on his hips. I have a nephew. Did I tell you? His name is Tom. My older brother’s son. He’s a gentle boy, not really strong. He’s been working on his PhD in Elizabethan literature.

    Here?

    He’s at Oxford. Dr. Jones pulled his desk chair around and sat. So what happened is that last year, late in the summer, he got sick. It was totally unexpected, but he had leukemia. It seemed to come like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky. Neither of us really knew how to handle it. He and I, we’re the only family we have left now.

    He went to a doctor, right?

    Oh, yes, of course. I don’t mean we didn’t know what to do to get him medical care. We didn’t know how to handle the emotional consequences. The threat. The unexpected mortal nature of the condition. I was overprotective, I’m afraid, and Tom became… somewhat eccentric. More so than his usual, and he was always an original boy.

    Will raised his eyebrows.

    I remembered you had been a Marine. You’ve got a Purple Heart, correct? I saw the tag on your motorcycle. That made me think you might have a better understanding of the way near-death changes a person. That you might understand what he’s going through.

    Okay. Will was remembering the way this particular professor liked to lay extensive groundwork before he got into the meat of a lecture.

    The oncologist told Tom his leukemia was in remission about a month ago, and he was free to continue his studies, so he went off to England to work on his dissertation. And that’s when the… when the strange….

    What happened?

    He started to see ghosts. Not just random ghosts, like ghosts on the street. Not like Casper. He’s talking to the ghost of Christopher Marlowe. And that’s not even the worst part.

    Will opened his mouth to speak, realized he didn’t have any idea what to say, and closed it again.

    He’s become convinced after talking to Marlowe’s ghost that Kit was not killed in Deptford in 1593, but that he escaped and went to live in Germany. Dr. Jones stood up, began an agitated pacing. William, do you understand my concerns? If he begins to spout off crackpot theories about Christopher Marlowe, his academic career will be in ruins before he’s even granted his degree. I mean, these conspiracy theorists are the laughingstock of the academic world!

    Wait a minute, I’ve heard about this. Some people say Christopher Marlowe faked his death and he was really Shakespeare or something, right?

    "There’re a hundred theories. That is the stupidest of them all. William, I’m afraid this belief of his is somehow rooted in his leukemia. It’s like he has some emotional trauma from being so ill, and it’s finding expression in

    this— He waved his hands. —this ghost obsession."

    Will waited. He still wasn’t sure what Dr. Jones wanted.

    Do you understand my concern? You see how this could happen?

    Yes. What do you want me to do?

    I want him at home, where I can care for him properly. I’ll pay for the plane ticket and give you money for expenses. You aren’t enrolled in any classes this summer. I want you to go to England and bring him home. Would you consider doing me this favor?

    WILL understood better than most how near-death experiences changed a person. Some people talked to Christopher Marlowe’s ghost, some people twisted Gumby and his little horse Pokey into obscene positions and put a photograph of the outrage on the Internet. What was the big deal? You just found a way to live, shouldered the burden, and moved on. Carried it around with you like a rucksack full of rocks. He rubbed the scar tissue that stretched down his right arm.

    So Tom Jones had leukemia? He was better now, thanks to his good health insurance and his overprotective uncle, and he was off at Oxford writing his dissertation. Did he realize how lucky he was? He hadn’t gone into the military, and gone to war, so he had a way to pay for his college. There were a million, a billion people in the world who’d had a rougher life. Will thought Dr. Jones and his nephew Tom, that gentle boy, could use a little toughening up. America was making people soft as taffy on a hot summer sidewalk. And taffy was annoying when it stuck to your shoe.

    He woke the next morning from a dream of England in June, the sky bright, air sweet as cherry blossoms, as cotton candy. He was lying in an English garden in Deptford, the fragrant, old-fashioned roses over his head like the cavorting fat pink bottoms of women in French paintings. There was a man lying next to him in the grass. He’d raised Will’s hand to his lips.

    He should go to England. Why not? Was anything left of Wordsworth’s daffodils? There would be gardens, nonetheless. And the British Museum, with half the Parthenon on display. He would go, collect the gentle boy, and bring him home. See the sights and smell some English roses.

    WILL was poring over a copy of Dr. Faustus. Dr. Jones put a cup of mocha down next to him and pulled out a chair. They were sitting on the patio of Starbucks and Dr. Jones had brought him some research material. This guy had a dark side, no question. Listen to this: ‘What art thou, Faustus, but a man condemned to die? Thy fatal time doth draw to final end; despair doth drive distrust into my thoughts….’

    "Tom studied Dr. Faustus when he was an undergraduate. I wonder if the themes are preying on his mind?"

    Oh, hey, I recognize these lines! ‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium—Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul: See, where it flies!’

    "It might be one of the great tragedies of English literature, his

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