There is only one topic completely off-limits with Larchmont: the events of July 29, 1974. Everyone knows the story. It was one of rock music’s biggest scandals, a dark and lurid tale of sex, drugs, and murder involving one of the most famous men in rock, Noel Gordon—a man Lara was, it was rumored, pregnant by that summer, though given that she very demonstrably does not have a child, who can say how accurate that rumor was?
The murder of Pierce Sheldon reverberated through rock circles, and both Lara and her stepsister, the writer Mari Godwick, were swept up in it. The swift conviction of John Dorchester, a hanger-on and drug dealer who had accompanied Gordon to Italy that summer, did nothing to stem interest in the story, and his suicide in an Umbrian prison just six months after said conviction only fueled more tawdry conspiracies.
Five years later, though, most of that has died down, eclipsed by the success of Mari Godwick’s sensational novel Lilith Rising and Lara’s Aestas.
And it is Aestas that provides me my one chance at getting a hint of Lara’s feelings about Villa Rosato and the summer that saw the gruesome murder of Pierce Sheldon.
I wait to bring it up until nearly the end of the interview when the sun has set outside and the tea we were drinking has been replaced with two vodka tonics.
“Why the title?”
Larchmont’s dark eyes narrow slightly.
“Pardon?” she asks, but I don’t think it’s a question. I think she’s trying to give me a way out. I probably should have taken it, but I press on.
“Aestas means summer in Latin,” I say. “And you wrote these songs in Italy in the summer of 1974.”
It’s the closest I’ll get to mentioning the events that happened at Villa Rosato, and there is something in the way Lara Larchmont looks at me in that moment that makes me feel slightly ashamed—slightly grubby—for even bringing it up.
“I did,” she finally says. “But the title of the album was really inspired by Camus. You know, ‘I found there was, inside me, an invincible summer,’ all that.”
Since she was gracious enough to let me slide in something so personal, I return the favor and don’t press. And honestly, there is something of the invincible summer about Lara Larchmont. Her smiles are easy, her eyes warm, and she seems untouched by all that darkness in a way that the other survivors of Villa Rosato are not. Photographs of Noel Gordon taken just this past summer in Venice reveal a man whose legendary beauty is fading （and whose equally legendary talent is being squandered）， and there’s always been a whiff of the tragic around Mari Godwick, despite her literary success.
But Lara Larchmont still walks in the sun.
I mention this later to an acquaintance, a writer who’ll remain nameless but was friendly with Larchmont and her set in the early seventies, and is still a force to be reckoned with in music journalism now.
To my surprise, he disagrees, shaking his head vehemently. “No, that summer ate her the fuck up, too, man. She’s just better at hiding it than the rest of them.”
—“Invincible Summer: The Rise and Rise of Lara Larchmont,”
Rolling Stone, November 1979
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ten thousand words.
I look at the number at the bottom of the page on my laptop again, and no, I’m not imagining it.
In the past three days, I’ve written ten thousand words, which is more than I’ve written in the last eight months combined.
Granted, not a one of those ten thousand words is about Petal Bloom, a fact that probably won’t thrill my editor, and certainly doesn’t help my bank account, but for the first time in ages, I actually feel like me again. Writer me, losing herself for hours at her laptop, slipping into some kind of jet stream only I can feel.
The only problem is I’m not sure what it is I’m writing exactly.
The name of the document is “TheVillaBook.doc” but it’s not about the villa, really. Or not just about the villa. It’s part biography of Mari Godwick, part true crime dealing with the murder of Pierce Sheldon, and part personal narrative—my Italian summer, post-divorce, where instead of eating, praying, and loving, I became interested in the link between a horror classic and the real-life horror that unfolded at the villa where I was staying.
It’s not like anything I’ve ever written before, but there’s something there, I’m sure of it, and even Rose seemed cautiously optimistic when she replied to my email, reminding me that I should still make the next Petal Bloom book the priority, but that she was just glad I seemed excited about writing again.
And I am. As excited as I can remember being in a long time.
A couple of years ago, just after Matt made his big baby announcement at Thanksgiving, I’d been between Petal books, and decided to try my hand at something different, something darker, edgier. I think there had been a part of me afraid that if I didn’t start it then, I might never do it, that I’d get too busy with life, with a baby, with the other Petal books still under contract.
It was never a book, never anything more than a quickly sketched-out premise about twin sisters in North Carolina, one of them a murderer, but which one? Still, I’d loved working on it, stayed up late just to spend more time with those characters, made playlists and Pinterest boards, thought about them when I was driving, when I was at the gym.
I always thought that’s why Matt’s reaction had been so lukewarm when he read the few chapters I’d written. He hadn’t liked how much it had consumed me, kept asking if I “really thought this was the best time to veer from the course,” and of course, it’s hard to try for a baby when your wife is practically glued to her laptop.
But maybe Matt had seen something in the pages that I hadn’t because when I’d sent them off to Rose, she’d come back with a very kind, very gentle reminder that I still had two more Petal books under contract, and the thriller market was so crowded.
You’re so good at what you do! she’d said over the phone. Do you know how hard it is to write cozies? Anyone can write these kinds of dark, twisted books. Think of this as a fun little exercise you did to get limbered up to work on Petal #7, okay?
It shouldn’t have hit that hard. Books were a business, after all, and Rose was smart, and probably right, and whatever that book might have been, it was now sitting on a flash drive that I’d misplaced somewhere in the house.
Besides, right after that was when I’d started feeling sick, so it was probably for the best I hadn’t started some big new project then, but I still thought of it sometimes, still wished I could slip back into the flow I’d felt working on it.
And today I had.
Closing the laptop, I stand up and stretch, looking out my bedroom window to see Chess outside on the lawn. She’s sitting on a striped blanket, her laptop perched on her knees, and even though her sunhat means I can’t see her face, I can see that, for once, her fingers aren’t flying over the keyboard.
They’re just sort of … hovering.
I know that position well, but Chess always seems to be barreling through her book, so it’s weird seeing her just sitting there, tortured by the blinking cursor.
Tires crunch on the gravel out front, and I turn away from the window, heading downstairs.