Vernon Downs (12 page)

Charlie signed the receipt with Vernon's practiced signature, a perfect counterfeit the result of hours spent tracing the letters in the book Vernon had signed to Olivia. “Be happy to,” he said, taking the book. “Who should I sign it to?”

Charlie scrawled the messenger's name onto the title page, his mind humming, the thrill from the deceit producing a kind of mental levitation. He scribbled “Hope you enjoy this” on the title page and repeated Vernon's signature.

“Here you go,” Charlie said. “Just don't sell it to the Strand.”

“No way, never,” the messenger said, bowing slightly. “Thank you.” He tucked the novel back into his bag without inspection and did the same with the receipt for the proofs. He thanked Charlie again and drank in the loft. Charlie imagined the stories the messenger would tell his friends back in Brooklyn about his visit to Vernon's.

“I know I missed your Christmas in July party,” the messenger said nervously. “But is there any way it would be cool if I came next year? My girlfriend would just die.”

“Of course,” Charlie said. Granting the messenger's wishes mollified his sense of right and wrong.

“Too cool of you,” the messenger responded. He continued to thank Charlie as he called for the elevator, one last thank-you slipping out as Charlie closed the door. He moved in the glow of charity as he opened the envelope to find the proofs of the piece he'd written for
George
magazine. The initial irritation at seeing Vernon's name in the byline subsided as Charlie gaped at his words emblazoned on the page. Vernon hadn't changed so much as a comma. A fantasy quickly developed whereby Olivia would pick up a future copy of
George
magazine based solely on a piece by Vernon Downs in the table of contents, running home to read it, lying across her bed while frantically flipping the pages, his words filling her eyes. He would need to make a photocopy of the proofs as evidence for when he confessed the ruse to her later. The fantasy rewound and replayed
through a celebratory tumbler of Vernon's whiskey, continuing through the meal of Chinese takeout he spilled across Vernon's countertop. The scenario, along with the whiskey and Chinese food, lulled him asleep in the early evening.

A clattering woke him near daybreak. He started awake, a blurring figure hovering near the door. The bleary visage of Vernon Downs bore down on him. “Why the fuck are you here?” he asked, his hair tousled as if he'd ridden an all-night roller coaster at Coney Island. Charlie had forgotten to turn off the air-conditioning and the loft was frigid.

“I thought … ,” Charlie said. “The doorman gave me the …”

Vernon jittered through the loft, grabbing up random objects: a fistful of CDs, something from a drawer in the kitchen, the opened bottle of whiskey. “You weren't supposed to come until—,” Vernon said. “I mean this is not a good—. Whatever.” His eyes were small and red, and Charlie wondered if he was high. “Everything is totally fucked. My fucking dog is missing and I have to leave for Vermont and …” Vernon recounted in profane outbursts how Jessica had taken Oscar for a walk and the dog had bolted from his leash. Vernon had canvassed the area around Jessica's Murray Hill apartment before retreating to a Kinkos to produce a flyer he'd spent the early hours affixing to any flat surface he could.

“I'm sorry,” Charlie said. “I didn't know.”

“You have to be vigilant,” Vernon said, a globule of spit landing near Charlie. “If anyone calls about Oscar, you have to go meet them. Here.” He dug into his black jeans for his wallet and swiped all the cash, handing it to Charlie. “Just do whatever you have to.”

“I will,” Charlie promised.

“And call me immediately when you find him,” Vernon said.

Charlie nodded and Vernon disappeared into the bathroom among a clattering of toiletries. Charlie quickly counted the money, which amounted to over four hundred dollars. Vernon emerged with a duffel bag and a suitcase on wheels. He'd smoothed water through his hair, and the adrenaline
that had fueled his all-night vigil had recessed, leaving him limp, barely able to scrape the luggage across the floor. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “The editor at
Shout!
magazine likes your story. He said he'd publish it in the fall fiction issue.”

Charlie guiltily longed for Vernon to leave so he could bask in his great fortune. “I can't thank you enough,” he said. Vernon waved him off, distractedly checking his answering machine for news of Oscar, deleting the message about the lost loafer before it finished. He trundled into the hall, a rumpled, near lifeless figure, and left without saying good-bye.

On his way out for coffee, Charlie didn't recognize the new doorman, who was leaner and had a militant air about him. He was also appreciably older than the doorman Charlie'd felt friendly toward. “Where's the other guy?” he asked, but the new doorman just shrugged and returned to sorting some cards on his desk. He reckoned the doorman had taken a sick day, or maybe even a personal day to play hooky. Good for him. Outside, a hulking moving truck idled at the curb. Charlie casually wondered if the woman on the second floor had found another apartment somewhere far away from Summit Terrace.

Waiting at the corner bodega for his coffee and egg sandwich, he flipped through the
Post
, landing on a small item about Vernon offering to name a character after the person who found Oscar. He was amazed at the press's preoccupation with every facet of Vernon's life. Back at Summit Terrace, he exited the elevator to find a woman with a brunette ponytail fidgeting with the lock on her door. “Hold the elevator,” she called out, but he had already let the elevator go.

“Sorry,” he said as he slid the key into Vernon's door.

“You must be Vernon Downs,” the woman said, apparently forgiving the faux pas. “I'm subletting while my sister is in Paris,” the woman said, the dimples on her cheeks and the tiny cleft in her chin forming a flawless frame for her soft smile. There was a tomboy element buried deep within, Charlie sensed, a toughness masquerading as delicacy. “I'm a huge fan.” She held out a manicured hand. “I'm Christianna.”

He returned the smile and shook Christianna's hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said. He felt no guiltier about giving this misimpression than he did earlier in the week when someone had mistaken him for someone else, calling and waving from across the street. He'd waved back as a courtesy and the woman moved on. There was little harm in fulfilling expectations, he thought. Besides, he could always plead ignorance with Christianna if the truth emerged, convincing her the miscalculation was her own.

“How long have you lived in the building?” she asked. Uncertain of how long Vernon had been in residence, Charlie was about to cover with “Not long,” but Christianna didn't wait for his reply and said, “I just have to say”—she put her hand on his arm—“that the party scene in
Scavengers
, you know, the End of the World party? That's exactly how it was at my college. The tiki torches, everything. God, I'm sorry I missed your Christmas party.”

“Oh, really? Where did you go to college?”

“That was at Hampshire. I'm at New Haven now,” she said, eager for a reaction. “Drama school. I want to move to New York to be an actress.” She called for the elevator and it opened, having never descended to the lobby. “Well, see you around, Vernon,” she said, and was gone just like that, the swirl of lilac perfume dying in her wake.

He avoided Christianna over the next week or so, pretending to be in a rush if she waylaid him in the lobby, or in the elevator, or on their adjacent balconies looking down on Thirteenth Street. Christianna's alarming intimacy, as well as her penchant for reciting her favorite scenes from Vernon's works, had become disquieting.

The first time she caught him in the elevator, on his way to meet someone who mistakenly thought he'd located Oscar: “You know what I loved about
The Vegetable King
? The stuff about Huey Lewis and Phil Collins and Whitney Houston. I laughed my ass off when I read it.”

The first time she cornered him at the mailboxes in the lobby: “You probably hear this all the time, but that story in
Book of Hurts
, the one set in Hawaii, is one of my favorites.”

The time she caught him people-watching on the balcony had spooked him the most. Christianna appeared on her balcony, swaddled in a royal blue cotton bathrobe, and addressed him as one of the characters from
Scavengers
. It was a moment before he realized she, too, was in character. He mimicked deafness and shouted something vague about a phone call he had to make, before scurrying back into the loft, easing the sliding glass door shut.

Two days later, exhausted from following a bogus tip about a dog matching Oscar's description wandering off leash near the World Trade Center, Charlie watched as a silver envelope was thrust under the door, followed by the echo of Christianna's door closing. He opened the elaborately calligraphed invitation to a New Year's in August dinner party and knew he would not be able to devise an excuse grand enough to evade the gathering. The homage to Vernon's party was slightly troubling, a fact that menaced him as he grudgingly dry-cleaned the one suit he owned after discovering that the suits in Vernon's closet wouldn't fit.

In the days before her dinner party, Christianna was noticeably absent from the building, and Charlie happily resumed the task of separating and sequencing Vernon's papers. He rarely left the loft, save for a farewell lunch with Derwin, who was decamping Brooklyn for Fire Island for the rest of August. Derwin was keen for details about the archive project, but in delineating his duties, Charlie admitted that the endeavor was a free-form exercise with little direction, and had been undertaken with more passion on Charlie's part than Vernon's. “My only real responsibilities are to check the mail and to report any important phone messages or e-mail,” Charlie confessed. He was too embarrassed to reveal his primary responsibility, finding Vernon's lost dog.

“Your Obelisk training is paying off,” Derwin laughed as he picked up the tab for the boozy lunch, the afternoon faded by the time they parted, with plans to reunite back in Brooklyn upon Derwin's return after Labor Day.

Charlie didn't encounter Christianna once, and he began to root for the possibility that the dinner party had been canceled, a hope that was
dashed when a catering van appeared on the afternoon of the appointed date. He reluctantly dressed, fishing through the leftover liquor for a full bottle of anything, finding an unopened pinot noir. He paced the loft until half an hour past the designated time, in order to skip the predinner cocktails, and then grabbed the bottle and presented himself at Christianna's door.

“Well!” Christianna said dramatically. “This is very exciting!” She was overdressed in a pale blue gown more suited for a ball, or a fairy tale. “Welcome,” she said by way of introduction to the expectant faces populating the loft, which had the same floor plan as Vernon's. “You traveled a long way to be here with us tonight,” Christianna added, but the other guests didn't understand her joke, and he worked the room, shaking hands with the segment producer at MTV, the budding fashion designer who lived with her parents in Ronkonkoma, the manager of several rap acts who kept saying he had to “leave soon,” and an actress who turned out to be Christianna's roommate at Yale. The oldest guest by far was familiar, and as the bespectacled man offered his hand, Charlie recollected him as the
Times
reporter from Vernon's Christmas party.

“Peter Kline,” the man said. “We met at your party.”

“Peter's a reporter for the
Post
,” Christianna said helpfully.

Charlie waited for Kline to correct her, but Kline nodded and smiled. “For my sins,” was all he said. Charlie smirked at Kline's having elevated his journalistic pedigree.
Typical
, he thought as the group gathered around the hand-carved mahogany table boasting a pewter candelabra in which cinnamon-scented candles were burning.

The catered meal was served by Christianna, who made no mention of the food having been prepared by caterers, absorbing compliments like “This is delicious” and “This is so yummy” as if she'd cooked the food herself, a personality quirk that Charlie found oddly endearing. She exuded sureness, and he admired how easily she assumed the pose.

Dinner conversation ranged from the vagaries of trying to start a
fashion design business to the latest MTV gossip to how hard it was to audition for female directors. Charlie politely solicited information about the rap world from the lone dinner guest who seemed content to sit back and listen, but his questions were answered with a short yes or no and, not really being interested in the subject, he gave up.

Christianna's Yale roommate—she'd been introduced as Diane or Diana, he couldn't remember which, though she'd haughtily corrected the rap manager when he called her by the wrong name—raved about an off-Broadway play she'd just seen having something to do with the Wright brothers and their illegitimate sister.

“I tried out for the part of the sister for the Williamstown festival,” Christianna said mournfully.

“You would've slaughtered whoever they have in the lead now,” Diane or Diana said.

Christianna smiled appreciatively. “So many parts, so many parts,” she said.

“I could never do that,” the MTV producer said. “Put myself out there like that. To be judged. I couldn't stand to.”

“How do you keep doing it?” Charlie asked, genuinely interested.

“If you keep wanting it, you'll get it,” Christianna said simply. “Nobody can take that from you.” Christianna and Diane—he'd decided it was Diane—hooked their pinkies in a secret handshake. “Tell us what you're working on now,” Christianna said to Charlie.