Vernon Downs (14 page)

V-E-R-N-O-N

A business card for a detective agency in Jersey City was paper-clipped to the letter. Charlie replaced the letter and slipped the folder back where he found it, as if he hadn't seen it. He started the
Minus Number
s
soundtrack over from the beginning and poured himself a vodka tonic, which stayed the onslaught of questions raised by the letter.

Charlie sensed an impending drink invitation from Christianna long before it arrived in the form of spontaneity in the elevator—“I'm meeting some friends at Aviator, would you like to join us?”—and he knew, too, that he would accept, not least because he was addicted to her fawning over him, the Famous Writer. He'd just returned from the Upper East Side, someone having claimed to have found Vernon's dog, but who in reality only wanted to meet Vernon Downs and get him to sign a book, which Charlie obliged. He'd found cataloging Vernon's archives a lonely endeavor, his days taken up with boxes of memorabilia celebrating Vernon Downs's success and with little else, leaving him restless and utterly alone once he stopped shuffling papers for the day. So much so that Charlie began to participate actively in the archives: An envelope containing correspondence with an author Charlie had vaguely heard of sandwiched between drafts of
Minus Numbers
provided the details of a small literary feud involving an article Vernon had written for
USA Today
. Charlie judged the feud to be too trivial to ruin a friendship and penned a short note of apology to the author in Vernon's handwriting.

And so he said yes to drinks at Aviator, though he claimed he needed to meet her there. “Prior obligation,” he lied. Christianna was oblivious— did she notice that he hardly left the apartment?—but delighted that he would join her and her friends. In truth, the cash Vernon had left in aid of the fruitless search for Oscar had dwindled, spent mostly on takeout and cabs. Charlie convinced himself that the sustenance and transportation were precisely what Vernon had intended the money for. He further convinced himself that the idea to sell off some of the signed books in Vernon's collection to the Strand to keep liquid—and thereby primed and ready to answer any alleged Oscar sighting—was sound. The first doubts
were quashed by Charlie's supposition that authors were always sending Vernon signed books—he'd found three in the mail from debut writers since he began apartment sitting—and so he cherry-picked a dozen or so books and waltzed them over to the Strand, pocketing an easy hundred dollars from the curmudgeonly buyer behind the counter, who raised an eyebrow at the inscriptions but remained silent on the matter. Charlie caught the buyer regarding him, and he signed Vernon's name to the receipt acknowledging the transaction. The buyer gave him a half smile and nodded as he swept the signed books aside and called for the next person in line.

The crowd at Aviator was unusually small, which Charlie ascribed to the hour, just past six. He was two vodka tonics in before Christianna finished her story about an exploitive audition she'd had that morning. “It was a student film,” she said. “Guess I shouldn't have been surprised.”

“You should turn him in,” Charlie said, pulverizing the lime at the bottom of his glass with a red plastic straw.

“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Christianna said, sipping her White Russian. “Funny thing was he resembled my friend James. Made me feel a little sorry for him, I guess. He died when he was nineteen.”

“Jesus, sorry,” he said.

“It's okay,” Christianna said, finishing her drink and handing the empty glass to the waiter, who replaced it with a fresh drink. The waiter also set down a plate of mozzarella marinara that Charlie didn't remember anyone ordering.

“How did it happen?”

“He was trying to light a cigarette—well, I'm pretty sure it was a joint, but what does it matter, right?—and his BMW flew off the freeway. I was following him. It was Labor Day weekend and we were going to stay at his parents' place.”

“Awful,” Charlie said, eyeing the dish between them. He poked at it with a fork, opting to partake in the free food. He presumed that since Christianna had extended the invitation, she would treat.

“He always ordered this,” Christianna said with a sigh.

“What,” he asked, “White Russians?”

“The mozzarella marinara,” she said, sighing again.

He put down his fork, forcing himself to swallow the gooey cheese, trying not to envision it as a chunk of flesh. “Was this when you were at Yale?” he asked.

Christianna bobbed her head, but he couldn't tell if she was indicating yes or no. The story felt familiar and he couldn't figure out why. (Later he would come across a letter in the archives from one of Vernon's friends describing how the story Vernon had written for
The Book of Hurts
about the death of their friend outside Palm Springs—in the exact manner that Christianna had described her friend dying—had helped the friend cope with the loss.) “Speaking of death,” Christianna said, launching into a tale about her college roommate OD'ing, which Charlie recognized as being right out of Vernon's novel
Scavengers
.

“So I come back after a night of drinking at the Pub and find her on the floor and it looks like she's not breathing. I look around and see a half-empty bottle of whiskey”—Dewar's in the book—“and think,
Oh my God, she's going to die
. So I grab a freshman in the hall and we drive my roommate to the emergency room”—Charlie remembered a funny exchange from
Scavengers
about one of the characters thinking the closest hospital was in Keene, New Hampshire, but he stifled his smile at this bit of comic relief absent from Christianna's version—“and the doctor can't find a pulse.” Ditto the book. “The doctor says, ‘Your friend is dead,' and I'm standing there thinking,
This can't be, this can't be
,” Christianna continued, “and then my roommate opens her eyes and says, ‘Am I really dead?' And the doctor says, ‘Yes, you are. I can't find a pulse.' Can you believe that?”

He said he could not.

“So I say to the doctor, ‘How can she be dead? She's talking!'” Christianna said, shaking her head at the absurdity. “But the doctor insisted. He kept saying, ‘Your friend is dead. Your friend is dead.'”

“That is something,” Charlie agreed, signaling for another drink. Christianna grew quiet, and he wondered if she'd recounted these plagiarized stories from Vernon's work to test him or to impress him. A game was afoot, but he couldn't grasp the rules. Christianna's left thigh brushed his and he moved away reflexively, wishing he hadn't. A general sexual frustration that had been accruing for weeks begged for an outlet, though he felt sure that sleeping with Christianna would be a monumental mistake. The perceived rebuff chilled the pleasantness the table had enjoyed; if he didn't manufacture an excuse to leave, the two would share a constrained stroll back to Summit Terrace or, worse, he would be made to pick up the check.

“Hey, look,” Christianna said, brightening.

Jeremy Cyanin strolled into Aviator in a charcoal suit, leading a dark, petite woman to a table near the bar. “Oh no,” Charlie said, slumping down in the booth.

“What?” Christianna asked.

“Great,” he said.

“
What?
” Christianna asked again, this time intrigued by his playacting.

He improvised an escape. “Cyanin's been harassing me about some coke he left at my place,” he said.

“So?”

“I did it, like, two weeks ago,” Charlie said, affecting lament. “And I'm fresh out.” He detected a spark in Christianna's eyes at the prospect of participating in the melodrama. “I'm going to try to sneak past him,” Charlie said, adding, “the bastard.”

“I'll cover you,” Christianna said conspiratorially. “I'll go up and talk to him. Distract him.”

“No, no,” he said. “At all cost, you must not engage him or he'll talk you into drinks, and when he finds out you're my neighbor, he'll weasel his way back to the building and we'll never be rid of him.”

Christianna nodded. “Oh, I know the type.” She squinted at Cyanin, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.

“Got an idea,” he said, motioning for the waitress, a young girl who didn't look old enough to drink, much less serve. “I want to play a prank on my friend,” he said, whispering for no reason. “I want to send a Sex on the Beach to that table”—he pointed to Cyanin's table—“but I want you to say it's from that table.” He pointed to a booth in the far corner where two comely lesbians were sitting side by side. “Okay, I'm out of here,” he said. He reached for his wallet, but Christianna shook her head.

“I've got this, you've got next time,” she said, and before he could process the ramifications of “next time,” he had kissed her on the cheek and was slithering along the bar, Cyanin with his back to him, the waitress bending to set the cocktail on his table, motioning toward the oblivious lesbians as Cyanin swiveled in his seat. He could hear Cyanin's explanation to his date: “They're fans, what can you do?” Charlie forged through the crowd, spinning away from a woman at the bar who turned precipitously with a martini in each hand. He grasped for a stool, his balance deserting him entirely, and he could only manage to spring forward, falling helplessly into the crowd pushing its way into Aviator. He collided with Peter Kline, the two of them falling against the hostess station.

“Leaving so soon?” Kline asked.

“I … have … to …” He gestured toward Fourth Avenue.

“I thought we were having drinks with Christianna,” Kline said, confused.

He engineered an answer along the lines that Christianna was indeed still inside, but that he was feeling ill and had to cancel. “I'm sorry,” he said, and took a step toward Summit Terrace.

“Wait,” Kline said. The crowd at the door plunged forward and Charlie found himself alone on the sidewalk with Kline. “I was wondering if you'd like to have lunch,” he said.

Charlie nodded, not really concentrating on what Kline was saying.

“Thursday?” Kline asked, hopeful.

“Sure,” he answered. He would've agreed to anything short of homicide to abort the conversation.

“Thursday at noon,” Kline said. “At Jackson's. The paper is buying.”

Charlie nodded idiotically, wanting to object. Someone or something tapped him on the back, but when he spun around, he was bewildered to find no one there, surprised further by the rush of vomit he spewed on the sidewalk, chunks of undigested mozzarella falling like wet clouds tumbling from the sky.

“Hey, you okay?” Kline asked, but he held up his hand and began walking backward, away from Kline and the orange and white stain he'd left in front of Aviator. “See you Thursday,” Kline shouted, and Charlie waved his arms wildly, both as confirmation and in protest, but the looming threat of lunch with Kline was less urgent than his roiling stomach, and he felt his way down Thirteenth Street, back to Summit Terrace, spending the night in the tub for its comforting proximity to the toilet.

Cyanin's flat voice came at him like an assault. He shrank against the porcelain tub, shivering. Who had let Cyanin into the loft? A thought he hadn't considered spooked him:
Cyanin has a key
. He hoisted himself out of the tub, carefully navigating a splotch of dried vomit that had missed its mark. The loft was quiet again and he peered out the bathroom door, ready to be cornered. But the loft was empty. A cold breeze swirled through the kitchen. A small cyclone of paper danced across the promontory of the highest stack of archives, floating and finally settling at his feet. He quickly shut the window he didn't recollect opening, realizing he was alone.

After a long, revitalizing shower, the blanket shrouding his brain lifted. The flashing light on the answering machine called out to him as he pulled on his jacket, and he pressed the button.

“Hello?” It was Cyanin. “Hello?”

He froze, as if Cyanin were at the door.

“Hello, hello, hello.” A pause. “Are you back? You're back. I guess the question is, why? A better question is, what was that shit at Aviator? The best question is, why did I have to read about your return in the
Post
? Call me back.” Another pause. “P.S. I slept with those two lesbians.”

Charlie erased the message, but it was burned in his memory. He opened the
Post
to Page Six, the notorious gossip column, spotting Vernon's name in bold in the “Sightings” column:

Bad-boy novelist Vernon Downs was seen stumbling out of Aviator on Fourth Avenue, laughing maniacally at a prank he'd just pulled on his fellow bad-boy novelist Jeremy Cyanin.

He skimmed the column—the notice of the actress arrested for shoplifting (again), this time at an antique shop in the Bowery; the underage pop star caught drinking at a club in Noho; the socialite who fled her suite at the Four Seasons without paying—but he invariably drifted back to the mention of Vernon, dumbstruck at how the
Post
had ascertained this bit of false information. It took half a bottle of Gatorade before he put together that Kline was most likely the author of the gossip. Infuriated, he pounded on Christianna's door, the brass knocker vibrating under his fist. He heard Vernon's answering machine through the open loft door: “Vernon, it's Daar. Are you back? Why are you back? Call me.” He erased the message, wondering if the
Post
article would reach Vernon. He remembered Vernon's description of his self-imposed exile in Vermont—“submarine down” were his exact words—and hoped that there weren't copies of the
Post
onboard that submarine. He couldn't imagine Vernon caring about the gossip item upon his return at summer's end and found solace in this rationale, which he also applied to the e-mail response from Shannon Hamilton: