Vernon Downs (17 page)

He sent the e-mail. His stomach rumbled just as Christianna's patience reached its limit. “Let's go,” she demanded.

They negotiated the crowd at Aviator, his brow sweaty from the short walk through the humid August streets, as Christianna steered them toward the same table, creating a sense of déjà vu.

“You should never keep a lady waiting,” Christianna chided him. “Tsk, tsk.”

“A lady never complains,” he joked.

“Oh, you are such a beasty,” she said.

“How's that?” he asked.

“You are such a total beasty.”

Charlie remembered this bit of dialogue from a Christmas party scene in
Minus Numbers
—it was possibly the only line from the book to appear in the movie—and he scoured his memory for the next line. He concentrated through four swallows of his vodka tonic before Christianna uttered, “You're such a Grinch,” a line from a Christmas party scene in
The Vegetable King
, confusing him, though he knew the next line from that scene.

“Bah humbug,” he said.

Christianna delivered the response without missing a beat. “What does Mr. Grinch want for Christmas? Has he been a good boy?”

The scene between Nick Banks and his girlfriend, Evelyn, came back to him with clarity—it had been one of Olivia's favorite scenes—and he fell into his role effortlessly, trying to remember his lines. “I want a Gucci wallet, I want a silver sherbet scoop from Lotus, I want a car stereo—”

“But you don't
even
have a car,” she said, as if on cue.

“But I
need
a car stereo,” he said.

“We'll see what we can do,” she said.

Eventually Christianna would respond only to “Evelyn,” and Charlie asked twice if she wanted to leave once Aviator was overrun with the preclub crowd. Christianna didn't answer, but Evelyn finally said, “Let's go to the Soho Grand,” and he instructed the cabdriver to the corner of Canal and West Broadway. After a couple of rounds of fifteen-dollar margaritas, paid for with the last of his Strand money and served to them while they lounged on oversized armchairs in the hotel air-conditioning, Christianna-as-Evelyn wanted to get a room, a fact she communicated by sitting on his lap and whispering it in his ear, and even though he didn't remember this particular scene from the book, he obliged, the girl at the front desk saying “Welcome back” when he charged the room to his American Express card. The confluence of alcohol and the possibility of sex was amplified when he spied Jessica at the bank of elevators dressed in a black miniskirt and halter top, hanging on Jeremy Cyanin's arm. Her gaze penetrated the dim lobby and she smiled as the elevator claimed them.

When he woke back in the loft, an empty bottle of vodka resting on its side next to the bed, Christianna in her loft, blaring the soundtrack from
Flashdance
, Charlie replayed his memories of the previous night, substituting Jessica for Christianna until the reverie seemed authentic.

Charlie drained a glass of orange juice, toeing the unmarked folder
containing Burton LaFarge's letter as he shuffled to the kitchen for a refill. A faint knock gave him a start. He knew who it was and refilled his glass quietly, gliding noiselessly back to the computer.

An e-mail from Shannon erased any further thoughts about Christianna.

What did you want to be before you wanted to be a writer?

The lone question bespoke a familiarity that was both alarming and alluring. Gone were the days of “Dear Vernon,” and Charlie lamented the disappearance of Shannon's lovely electronic signature, the tiny
s
and
h
importing its own message. He hoped to revive the tradition by not falling victim to the new parlance, instead addressing Shannon as always.

Dear Shannon,

Before I was a writer I wanted to be a musician. In fact, I still have fantasies of being a musician, and that's one thing I definitely was going to embark on before Camden. I was in a band in high school—Phantasm, which was not the name I thought of, but one the guitarist did. It was the summer before going to college. I had been accepted to Camden, and it was that summer where the decision was either to stay with the band and see what would happen, or go to Camden and major in creative writing, read everything, and start to concentrate on that. Being the really kind of wimpy, safe adolescent I was, I choose to go to college, and the band broke up.

V-E-R-N-O-N

The orange juice was impotent against the hunger seizing him. He dressed haphazardly and listened at the door before exiting by the back stairs. Breakfast at Baxter's, the diner on First Avenue, was the remedy. The diner had started to feel more like a sanctuary than the loft on Thirteenth Street, so he was dismayed to look up from his omelet to find a
college-aged kid with dirty-blond dreadlocks standing beside his table.

“Mr. Downs?”

“Yes?”

“I'm Shannon,” the young man said, flipping his sunglasses up on his head. A day-old beard camouflaged a ridge of adolescent acne scars on Shannon's wide chin.

“Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

Charlie bit down on the inside of his cheeks to squelch both his supreme disappointment and the anxiety of having been watched. Though he never imagined meeting the recipient of his late-night e-mail correspondence, he'd nonetheless begun to fantasize about what Shannon might look like, mostly a compilation of the best features of girls he'd known. Olivia had been curiously excluded from the anthology, which he attributed to the illicit thrill of cheating on his own feelings whenever he answered one of Shannon's e-mails. All that mental expenditure was gone, but the need to delicately extricate himself overtook his anger at what was clearly an inappropriate situation.

Shannon towered nervously over the table, fingering the strap on a new messenger bag. Charlie masked his annoyance by asking Shannon to sit.

“Thanks,” Shannon said.

“How did you know who I was?” Charlie asked. “I mean, how did you recognize me?”

“I saw you come out of the building,” Shannon answered, momentarily embarrassed.

“How did you know where I lived?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, um, hope it's okay,” Shannon said. “The alumni office at Camden gave me your address when I asked for your e-mail.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. The pain of recognition was unbearable. “So. You're a … man.”

He'd hoped for levity as a stall tactic, but Shannon blushed. “Um,
yeah. Did you think—”

Charlie cut him off before the embarrassing realization could land. “Just an observation,” he said.

“I wanted to, um, thank you for, you know, taking the time to write to me,” Shannon said, the mangled sentence barely making its way from his lips. “I'm, uh, sure that you have better things to do.”

“No problem,” Charlie said, regaining his composure. He was the famous writer, after all. “Happy to help.”

“It's really nice of you,” Shannon said.

Charlie sipped his coffee. “You live in the East Village?” he asked.

“Hoboken,” Shannon said.

The two sat in silence and Shannon's nerves gave first. “I, uh, was hoping you would read my book,” he said, hoisting a manuscript from his bag. “And, you know, you wouldn't have to line-edit it or anything. Unless you wanted to.”

Charlie sipped his coffee again, stalling.

“Fine,” he said.

Shannon stood, gazing at his watch. “Anyway, I hope it's not a bother and thanks again. Take your time. I gotta run. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Charlie said. He ordered another cup of coffee, relieved, his dull headache receding with every slurp. He fanned the pages of Shannon's manuscript, embarrassed at the revelation that Shannon was not a sexy female fan, but was instead just another male writer who wished he were Vernon Downs.

Shannon dropped an e-mail a week later crafted to seem innocuous—“Have you had a chance to read my manuscript yet?”—and Charlie answered quickly that he had, and that he liked it. He hoped this was all the encouragement Shannon sought, but Shannon persisted to know what exactly he had liked, and he generalized about the originality of
the main character's plight as well as the role chance played in the lives of all the characters. Shannon assailed him with direct questions about the manuscript, but his deft circumlocution kept Shannon at bay until, weary, Shannon asked him point-blank if he would recommend him to his agent. The query came after a long day of e-mailing wherein Charlie tried to make up for his brutal evasiveness by actually reading the first chapter of Shannon's manuscript—he discovered he'd been spelling the main character's name wrong, which likely as not had aroused Shannon's suspicions—and so he answered, “Yes, I will.” Shannon replied with a smiley face drawn with a colon and a closing parenthesis.

Another e-mail the next day was devoid of any pretense of endearment. Shannon asked again if Charlie would recommend him to Daar Baumann and again Charlie promised that he would. Shannon thanked him, adding, “I was thinking it might be helpful to have a blurb from you. Possible? Thanks. Your fan, Shannon.”

“Hey, Shannon”—Charlie hoped the casual salutation would temper Shannon's aggressiveness—

You should send the whole manuscript. She'll want to read it front to back, guaranteed. Give her this quote from me:

“With this novel, Shannon Hamilton pulls off a magic act of sustained imagination. Hamilton's prose sings, his characters intrigue, and I have no doubt the publication of this book will bring favorable comparisons to some of our most revered authors, not least among them Salinger. This book is an updated
Catcher in the Rye
.”

Charlie appended the note with Daar Baumann's e-mail address and signed off with “Good luck—you won't need it!” He expected that would be the last he'd hear of Shannon Hamilton. The potent feeling of control over the small mess he'd gotten himself into with Shannon was fleeting, supplanted by a worry and anxiety he hadn't known since leaving Arizona,
since Olivia had packed her bags and flown out of his life.

He'd been unsettled by a chance encounter with Shelleyan, who had shrieked his name from across Union Square Park the day before. She'd dyed her hair a shiny chestnut color and had cut it at a severe angle. He hardly recognized her. “So there you are,” she said. “I've been leaving messages for you.” Charlie shrugged and moved down the sidewalk. Shelleyan kept stride. “Olivia is coming to New York,” she announced theatrically. “I'm picking her up at the airport on Tuesday. She's going to stay with me. And I thought maybe we could all get together.”

He mumbled an apology about being very busy.

“I've been temping at
Shout!
” she said. “Congrats on your story. You've come a long way in a short time.”

The calculus whereby Shelleyan sneaked a copy of Charlie's story to Olivia, who had probably read it in disgust, was easy math. He was convinced that Olivia's sole motivation in coming to New York was to confront him about his fraudulent portrayal of their time together. As the crowds hustled around them, a thrumming in his head spread to the rest of his body. His nerves frenzied, as if Olivia might turn the corner and find him, exposed, caught on the verge of escape. He hadn't considered until that moment how much his scheming nourished him, and that her complete silence sustained the whole of his ambition to get her back. But Shelleyan's invitation threatened proximity, and proximity would only mean exposing his rapidly withering dreams. None of what he'd undertaken would mean anything to Olivia. Worse, he was clueless what her reaction would be upon learning of his last few months. He couldn't summon a response plausible enough to be Olivia's, one that could be ascribed solely to her and not to any one of the faceless strangers passing by. It was like they'd never met; she was a featureless ghost, and he searched his mind for any tangible proof that he'd ever known her. Even Shelleyan appeared unrecognizable; she bore a vague resemblance to the girl from a lost time who berated him for not knowing who Vernon Downs was, or that he was Olivia's favorite
writer—insinuating there was a reservoir of things he didn't know and could never understand—but she was far removed from the tiny community college cafeteria thousands of miles away in Arizona where they'd once crossed paths, and it seemed preposterous to be standing on a sidewalk in New York, listening to her prattle on about reunion. A fleeting thought grew manifest within him: That his connection to the past was just his own fanciful imagination. The Kepharts, and the McCallahans, and the Alexander-Degners, the Wallaces, the Chandlers, and now Olivia. What he thought he knew about her—about any of them—was just pure invention.

“You have to call me
now
,” Vernon's agent said after the beep. No “Hello,” no “Hi, how are ya?” “I don't know why you're not answering the Vermont number you gave me, but the
Post
has something and we need to talk about it. Call me, Vernon. I'm serious.”

Before Daar Baumann finished her message, Charlie was out the door, struggling with the buttons on his shirt as he called for the elevator. Christianna's door opened and she emerged dressed for an evening out. She sized him up, but before he could spit out Kline's name, she withdrew into her loft. The elevator sounded and he suffered the interminable ride to the lobby, rushing out of Summit Terrace for a cab that was about to pull away, his breath a hot smoke against the windows.

The
Post
offices were grungier than he'd expected. A gruff security guard he tried to finesse wouldn't let him pass, instead calling up to Kline to announce his arrival.

“This
is
a pleasure,” Kline said, greeting him as the elevator opened on the sixth floor. The glass cubicles in the bull pen were occupied with interns and secretaries, none of whom paid any interest as Kline ushered them into his office, a cramped space cluttered with papers and Yankees memorabilia. “My favorite player,” Kline said when he caught Charlie admiring
a baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. “Kid had two bad legs and kept hitting. Amazing, no?”