Vernon Downs (3 page)

A profile of Downs in
Vanity Fair
filled in the blanks about his canceled tour and gave an update about his whereabouts: He was ensconced in an unnamed town in Virginia with a friend, attempting to begin a new novel. The article described Downs as “bulky,” a detail in direct opposition to his author photo, but didn't include any photographs, instead employing a full-page caricature emphasizing Downs's cherubic features. The odd detail of Downs picking up a bath towel and sniffing it to see if it
was clean stayed with Charlie longer than it should've.

“Let's write him a letter,” Olivia said. “A real fan letter. I've never written a true fan letter.”

Charlie convinced her the better idea was to write a letter to the editor of
Vanity Fair
. “He might see it,” Charlie reasoned.

Olivia crafted a note she hoped Downs would read, rejoiced when it appeared:

Finally a quasi-revealing profile (as much as we'll ever know, I'll bet) of one of the most talented writers of our time. As a creative-writing student at Glendale Community College, I can say that Mr. Downs is among the most revered authors of my generation, admired for the fluidity of his prose style and his eye for context and detail, which, on the surface, appear ordinary enough but are really, under Mr. Downs's microscope, threatening and truly unnerving. I quiver with anticipation for the arrival of his latest masterpiece.

—Olivia Simmons, London

The sexual innuendo of the last sentence bothered Charlie like an itch he couldn't reach, but he was more troubled by Olivia's identifying herself as a Londoner, a reminder that she was but a provisional visitor who would return to her homeland in a matter of months. He suppressed those emotions and they spent the next few days driving around the metro Phoenix area, buying up copies of
Vanity Fair
.

The idling cab, pulled to the curb at Summit Terrace, was a cocoon: Once Charlie stepped from it, the final act of his plan to win back Olivia would begin. Camden had been a trial run—everyone in the summer writing program would forever associate him with Vernon Downs and vice versa. The stage was bigger now. How to replicate the effect, he wasn't exactly sure. Olivia's words—“We can't see each other anymore”—still
rattled him, though increasingly he thought of them as a challenge. He'd said he'd come the first chance he could, which meant financially, which was easily solved by an afternoon spent filling out preapproved credit card applications offered along with free T-shirts at various tables around campus. As the cards began to appear in the mail, he planned his trip to London and was devastated and confused when his weekly phone call didn't find Olivia at home. When he finally reached her, he wouldn't hang up without an explanation, and Olivia gave him an unbelievable one she had clearly contrived under duress. Perhaps her parents had learned about how she'd switched enrollment from Arizona State to Glendale Community College and were punishing her.

A desperate scenario in which he'd locate Vernon Downs in New York emerged. What would happen after that was anyone's guess, but he let himself be guided by impulse. He charged a one-way trip to New York City and studiously pored over a map on the flight, wondering where along the colored grid he'd find Vernon Downs. He traced the route from LaGuardia into the city so he wouldn't be taken advantage of by the unscrupulous taxi drivers of popular imagination. He laughed now as he remembered the look of surprise on the cabbie's face when Charlie instructed him to take the Triborough Bridge. He hadn't known that the Triborough was a toll bridge and that the Midtown Tunnel was the faster, free alternative. Other surprises lay in store, like the hotel in Times Square that was really a hostel, necessitating a pair of flip-flops from the corner CVS in order to use the communal shower; and how everything in New York cost at least two dollars more than it did in Phoenix. But the biggest surprise was the absolute lack of any trace of Vernon Downs anywhere in Manhattan. All the articles he'd read had Downs starring in nightly debaucheries, but as Charlie haunted the entrances of bars like Nell's and Balthazar and clubs like Tunnel and Limelight, he understood that everyone who entered those venues did so seeking debauchery. He stood squinting up at the office of Downs's literary agent, Daar Baumann,
but knew nothing but disappointment awaited inside. Recognizing dead ends was a useful skill he'd developed early on.

The stench of defeat dogged him until a new plan spontaneously emerged, based on a flyer for a summer writing conference at Camden College, Downs's alma mater, that was stuck on a bulletin board at the New School, where Charlie had taken refuge from an early blast of summer heat. Camden had figured prominently in a number of Downs's books, and the conference featuring lectures and writing workshops would at the very least bring Charlie closer to the world of Vernon Downs. It seemed like the logical next step in his quest to win back Olivia.

Charlie cursed himself for scrimping, the late arrival time the result of a cheaper red-eye ticket that imprisoned him at the Albany bus station until six a.m., the first available pickup time that could be arranged by the car service, the only means of travel available to the remote college campus. This rookie mistake was obvious in retrospect as he trudged in circles through the tiny terminal, willing the sun to appear. He contemplated a hotel room, but the balance on one of his MasterCards had crept perilously toward the limit, and he vowed to eschew unnecessary purchases. He'd wait it out. He clutched the postcard of the Empire State Building he'd purchased at the Port Authority, debating about sending it. Olivia would see the beseeching lines he'd scrawled and know his longing for reconciliation. He slid the postcard into a mail slot and immediately began to worry that Olivia's parents would find the missive in the mail and trash it instead of delivering it to its intended reader.

He curled up on an uncomfortable half bench, the strap of his duffel bag looped around his arm to prevent robbery; the suede pouch within, given to him by the Kepharts, secreted keepsakes from his travels and was the sole possession he valued. He longed for the comfort of his bed back in Phoenix, though he knew his ex-roommate had found someone to rent his
room after Charlie announced his plans to go east. Sleep came fitfully and then was banished forever by the whir of an industrial vacuum cleaner as the terminal underwent an early-morning cleaning. Six o'clock was forever in arriving, and despite his excitement at escaping the bus terminal, he dozed off in the back of the hired Lincoln Town Car, waking to marvel at the Vermont countryside. The sun glinted off the green fields and he took in the rural landscape.

The car sailed through a red-planked covered bridge eroded by time, the verdant landscape filtering in through the latticework, the car's interior spotted with sunlight. The Town Car shot out the yawning mouth of the bridge, delivering them into the town of Camden, a picturesque New England hamlet populated with wide lawns running back toward quiet houses nestled far from the road. The driver nosed the car through the gates of Camden College, itself set deep in the woods. An admixture of anxiety and excitement coursed through Charlie as the car crept along College Drive, finally slowing to a stop at the Barn, the two-story structure that functioned as the administration building. The driver let him off, and he signed for the service and the tip, which was more than he'd anticipated. He watched the black car drive away until it turned the corner, a curtain of morning sunlight falling over the still campus. The buildings appeared deserted: the Commons ahead and Crossett Library to his left, the manicured Commons lawn a quiet runway extending toward the End of the World, the abrupt terminus from which endless miles of Vermont woods and sky were visible.

He wondered what Olivia would say.

He wished he could know.

The single thought that he was finally within the inviting bosom of Vernon David Downs's alma mater was surreal. His sole preoccupation on the bus ride from New York had been how to breach the campus successfully—he'd run several scenarios involving multiple deceptions to finesse any security—and once the awe at how easily he'd been able to infiltrate
Camden had subsided, he realized he knew very little about Downs's existence on campus. Which of the green and white clapboard dorms had he lived in? McCullough? Booth? He set his bag down on one of the picnic tables outside of the Commons, distressed by extreme weather and extreme temperaments, searching the campus for any sign of life.
Vernon Downs probably sat at this picnic table
, he thought. He tried the door to Stokes, surprised when the handle gave easily, and roamed through the vacant dorm, choosing an empty room down an empty hall farthest from the entrance as his own.
He probably stared out this window
, Charlie thought. The distant mountaintops retained their snowy caps, even in the summer.
He may even have lived in this very room
, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, exhaustion washing over him as he spread out fully clothed on the soft bed.

Faint laughter woke him some time later. He squinted at the bluing light as he tried to gauge where he was. The gauzy curtains blew in the evening breeze, the air suffused with a floral sweetness. Out his window, dark figures moved against the gray landscape, some struggling with overpacked bags, others darting furtively in and out of their dorm, unpacking idling cars double-parked on the single-lane road that wound past the student housing.

His fellow Camdenites had finally arrived.

Charlie hurriedly showered and dressed, then sauntered toward the Commons, which cast rectangles of light across the darkening lawn, the destination of the flow of people appearing in doorways or emerging in tributaries from points unseen. He kept his head low, hoping to blend with those who were actually enrolled in the summer program. Experience had taught him that he could persuade people he was invisible, which invariably emboldened him in any new social situation, so he was bewildered by how nervous he felt. He followed a woman in her eighties wrapped in an oversized yellow Windbreaker, as if expecting a storm, into a dimly lit room crowded with amiable and eager faces, all congregated at a long wooden bar stocked with self-serve beer and wine, which was
being grabbed up by nervous hands. Charlie tried to mix into the crowd, cradling a sweaty bottle of Budweiser, listening in on conversations that cut violently from how hard it was to find time to write, to a short list of favorite books, to which of the teachers huddled near the dormant stone fireplace was the recent National Book Award winner.

Camden's recent history was very much on everyone's minds too. Charlie gathered the bits and pieces of conversation to sew the narrative together: Just a year before, the college had taken the extraordinary step of abolishing tenure, firing a third of the professors who taught at Camden, invoking the ire and censure of the academic community. The air was polluted with uncertainty about Camden's future, which provided the perfect cover for Charlie's impersonation of a Camden student. He quickly fell into the proscribed banter, asking people where they were from, if they wrote fiction or poetry or what. He readily provided answers when the same was asked of him, sometimes recycling answers he'd been given moments before during a similar inquiry. There was something intoxicating about rotating in a crowd of aspirants. Anything was possible. Even getting Olivia back.

That night, he dreamed what he would do.

Early the next morning, he strolled into the Barn and located the alumni office.

“I'm a student here and would like the address for an alum,” he said to the straw-thin girl with wispy blond hair behind the counter. “Vernon Downs.” A rising nervousness pulsed through him. He regretted betraying his earlier instinct to employ a believable ruse. He'd considered several on the walk to the alumni office: that he was with the local newspaper and wanted to interview Downs; that he worked in the library and needed to forward a package someone had sent Downs; or that someone at the campus bookstore wanted to ship a carton of
The Vegetable King
to Downs for autographing. But none of the deceptions appealed to him, and it was better to go in straight than to proffer a lie he wasn't completely invested in.

“I'm just watching the desk for my friend,” the girl said. “I actually work in admissions.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. He leaned on the counter in what he hoped was an unassuming pose. “Which is better?”

The girl made a face. “Both are boring,” she answered. “But it beats working in the cafeteria with the rest of the losers.”

Charlie laughed. “I suppose it does.” The girl glanced absently at the clock on the wall, the red second hand gliding slowly across its face. “I like the food here,” he said. “I mean, I like that someone else takes care of it.”

The girl smiled. “I'm a vegan, so I only really eat at the salad bar.”

Charlie worried that his request would come under scrutiny if the girl's friend reappeared, and he debated leaving. But something in the way the girl behind the counter nervously began to scratch her elbow betrayed that she and her friend were likely up to something, or she was worried that she'd be found out for spelling her friend, who was off doing who knew what, and Charlie reversed course.

“I'm sort of in a hurry,” he said, affecting impatience.

“God, where is she?” the girl asked. “She's been gone for, like, ten minutes.”

“Is there someone else who can help me?” Charlie asked, searching the obviously empty office.

“I'll just do it,” she said. The girl tapped something on the computer. She handed him a yellow Post-it note, a phone number scrawled in her slanted handwriting. “It says the request for an updated address is pending, sorry.” Charlie thanked her and memorized the phone number in case something disastrous happened to the Post-it, which he folded into his wallet, with the intention of transferring it to the safety of the suede pouch. He absented the alumni office quickly, as if he might be called back to account, the creaky floorboards singing underfoot. An errant left brought him face-to-face with the director of the summer program, a large bearded Irishman with tortoiseshell glasses whom he recognized from the
writing program flyer.