Vernon Downs (7 page)

He'd had to invent a pretext for a second call, especially after his unexplained National Arts Club absence, and he manufactured an assignment he hadn't been given: He asked Vernon if he could interview him for
Oneironaut
, an online pop culture magazine whose founder he'd befriended in line at Starbucks.

“Sure,” Vernon had said. “Be happy to.”

The door opened slowly, a pair of cautious eyes peering from behind it. The door opened further and Vernon Downs stood before him, a tall, bulky man in his midthirties, a half smile on his cherubic face, the living embodiment of the description from the
Vanity Fair
profile he and Olivia had read repeatedly. A slight embarrassment passed between them.

“Come in,” he said, his baritone voice filling the cavernous loft as Charlie entered.

“For Olivia?” Vernon asked.

Charlie nodded as he fished the tattered copy of
The Vegetable King
Olivia had left behind from his bag.

“This looks pretty beat up,” Vernon said, fanning through the curled pages. “I think I can do better.” He slid back the doors on the white and maple sideboard table packed with books and, not finding what he was searching for, reached under the unmade bed for a plastic bin crammed with copies of his work. He selected a pristine copy of
The Vegetable King
and signed it to Olivia. He signed the worn copy too, splaying the book out on the black granite kitchen counter, the only shadow anywhere in the gleaming white loft. “You can sell this one for a couple of bucks at the Strand.” Charlie nodded, remembering the mammoth bookstore on Twelfth Street from when he'd cased Vernon's block upon learning Vernon's address.

The light outside the oversized windows was fading, a dusky glow painting the white walls gold. The stainless steel fan Vernon had switched on during the interview rotated, its blades flashing, the breeze rippling the cloth folding screen in the opposite corner that sequestered a table and computer. Vernon flicked on the track lighting and the loft, which had previously felt like a theater stage, took on the warmth of a habitable apartment. Charlie's anxiety at meeting Vernon had dissipated over the course of the interview, and he had become captivated by Vernon's
answers, querying him exhaustively with the ambition of knowing every nuance about the author and his life. In the span of an afternoon, he'd become the world's expert on all things Vernon Downs, and for a brief moment he wished to time-travel back to the Milky Way Café at Glendale Community College so that instead of uttering “Why do I know that name?” he could proclaim “Of course, Vernon Downs.”

“I'll ride down with you,” Vernon said as he stabbed his cigarette into the pewter ashtray engraved with WORLD'S GREATEST DAD, which had slowly filled during the interview. Vernon cradled the ashtray and moved them into the elevator with a jauntiness that belied what must've been the incredible stress of the last couple of months. His smooth face was unblemished and he projected a vigor Charlie associated with health spas and resort living and not virtual exile in a small loft in New York City. “Be sure to show me the interview before you send it,” he said. “Just to make sure I didn't say anything, you know, ridiculous.”

Charlie promised he would. The elevator opened on the second floor just as Vernon said, “I'm having a little party,” and Charlie was too exhilarated at the invitation to Vernon's famous annual Christmas in July party to really register Vernon's scattering the remnants from his ashtray in the hall, the heaviest concentration of butts littering the doorway of apartment 2D. Vernon stepped back into the elevator and it completed its descent to the lobby. “You should definitely stop by.”

Charlie suppressed his elation. “I will,” he said, “thanks a lot,” regretting the “a lot” as soon as it left his mouth. The division between those on the inside and those on the outside was just circumstance and chance, he thought.

“And I'd love to see some of your work.” Vernon slipped the ashtray into the back pocket of his black jeans.

“Oh,” Charlie said, more in surprise than in response to the enormous gratitude the gesture inspired. He shifted into the rote supplication he could conjure at will while he considered what work he could show. He
had his Oswald story, but he'd also managed to finish the story loosely based on him and Olivia for his Camden workshop. He'd feigned illness rather than attend workshop the day his story was to be discussed—he hadn't changed Olivia's name and understood too late that he wouldn't be able to weather others speaking about her in any way, even as a fictional character, so much so that he left the copies with his workshop mates' edits unread in a trash can in Booth before lighting out for New York. He was curious what Vernon would make of the story, though, and was also thrilled that he would soon be introduced to Olivia, albeit only on the page.

The genuineness of Vernon's invitation to the party and his offer to read some of Charlie's work caught Charlie off guard, and he exited the lobby before he could utter something foolish that might persuade Vernon otherwise, but Vernon was engrossed in conversation with the doorman, complaining of someone smoking in the halls. The doorman promised to investigate, and Charlie wondered what the gag was.

In honor of the invitation to Vernon's party, Charlie bought a new shirt. He'd spent the afternoon at Century 21, the discount clothing store near Wall Street. Previously, his fashion sense had been limited to the rudimentary understanding most men held about colors that clashed. He had enlisted the help of the salesgirl, who smelled like vanilla, and he gave a start when the elevator to Vernon's loft opened on the second floor and a woman wearing the exact same scent emerged from apartment 2D. Charlie glanced guiltily at the carpeted hall, which had been recently vacuumed. He smiled at the woman, who was wearing a cornflower blue silk pleated dress that matched the color of her eyes.

He held the door for the woman and she disappeared into Vernon's party like quicksilver. Charlie maneuvered through the crowded loft with the manila envelope containing a copy of the story he'd written at
Camden. Trajectory after trajectory was aborted, guests crashing into him as he sought out his host, who was sequestered in the corner with the rented sound system that rendered conversation in the loft impossible. As he cut through the crowd, he found himself next to an actress he recognized from one of Olivia's favorite movies. The actress was drunk, relying on the nearest blank wall to keep her upright. He surveyed the loft and realized the party was peopled with celebrities. The lead singer of a band he had worshipped one summer in high school was chatting up Vernon, and Charlie stalled his approach.

Vernon waved him over.

“Thanks again for inviting me,” Charlie said, awkwardly sticking out his hand, as if they hadn't previously met. In one unbroken gesture, Vernon shook his hand and introduced him to the lead singer, whose name he couldn't hear over the blaring music but knew nonetheless. “I brought a story,” Charlie said, offering up the envelope, intuiting just then that it was completely the wrong venue and occasion to pass work to Vernon. Vernon responded by gracefully nodding and taking the envelope, slipping it behind one of the speakers. The hardwood floor was littered with silver and gold confetti, and a bodybuilder in a Santa suit hoisting a tray of hors d'oeuvres slipped and fell, scattering his payload, though hardly anyone noticed.

Charlie felt like a child who had strayed into a parental gathering, past his bedtime, and excused himself on the pretense of getting a drink. “Can I get you anything?” he asked Vernon, regretting this sycophancy, but Vernon didn't hear—or pretended not to—and Charlie slunk away, inching through the mob toward the makeshift bar. He felt a hand squeeze his arm and turned to find himself latched to a woman with enormous red lips.

“Vernon!” the lips shouted, and then just as quickly, “Oh, I'm sorry.”

“I'm Charlie,” he said, but the woman was skimmed away by a tide of revelers.

The movie poster for
Minus Numbers
loomed over the bar, the actor who had played the lead pointing at the poster, his face betraying the years since the film's release, as he strove to convince a skeptical blond woman that he was the actor on the poster.

“It's really me,” the actor argued, a drunken grin spreading across his face.

The blond woman rolled her eyes and departed the bar with her drink, nearly charging into Charlie, whom she looked past as she scrutinized the faces in the loft.

The bartender, a tall, tanned woman in a gauzy dress, cupped her ear as he shouted his drink order, nodding as she poured out the last swallow of a bottle of tonic. Jeremy Cyanin materialized at Charlie's side. In all but a handful of the gossip column accounts of Vernon's alleged antics in bars and nightclubs from the Lower East Side to the Hamptons, Cyanin had been implicated as Vernon's accomplice, the two often referenced in the same breath. Cyanin's first novel,
Fiesta!
was published to critical and popular success simultaneous to Vernon's
Minus Numbers
, and as both novels explored disaffected youth, the press rendered the two writers interchangeable and began confusing them in print regularly. Their author photos from the decade previous had been reprinted thousands of times, so that the casual reader couldn't tell them apart, or recognize them now. Cyanin's reputation had been enhanced by a short stint as an ambulance driver during the first Gulf War—though a leg injury had deposited him safely stateside, where he continued his job as a fact-checker for the
New Yorker
—and from his surviving a small-plane crash during an African safari he'd taken with his first wife. (Cyanin had been married multiple times, each marriage beginning on the heels of the last.) The couple had been rescued by a passing sightseeing bus, only to have their second plane crash. Cyanin had suffered a ruptured spleen, a sprained arm, smashed vertebrae, a burned scalp, and a transitory loss of all feeling in his hands. To his eternal amusement, he had been declared dead and
read his own obituary in a café in Venice, a fact he often mentioned in interviews.

“Another,” he said to the bartender.

“One sec,” the bartender said, holding up a finger as she turned to rummage through the cardboard boxes of unopened bottles of gin, tequila, vodka, whiskey, and rum.

Charlie grasped for something to say to Cyanin, but his thoughts were hijacked by the memory of Vernon referring to Cyanin as obsequious when Charlie tried to initiate small talk while waiting for the elevator. “He's still an obsequious presence at nightclubs.” Vernon had meant “ubiquitous.” The malapropism had plagued him, a catch in his throat that surfaced as he stood side by side with Cyanin. To his relief, Cyanin paid him no attention, staring straight ahead until a murderous shriek broke his trance. A woman grabbed Cyanin and kissed him on the lips. Cyanin pulled back, pretending offense.

“Is that a promise or a reprimand?” he asked, oozing a phony charm.

The woman hiccupped loudly and then proceeded not to be embarrassed when it was discovered that she'd mistaken Cyanin for her ex-husband, a bond trader for Salomon Brothers. “You actually don't look a thing like him,” she said.

“He's a very lucky man,” Cyanin said, swiping his fresh drink from the bar without breaking conversation. Charlie grabbed his vodka tonic as well, pointedly thanking the bartender, and turned away from Cyanin to face a platoon of thirsty partygoers impatiently questing for another drink.

“I loved your book,” a bespectacled man said.

“Excuse me?” Charlie said. The vodka began massaging his brain.

“I said I loved your book,” the man repeated, the scent of whiskey on his breath. Charlie noticed the man teetering slightly in his tasseled loafers. “I thought the characterizations were … real and the story … believable,” the man said.

Charlie smiled, nodding as the man continued to praise whatever book he was referring to.

“Is it hard to write a book like that?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Very hard. Harder than you'd think.”

“I'm Peter Kline,” the man said. “I'm with the
Times
.”

Charlie suspected Kline wouldn't remember the conversation and indulged him, grateful for someone to talk to.

“What I really liked was the way you couldn't tell if the main character—what was his name again?” Kline exhaled a stream of sour breath as he fumbled.

“I'm sorry,” Charlie said. “I'm deaf in one ear. What did you say?”

“The main character in
The Vegetable King
,” Kline said. “His name is escaping me.”

“Nick Banks,” Charlie said.

“I liked the way you couldn't tell if Nick Banks was really doing those murders, or if they were all just his imagination,” Kline said.

Charlie sipped his drink, annoyed. “You couldn't tell? Thought it was obvious.”

Kline didn't register the barb. “This is some party,” he said. “Lots of celebs. Saw you with Jeremy Cyanin over there by the bar. Your partner in crime, eh?” Kline winked conspiratorially. “He says you don't like your picture taken.”

Charlie smiled sheepishly. “Just doesn't seem like a good idea,” he said. The cadence of Vernon's speech had been indelibly recorded in Charlie's brain, and he contorted his mouth to imitate the smirk he'd seen Vernon employ when he'd asked him the same question.

Kline winked again, making a gun with his fingers. “Gotcha. Lots of nut jobs out there.” The commotion around a handstand by an attractive woman whose dress gathered down around her shoulders obscured Kline's good-bye as he joined the tributary of people moving slowly toward the balcony. Charlie swayed with the crowd until Kline was gone and then
made his way for the door. He'd stayed long enough to recount the party to Olivia and glanced toward Vernon, hoping to give a salute across the noisy room, but Vernon was still in the corner, the woman with the cornflower blue dress whispering into his ear. He laughed and she leaned her body into his.