Shriver

by Chris Belden

  Shriver pounded down the stairs and burst through the lobby door. He ran past the front desk, where Charlevoix called out, “You certainly are popular here!”

  He sped toward the entrance. As he got near, the doors slid open automatically. He skidded to a stop just outside. He scanned the lot. Behind him, through the glass, he watched as Jack Blunt and another man—the agent, Mr. Cheadem, apparently—came around the corner from the stairway, followed by Krampus. On the other side of the lobby, emerging from the saloon, came the tall man in black.

  This is it, Shriver thought. I’m done for.

  Just then he heard the distinctive clip-clop of horseshoes on pavement. Across the parking lot galloped Walter with T. Wätzczesnam astride his sloped back. Shriver held up his arm, as if hailing a cab.

  “Yee haw!” the cowboy hollered, waving his ten-gallon hat.

  Shriver looked back to see the men running through the hotel lobby toward the door. Nixon, lagging behind, signaled frantically for Shriver to run.

  The cowboy steered Walter up to the hotel entrance.

  “Climb aboard, Shriver!”

  Shriver looked back again. The men had almost reached the door.

  “Time’s a-wastin’, buddy,” T. said, holding out his knobby, weather-beaten hand. Shriver took hold, and, with surprising strength, T. pulled him up onto the horse, where Shriver settled in behind him on the saddle.

  “Giddyup!” T. roared, and Walter tore out of the parking lot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Walter ran at a full gallop, each stride sending Shriver’s sore rump in the air and then back down against the hard back edge of the saddle. He had never ridden a horse before. Amazed and terrified by the animal’s power, he clutched at T.’s denim jacket as they hurtled down the campus’s main drag. Students waved and shouted hello, apparently accustomed to seeing the cowboy professor around town on his trusty steed.

  “Hold on, Shriver!” T. cried as he abruptly steered the horse around a sharp corner onto a wide side street.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To a party!”

  They rode past several old, solidly built homes with well-cared-for lawns before slowing and turning up a long gravel driveway. The drive was lined with cars parked beneath a double row of massive trees that formed a green tunnel overhead. Among the cars, Shriver noticed, was Simone’s giant vehicle. At the end of the drive stood a white house with tall columns. To Shriver the place looked like a plantation house or the home of the warden in a chain-gang movie.

  They rode right up to the front steps and T. pulled the reins. “Whoa!” The horse snorted and came to a stop.

  “Where are we?” Shriver asked.

  “This is the house of our outrageously overcompensated college president.”

  Mosquitoes descended upon them as they dismounted.

  “Good boy,” T. said, patting the horse on its powerful flank. The animal snorted and flicked its tail at the ruthless insects.

  At the bottom of the steps leading up to the wide, columned porch, the cowboy produced a flask and offered it to Shriver.

  “No thanks, T.”

  T. looked taken aback. “Very prudent of you, Shriver.” Then he took a long pull, screwed up his face into a pleased grimace, and pushed through the pulsing wall of mosquitoes to the front door.

  “Are you sure I should be here, T.?” Shriver asked, rubbing at his saddle sores.

  The cowboy snorted, sounding remarkably like Walter the horse. “Of course you should be here, Shriver. This party’s for you.”

  He lifted a heavy brass knocker and banged it against the door. Shriver looked back down the long driveway, estimating how long it would take to run down its length and back to the hotel.

  As they waited, there came a shrill noise from the far end of the porch: another insect zapper. Zzzzzzch!

  “Amazing contraption,” T. said. “I’d like to strap one to my back.”

  As the bug killer zapped away, the door swung open and a black-jacketed servant appeared.

  “We’re here for the soiree,” T. said.

  The servant, a stoop-shouldered older gentleman, consulted a clipboard. “Your names, sir?”

  “My name is T. Wätzczesnam, Ph.D., and this here is the party’s honoree, Mr. Shriver.”

  The servant checked off T.’s name on the list, then paused. “It seems Mr. Shriver has already arrived.”

  “Nonsense,” T. said. “This is Mr. Shriver.”

  “T.,” Shriver said.

  “According to the list, sir—”

  “Damn your list, man.”

  “T., please.”

  “Sir,” the servant said, puffing out his fragile-looking chest.

  “Out of our way!” The cowboy pushed past the man, nearly knocking him over. “Come on, Shriver. Let’s settle this once and for all.”

  Apologizing to the shocked servant, Shriver followed T. inside. They passed into a wood-paneled hall with a wide staircase. T. turned left through an arch into a large room full of people chatting and drinking wine. Over by the tall windows, Christo, Delta’s musician friend, played “Somewhere over the Rainbow” on a grand piano. Nearby stood Simone and the real Shriver speaking to a squat man with silver hair and a matching handlebar mustache. When Shriver followed T. into the room, a few faces turned and stared, then, like a wave, other faces turned and stared, the wave coursing through the crowd until it washed up at the back, where Simone’s face went hard and red. By now, the room had grown silent except for the piano, which the oblivious young man continued to play.

  Simone detached herself from the triangle and pushed through the room. She’d changed into an elegant white dress with spaghetti straps. The freckles on her chest and shoulders glowed with rage.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Simone, dear,” T. said, but she ignored him and marched straight up to Shriver.

  “I hoped you’d left town by now,” she said, “with your tail between your legs.”

  Shriver did not know what to say. He glanced around the room, hoping to see a friendly face, but no one smiled—except for the real Shriver, whose grin was of the well-fed-canary type.

  “So,” Simone said, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

  Shriver cleared his throat. “I’d like to apologize.”

  “What the hell for?” T. asked.

  “No, T.,” Shriver said, “I need to say this.” He paused, trying to figure out what it was he needed to say. Simone waited with a skeptical expression. “I came here under false pretenses,” he started.

  “Nonsense!” T. cried.

  Simone wheeled toward the cowboy. “Will you pipe down, you blithering old drunk?”

  Wätzczesnam stepped back, as if she had struck him across the face, but it worked: he shut up. And so did the piano player, who stopped in the middle of a verse.

  Simone turned back to Shriver. “Say what you need to say and go.”

  “Of course.”

  Looking at all these glasses of wine, Shriver wanted more than anything to have a drink. No—he wanted more than anything to be somewhere else. No again—he wanted to be somewhere else and drunk. But here he was, sober, in a predicament of his own manufacturing, and he swore he would exit as gracefully as possible.

  “First of all, I’d like to say what a privilege it’s been to be here with you all these past few days. With Mr. Rather, Ms. Amphetamine, with Ms. Smithee, wherever she is. I’d especially like to thank Professor Wätzczesnam, and my intrepid handler, Mr. Nixon, who I wish was here, for their generosity and support.”

  “Hear! Hear!” T. said, lifting a glass of wine from a passing waiter’s tray.

  “You have treated me with such undeserved respect and courtesy. I will always remember you fondly.”

  Simone sighed dramatically. “Are you finished?”

  The real Shriver, who had remained beside the piano, now moved through the crowd and stood inappropriately close t
o Simone. To Shriver this smacked of some kind of territorial signal: This woman belongs to me. The writer also appeared intoxicated as he swayed on unsteady legs, his eyes glassy and unfocused. Shriver felt his face burn, but he was glad to see Simone take a small step away, as if she too were uncomfortable with his proximity.

  “Most of all,” Shriver continued, “I’d like to thank you, Professor Cleverly, for presenting me with the opportunity to meet these lovely people.”

  Simone rolled her eyes.

  “And I want to say how profoundly sorry I am for—”

  “Wait!”

  Through the arch came Gonquin Smithee, followed by Edsel Nixon.

  “Thank God!” Simone said, running to the poet. “Where have you been?”

  Gonquin, waving a sheaf of yellow paper, sidestepped Simone and approached Shriver. “This,” she said, holding out the pages, “is wonderful.”

  “Is that my story?” Shriver took the pages in his hand. It felt like being reunited with a child. “But how did you get it?”

  “Guess where she was,” Edsel Nixon said, beaming. “She was in your room this whole time.”

  “I passed out under your bed, then woke up yesterday morning after you’d gone,” Gonquin explained. “I really didn’t want to face Majora, so I stayed and spent all day composing a slew of new poems—all from the point of view of my father.” She pulled several pages of hotel stationery from her pockets. “I think it’s my best work.”

  “You’ve been there since yesterday?” Simone asked.

  “When Shriver didn’t come back last night, I figured I’d stay another day.” She turned to Shriver and added, “I spent half the night reading your story. I think I read it five times.”

  Simone directed a withering look at Shriver. “He didn’t return to his room last night?”

  “I was locked out,” he explained, thrilled by her jealousy.

  “When those men knocked on the door to room nineteen this afternoon,” Edsel said, “Ms. Smithee climbed out the window and down the ladder we left there.”

  “When men pound on the door,” Gonquin said, “my instinct is to run the other way.”

  “Does Detective Krampus know about this?” Shriver asked.

  “Detective who?” the poet said.

  The real Shriver stepped forward, again positioning himself beside Simone. Swaying slightly, he extended a hand to Gonquin. “Ms. Smithee, so pleased you turned up.”

  “Who’s this?” the poet asked Shriver, ignoring the man’s hand.

  “This is Mr. Shriver,” Simone told her.

  “I don’t understand.” Gonquin looked to Shriver for an explanation.

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you left?” Simone asked him.

  “Leave?” Gonquin said. “Why would he leave?”

  “Ms. Smithee—”

  “This is the best story I’ve read in a long, long time,” the poet said, grabbing the papers back from Shriver. “You can’t make him leave now.”

  “You don’t understand,” Simone said.

  “Damn right, I don’t.”

  Looking at Shriver as she spoke to Ms. Smithee, Simone said, “This man is not Shriver.”

  “Of course he is.”

  “Hear! hear!” T. interjected as he helped himself to another glass of wine.

  Simone addressed Shriver. “Perhaps you’d like to explain this to Ms. Smithee.”

  All eyes turned to Shriver. He licked his dry lips. “Well,” he began.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Now what?” Simone said.

  Excited voices were heard from the hall before in rushed Jack Blunt and another man, a portly young fellow with a double chin that spilled over his shirt collar.

  “Greetings, everyone,” Blunt said, his toupee still askew. “May I introduce Donald Cheadem, Mr. Shriver’s agent.”

  Mr. Cheadem walked directly up to Shriver and offered his hand. “How do you do, Mr. Shriver?”

  “No!” cried Simone and the real Shriver in unison.

  Startled, Cheadem stepped back, as if to begin again. The real Shriver stepped forward. “I am Shriver.”

  “Oh, so sorry,” the agent said.

  “Wait a second,” Gonquin Smithee said. “You’re Shriver’s agent, and yet you don’t know what he looks like?”

  “We only met the one time,” Cheadem said as the real Shriver pumped his hand, “and that was twenty years ago.”

  “Good to see you again,” the real Shriver said.

  “I was only fifteen years old at the time,” the agent continued. “My father was Mr. Shriver’s original agent, you see.”

  “That’s right,” the writer said. “I remember now.”

  At this point, Shriver considered running. Nothing good was going to happen here. He’d been exposed as an imposter, Simone loathed him, and he had retrieved his story. It was time to go home, before he got thrown in jail—or lynched. With this in mind, he backed away toward the front hall.

  “And how is your old man?” the real Shriver asked Mr. Cheadem.

  “I thought you knew,” the agent said. “My father passed away ten years ago.”

  Just as Shriver had reached the arch that led to the hall, the front door burst open again and in marched Detective Krampus.

  “Nobody move!”

  “What’s going on?” Simone asked.

  “Will Mr. Shriver please step forward?” the detective said.

  Some in the room turned to our Shriver, some to the other Shriver. Neither man made a move.

  “Well?” Krampus said. “Is no one here the author of this novel?” He held up a copy of Goat Time.

  Shriver watched the real Shriver, whose eyes darted about the room.

  “This is Mr. Shriver,” Simone said, indicating the man beside her.

  “Is that so?” Krampus asked.

  “Of course it is,” Simone answered just as Gonquin Smithee said, “Of course not.”

  “Ms. Smithee?” Detective Krampus said, just now noticing the poet. “Is that you? Where on earth have you been?”

  “Oh, around,” she said.

  “But—”

  “I’ll explain later,” Shriver told Krampus.

  The detective digested this, then turned back to the real Shriver. “Well—are you Shriver?”

  “Go on, Caleb,” Simone said. “Tell him.”

  Caleb? Shriver thought. She’s calling him Caleb?

  The silver-haired man with the voluminous mustache pushed through the stunned group and addressed Krampus.

  “Detective, my name is Horace Wimple, and I am the president of the college and current resident of this home.”

  “How do you do, Mr. President.”

  “Frankly, I’m a little confused.”

  “Of course. Let me explain. This man”—Krampus gestured toward the real Shriver—“is wanted in three states for fraud.”

  Simone let out a cry of anguish.

  “I knew it!” T. hollered.

  Shriver too had known something was off. The man was simply too familiar with his own novel.

  In shock, no one made a move when the real Shriver bolted from the room.

  “Caleb!” Simone shouted when the front door slammed.

  “Simone!” Shriver called, following her into the hall.

  Simone opened the door and, on the front porch, restrained by two uniformed police officers, the real Shriver squirmed and cursed.

  “Let him go!” Simone ordered, but the officers held tightly to the struggling writer.

  “You can take him away,” Krampus said to the men.

  As a crowd gathered behind her, Simone confronted the diminutive detective. “This is outrageous! Where are you taking Mr. Shriver?”

  “That is not Mr. Shriver,” Krampus said.

  “But I am Shriver!” the man shouted as the officers steered him down the steps. “He’s the imposter! Not me!”

  “Detective,” Horace Wimple said
, “can you please explain all this?”

  “For the past several years,” Krampus said, “this man has assumed the identities of several important people, including a bank president, a member of Congress, and an airline pilot.”

  “Good Lord,” Horace Wimple said. “Why?”

  “Apparently, it’s a desperate bid for attention. Particularly”—here he cleared his throat and made a show of looking away from Simone—“female attention. Just last month he pretended to be a casting director for a reality television program about women exhibitionists.”

  Simone gasped.

  Then, just as the not-real Shriver was being forced into the police vehicle, he tore free from his captors and dashed down the driveway.

  “Stop him!” Detective Krampus yelled as the two officers gave chase. But the man was surprisingly quick and disappeared around the corner well ahead of the policemen.

  Krampus, cursing his men, tore down the driveway in pursuit. The partygoers, oblivious to the cloud of voracious mosquitoes that descended upon them, spilled out onto the porch and watched the little man dash around the corner and disappear.

  Zzzzch! went the insect zapper.

  T. Wätzczesnam, full wineglass in hand, patted Shriver on the back and said, sadly, “I believe this singular situation has me stumped for an appropriate bit of verse.”

  “May I have a word?” Simone asked Shriver, escorting him into another room off the hall, Mr. Wimple’s office, apparently. There was a desk, a file cabinet, and shelves lined with books. Shriver’s lower bowel puckered at the smell of decaying paper.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Shriver said.

  “Never mind that. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me who you are.”

  “Simone—”

  “Oh, will you please just do it,” she said, starting to tear up. “I don’t know which end is up anymore, and I could use a little certainty here.”

  Shriver removed his handkerchief and handed it to her. She thanked him and wiped her eyes. Then she glanced down at the hanky and let out a little gasp.

  “What is it?” Shriver asked.

  “The handkerchief.” She held it out to him, unfolded. “CRS. That’s you?”

  He nodded.

  Her face relaxed into a smile. “Oh, thank God.” She handed the handkerchief back to him.