The Thieves of Manhattan

by Adam Langer

  This pace might have been inconvenient for the industry as a whole, but it was phenomenally useful to the con artist who knew how to exploit the flaws in a world that spun at two different speeds. By the time the truth behind The Thieves of Manhattan would be revealed, all the checks would be cashed, and Myself When I Am Real would be in the hands of a copy editor.

  Nearly a year had passed since I had gone with Anya to hear her read at KGB’s “Literal Stimulation,” and now I was walking into the Big Box Books on Broadway for the launch event of We Never Talked About Ceauşescu. When I worked up the street at Morningside Coffee, I was greeted every morning by the sight of a scowling, even-bigger-than-life cardboard Blade Markham in 3B’s window; tonight, his picture was gone, replaced by a giant cutout of Anya’s book cover. Blade Markham was here in person, though, standing with his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans at the front of the store near the podium. Geoff Olden was shaking hands, smiling, passing out pairs of business cards.

  A familiar crowd was here—Anya’s editor, her publicists, creative writing students from Columbia, and a few unsuspecting bookstore customers trying to make their way past the crowd to get whatever book they had come here to find, probably Blade by Blade. Isabelle DuPom was standing beside Geoff Olden near stacks of We Never Talked About Ceauşescu. Isabelle and I had dated for a few weeks in late July and early August, but we were a bad match. She was my agent’s employee and she had a book manuscript she was hoping to sell—exquisitely crafted but hopelessly small stories about her childhood in Montreal; I was an up-and-coming author with a big book on the way. We went to movies, attended readings, made exuberant yet passionless chinaski, and talked about books and writing, but when I was with her, I couldn’t escape the feeling that something was phony about our relationship, realizing too late that the phony thing about it was me.

  Out the window of the bookshop, I could see traffic on Broadway, could see the café, too. For a moment, I thought I saw Faye in her baseball cap and paint-spattered jeans peering through the bookshop window—wishful thinking on my part. I longed to tell her stories again, but I knew she was no longer interested in hearing them.

  I took my place behind the back row of folding chairs, most of which were filled when Blade Markham took the stage and bent down to speak into the microphone that had been positioned at Anya’s height. Blade spread his arms out, then flapped them at his side, like a quarterback trying to silence the home crowd. He asked everyone to “give it up for Anya Peh-tresh-KOO, whose first book, We Never Talked About Chow-Chess-Koo, just dropped, yo.”

  Blade applauded, hands above his head, and then the audience joined in. Anya embraced Blade before stepping to the podium. Something was shining on the ring finger of her left hand—apparently, she and Blade were engaged.

  Anya had just started to read when Blade spotted me and walked fast in my direction, truth cross thumping against his chest. I didn’t know whether Geoff or Anya had told him I was here, whether he recognized me from the furniture store or from Geoff’s apartment, but when he asked me to “step outside for a minute, son,” I sensed he might want to roll me once and for all. I whispered that I was here to listen to Anya read, but he slapped me hard on a shoulder—“You’ve heard Anya read before, my man,” he said.

  Once we were outside the bookstore, though, Blade smiled, then put out his hand. “I been readin’ you, bro; I been reading your words,” he said. He added that he wasn’t through with The Thieves of Manhattan, which Geoff had sent to him, but it was “righteous as hell,” and filled with wheeze-dom. If called upon to do so, he would be more than willing to deliver “props” to me in the form of a blurb.

  I thanked him, then looked through the window at Anya. I couldn’t hear what she was saying at the podium, and yet I could see the hold she had over the people in her audience—they seemed as if they would follow her anywhere. I confided to Blade that I had seen the ring on Anya’s finger, and I congratulated him.

  Hell yeah, he said, Anya was steppin’ tonight, and now she was “sportin’” his “bling, yo,” and goddamn did he love that woman. He said that the three of us had to get together some time and “throw back a couple coldies,” and I said I’d be happy to. He told me to wait two weeks to call, because next week was gonna be crazy.

  Why would next week be crazy? I asked.

  “Just watch your television box, son,” Blade said as he shook my hand again. “Just keep an eye on that TV box, yo.”

  HONOR LOST

  When I learned that Pam Layne had made We Never Talked About Ceauşescu her next book club choice, Blade’s words about the “TV box” made more sense. Anya and Blade’s phone was bound to be ringing off the hook, and I could just imagine the photo spread being planned for People magazine—“America’s Hottest Literary Couple.”

  Strangely, when I read of Anya’s good fortune on page two of the Times’s Arts section, I didn’t feel jealous. Layne’s selection of Ceauşescu for her talk show seemed both inevitable and just, like Nelson Mandela winning the Nobel Peace Prize or Kate Winslet nabbing an Oscar. The world of bestselling authors and their books no longer seemed unattainable—today, it would be Anya’s turn in the spotlight; next, it would be mine. I foolishly fantasized that Pam Layne might even ask Anya whom she had dated before Blade—a year from now, when Thieves would be published, people might remember my name.

  I tuned in early to the show, and shut my windows and blinds so I would be able to hear and see everything on my new flat-screen. I sat on my black leather couch with a beer and takeout Chinese food, considered the time Anya and I had spent in my West Harlem studio, Anya scribbling while I stared at my computer screen. I imagined what it must have felt like to be the Beatles in Hamburg.

  Then the jaunty Pam Layne theme music began to play, Layne’s logo popped onto the screen, and there was Pam in the spotlight, delivering her opening monologue. I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying—something about the power of a good story to transform us and to make us believe; I just kept waiting for Anya, whom Pam said would be “visiting us after a short break.”

  Pam Layne had been a child actor, had appeared in movies or on TV for nearly forty years, but when the first commercial break was over and Anya appeared in a black golightly, tights, and pumps, she appeared to be the one who truly belonged on television. As Pam introduced Anya, who smiled demurely as she walked to her chair, I noted that the show’s set appeared starker and less welcoming than it usually did. When I had seen Blade and a half dozen other authors on the show, they sat opposite their host in comfortable chairs in front of a roaring fire, like old pals meeting in a living room, nibbling cookies, and talking over old times. Pam would describe how she had come to learn about whatever book she was featuring—it was always one that had been recommended by “this gal I met in the checkout line”; “my darling assistant, Mabel.” Layne liked to tell her viewers and her studio audience to imagine themselves at a Girl Scout camp outing, holding hands in front of a fire, and listening to stories. Come on, she’d say, kick off your shoes, crawl in your sleeping bag, let’s listen.

  Today, the set was configured as if for a Sunday morning political talk show. Pam Layne’s short, frosted blond hair looked sharper and more severe than it usually did. Pam and Anya were seated behind desks. Still, the camera adored Anya, and so did the audience, gasping when she told Pam about how she had come to write Ceauşescu; she described the desolation she had felt at her ailing father’s side, reading her stories to him, knowing she would soon become an orphan. Yes, I felt proud that Anya’s stories had made me fall in love with her long before America was doubtlessly doing the same.

  Anya finished telling her story, blushed, wiped her eyes, and looked to Pam. And then Pam Layne looked directly back at her. “Why are you lying to us?” Layne asked. Anya emitted a nervous chuckle. “Why are you lying to my audience, Anya?” asked Layne. I had thought that Layne must have been joking, but then I saw the shell-shocked expression emerging on Anya�
�s face. I felt my own heart beginning to beat just a bit more strongly as I saw Anya’s hands start to shake. The camera cut to a close-up of Pam Layne.

  “We’ll be right back,” she said.

  My mind began to reel, my stomach started churning, I dropped my chopsticks and didn’t pick them up—I didn’t feel like eating anymore. I stood and paced my floor, then, after the break, sat back down as Pam Layne spoke directly to the camera. This woman sitting beside her was a fraud, she said; everything Anya Petrescu had said before the break was a lie.

  Anya’s skin was pale. Upon her face was an expression I didn’t recognize—shame, perhaps embarrassment. She looked as if she wanted to be anywhere but on the set of the show.

  “Now, tell us the truth, Anya,” Pam Layne said.

  Anya seemed to be fighting back tears. Another unfamiliar expression—when she felt like crying, the Anya I knew always let those tears flow down her cheeks, let them stay right where they were until I wiped them away.

  “Are you from Bucharest, Anya?” asked Layne.

  I shoved my plate of food out of my line of vision; even the sight of it was making me ill.

  Anya bit her lip. And then she shook her head, mouthing a word yet not giving voice to it.

  “Anya, are you from Bucharest?” Layne asked again, and this time I could hear Anya’s voice, which sounded more foreign to me than it ever had.

  “I’m not,” said Anya.

  Members of the studio audience shook their heads in disbelief. My entire body felt dizzy. In the audience, Blade Markham was holding one hand over his truth cross, the other over his mouth.

  “Where are you from, Anya?” Pam asked.

  I couldn’t hear Anya at first, and Pam couldn’t either, but the second time Pam asked, I heard Anya’s voice loud and clear.

  “Maplewood, New Jersey,” she said.

  Another gasp from the audience, another gasp from me, another from Blade Markham.

  “And is your name really Anya?” asked Pam.

  Another no from Anya; her accent was gone, along with it the voice that had called me Ee-yen and told me how much she luffed me. She looked fragile and small, and I had the sensation that I often had when I was with her, that I wanted to fix whatever was wrong, to give her the happiness to compensate for all the misery she had felt growing up in Bucharest.

  “No, it’s Anna,” she said.

  Pam Layne looked piercingly at Anna Petrescu. “And why pretend your name was Anya and you were from Hungary?”

  “Romania,” said Anya.

  “Why, Anna?”

  Anna took a breath. “Because I thought no one would read my stories if I was just some rich kid from Maplewood, New Jersey,” she said.

  Pam Layne held Anya’s book up to the camera, then slammed it down on the table. The camera closed in on Pam, who said she had half a mind to take Anya’s book and throw it into her fireplace. She spoke to the camera about truth and trust and inviolable covenants between authors and readers. But I couldn’t watch anymore. I felt mixed up and afraid, as if I only now understood the gravity of what I myself had done, what I was still doing, and all that I had left to do. I shut off the TV and called Jed Roth. And when he didn’t answer, I jogged as fast as I could to his place.

  OUTSIDE ROTH’S

  “So explain to me exactly what some counterfeit Eastern European has to do with you?” Roth asked. I had caught up to him in front of his building right when he was about to enter with a cup of takeaway tea.

  What did it have to do with me? I asked. I was still out of breath; I was speaking faster than I was thinking, and my thoughts had been racing along at a pretty good clip. It had everything to do with me, I said, everything to do with both of us.

  “Then explain to me exactly what you think will happen,” Roth said. “Tell me the cause and effect.”

  I thought it was obvious, but I told him anyway, nervously running my words together: Anya was represented by Geoff Olden. She had appeared on Pam Layne’s show, and everything she’d said about herself to me and, more important, to everyone else had been revealed to be a lie because she hadn’t thought people would buy her books if she admitted who she really was. And here’s what would probably happen, I said: people would stop buying her book, and no publisher would give her a chance to write another. No Olden client would be safe; every one of his authors’ biographies would be scrutinized.

  Roth smiled, then led me by the shoulder across Riverside Drive and into the park, where he sat on a bench that faced toward the Hudson. The park was filled with sounds of children laughing as they swung on swings or ran through sprinklers; dogs barked as they scampered across fenced-in lawns; and yet the end of summer was approaching. In the air, I could inhale the imminent arrival of the first day of school—it smelled like freshly cut grass, newly poured asphalt, and leaves just getting ready to fall.

  “Now,” Roth said, sipping his tea as I sat beside him, “tell me exactly who will discover this truth.”

  “People,” I said. “Anybody.”

  “Which people? Which anybody?”

  “Some fact-checker,” I proposed.

  “Publishers can’t afford to employ fact-checkers,” said Roth. “Try again. Who else?”

  “Journalists,” I said. “The same people who found out about Anya.”

  “Which ones?”

  I said I didn’t know, but as more people read our book, more people would start examining it. Maybe it would be a reporter, or someone at Merrill Books or Olden’s office.

  “And what exactly will these ‘people’ find out?” Roth asked. “That your name isn’t really Ian Minot?”

  “No, that’s true,” I said.

  “That you didn’t come to New York from Indiana?”

  “No.”

  “That a library didn’t burn down? That no hooligan worked there? That there’s no such thing as The Tale of Genji?”

  “No, you know that’s all true too.” Usually, Roth’s confidence was reassuring; today it just irritated me. “I mean everything else,” I said. “The chases, the golden cross, the desolate field, the eight-thirteen train.”

  “And who other than you or me can prove that any of that’s not true?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Who?” he asked again.

  I thought for a moment.

  “Tell me, Ian,” said Roth.

  I kept thinking.

  And then I thought some more.

  Well, I thought, who really did know much about how I had spent my first years in New York? Faye didn’t. Neither did Anya, no more than I knew where she was from when she had talked to me in that accent, making believe she thought Blade Markham was the one from Mepplewood, New Jairsey. Maybe the truth was that they both were from Jairsey. Maybe they had planned everything out way in advance. As for me, I wasn’t very good at maintaining contacts—my parents’ deaths had taught me that nothing was permanent and so I tended to drift in and out of people’s lives, mostly out, and my adult life had seemed to be a series of freestanding episodes linked only by their main character, something agents often complained about in letters to me when they were rejecting my work. Maybe Roth was on to something; maybe he had known all along that he had chosen the right man.

  “But someone,” I said.

  “Yes, someone,” Roth said. “You.”

  And then Roth told me that on the night I had gone to hear Anya read at the KGB Bar, he had been there too. He had known right away that everything she was saying was false, he said. It was that skill of his again, the one he had mentioned to me on the night we met—being able to see truth or falsehood even in fiction. For Anya, it had only been a matter of time before she was discovered; she was lucky that the wheels of publishing turned so slowly. By now, at least she had already cashed her checks.

  “You see,” Roth continued as he took another sip of tea, “your little Bulgarian friend? She told the worst sort of lies—the ones that are so easy to disprove, the ones that
can be destroyed with one simple phone call. You’re telling enormous lies, but they’re so entangled with true stories that it would take years of work to pull out each individual strand to discover which is fact and which is fiction.”

  I didn’t want to tell Roth he was right, so I shut my mouth. But as I added up the lies, I couldn’t find the one that would give us away. The stories about who I was and where I came from were true; the characters in The Thieves of Manhattan were fictional, and what fictional character would stand up and say that Roth and I had created him or her? Would whoever had been working at the Blom Library when Roth had seen the girl there file suit, saying, “I’m no hooligan”? Sure, there were details that could have tripped us up, cute little flourishes about latitudes and longitudes that had been included in Roth’s original, now stored safely away in my files, but I had insisted we eliminate them in the final draft.

  “No, Ian,” Roth said, “there’s only one way this lie could unravel before its time, and there are only two people who could make that happen—you and me. As long as we remain calm and patient, as long as you stick to the story, everything will fall out just as it has been planned. It will all happen as it was written, Ian.”

  I watched the leaves flutter in the breeze, I watched boats sailing along the Hudson. I listened to children and dogs, to joggers passing. Roth stood up and took his empty tea container to the trash can. I could still hear his voice even though he wasn’t speaking to me now.

  “Just as it was written,” I heard him say. I reminded myself to be patient and calm. I continued looking out at the river and the trees, trying to reassure myself that I was still in control.