Vernon Downs

by Jaime Clarke

  The open door to the Black Rabbit was less than fifty feet away. “You can always reach me here,” he said, jamming his thumb at the gold-stenciled window. He laughed to indicate it might be a joke and it might not, waving and disappearing into the dark, cool bar. He spied Shelleyan copying the phone number into her address book. The sight of her provoked a set of fragile emotions: On the one hand, a sense of welcome familiarity gripped him, as if he and Shelleyan and Olivia had lunched together in the Milky Way yesterday rather than forever ago; but all that had happened to him since reminded him that Olivia, too, was off somewhere living her life while he was absent from her life. He longed to staunch the accumulation of time spent apart, and Shelleyan’s presence was a further insult to his situation.

  Charlie watched from the safety of a dim corner until Shelleyan was lost in a sea of NYU kids migrating toward Sixth Avenue. The empty bar had the clean smell of freshly polished wood. The elderly bartender nattily attired in a pressed white cotton shirt and vintage gold vest busied himself with aligning the bottles of liquor behind the bar, rotating the labels face out, putting his eyes in the mirror only when Charlie turned to leave.

  “Drink?” the bartender asked. A streak of late-afternoon light lit a dust mote that floated aflame across the vacant bar.

  Charlie hesitated. He knew that wood-paneled bars like the Black Rabbit were generally more expensive than the sinkholes on the Lower East Side—he’d wandered into the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel after an afternoon idle in Central Park and was dismayed at the fifty-dollar check for two vodka tonics and a watercress sandwich. He hadn’t even known what watercress was, and while he enjoyed the sandwich, he would forever associate it with that afternoon’s extortion.

  “Maybe a glass of water,” Charlie answered, “if you can spare it.”

  The bartender smiled. “You look like you need something a little stronger than water.”

  Charlie pulled out a barstool, convinced that this old man was going to sucker him by selling him a drink he needed but couldn’t afford. His insides were still electrified from Shelleyan’s unforeseen appearance, and the fortitude he needed to endure the harsh conditions on the streets of New York had momentarily been flushed from his system.

  The bartender poured a tall, frosty glass of amber ale and set it in front of him. “On the house,” he said without fanfare.

  A store of self-pity welled up and it was all he could do to refrain from leaping over the bar to hug the bartender, or to curb the tears tickling the corners of his eyes. He lifted the glass in the bartender’s direction. “Cheers,” he said, the first taste of the cold beer going down a little too easily.

  The bartender gave his name, and Charlie listened as Frank related how he’d once been a Broadway producer, “back when New York was New York,” telling about the theater he had called home and all the wonderful friends who were long gone. “Some of them are on the wall,” he said, indicating the framed pen and pencil caricatures that lined the establishment. Frank poured Charlie another beer, then one for himself. “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a writer,” Charlie said, sipping the fresh beer.

  “What have you written?” Frank asked.

  Charlie babbled an unintelligible monologue about a novel that too closely resembled the mashed-up plots of two of Vernon Downs’s novels, and he hoped that Frank wasn’t a rabid Downs fan. “So far unpublished,” he added quickly.

  “Just takes luck,” Frank said. “So many people in the theater had the most amazing stories about finding fortune. Some owed their whole career to standing in the right spot at the right time.” He raised his glass. “To luck.”

  Charlie lifted his half-full glass. “To luck,” he repeated.

  Frank drained his glass and quickly washed it in the bar sink, replacing the sparkling pint on the pyramid of glasses behind the bar. “My friend owns a small publishing house in Brooklyn,” Frank said. “You should send him your book.”

  Frank’s mounting kindness toward him washed away all of Charlie’s anxieties, and he deeply wished the imaginary manuscript existed, if only to repay the charity that Charlie knew he didn’t deserve. He pocketed the address Frank scrawled on a cocktail napkin bearing a foil silhouette of a small black rabbit.

  It was a number of days before Charlie learned that Obelisk Press was in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, the same neighborhood where Shelleyan lived, and the notion of paying a visit—he was slowly learning that every connection in New York deserved tribute—gave him the heebie-jeebies. Accident brought him to the crumbling concrete steps of the gray building in the Puerto Rican section of Williamsburg one Wednesday afternoon: He was enjoying an afternoon getaway from the city courtesy of a flyer he’d found in the subway advertising a kickball tournament in McCarren Park, in Greenpoint, the neighborhood abutting Williamsburg. As the sun set on the kickballers, Charlie trudged back toward the subway, his stomach full from the free hot dogs and watery beer served to spectators and players alike by the Turkey’s Nest, a dive bar that was also the tournament’s sole sponsor. An adventurous jaunt down a quiet side street designed to prolong the redemptive afternoon led him instead to the discreet plaque advertising the publishing company Frank had steered him and his imaginary manuscript toward.

  He knocked on the door, unsure what he’d say. No one answered. He knocked again, spying the buzzer at knee height. He bent down, his back aching from leaning or lying on the grass all day, and pressed the buzzer. The front door was jimmied open by an enormous man in his sixties dressed in an impeccable three-piece suit, a neatly trimmed white beard the only hair on his pink head. Charlie introduced himself as a friend of Frank’s. He didn’t know Frank’s last name, and Frank had only suggested mailing his imaginary manuscript, not showing up at the address in Brooklyn, but Charlie’s instinct was stronger than reason and always prevailed. The man was searching Charlie’s face, trying to fathom what it was he was saying, when Charlie remembered the folded napkin in his wallet. He offered the napkin with Frank’s scrawl and the man’s eyes lit up. He hoped Frank wouldn’t learn of this misapplication of his kindness, though he was fairly sure he would never see Frank again, or could avoid him if it became an issue, so he dispatched the worry as quickly as it arose.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Come in.”

  The man introduced himself as Derwin MacDonald, though his affiliation with Frank from the Black Rabbit was to be forever unknown. Obelisk Press occupied the entire first floor of the building, the second being Derwin’s living quarters. Charlie accepted Derwin’s offer of a strong cup of coffee and, grateful for a comfortable chair, settled into the low-lit living room as Derwin recounted his days as a hanger-on in London, on the fringes of the third incarnation of the Bloomsbury Group, which Derwin explained was a group of intellectuals, writers, and painters. He glossed over the group’s demise owing to vanity and fervent self-publication, Obelisk rising from the ashes of the immolation to publish the writers and thinkers he admired most.

  “Do you write?” Derwin asked.

  “I’d like to be a writer,” Charlie admitted.

  “Ah,” Derwin said. “That’s not the same thing.”

  Charlie shrugged and peppered him with questions about London, what it was like to live there, how expensive it was compared with New York, what single people did for fun, etc., keeping silent on the nature of his inquiry. He was dismayed at the glorious portrait Derwin painted, worried that Olivia might realize that she was already living in one of the most desirable world capitals and lose any interest in returning to America, for any reason.

  By the end of the evening, he felt as integrated as he had since he’d left Phoenix, and by the end of the week he was squatting in the tiny studio apartment on the third floor, above Obelisk Press, with Derwin’s permission. A foldout couch sat unevenly on the hardwood floor next to a table with spindly legs piled high with copies of Obelisk titles. A small counter installed under the far eave supported a toaster and a defunct coff
eemaker. What he mistook for a closet was actually a half bathroom. The room suited him fine. He’d long ago given up trying to personalize any of the spaces he inhabited.

  His apprehension at bumping into Shelleyan on the streets of Williamsburg faded as he acclimated to his new lodgings, and when Derwin offered him a part-time job as his right-hand man, he felt landed enough to call Vernon Downs, whose number he still knew by heart.

  As he knocked on Downs’s door, Charlie was revisited by an old humiliation from his first week in New York. Fearing that he’d be chased from the city and never have the chance, he had managed a call to Downs. Their staccato conversation—mostly Charlie giving a nervous recitation about what had transpired after his public reading of Downs’s work—was cut short with a proffered invitation, a book party at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park. Charlie thanked him profusely, and Vernon said he was looking forward to meeting then, which provoked a crippling anxiety that lasted until the party. It was some small relief, then, when the doorman at the National Arts Club forbade him entrance for lack of a jacket.

  “Gentlemen wear jackets,” the doorman snobbishly suggested. The snub ignited Charlie’s inclination toward flight, which he’d felt when he first arrived at the Kepharts’, and the McCallahans’, and the Alexander-Degners’—on down the line. Over the years, he’d noticed a tickle when inaugurated into a new situation, one that implored him to turn back, or to press on quickly. He fought against the feeling but bailed from the foyer as the doorman hunted up a club jacket for him to wear. An aggregate of humiliation could only lead to certain ruin. But would Vernon remember Charlie standing him up? Or worse, had he somehow witnessed his humiliation as the doorman shook his head sternly, like the nannies did their charges in Gramercy Park on the sunny days since that Charlie had spent canvassing the scene of the crime, the interior of the National Arts Club a mystery still? He had considered calling Vernon the next day and leaving a cheery message saying he’d see him later that night, pretending to be mistaken about the date, ultimately glad that he hadn’t. One of the dilemmas about an uncertain present was an indecipherable future.

  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.

  Chapter II

  “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 t
hrough 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.”