Vernon Downs

by Jaime Clarke

  “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.

  A boisterous foursome burst into the lobby, late arrivals for the party raging upstairs. Charlie lingered, eavesdropping on their excited chatter about meeting Vernon Downs, before catapulting out into the night, his senses ablaze with a privileged glimpse of the world Olivia must’ve dreamed of a thousand times over.

  Charlie announced himself to the doorman, who registered a faint look of recognition. The doorman hung up the phone. “He’s coming down.” Charlie had almost missed the message Vernon had left the day before at Obelisk, asking him to join him for lunch. He had spent most of the previous day uptown with Derwin, who had arranged a launch party for Jacqueline Turner, one of his oldest authors, at Bemelmans in the Carlyle Hotel. Derwin had advanced him his paycheck so he could buy a suit for the occasion, again with the assistance of the vanilla-laced salesgirl at Century 21, who remembered him, or pretended to. New York’s reputation as a cold, heartless metropolis was unearned, in his judgment. Eastern Star, the former speakeasy on the same block as Obelisk, had become Charlie’s local, and he was amazed at the disparate population he’d encountered at the Star’s lacquered and pockmarked bar: faces from Florida and Texas and Oregon, or Canada and Europe and Asia—each as friendly as the last, always inquiring what had brought Charlie to New York. He always demurred and instead luxuriated in their answers to the same question, drinking in the various biographies and ambitions. The Vietnamese girl who was studying fashion at Pratt; the Australian couple who hoped to open an apiary somewhere in Brooklyn; the kid from Detroit who had dreams of becoming a hatter. Their ambitions were endless and Charlie lamented only that he’d never know if any or all of them would come to fruition.

  Charlie’s stomach gurgled, reproof that he hadn’t eaten since the Southern-themed launch party at Bemelmans the day before. The plate of leftover pecan-encrusted sliced chicken breast drizzled in honey and red-skinned mashed potatoes he’d wolfed down was a distant culinary event, and he hoped Vernon’s plans for lunch were more
than liquid. Jacqueline Turner had abstained from the delicious fare at her launch party, which Charlie ascribed to nerves. Leading up to the party, Derwin had been distracted with the details. What was left unsaid was that with Jacqueline being eighty, this would surely be her last novel, and even Derwin knew that it would not be remembered or read in the future. Charlie wondered if the same was true for her first novel, Esque. A framed enlargement of the cover hung over Derwin’s desk, the author photo a stunning portrait of Jacqueline in her youth, her even features lending her an aura of grace. The knowing eyes bored out from the frame as Charlie considered the art deco design on the cover. The novel had won several of the major fiction prizes the year it was published, and Jacqueline had written two more in short order that sold well enough to her new audience, which thinned with each subsequent title, until she stopped publishing altogether at the young age of forty. Charlie bristled at the notion that it was possible to go from gracing the cover of Time magazine to obscurity within the same lifetime. Vernon Downs would be famous his entire life, probably post-humously, too. Jacqueline’s death would merit an obituary in the New York Times, and Derwin would keep her work in print as long as he was alive, but it would probably suffer the miserable fate of being stacked in warehouses waiting for readers whose attention had turned elsewhere. The launch party for Jacqueline’s new novel—sparsely attended by friends of Derwin’s as well as a smattering of Jacqueline’s contemporaries, and none of the press outlets Derwin had Charlie fax his carefully worded press release to—telegraphed just such ignominy. Charlie had helped himself to seconds after the small gathering had cleared, the caterer’s assistant eyeing the same prize. Charlie knew the hunger with which free food was devoured, and he imagined the assistant would be lunching on pecan-encrusted chicken sandwiches for weeks.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Vernon said as he hustled into the lobby. “I have to go uptown.”

  A black sedan Charlie hadn’t previously noticed idled out in front of Summit Terrace. His hunger rose up against his inclination toward genuflection but was defeated. “No problem, really.”

  “Ride with me,” Vernon said. “I read your story.”

  The driver opened the door for Vernon and grimaced as Charlie skirted around to the other side, never having had a car door opened on his behalf. The leather interior was remarkably hard, and Charlie bounced in his seat as the car turned uptown, sailing up Park Avenue South. The landscape transformed dramatically as they sluiced through the tunnels at Grand Central, awash in the gilded moraine of centuries of wealth accumulation. Across Park Avenue, across the wide boulevard of landscaped tulips, a silver Jaguar gleamed heroically in a showroom window.

  The interim between Charlie’s handing over his story to now had been teeming with grand designs of becoming Vernon’s protégé, fêted up and down Manhattan as the Next Big Thing, perhaps replacing the dull, aging Cyanin as Vernon’s literary yin. If simply knowing Vernon was currency in Olivia’s eyes, his becoming a protégé would make him richer by ten. The fantasies about celebrity-studded book parties and lucrative film offers were brought low now that he was cocooned in the sedan with Vernon. Charlie hadn’t done more than transcribe his and Olivia’s story, the pages likely rotten with florid language as a result of the seismic ache in his heart. That Vernon Downs would be remotely intrigued by the story suddenly seemed a severe miscalculation.

  “I read it twice,” Vernon said, tapping his slender fingers on the armrest between them. “You’re onto something, but it’s not happening on the page yet. Nothing happens, for one. Characters need backstory, but Alice is down the rabbit hole on page one, if you get me. And action is borne from motivation. So for instance, the girlfriend doesn’t just move back home. They’re engaged and she breaks up with him to marry someone else. But even that is too boring. She marries the other guy because the other guy has money, which is important because the girlfriend’s family fortunes are dwindling. Maybe the result of scandal. Etcetera.”

  Charlie swallowed the revulsion he felt at the idea of Olivia marrying someone else, or marrying someone else for money. The offense was too grievous to consider, even fictionally. Vernon’s advice called to mind those critics who had wondered where the emotional heft was in his work, complaining that his novels were too often peopled with ciphers meant to channel the author’s ennui. One particular critic had called Vernon’s work “everythingless.”

  Charlie mentally argued against Vernon’s critique but was distracted by Vernon adding, casually, “I think I know an editor who would consider it if you revise.” The hard truth that he needed Vernon’s approval, craved the apprenticeship, stifled all his argumentative impulses.

  “I’ll definitely have another go at it,” he said. “Thanks. Really, thanks.”

  “Pull over here,” Vernon told the driver. The car found the nearest curb and Vernon turned in his seat. “Here’s how you can return the favor.” The directness of his tone spooked Charlie and he was taken aback by the cold fear he felt. He hadn’t previously considered Vernon to be dangerous, but even the driver averted his eyes. “Write me five hundred words on why kids are ruining America.”

  “You mean like an essay?” Charlie asked, laughing.

  Vernon smiled, clenching and unclenching his fists as if the reps were part of a daily exercise routine. “It’s for George magazine. I told them I’d do it, but that was only because I wanted to meet JFK Jr. I’m just not into it now.” He searched Charlie’s face for complicity. “Do this for me and I’ll show your story to my friend the editor.”

  Charlie nodded, knowing the hunger for ingratiation. “Sure. When do you need it?”

  “Yesterday.” Vernon grimaced. “Why don’t you bring it with you to KGB tomorrow night. There’s a book party. Seven p.m.”

  “Okay,” Charlie agreed. It was easy to agree without considering what he was agreeing to.

  “This is you,” Vernon said. It took Charlie a moment to realize what Vernon was saying.

  “Watch traffic,” the driver warned from the front seat.

  “Sorry about lunch,” Vernon said.

  Charlie waved good-bye and walked up Sixty-eighth Street, irresolute about the direction he was headed until Central Park came into view, orienting him. He was lost as a tourist uptown—his second trip in as many days—and almost collapsed in frustration until the doorman at the Plaza indicated with a nod the direction of the subway entrance under the hotel.

  Charlie mounted the steep stairs to KGB, emerging at the tiny second-floor bar whose walls were lined with Soviet memorabilia, framed posters of Stalin and Lenin and other unnamed politburo chiefs menacing the crowd of oblivious hipsters from above. He spotted Vernon under a poster of Yuri Andropov. As he knifed through the throng, he spied Jeremy Cyanin behind a near-life-size black-and-white head shot of the author whose books were stacked on the corner of the bar.

  Charlie crept forward. He’d been confused by the lack of real instructions for delivering the George magazine piece—he surmised that Vernon hadn’t asked him to e-mail it to avoid an electronic paper trail—and felt foolish for bringing it to the book party, even if those were Vernon’s instructions. He’d nearly abandoned the assignment, unable to come up with a slant that seemed worthy of a slick magazine, until he’d solicited Derwin for his assessment of youth culture. Derwin had given him a soulful look. “Murderers, rapists, gamblers,” he’d said. “You never heard of these things when I was young.” Charlie had no independent knowledge about whether the comparison was true or not, but once he embraced Derwin’s point of view, the piece flowed quickly:

  Teens are running roughshod over this country—murdering, raping, gambling away the nation’s future—and we have bills for counseling and prison to prove it. Sure, not all kids are bad—but collectively, they’re getting worse. Why should we blame ourselves? Things have changed drastically in the last twenty years, to the point where one can really only chuckle in grim disbelief. Cheating on exams? Smoking cigarettes? Shoplifting? You wish.
Murder, rape, robbery, vandalism: The overwhelming majority of these crimes are committed by people under twenty-five, and the rate is escalating rapidly.

  He’d gone to sleep feeling mentally fatigued, spent from rearranging sentences and auditioning words and phrases, searching for artistic expression of his borrowed idea, but also from the charge of aping Vernon’s cool attitude.

  Vernon nodded in his direction, calling him over.

  “You made it,” Vernon said.

  Charlie made a nervous joke about having gotten lost, even though he hadn’t.

  “This is Jeremy Cyanin,” Vernon said, pointing.

  “Hey,” Cyanin said coolly, scanning the room. “I suppose you’re mad at Vernon too.”

  Charlie smiled dumbly, unsure what the gibe meant, forcing Vernon to explain that he’d been spending time with some models as research for his next novel and had even participated in a photo shoot, but changed his mind about signing the release form. Apparently, everyone was angry about it, much to Cyanin’s amusement. Charlie processed the information in the uncomfortable silence, which was broken by a woman dripping in gold lamé who squealed when she saw Vernon and Cyanin. “It is you,” the woman said, raising her arms to allow the writers to hug her. Cyanin obliged, while Vernon lifted his glass in the woman’s direction. “Hello, Vernon,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since your Christmas party. You never did say where you hired those elves from.”

  “The elves were two years ago,” Cyanin said, laughing. He rocked back on his heels, unaware of the swaying.

  The woman’s expression changed. “Yes, I’m on some sort of blacklist, apparently.” Vernon shrugged and rattled the ice in his glass. A cloud settled over the woman, whose gold lamé dress appeared rusty in the red-lit room.

  Cyanin leaned into the bar, and Charlie passed the folded pages to Vernon, who slipped them into his suit jacket pocket with a half smile.

  “Looks like a rip-off of Minus Numbers,” Charlie said, indicating the blowup of the cover.