by Jaime Clarke
And so he said yes to drinks at Aviator, though he claimed he needed to meet her there. “Prior obligation,” he lied. Christianna was oblivious— did she notice that he hardly left the apartment?—but delighted that he would join her and her friends. In truth, the cash Vernon had left in aid of the fruitless search for Oscar had dwindled, spent mostly on takeout and cabs. Charlie convinced himself that the sustenance and transportation were precisely what Vernon had intended the money for. He further convinced himself that the idea to sell off some of the signed books in Vernon’s collection to the Strand to keep liquid—and thereby primed and ready to answer any alleged Oscar sighting—was sound. The first doubts were quashed by Charlie’s supposition that authors were always sending Vernon signed books—he’d found three in the mail from debut writers since he began apartment sitting—and so he cherry-picked a dozen or so books and waltzed them over to the Strand, pocketing an easy hundred dollars from the curmudgeonly buyer behind the counter, who raised an eyebrow at the inscriptions but remained silent on the matter. Charlie caught the buyer regarding him, and he signed Vernon’s name to the receipt acknowledging the transaction. The buyer gave him a half smile and nodded as he swept the signed books aside and called for the next person in line.
The crowd at Aviator was unusually small, which Charlie ascribed to the hour, just past six. He was two vodka tonics in before Christianna finished her story about an exploitive audition she’d had that morning. “It was a student film,” she said. “Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.”
“You should turn him in,” Charlie said, pulverizing the lime at the bottom of his glass with a red plastic straw.
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Christianna said, sipping her White Russian. “Funny thing was he resembled my friend James. Made me feel a little sorry for him, I guess. He died when he was nineteen.”
“Jesus, sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Christianna said, finishing her drink and handing the empty glass to the waiter, who replaced it with a fresh drink. The waiter also set down a plate of mozzarella marinara that Charlie didn’t remember anyone ordering.
“How did it happen?”
“He was trying to light a cigarette—well, I’m pretty sure it was a joint, but what does it matter, right?—and his BMW flew off the freeway. I was following him. It was Labor Day weekend and we were going to stay at his parents’ place.”
“Awful,” Charlie said, eyeing the dish between them. He poked at it with a fork, opting to partake in the free food. He presumed that since Christianna had extended the invitation, she would treat.
“He always ordered this,” Christianna said with a sigh.
“What,” he asked, “White Russians?”
“The mozzarella marinara,” she said, sighing again.
He put down his fork, forcing himself to swallow the gooey cheese, trying not to envision it as a chunk of flesh. “Was this when you were at Yale?” he asked.
Christianna bobbed her head, but he couldn’t tell if she was indicating yes or no. The story felt familiar and he couldn’t figure out why. (Later he would come across a letter in the archives from one of Vernon’s friends describing how the story Vernon had written for The Book of Hurts about the death of their friend outside Palm Springs—in the exact manner that Christianna had described her friend dying—had helped the friend cope with the loss.) “Speaking of death,” Christianna said, launching into a tale about her college roommate OD’ing, which Charlie recognized as being right out of Vernon’s novel Scavengers.
“So I come back after a night of drinking at the Pub and find her on the floor and it looks like she’s not breathing. I look around and see a half-empty bottle of whiskey”—Dewar’s in the book—“and think, Oh my God, she’s going to die. So I grab a freshman in the hall and we drive my roommate to the emergency room”—Charlie remembered a funny exchange from Scavengers about one of the characters thinking the closest hospital was in Keene, New Hampshire, but he stifled his smile at this bit of comic relief absent from Christianna’s version—“and the doctor can’t find a pulse.” Ditto the book. “The doctor says, ‘Your friend is dead,’ and I’m standing there thinking, This can’t be, this can’t be,” Christianna continued, “and then my roommate opens her eyes and says, ‘Am I really dead?’ And the doctor says, ‘Yes, you are. I can’t find a pulse.’ Can you believe that?”
He said he could not.
“So I say to the doctor, ‘How can she be dead? She’s talking!’” Christianna said, shaking her head at the absurdity. “But the doctor insisted. He kept saying, ‘Your friend is dead. Your friend is dead.’”
“That is something,” Charlie agreed, signaling for another drink. Christianna grew quiet, and he wondered if she’d recounted these plagiarized stories from Vernon’s work to test him or to impress him. A game was afoot, but he couldn’t grasp the rules. Christianna’s left thigh brushed his and he moved away reflexively, wishing he hadn’t. A general sexual frustration that had been accruing for weeks begged for an outlet, though he felt sure that sleeping with Christianna would be a monumental mistake. The perceived rebuff chilled the pleasantness the table had enjoyed; if he didn’t manufacture an excuse to leave, the two would share a constrained stroll back to Summit Terrace or, worse, he would be made to pick up the check.
“Hey, look,” Christianna said, brightening.
Jeremy Cyanin strolled into Aviator in a charcoal suit, leading a dark, petite woman to a table near the bar. “Oh no,” Charlie said, slumping down in the booth.
“What?” Christianna asked.
“Great,” he said.
“What?” Christianna asked again, this time intrigued by his playacting.
He improvised an escape. “Cyanin’s been harassing me about some coke he left at my place,” he said.
“So?”
“I did it, like, two weeks ago,” Charlie said, affecting lament. “And I’m fresh out.” He detected a spark in Christianna’s eyes at the prospect of participating in the melodrama. “I’m going to try to sneak past him,” Charlie said, adding, “the bastard.”
“I’ll cover you,” Christianna said conspiratorially. “I’ll go up and talk to him. Distract him.”
“No, no,” he said. “At all cost, you must not engage him or he’ll talk you into drinks, and when he finds out you’re my neighbor, he’ll weasel his way back to the building and we’ll never be rid of him.”
Christianna nodded. “Oh, I know the type.” She squinted at Cyanin, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.
“Got an idea,” he said, motioning for the waitress, a young girl who didn’t look old enough to drink, much less serve. “I want to play a prank on my friend,” he said, whispering for no reason. “I want to send a Sex on the Beach to that table”—he pointed to Cyanin’s table—“but I want you to say it’s from that table.” He pointed to a booth in the far corner where two comely lesbians were sitting side by side. “Okay, I’m out of here,” he said. He reached for his wallet, but Christianna shook her head.
“I’ve got this, you’ve got next time,” she said, and before he could process the ramifications of “next time,” he had kissed her on the cheek and was slithering along the bar, Cyanin with his back to him, the waitress bending to set the cocktail on his table, motioning toward the oblivious lesbians as Cyanin swiveled in his seat. He could hear Cyanin’s explanation to his date: “They’re fans, what can you do?” Charlie forged through the crowd, spinning away from a woman at the bar who turned precipitously with a martini in each hand. He grasped for a stool, his balance deserting him entirely, and he could only manage to spring forward, falling helplessly into the crowd pushing its way into Aviator. He collided with Peter Kline, the two of them falling against the hostess station.
“Leaving so soon?” Kline asked.
“I … have … to …” He gestured toward Fourth Avenue.
“I thought we were having drinks with Christianna,” Kline said, confused.
&n
bsp; He engineered an answer along the lines that Christianna was indeed still inside, but that he was feeling ill and had to cancel. “I’m sorry,” he said, and took a step toward Summit Terrace.
“Wait,” Kline said. The crowd at the door plunged forward and Charlie found himself alone on the sidewalk with Kline. “I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch,” he said.
Charlie nodded, not really concentrating on what Kline was saying.
“Thursday?” Kline asked, hopeful.
“Sure,” he answered. He would’ve agreed to anything short of homicide to abort the conversation.
“Thursday at noon,” Kline said. “At Jackson’s. The paper is buying.”
Charlie nodded idiotically, wanting to object. Someone or something tapped him on the back, but when he spun around, he was bewildered to find no one there, surprised further by the rush of vomit he spewed on the sidewalk, chunks of undigested mozzarella falling like wet clouds tumbling from the sky.
“Hey, you okay?” Kline asked, but he held up his hand and began walking backward, away from Kline and the orange and white stain he’d left in front of Aviator. “See you Thursday,” Kline shouted, and Charlie waved his arms wildly, both as confirmation and in protest, but the looming threat of lunch with Kline was less urgent than his roiling stomach, and he felt his way down Thirteenth Street, back to Summit Terrace, spending the night in the tub for its comforting proximity to the toilet.
Cyanin’s flat voice came at him like an assault. He shrank against the porcelain tub, shivering. Who had let Cyanin into the loft? A thought he hadn’t considered spooked him: Cyanin has a key. He hoisted himself out of the tub, carefully navigating a splotch of dried vomit that had missed its mark. The loft was quiet again and he peered out the bathroom door, ready to be cornered. But the loft was empty. A cold breeze swirled through the kitchen. A small cyclone of paper danced across the promontory of the highest stack of archives, floating and finally settling at his feet. He quickly shut the window he didn’t recollect opening, realizing he was alone.
After a long, revitalizing shower, the blanket shrouding his brain lifted. The flashing light on the answering machine called out to him as he pulled on his jacket, and he pressed the button.
“Hello?” It was Cyanin. “Hello?”
He froze, as if Cyanin were at the door.
“Hello, hello, hello.” A pause. “Are you back? You’re back. I guess the question is, why? A better question is, what was that shit at Aviator? The best question is, why did I have to read about your return in the Post? Call me back.” Another pause. “P.S. I slept with those two lesbians.”
Charlie erased the message, but it was burned in his memory. He opened the Post to Page Six, the notorious gossip column, spotting Vernon’s name in bold in the “Sightings” column:
Bad-boy novelist Vernon Downs was seen stumbling out of Aviator on Fourth Avenue, laughing maniacally at a prank he’d just pulled on his fellow bad-boy novelist Jeremy Cyanin.
He skimmed the column—the notice of the actress arrested for shoplifting (again), this time at an antique shop in the Bowery; the underage pop star caught drinking at a club in Noho; the socialite who fled her suite at the Four Seasons without paying—but he invariably drifted back to the mention of Vernon, dumbstruck at how the Post had ascertained this bit of false information. It took half a bottle of Gatorade before he put together that Kline was most likely the author of the gossip. Infuriated, he pounded on Christianna’s door, the brass knocker vibrating under his fist. He heard Vernon’s answering machine through the open loft door: “Vernon, it’s Daar. Are you back? Why are you back? Call me.” He erased the message, wondering if the Post article would reach Vernon. He remembered Vernon’s description of his self-imposed exile in Vermont—“submarine down” were his exact words—and hoped that there weren’t copies of the Post onboard that submarine. He couldn’t imagine Vernon caring about the gossip item upon his return at summer’s end and found solace in this rationale, which he also applied to the e-mail response from Shannon Hamilton:
Dear Mr. Downs,
Thanks for replying. I appreciate your taking the time. And I’ll take your advice to heart. Really. So thanks. I meant to ask in my last e-mail: What was it like when your first novel was published when you were so young?
Your fan,
Shannon
Charlie smiled. He was still grinning as he grabbed a six-pack of Corona from the reach-in cooler at the deli on the corner with one hand and a couple of limes from a plastic basket on the counter with the other, opting for a little hair of the dog over the bagel sandwich he’d set out for. Back in the loft, he opened a Corona and shoved a wedge of lime down its neck, taking a long pull as the computer warmed up again. He unearthed the typed interview, spreading the pages out before him. He opened Shannon’s e-mail and clicked reply.
Dear Shannon,
Seems strange to me to be thinking about that book again after all these years. The last time I reread it, I remember thinking I was too young to write a book like that. I also remember thinking that I shouldn’t have taken a lot of the editorial advice I received. The first draft of Minus Numbers was very, very long and a lot of melodramatic things happened. But what I was going after was to have all these melodramatic things drifting in and out of the characters’ lives and to have the power of these melodramatic things completely diminished because of all the fluff that’s surrounding their lives. So there could be murders and rapes, but all this other garbage floating around the characters mutes the power of these horrifying things happening to people. This idea probably interested me the most when I was working on Minus Numbers.When the book was edited down—and it was pared down a lot—by the editing process, a thirty-or-so-page sequence near the end of the book was left intact and stands out as way too melodramatic. I think the book holds up until then, but then I just find it to be a little embarrassing. Everything pretty much reads as I wrote it, but since a lot of stuff was edited out of the middle, these last pages really bother me, or did bother me when I last reread it. I also think the editing toward this kind of ending probably helped make Minus Numbers a more popular book too, and it helped make it a more successful book than it perhaps would’ve been if I’d had my way.
Yours,
V-E-R-N-O-N
Dear Mr. Downs,
Wow, thanks for that insider’s look into the publication of Minus Numbers. Sounds like publishers really have the ultimate say, huh? Sucks. Curious about your writing habits. And about your favorite books. But if you don’t have time to write me back, don’t worry. I’ve taken up too much of your time already!
sh
The seduction of the lowercase signature was a whisper that hovered, filling the room with promises and praise: Shh, this is between us. Shh, I’m your biggest fan. Shh, trust me with all your secrets. He shuffled the pages of the interview and stroked the keyboard:
Dear Shannon,
I don’t write every day. I think about writing every day, but I don’t write every day. There are days where I write a lot, and there are days where I can’t do it. Some days I have either notes or parts of things that I put into my computer, reorganize, or edit. It really depends on what’s going on in my life, it really depends what kind of mood I’m in. Sometimes the material overrides the mood and makes you push forward and say, “I really want to do this, I have the impulse to do this right now, I’m gonna do it.” And there are other days where you feel like crap and you can’t do it. You can’t will a good paragraph, you can’t wish it to work out. You’ve really got to be in a mood, and there are a lot of times where I just sort of wander around the apartment, wait for the mail, open up the refrigerator, wait for the mail some more, open up the refrigerator, turn on MTV, hope I get some good magazines in the mail, walk around the corner, go to a movie, things like that.
As for books, my advice is to read whatever you can get your hands on.
V-E-R-N-O-N
Charlie crawled into bed. He couldn’t sh
ake the fantasy about how he’d respond if a fan note from Olivia appeared in Vernon’s inbox. The idea electrified him no end.
Charlie flipped back and forth through the weathered copy of Zagat he found in Vernon’s top desk drawer, but Jackson’s was not listed. Knowing that restaurants in New York sometimes had their official name and their popular name, he searched the index for the name of the restaurant Kline had suggested. Charlie was running late anyway—a burst of energy had propelled him through a midnight session with the archives; he was through 1993 now—but he’d use his inability to locate Jackson’s in Zagat as his excuse, rubbing it in Kline’s face as a salve for what little irritation remained from the Kline-inspired Post article. He finally called information, the operator informing him that Jackson’s was on West Fifty-fourth Street, and the cabdriver circled the block before finding the unmarked place with blackened windows. Charlie stuck his head through the front door, his eyes adjusting to the dim light made dimmer by the crushed-velvet walls and ceiling. He spotted Kline waving wildly from a table next to the kitchen.
“You made it,” Kline said benignly.
“Place is hard to find,” Charlie said, his rising annoyance competing with the kitchen clatter. Vernon wouldn’t sit by the kitchen, Charlie thought.
“This is an old newsman’s hangout,” Kline said proudly, as if he’d invited Charlie to his private club.
“It’s a little dingy,” Charlie said. He hoped Kline wouldn’t recognize that he was wearing the same suit he’d worn at Christianna’s dinner party, then realized he didn’t really care. The criticism about the restaurant stung Kline, and Charlie let go of any residual anger about the Post gossip piece.
“The food’s good,” Kline offered.
Charlie had readied himself in case Christianna had told Kline about how he’d taken her to the apartment of the famous actor who lived on Central Park West, an invitation extended by e-mail from Vernon’s film agent, someone named Bill Block. “He really wants to meet you,” Block had written. Charlie was a fan of the actor, as was Christianna, and they’d spent an animated evening in the actor’s company, drinking expensive bourbon from cut crystal glasses while overlooking Central Park. Charlie signed some first editions of Minus Numbers and The Vegetable King before they left, the actor calling him “mate” as they waited for the private elevator. But Kline seemed oblivious of this latest escapade, and Charlie endured his soliloquy about how he had become a reporter, how he’d come to work for the Post, how he coveted a job covering the Yankees. Charlie focused instead on his steak tartare, zoning out on Kline, trying to remember when he’d last eaten steak tartare, if ever. He intended to soak Kline for the best lunch possible.