Vernon Downs (18 page)

He didn't answer, didn't know what Kline was referring to, didn't want to know.

“Have a seat,” Kline said, indicating a ratty leather chair opposite his messy desk. “To what do I owe this visit?” he asked.

Kline's coyness riled him and Charlie struggled with his lines. He had choked back tears earlier in the cab when he imagined Vernon's irate reaction to Kline publishing whatever article he proposed to publish.

“How did you find out?” Charlie asked.

Kline put his hand on his heart. “Find out what?”

“C'mon.” Charlie leaned forward in his chair, measuring his breath. “How'd you figure it out?” On the cab ride over, he had considered forsaking Vernon Downs entirely and bolting from New York, later presenting the episode as an anecdote that would maybe amaze Olivia. But he was curious about the publication of his story in
Shout!
and wasn't ready to submarine what might be a burgeoning literary career. Could he manage both? It all depended on Kline, to his supreme amazement.

“That you're not Vernon Downs?” Kline waved at someone passing outside the office. “I bumped into Vernon when I visited Christianna after the party. I was just playing my cards close.”

Charlie exhaled. He'd underestimated Kline by disregarding him, and the penalty phase was about to commence. “What's the pot?” he asked.

Kline pitched forward. “You ever had a nemesis?” he asked.

A crowded field of faces from the past came to mind. “So?”

“Mine is another reporter—he prefers ‘journalist,' excuse me. He was accepted at the more prestigious
J
school, works for a more prestigious paper, gets the plum assignments, on down the line.” Kline's phone rang and he glanced at it. “I first heard about his writing an unauthorized biography of Downs from a mutual ex-girlfriend.” He held up his hands. “I can't even verbalize that situation, but anyway, she told me and so I just showed
up at his Christmas party. Did you know anyone can go? You don't have to be invited. If you know about it, you just go. Pretty remarkable for someone so mysterious. I knew the address from Christianna's sister, and it didn't take much investigation to uncover the when.”

“Does Christianna know?” Charlie asked. The thought hadn't occurred to him until just that moment.

Kline shook his head. “I don't care about what you're up to with her,” he said. “She'll never say anything to her sister, if that's your concern.”

Charlie was unsure of his primary concern. “I still don't know what this is all about,” he said, shifting.

Kline shoved a piece of paper across the desk. Charlie recognized it at once, the letter that had turned up innocently in Vernon's archives, a letter he guessed Vernon hadn't meant to keep.

“It's a copy,” Kline said, warning in his voice.

Charlie reread the letter from Burton LaFarge, the accusation of plagiarism infinitely more menacing as he sat in Kline's office than it had been when he'd first discovered it in the safety of the loft. “Did you write this?” he asked, tossing the letter back across the desk. Stall, stall, stall.

“You know I didn't.”

He thought of another tack: “How did you get it?” He guessed breaking and entering wasn't a talent Kline possessed.

“I told Christianna I could get her a couple of auditions,” Kline said without a trace of chagrin. “She should take some acting lessons from you, though. That day at lunch? An amazing performance.”

The emotional swing brought on by Christianna's betrayal was sickening. He'd never be able to explain to Olivia about why and how he'd come to New York and ended up embarrassing himself by pretending to be Vernon Downs. He wouldn't be able to use as an excuse how expert he'd become at pretending. It was all over if Kline printed what he knew. He began the cost-benefit analysis he'd employed in previous situations created
out of his eagerness to fit in, or his yearning to be liked, measuring what had been forfeit against what could be revised in his favor, and he realized that the option to simply move on to the next thing, whatever it was, was his to exercise. Whatever mistakes or missteps he'd made in Denver, and Santa Fe, and Rapid City, San Diego, and Phoenix, had always accrued mercilessly until he'd wish for another move if only to wipe the slate clean.

But maybe it could all be salvaged, he thought. Perhaps Kline would barter the LaFarge letter for a raunchy tale about Jeremy Cyanin involving hookers and a substantial quantity of cocaine, insinuating that Cyanin was a bagman for a local crime family and that he might have participated in a hit. Or a believable story about Cyanin's sexual depravity, something involving ropes and turpentine, but that lie paled in comparison to Charlie's impersonating Vernon Downs, and the mental narrative he began to spin about Cyanin and the mob spiraled out of control and out of the realm of believability. He surrendered to his compromised position.

“What is it you want?” he asked.

The passing crowd barely registered as he exited the
Post
building, nearly tripping over a homeless woman squatting out on a flattened refrigerator box, Kline's outrageous request for access to Vernon's archives to write the better biography as the price of Kline's silence, both in the pages of the
Post
and with Christianna, ringing in his ears. Kline had pushed for Charlie's help in securing authorized status for the biography, but even Kline knew this was overreaching. Charlie assented to the request simply to win his freedom. Late-August humidity swarmed the city, the stink of garbage piled high on the sidewalk nauseating. Sweat trickled down his back as he waved in vain for a cab during rush hour.

The lock to Derwin's brownstone resisted Charlie's key. He leaned against the diamond-shaped window scarred by weather and vandalism and peered in, but the entryway was deserted.

“He died.” Mrs. Cooper, the ancient Puerto Rican neighbor who could pass entire days loitering on her stoop, told about Derwin's fall, the ambulance that whisked him away, demolishing his summer plans for Fire Island and forever after. She couldn't answer Charlie's question about who changed the locks, but uttered something incomprehensible about Derwin's brother in Baltimore.

Charlie glanced up at his former residence, the tiny studio apartment sealed like a tomb. He felt the first tremors of hysteria as he grieved for what was lost, mostly the suede pouch from the Kepharts that held his valuables:

The aluminum diamonds from the long-ago Batman and Robin performance had traveled with him for so long they'd turned yellow. The skit had ended triumphantly, good finally trumping evil as Charlie skated across his homeroom floor, undercutting the Joker's legs so that the bag of foil diamonds soared, spraying the tiny silver jewels under the desks of their classmates, a choreographed move they'd practiced in the hall. George proudly wore the remnants of the white makeup used to paint him as the Joker that wouldn't wash off, the three of them accepting the wows of their peers, who they believed considered them superheroes. The Joker's capture and the players' ovation weren't the close of the drama for Charlie, however. The conclusion of the play would be asking Suzy Young to be his girlfriend. He'd chosen breakfast in the gymnasium as the venue for his proposal, but he waited a couple of days, allowing for the legend of the Batman and Robin skit to propagate, he imagined, before approaching Suzy. He'd purposely stayed clear of her to avoid losing his new sheen of celebrity, which was why he was oblivious about her father's abrupt transfer to Idaho, the reason Suzy was absent from breakfast on the day he'd hoped would be their happiest. Charlie frantically searched the gymnasium, asking her friends if they knew where she was. Suzy's desk remained empty during the morning classes, and he finally asked Mrs. Holstein about Suzy as the others filed out for recess, collapsing in tears when Mrs. Holstein told him the awful truth.

Gone too was the wedding ring Michelle Benson had given him in the fourth grade. Michelle's friends had been the inspiration to take the relationship to the next level. “Why don't you just ask her to marry you?” they chimed, a dare Charlie converted into proposal, asking Michelle if she would marry him in a note before lunch. Michelle gamely accepted, less flattered than amused, he thought—she was always more amused by him than anything else—though he was the last to know of her decision, since it was Wednesday, which meant boarding the bus that pulled up outside Mrs. Selby's class and honked in the middle of the day, Charlie the lone student from Lewis and Clark in the Gifted and Talented Program hosted by Webster Elementary. He bemoaned his showy cleverness at the annual spelling bee—he discovered an ability to spell words whose definitions eluded him—an exhibition that landed him in the gifted program. He dreaded Wednesdays, not because he sensed his classmates staring at him and his cumbersome backpack as he climbed onto the near-empty bus, or because he had to walk home alone from Webster through an unfamiliar neighborhood, but because of the menacing he and his fellow gifted students suffered on the Webster playground.

His enrollment in the gifted program was a source of tension in the McCallahan household, too: The McCallahans never asked him about it, and Wednesdays came and went like the other days of the week, so that it felt like Charlie's secret, a quiet he associated with the school nurse's diagnosis that Ian was dyslexic, though when Charlie overheard Mrs. McCallahan telling Mr. McCallahan, she said the word in a way that betrayed her disbelief in the nurse's medical qualifications. For his part, Ian never let on that the gifted program bothered him, though Ian barely came out of his room when Charlie knocked to say good-bye before being shipped out to Rapid City without a chance to properly divorce Michelle.

Charlie's wedding day was attended by most of the girls in his class. The event was booked for the early recess, near the monkey bars. One of
Michelle's friends made a crown for her to wear, and Charlie fashioned two rings out of twist ties. The ceremony was quick and consisted of Michelle and Charlie holding hands while they were pronounced man and wife by Michelle's best friend. “You may now kiss the bride,” someone yelled, and he angled forward, Michelle taking the kiss on her cheek.

Lost was the letter from Ms. Slater, his first-grade teacher, her acknowledgment of the carefully wrapped package containing a necklace and a ring from the machine at the grocery store that spit out plastic bubbles full of wonderful prizes that he'd left on her chair the last day of class. Charlie would stare moon-eyed at Ms. Slater from his seat near the back of the room, listening but not listening to whatever subject they were studying. He didn't endeavor to impress her with his academic work; that route was too pedestrian. His own burgeoning affinity for the dramatic was born out of the anonymity that had claimed him since his parents died. Instead he chose “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” from the song-book his piano teacher had given him and practiced it incessantly, working for perfection, willing himself to tears on the refrain “Bring back my Bonnie to me.” He dreamed of performing the ditty to a packed concert hall, smiling in Ms. Slater's direction after the touching performance, the only variation on the dream being the hairstyle Ms. Slater wore. The recital dream was so real he could summon its emotional aftershocks at will, reveling in it over and over so that the moment felt like a shared secret, an illicit romance his classmates were oblivious to. Worried that she'd forget him—and slightly paranoid that she'd vanish before the start of the next school year—he hoped the jewelry would serve as a reminder of his affection and that she'd look forward to seeing him as eagerly as he looked forward to seeing her in the fall. A tizzy threatened his summer until he found a letter addressed in Ms. Slater's hand:

Dear Charlie,

I was so surprised to find a present on my desk after school. Thank you so
much for the lovely necklace and ring.

I have been having a nice summer. Mostly I've just been lazy—doing a lot of reading and sunbathing. I have a new car and will probably be going on a trip later this summer. I plan to visit my sister in Spokane and my parents in Portland, and go to Seattle for the King Tut exhibit.

I hope your summer is a lot of fun.

Love,
Ms. Slater

He'd never again hold the Mormon dance card he'd acquired so that he could attend dances with Jenny, his high school girlfriend. His theory that Mormonism was the sole obstacle to a secure future with Jenny had been wrong. He guessed that swaying Jenny from Mormonism would be a nearly impossible task, but everything hinged on it, so when he read about a documentary proving conclusively that Mormonism was substantially make-believe, he perceived it as his last last chance. Jenny's letters from college had ceased leading up to Christmas, and he hoped her silence was simply reticence to engage his harangue that religion was just a form of governance, rather than a repudiation of him entirely.

Jenny's expression when she opened the door, the aroma of her family's dinner wafting in his direction, revealed how far he'd fallen. “This isn't a good time,” she said, as if he were a salesman conniving for just one cup of coffee. Her expression contracted when she spotted the documentary he was cradling, tears streaming down his face. She'd already disowned him, he could see that, but the glint in her eye communicated how much his materializing with the anti-Mormon video violated the last sacrament between them—the remembrance of how much they'd once loved each other—rendering the memory impotent. Jenny's look hardened and Charlie divined the shattering news that he had been unaware of: She had moved on. A downdraft whipped through the yard and Jenny stepped away from the screen door. The sonorous vibration of laughter burst from
the house, and Jenny glanced reflexively toward the dining room, the same dining room where he'd supped on numerous occasions, encircled in prayer around the polished table with Jenny and her family, giving thanks, Charlie finally drawn completely into the comfort of home. He stammered a valediction about his embarrassment at having interrupted dinner, but Jenny cut him off again with “This isn't a good time,” and the expression he must've worn his first day in Denver, and Santa Fe, and Rapid City, and San Diego, and Phoenix—the look of someone who was starting over—spread across the constellation of freckles he used to spend afternoons counting with clandestine kisses. And although he'd worn the expression in countless circumstances, he'd never had to suffer it—he'd always been the one moving on, leaving friends and familiarity in his wake—and the effect was devastating. As Jenny closed the door, her silhouette rejoining the festivities, he stood in darkness, drowning in Jenny's disdain, his losses mounting, his eyes wet with regret.