Vernon Downs Read Online Free Page A

Downs’s alma mater, that was stuck on a bulletin board at the New School, where Charlie had taken refuge from an early blast of summer heat. Camden had figured prominently in a number of Downs’s books, and the conference featuring lectures and writing workshops would at the very least bring Charlie closer to the world of Vernon Downs. It seemed like the logical next step in his quest to win back Olivia.
    Charlie cursed himself for scrimping, the late arrival time the result of a cheaper red-eye ticket that imprisoned him at the Albany bus station until six a.m., the first available pickup time that could be arranged by the car service, the only means of travel available to the remote college campus. This rookie mistake was obvious in retrospect as he trudged in circles through the tiny terminal, willing the sun to appear. He contemplated a hotel room, but the balance on one of his MasterCards had crept perilously toward the limit, and he vowed to eschew unnecessary purchases. He’d wait it out. He clutched the postcard of the Empire State Building he’d purchased at the Port Authority, debating about sending it. Olivia would see the beseeching lines he’d scrawled and know his longing for reconciliation. He slid the postcard into a mail slot and immediately began to worry that Olivia’s parents would find the missive in the mail and trash it instead of delivering it to its intended reader.
    He curled up on an uncomfortable half bench, the strap of his duffel bag looped around his arm to prevent robbery; the suede pouch within, given to him by the Kepharts, secreted keepsakes from his travels and was the sole possession he valued. He longed for the comfort of his bed back in Phoenix, though he knew his ex-roommate had found someone to rent hisroom after Charlie announced his plans to go east. Sleep came fitfully and then was banished forever by the whir of an industrial vacuum cleaner as the terminal underwent an early-morning cleaning. Six o’clock was forever in arriving, and despite his excitement at escaping the bus terminal, he dozed off in the back of the hired Lincoln Town Car, waking to marvel at the Vermont countryside. The sun glinted off the green fields and he took in the rural landscape.
    The car sailed through a red-planked covered bridge eroded by time, the verdant landscape filtering in through the latticework, the car’s interior spotted with sunlight. The Town Car shot out the yawning mouth of the bridge, delivering them into the town of Camden, a picturesque New England hamlet populated with wide lawns running back toward quiet houses nestled far from the road. The driver nosed the car through the gates of Camden College, itself set deep in the woods. An admixture of anxiety and excitement coursed through Charlie as the car crept along College Drive, finally slowing to a stop at the Barn, the two-story structure that functioned as the administration building. The driver let him off, and he signed for the service and the tip, which was more than he’d anticipated. He watched the black car drive away until it turned the corner, a curtain of morning sunlight falling over the still campus. The buildings appeared deserted: the Commons ahead and Crossett Library to his left, the manicured Commons lawn a quiet runway extending toward the End of the World, the abrupt terminus from which endless miles of Vermont woods and sky were visible.
    He wondered what Olivia would say.
    He wished he could know.
    The single thought that he was finally within the inviting bosom of Vernon David Downs’s alma mater was surreal. His sole preoccupation on the bus ride from New York had been how to breach the campus successfully—he’d run several scenarios involving multiple deceptions to finesse any security—and once the awe at how easily he’d been able to infiltrateCamden had subsided, he realized he knew very little about Downs’s existence on campus. Which of the