Vernon Downs Read Online Free Page B

green and white clapboard dorms had he lived in? McCullough? Booth? He set his bag down on one of the picnic tables outside of the Commons, distressed by extreme weather and extreme temperaments, searching the campus for any sign of life.
Vernon Downs probably sat at this picnic table
, he thought. He tried the door to Stokes, surprised when the handle gave easily, and roamed through the vacant dorm, choosing an empty room down an empty hall farthest from the entrance as his own.
He probably stared out this window
, Charlie thought. The distant mountaintops retained their snowy caps, even in the summer.
He may even have lived in this very room
, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, exhaustion washing over him as he spread out fully clothed on the soft bed.
    Faint laughter woke him some time later. He squinted at the bluing light as he tried to gauge where he was. The gauzy curtains blew in the evening breeze, the air suffused with a floral sweetness. Out his window, dark figures moved against the gray landscape, some struggling with overpacked bags, others darting furtively in and out of their dorm, unpacking idling cars double-parked on the single-lane road that wound past the student housing.
    His fellow Camdenites had finally arrived.
    Charlie hurriedly showered and dressed, then sauntered toward the Commons, which cast rectangles of light across the darkening lawn, the destination of the flow of people appearing in doorways or emerging in tributaries from points unseen. He kept his head low, hoping to blend with those who were actually enrolled in the summer program. Experience had taught him that he could persuade people he was invisible, which invariably emboldened him in any new social situation, so he was bewildered by how nervous he felt. He followed a woman in her eighties wrapped in an oversized yellow Windbreaker, as if expecting a storm, into a dimly lit room crowded with amiable and eager faces, all congregated at a long wooden bar stocked with self-serve beer and wine, which wasbeing grabbed up by nervous hands. Charlie tried to mix into the crowd, cradling a sweaty bottle of Budweiser, listening in on conversations that cut violently from how hard it was to find time to write, to a short list of favorite books, to which of the teachers huddled near the dormant stone fireplace was the recent National Book Award winner.
    Camden’s recent history was very much on everyone’s minds too. Charlie gathered the bits and pieces of conversation to sew the narrative together: Just a year before, the college had taken the extraordinary step of abolishing tenure, firing a third of the professors who taught at Camden, invoking the ire and censure of the academic community. The air was polluted with uncertainty about Camden’s future, which provided the perfect cover for Charlie’s impersonation of a Camden student. He quickly fell into the proscribed banter, asking people where they were from, if they wrote fiction or poetry or what. He readily provided answers when the same was asked of him, sometimes recycling answers he’d been given moments before during a similar inquiry. There was something intoxicating about rotating in a crowd of aspirants. Anything was possible. Even getting Olivia back.
    That night, he dreamed what he would do.
    Early the next morning, he strolled into the Barn and located the alumni office.
    â€œI’m a student here and would like the address for an alum,” he said to the straw-thin girl with wispy blond hair behind the counter. “Vernon Downs.” A rising nervousness pulsed through him. He regretted betraying his earlier instinct to employ a believable ruse. He’d considered several on the walk to the alumni office: that he was with the local newspaper and wanted to interview Downs; that he worked in the library and needed to forward a package someone had sent Downs; or that someone at the campus bookstore wanted to ship a carton of
The Vegetable King
to