Vernon Downs Read Online Free PDF

he often acted as if he were on a stage, with the audience just off in the wings.
    â€œThe workshops are all screwed up now,” the first voice said, exasperation replacing anger.
    â€œCan’t we draft the closest wait lister?” the small voice said.
    â€œNot at this late date,” was the reply.
    Charlie stared dumbly at the bulletin board. He had what he’d come for, and extending his stay on campus could only increase the chance of exposure. But there was an allure about all he didn’t know about Vernon Downs and his time at Camden. He reasoned that an education in All Things Vernon could only aid in his overall goal to ingratiate himself with the author. Plus, it was more economically feasible to spend ten days in Vermont than ten days in New York City. He crept away from the open door, the floor creaking underfoot, threatening to expose him as he formulated what exactly he’d say. He didn’t consider it lying, exactly, but an expedience that benefited all parties involved—a cousin to a white lie, or at best, an act of charity whose currency was simple, harmless untruths.
    He circled the Barn, gathering courage before striding into the writing program office. The air-conditioning had been turned low and Charlie shivered as he approached the counter.
    â€œCan I help you?” The small voice he’d heard earlier belonged to a round, dour woman behind a wooden desk weighted down with stacks of shuffled papers and a computer monitor three technologies old.
    â€œI need to pay my tuition,” he said confidently, smiling sheepishly, as if the joke was on him in some way.
    â€œWhat’s the name?” the woman asked as she pulled a pair of reading glasses from her worn sweater.
    He gave her his name and she typed it slowly into the computer. A dark figure moved behind a pane of frosted glass in the door guarding an inner office. The dour woman frowned. “I don’t have you in my computer,” she said.
    Charlie smiled casually, knowing this was the critical performance. “Maybe I’m still on the wait list,” he suggested. “I was wait-listed at first.” He rubbed his hands together and then dropped them to his sides, shrugging in a mimic of a small child waiting instruction from a parent.
    The woman clacked the keys of her computer again, a look of consternation on her face. “Hmm,” she said, and Charlie could see the conceithe’d planted in her mind take bloom. “Wait one moment, please.” She swept out of the room, easing behind the door to the inner office, which was consumed with urgent whispering. The door opened and closed again, and the woman rounded her desk, a curiously thin file folder in her hand. “Found it,” she said, sighing dramatically. “Computers can’t beat a good old-fashioned filing system.”
    Charlie chortled dutifully. “They never will,” he agreed, nodding at the prop file. He was amazed but not surprised that the trick had worked.
    â€œHow would you like to pay?” the woman asked.
    Charlie placed his MasterCard on the counter, and the woman fished a carbon from the top drawer. He smiled as she copied down his credit card number, confident that the summer writing conference would be over before the transaction was processed, at which point he would call MasterCard and refute the charges, feigning ignorance about what or where Camden was.
    Charlie moved into the cramped room assigned him in Booth, no longer having to squat in Stokes on the fringe of the summer program, though his official admittance left him feeling exposed. He nodded politely to the girl who lived at the end of the hall, alarmed that she’d try to trap him in a conversation about books or writing. A low-level fear accompanied him as he rotated on the outside of groups of students that formed and broke apart with the speed of supernovas. His artistic resume—two semesters of creative writing